RFI Senior Fellow Paul Marshall, writing this week for Providence, takes on longstanding questions about the role of religion in provoking mass violence, including war, throughout history, and how more recent secular sources of violence might be comparatively understood. He writes:

The key issues are not whether religion has justified evil things, which it certainly has, but whether religions, or at least some religions, have been particularly disposed to violence and repression. And, in particular, how historic religions compare with those comparative newcomers in world history, secular ideologies and regimes.

Marshall’s observations in this regard draw upon a book published last year titled, Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History, by Thomas Albert Howard, which makes an important contribution to this fraught topic.

Read the full article: “Secularism as Theocracy.”