The root cause of much of the violence in the world is ethnocentrism—the strongly held belief that there is only one correct way of doing things, of thinking, of seeing the world. As we learn to accept our own cultural beliefs and values, we unconsciously learn to reject those of other people. This means, unfortunately, that humans from different religious traditions may find themselves in conflict with one another. Religious ethnocentrism—the belief, often strongly held, that one’s own religion is the only true religion or is a superior religion—is a barrier to peace and harmony. The Dalai Lama, in his Ethics for the New Millennium, writes:
“It is a sad fact of human history that religion has been a major source of conflict. Even today, individuals are killed, communities destroyed, and societies destabilized as a result of religious bigotry and hatred.”
Religious ethnocentrism is often born from ignorance: ignorance of the world’s religious diversity as well as ignorance of a person’s own religious traditions, teachings, and history. Guy Harrison in 50 Popular Beliefs that People Think are True writes:
“Ignorance is the greatest reason so many people are able to confidently declare that their religion is true while all others fall short. What could be easier than to feel superior about your belief system when you know little or nothing about all other belief systems?”
The ignorance stemming from religious ethnocentrism is often deliberately nurtured. For example, parents refusing to allow their children to learn about other religions in school. In one instance, Christian parents pulled their children out of school because the world history class mentioned Islam. In other instances, Christian parents have petitioned school libraries to pull books from their shelves that mention Wicca or other non-Christian religions.
It is not just that parents don’t want them to learn about other religions, but they don’t want them exposed to any thinking that might conflict with their closely held religious beliefs. One of the most common areas of conflict deals with the teaching of evolution, considered by nearly all scientists to be an important and basic part of science.
In general, monotheistic religions—those focused on the worship of a single, all powerful god—tend to be more intolerant than those which are polytheistic or atheistic. Writing about Egyptian polytheism, Barbara Mertz, in Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt, reports:
“If a foreigner could not find some Egyptian god or other to worship, he was very hard to please; but even in that case the amiable Egyptians allowed him to worship his own god, or even adopted it themselves.”
Monotheistic religions often seek converts, that is, they seek to bring “the one true way” to people who follow different religious paths, often classifying these other religions as wrong, evil, satanic, or not really religions. The 14th Dalai Lama writes in his
Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions can Come Together:
“Historically religions have gone to great lengths, even waging wars, to impose their version of what they deem to be the one true way.”
In noting what appears to be the inherent belligerent intolerance of monotheism, Robert Wright, in his book
The Evolution of God, writes:
“Some even see this as an intrinsic property of monotheism; whereas polytheism leaves room for the validity of other peoples’ gods, ardent monotheists, according to this indictment, were allergic to peaceful coexistence.”
Wright also asks:
“Is violence part of the character of the Abrahamic god? Is there something about this god—or something about monotheism generically—that has been conducive to slaughter through the ages?”
Today’s news media are filled with examples of religious ethnocentrism. For example, when it was announced that the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. was to host a Muslim prayer service,
Bryan Fischer replied:
"This is one of the Ten Commandments: You shall have no other gods before me. Allah is another god. The Bible says you, as a nation, shall have no other gods before me ... Make your objections known, that you object to the National Cathedral being turned into a mosque. That was not the purpose for which it was built. The purpose for which it was built is to worship the God that made America great and you object to it being used to worship a god of a completely different religion."
Another example of religious ethnocentrism is seen in the insistence by some Christians that all people, including non-Christians, must accept the Christian creation story as the only valid creation story. The need for history to conform to the Christian creation story can be seen in the European conquest of the Americas. Brian Dalton, in an article in
Free Inquiry, writes:
“When Europeans came to the Americas, they found a people whose origins and existence they did not understand (and which was not accounted for in their holy book). So they extrapolated from what they thought they knew, taking the biblical story of the lost tribes of Israel and superimposing that tale onto the newly discovered peoples of North, Central, and South America.”
American Indian creation stories are thus labeled as myth or superstition, while the Christian story is assumed to be true.
Religious ethnocentrism can also manifest itself as religious imperialism in which one particular religious tradition is considered supreme and all others are declared illegal. This has been seen in the United States with the suppression of American Indian religions and the requirement that American Indians become Christian. In 1870, President Ulysses Grant’s Peace Policy gave the administration of Indian reservations to Christian denominations which were to have a monopoly on proselytization. Under American policy at this time, the efforts to “civilize” the Indians required them to become Christian. Therefore conversion, by force if necessary, was an important part of American policy. Following the recommendations of the Secretary of the Interior, missionaries, and other influential “friends of the Indian,” the United States formally outlawed “pagan” ceremonies in 1884. Indians who were found guilty of participating in traditional religious ceremonies were to be imprisoned for 30 days.
More recently, in 1992, the construction of a mosque in Edmund, Oklahoma was opposed by Christians. One minister’s wife testified:
“The constitution says ‘One nation under God’ and that’s a Christian God. These people have absolutely no right to be here.”
Religious imperialism in the United States can also be seen in the requirement to believe in a god or deity: constitutional provisions in seven states bar atheists from public office and Arkansas State Constitution bars an atheist from testifying as a witness at a trial. Article 19 of the Arkansas State Constitution:
“No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court.”
Religious imperialism can also be seen in the history of Ireland in which Catholicism was repressed. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the government passed a series of anti-Catholic laws known as the Penal Laws. The first of these was passed in 1695. This was followed in 1697 by the Bishops’ Banishment Act, and in 1704 by the Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery. The Penal Laws were designed to force Catholics to the lowest socioeconomic status. For example, under the Penal Laws, Catholics were not allowed to own a horse worth more than five pounds. Furthermore, any Catholic who was offered five pounds for a horse was required to sell it. Catholics were also prohibited from possessing arms.
Religious ethnocentrism has often been the source of wars, genocides, murders, and massacres. Michael Angrosino, in his book The Culture of the Sacred: Exploring the Anthropology of Religion, reminds us:
“…we should not be surprised at the lesson of history: conflicts rooted in religious or other ideologies are often more intractable and passionately fought than those resulting simply from economic or political rivalries.”
Examples of this range from the Christian Crusades against Islam, to the conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, to the suppression of Native American religious movements in the United States (such as that which resulted in the massacre at Wounded Knee).