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In many ways, monotheism led ultimately to a new assertion of man's worth. It rose as a unifying force above countless tribal deities and, therefore, tribal conflicts. But, facing outward, it also encouraged exclusivity and intolerance—the line between the believer and the infidel, the chosen and the unchosen. Christianity and Islam have had the historical habit of descending with a sword on strangers. The world's other great monotheistic faith, Judaism, has traditionally been more defensive.
Is the religious element in war an atavism, or has it been taken up, in its essentials, by the various sides in the world's more modern ideological struggles? Viet Nam was in one sense a kind of religious war—a battle for souls, for "hearts and minds." (Soldiers in Viet Nam collected enemy ears, just as Huguenots wore strings of priests' ears.) Perhaps a quality of holy war was involved, but there were crucial differences. The Americans who fought in Viet Nam did so chiefly out of a residual social discipline, not a religious or tribal loyalty, and that discipline eventually all but broke down, hastening the end of the American involvement. Besides, ideological conflict is susceptible to detente, and there is something in the nature of religious war that is deeply intolerant of accommodation. The combination of Communism and nationalism is, of course, a powerful force for ideological upheaval, providing saints and messiahs—Ho Chi Minh, Mao, Castro—and an accompanying mythology and faith. There, too, the overriding faith validates any behavior on behalf of the visionary goal—which in the Marxist case must be achieved in this world, not the next. Some Communist leaders now, how ever, especially those in Western Europe, have begun insisting that it is time for an end to celebrations of Red mythology.
Roger Shinn, Reinhold Niebuhr professor of social ethics at New York City's Union Theological Seminary, believes that "religious wars tend to be extra furious. When people fight over territory for economic advantage, they reach the point where the battle isn't worth the cost and so compromise. When the cause is religious, compromise and conciliation seem to be evil." Possibly the transcendent nature of both religion and war encourages an especially lethal kind of fanaticism. As Shinn says, "War is one of the few occasions when people are asked to give of themselves in a cause that is greater than self. People are asked to forget self — and human nature rises and falls to the occasion."
In any case, men who have fought in the name of religion and journalists who have observed them detect an eerie difference from more conventional warfare — a note of retribution and atonement, a zealotry that exists outside time and immediate circumstances, an implacability that is directed from within. The fury of fighting in Lebanon suggests as much. That, of course, is a definition of faith — but saintliness has its dark, bloody side.
Religion is not only certainty, but a confused striving for truth; not only the imposition of dogma, but the open, undiscriminating act of mercy. And certainly secular societies have not managed to avoid war or cruelty. Yet the paradox of religion-at-war remains shocking.