Will Increase in Religious Observance Lead to More Violence?

By Henry Srebrnik, Canadian Jewish News

If people become less religious, does it follow that crime will skyrocket, violence will rise, and life will degenerate into immorality and depravity? Many people think so, but is it true?

While most American politicians maintain that robust civil societies can only exist on a strong bedrock of religious values, statistics don’t confirm this. In actual fact, those societies today that are the most religious – in places like Nigeria, Uganda, the Philippines, Pakistan, Morocco and Egypt -- tend to have the highest violent crime rates. 

Meanwhile those societies in which faith and church attendance are the weakest (the most secular societies today include Sweden, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Britain and France) tend to have the lowest crime rates. Generally speaking, religion is more important to people in poorer countries than in richer ones, though the United States bucks the trend with the highest percentage of people who are religious out of all economically advanced nations.

The Global Peace Index, an annual report that provides a comprehensive analysis on the state of peace in the world and is issued by the Institute of Economics and Peace based in Sydney, Australia, lists the degree of peace in the world’s nations, based on the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic or international conflict, and the degree of militarisation.

According to the 2017 Index, the 10 most peaceful nations are Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Canada, Switzerland, and (tied for tenth) Ireland and Japan. All are largely secular societies, with virtually no religious conflict.

By contrast, Syria is the least peaceful country in the world for the fifth year running, followed by Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic and Ukraine. They all have very severe ethno-religious divisions.

True, there are multiple and complex factors, including economics, geography, politics, and history, that are involved in determining levels of violence in states. But it is clear that a strong or increased presence of secularism isn’t as damaging a threat as many claim it to be. And as political theorist Michael Walzer notes in his 2015 book The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions, many noble, secular, and even socialist projects of national emancipation have foundered on the rocky shores of religious extremism.

“Why,” he asks, “have the leaders and militants of secular liberation not been able to consolidate their achievement and reproduce themselves in successive generations?” Indeed, why were they replaced by those who look backward rather than forward? One reason: they did not understand religious passion. This perhaps explains why countries like Bangladesh, India, Israel and Myanmar have been reverting to religiously based national narratives.

The Changing Global Religious Landscape, a study released by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, projects that, with the notable exception of Buddhism, all of the world’s major religious groups are poised for at least some growth in absolute numbers in the coming decades. By 2050, Christians and Muslims will make up, between them, more than 60 per cent of the world’s population, with Islam as the fastest growing faith.

So the study appears to indicate that sectarianism, confessional identities, and loyalties have not been superseded by globalization. 

And it may follow that if religion does correlate positively with violence, we can expect a more volatile world in the coming decades, because the world is becoming more religious. In this brave new world, highly secularized countries may tend to fare the best, while those nations with the highest rates of religiosity will be the most problem-ridden when it comes to violent crime and corruption.