Religion, Conflict, Authoritarianism and the duopoly of shared power

I’m completely in favour of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. George Carlin

Religion, Power, and the Case for Separation

The history of religion and political power reveals a recurring truth: wherever faith and governance converge, freedom withers. The preceding analysis demonstrates that no belief system, however benign in doctrine, remains immune to corruption once granted authority over law or policy. From the theocratic empires of antiquity to the moral populism of modern democracies, the fusion of divine certainty with political ambition has repeatedly justified repression, war, and the silencing of conscience. It is not belief itself that endangers society, but the institutional control of belief, the conversion of private faith into public instrument. A just and rational state must therefore protect freedom of religion by ensuring freedom from religion in all its legislative and executive forms. The separation of belief and governance is not hostility to faith; it is the safeguard of both liberty and faith from the predations of power.

Below is a careful, evidence-based survey of the roles the three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) have played, directly or indirectly, in human conflicts over the past two millennia and how they are weaponised by the politically astute and narcissistic for their own aims. The intent is not to cast blame, there is sufficient for all to bask in that pyre, but to trace patterns, tensions, mechanisms and turning points. Wherever possible I prefer historical consensus or recent scholarship over victor accounts, polemics or propaganda.

1. Framing the problem: religion as cause, amplifier or pretext

   It is important at the outset to distinguish among several possible relationships between religion and conflict:

• Religion as primary cause, where theological doctrines or sacred claims directly motivate violence
• Religion as amplifier or legitimiser, where conflict has non-religious roots (ethnic, economic, political, territorial) but religious identity is used to mobilise, frame, or justify
• Religion as restraining influence, where religious norms, hierarchies or institutions mitigate violence or constrain excess
• Religion as identity marker, where it overlaps with cultural, ethnic or communal identity, making lines of conflict more durable

In practice, across history, religion has seldom been the sole cause. But in many conflicts, religion provided motives, symbols, legal frameworks or mobilisation narratives. The three Abrahamic faiths share scriptural traditions, “holy war” motifs, and ideas of exclusivity (monotheism), which can make religious identity a potent factor in conflicts. (armyuniversity.edu).

Below we trace their respective roles more specifically.

2. Judaism: from minority tradition to contested identity

Because Judaism has often existed without a sovereign state over much of the last two millennia, its role in conflict is different (and often more constrained) compared to Christianity and Islam. But it is still implicated in religious-communal conflict in a number of ways.

2.1 Ancient and Late Antique period

• After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Judaism remained a diasporic religion under Roman (later Byzantine) rule. Conflicts involving Jews tended to be local riots, persecutions, or forced conversions, rather than large-scale wars explicitly between faiths.
• In late antiquity, theological disputes (e.g. Christians vs Jews) sometimes led to restrictions on Jewish worship or property rights under Christian emperors, though in many cases Jews retained limited communal autonomy.
• The rise of Christianity as a state religion in the Roman Empire meant that Jews became a religious minority under an officially Christian regime—a shift in status that made them more vulnerable to legal discrimination, riots, or local violence.

2.2 Medieval and early modern Europe

• Under Christian Europe, Jews were often subject to persecution, forced conversion, expulsions and pogroms. For example, the medieval “blood libel” accusations or mass expulsions (Spain 1492, England 1290, various German states in the 14th and 15th centuries) reflect how religious identity became a convenient target.
• These conflicts were not primarily wars of faith between large polities, but persecutions and violence within Christian societies. They often had economic or social undercurrents (scapegoating during crises, envy of Jewish economic roles) but were framed in religious terms (purity, heresy, idolatry, deicide).
• On occasion Jews became scapegoats during the Crusades: for example, during the First Crusade (1096) some crusaders massacred Jewish communities in Rhineland towns (Worms, Mainz) en route to the Holy Land. (Wikipedia)
• In Muslim lands under Islamic rule, Jews (and Christians) generally lived under the “dhimmi” status: non-Muslim “people of the book” who were allowed protection but subject to special taxes and legal disabilities. This arrangement periodically led to tension, discrimination, and local violence. (CPNN World)
• The Convivencia period in medieval Iberia is often cited as a time of relative tolerance among Muslims, Christians and Jews, though its idealised portrayal is contested. (Wikipedia)
• The Jewish communities sometimes took sides in political or dynastic conflicts (e.g. supporting a local lord in return for protection), thereby becoming entangled in secular political strife.

2.3 Modern period: Zionism, antisemitism, and national conflict

• In the 19th and 20th centuries, with the rise of nationalism and modern anti-Semitism in Europe, Jewish identity increasingly became a national question. The Dreyfus Affair in France, the pogroms in Russia, and the Holocaust are among the extreme manifestations of religious (and racial) hatred.
• Zionist movement and the founding of Israel introduced new dynamics: religious identity intersected with national and territorial conflict. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is partly framed in religious terms (control of Jerusalem, holy sites), though its roots are land, population displacement, colonialism and nationalism. (The Washington Institute)
• In the modern state era, Jewish identity has also been weaponised by anti-Semitic ideologies (e.g. Nazi Germany, various Islamist or extremist ideologies) as a target of genocide or violence.
• Internal Jewish conflicts (such as Orthodox vs Reform vs secular) have sometimes produced tension but rarely large-scale violence; the external pressures have been more consequential.

In sum, Judaism’s role in religiously framed conflict has largely been as an often-vulnerable minority, a boundary marker, and a mobilised target, rather than a dominant initiator of religious wars at a grand scale.

3. Christianity: from persecuted sect to state religion to missionary conflict

Christianity offers a more direct case of how a religion transitions into political power, and how that transformation shapes conflict.

3.1 Early Christian era and Late Antiquity

• In its first centuries, Christianity itself was persecuted by the Roman state. Conflict was primarily with pagan authorities, not with other monotheistic religions.
• After Constantine (c. early 4th century) and the Edict of Milan (313 CE), Christianity became increasingly tolerated, then privileged, then the official state religion in various parts of the empire.

• From the time of Theodosius (late 4th century) Christianity became “imperial religion,” and policies suppressing pagan practices or heresies emerged. These

internal religious conflicts (orthodox vs heretic) sometimes involved coercion or persecution (e.g. Arian controversies, suppression of sects).

• The conversion of barbarian kingdoms to Christianity introduced boundary conflicts, sometimes with the persistence of pagan traditions or heretical variants.

3.2 The medieval period: Crusades, reconquest, and religious states

• The Crusading movement (from 11th century onward) is among the most explicit instances of religious war in Christian history: Western Christian states launched campaigns to “liberate” or capture the Holy Land, often against Muslim polities. (Wikipedia)
• Crusades also extended to Iberia (Reconquista), the Baltic (Northern Crusades), and conflicts with heretical sects (Cathars).
• In many of these, religion and territorial expansion were intertwined. The religious rhetoric framed the conflict as a cosmic struggle, with indulgences or spiritual rewards for fighters.
• Christian kingdoms often persecuted Jews and Muslims within their realms—expulsions (e.g. Spain), forced conversions, or social restrictions. These policies had religious justification (e.g. heresy, apostasy) even though political motives (unity, control) were also strong.
• Christian–Islamic conflict extended over centuries along frontier zones, such as in Iberia, the Balkans, Anatolia, North Africa, and the Crusader states. Alliances across religions sometimes occurred when political convenience demanded it.

3.3 Early modern to colonial period

• The Reformation and Counter-Reformation (16th–17th centuries) produced intra-Christian wars (e.g. French Wars of Religion, Thirty Years’ War) in which theological differences led to mass violence, territorial realignments, and state formation. These are among the clearest cases where Christianity itself was a central fault line.
• During the colonial era, European Christian powers often subordinated or suppressed indigenous religions, sometimes violently, claiming missionary or “civilising” mandate. Though not conflicts among Abrahamic faiths directly, the logic of Christian expansionism and religious justification for conquest shaped colonial conflict globally.
• Christian missionaries or colonial administrations sometimes interfered in local religious politics, provoking resistance or conflict.

• Post-Reformation conflicts with pronounced religious dimensions in Europe and the Isles
• The English Reformations and their continental entanglements
  After Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s, England’s religious settlement remained unsettled for decades. The oscillation under Edward VI and Mary I, followed by Elizabeth I’s via media in 1559, gave England a Protestant identity with Catholic rites retained in moderated form. This settlement created fault lines domestically and abroad. Excommunication of Elizabeth by Pius V in 1570 framed later plots against her as religious duty from a Catholic standpoint, while the Crown equated recusancy with disloyalty. These dynamics set the stage for later interstate and insurgent conflict where religion and raison d’état overlapped.
• Anglo-Spanish conflict, the Netherlands and the Armada, 1568–1604
  Hostility between Protestant England and Catholic Spain intensified through the 1570s and 1580s. England’s covert and later overt support for the Dutch Revolt, English privateering against Spanish shipping, and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots fed a conflict cast by both sides in religious terms. The Spanish Armada of 1588 sailed under a mandate that combined strategic aims with Catholic restoration. English propaganda pitched defence of realm and Protestant order. The fighting at sea and in the Low Countries was driven by power politics and commerce, yet confessional identity shaped recruitment, diplomacy and legitimacy claims.
• French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598
  A series of eight wars between Catholics and Huguenots fractured France. The St Bartholomew’s Day massacres in 1572 remain a stark moment of confessional violence. The eventual accession of the Protestant Henry of Navarre as Henry IV and his conversion to Catholicism in 1593 reflected political necessity. The Edict of Nantes in 1598 granted limited toleration to Huguenots and sought to end cycles of bloodshed. Here, dynastic and noble rivalries, regional autonomy and crown weakness amplified doctrine-driven polarisation, showing how religious and political incentives aligned and then had to be unwound through a pragmatic settlement.
• The Dutch Revolt and the birth of a republic, 1566–1648
  The revolt against Habsburg rule combined resistance to central fiscal and legal control with Calvinist mobilisation. Iconoclasm in 1566, repression by the Duke of Alba, and the execution of Protestant leaders hardened confessional lines. The Union of Utrecht in 1579 created a framework for the Dutch Republic with de facto Protestant ascendancy and a measure of pluralism in urban centres. Maritime war with Spain and a commercial revolution ran in parallel. Religion legitimised resistance, while political economy and local liberties supplied enduring fuel.
• The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648
  Sparked by the Bohemian Revolt and framed initially as a Protestant–Catholic power struggle within the Holy Roman Empire, the war widened into a pan-European conflict involving the Habsburgs, multiple German states, Denmark, Sweden and eventually Catholic France allied with Protestant powers. It was a confessional war and a dynastic-imperial war together. Atrocities were widespread, often by mercenary armies living off the land. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 entrenched state sovereignty, expanded confessional arrangements beyond the older cuius regio, eius religio principle, and marked an inflection point in the European state system where religious settlement became subordinated to balance of power politics.
• The Three Kingdoms conflicts and the Irish dimension, 1639–1653
  In the British Isles, religion and governance were tightly coupled. The Bishops’ Wars in Scotland arose from imposition of Anglican liturgy. The English Civil Wars pitted Royalists against Parliamentarians with religious fault lines between episcopacy and various Puritan groupings. In Ireland, the 1641 rising led to the Catholic Confederation, and warfare took on an explicitly sectarian cast as well as a colonial one. Cromwell’s campaigns in Ireland in 1649–1650 involved sieges marked by exceptional severity at Drogheda and Wexford. Land confiscations and a reshaped settlement followed. Across the three kingdoms, sovereignty, church polity and local rights were interlocked with confessional identity, turning a constitutional crisis into a multi-front war.
• The Williamite War in Ireland and the Penal era, 1689–1691 and after
  After James II’s deposition in the Glorious Revolution, Ireland became the main theatre of the Jacobite–Williamite struggle. The Boyne and Aughrim were decisive battles fought with rival claims of legitimate monarchy infused with confessional meaning. The Treaty of Limerick ended major hostilities, but the subsequent Penal Laws created a Protestant Ascendancy and codified civil disabilities for Catholics and many Dissenters. Sectarian hierarchy thus became embedded in law and property relations for generations.
• Religion and state formation in the Isles after 1689
  The Toleration Act 1689 granted limited freedoms to Protestant Dissenters but excluded Catholics and some others. The Test Acts retained civil bars until the nineteenth century. In Scotland, the established Kirk took a Presbyterian form, while in England the established church remained Anglican. Confessional boundaries eased slowly in law but stayed powerful as identity markers, shaping mobilisations in later crises and reforms. Catholic emancipation in 1829 was a major step, yet sectarian politics endured in Ireland through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Ottoman–Habsburg frontier and Mediterranean war, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries
  Beyond western Europe, confessional frontiers persisted. The Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire fought repeatedly in central Europe and the Balkans. Both sides used religious language to legitimise campaigns. The sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683 became emblematic moments. On the seas, warfare between Catholic powers and Muslim polities, including corsair states of North Africa, interwove religious rhetoric with strategic and commercial aims. Borderland populations adapted through accommodation, conversion, or flight depending on local conditions.
• Safavid–Ottoman rivalry and intra-Islamic sectarian war, sixteenth to seventeenth centuries
  The rise of the Safavid state in Persia with a Twelver Shi ‘a identity produced a confessional conflict with the Sunni Ottomans. Campaigns between the empires blended dynastic rivalry with sectarian consolidation. Both powers enforced religious conformity at home while contesting influence in Mesopotamia, the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia. Confessionalisation here was not an abstract theological exercise but a state-building tool that structured loyalty, taxation and law.
• Ireland in the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
  Sectarian stratification shaped agrarian relations, political mobilisation and resistance. The 1798 Rebellion was influenced by republican ideas from France and America, yet sectarian tensions were present, with the United Irishmen attempting to transcend them and local dynamics sometimes cutting the other way. Through the Act of Union and into the nineteenth century, the interplay of religion, national identity and land continued to inform protest movements, security responses and later constitutional contests.
• What these episodes show about religion’s role
  First, religious commitments were not mere decoration. They supplied legitimacy, mobilisation frames, law codes and social demarcation. Second, religion rarely acted alone. Fiscal extraction, dynastic ambition, local liberties, strategic geography and trade rivalries were co-equal drivers. Third, once confessional identities mapped onto political or territorial claims, violence became more durable because compromise threatened ultimate beliefs as well as material interests. Fourth, when settlements carved out toleration with pragmatic guardrails, violence declined. The Edict of Nantes, Westphalia’s arrangements and later emancipation statutes demonstrate that legal pluralism can cool confessional war without resolving doctrinal disagreements.
• A note on Judaism within these conflicts
  Within the European cases above, Jewish communities were overwhelmingly minorities embedded in Christian polities or, further east and south, within Muslim empires. They bore the brunt of scapegoating during upheavals, including massacres in the Rhineland during the First Crusade, expulsions in England in 1290 and Spain in 1492, and episodes of violence amid seventeenth-century turmoil in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The pattern was structural vulnerability rather than large-scale Jewish initiation of conflict. Where relative toleration existed, as in parts of the Dutch Republic or under some Ottoman arrangements, Jews contributed across commerce, finance and scholarship, reminding us that legal status and elite incentives mattered as much as doctrine.

3.5 Modern era: secular states, Christian nationalism, and religious violence

• In the modern era, most states in historically Christian regions have become secular or pluralist, but religious identity remains politically mobilisable.
• In parts of the world (e.g. Latin America, Africa), Christian identity movements have sometimes aligned with state or non-state actors in conflicts (e.g. militias or religious parties).
• Christian nationalism in some countries has contributed to intercommunal tensions (for example, in India, some Christian minorities face persecution from Hindu majorities, though that is outside the Abrahamic axis).
• Christians have also been victims and targets in modern wars (e.g. in the Middle East, persecution of Christian minorities).
• In recent decades, theological extremism (e.g. fringe apocalyptic movements) has sometimes justified violence domestically or internationally, though these are relatively rare compared to other drivers.

In sum, Christianity’s transformation from persecuted sect to imperial religion empowered it to act as a major agent of conflict (internally and externally), especially in Europe, the Mediterranean and colonial domains.

4. Islam: the expansionary religion and context of political theocracy

Islam’s relationship with conflict is distinct because from very early on it took on a political-magisterial character, and its expansion historically involved military conquest.

4.1 Early expansion and the caliphates

• After Prophet Muhammad’s death (632 CE), the Rashidun and then Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates expanded rapidly across Arabia, the Levant, Persia, North Africa, Iberia and beyond. Much of this expansion was carried out through military conquest, sometimes framed in religious terms as jihad (struggle or holy war).
• These early conflicts were not only religious but also political, tribal, economic. But religious legitimacy played a key role in mobilising support and claiming authority over conquered populations.
• In many conquered territories non-Muslims became dhimmis (protected people), required to pay the jizya tax, sometimes with social restrictions, although conversions and inclusion varied. (CPNN World)
• In some cases, early Muslim–Jewish or Muslim–Christian relations were cooperative or pragmatic, especially when the new rulers inherited functioning administrative systems. For example, in early Islamic Spain or in some parts of the Middle East, Jews and Christians played roles in government, scholarship, and commerce. (CPNN World)
• But conflict did erupt, e.g. revolts, rebellions, sectarian strife (Sunni vs Shi ‘a), and punitive campaigns against resistant populations.

4.2 Medieval period and Islamic states in conflict

• Islamic states sometimes waged wars explicitly with religious language against non-Muslim polities (e.g. Byzantine frontier warfare, Reconquista, Crusader states).
• Within the Islamic world, sectarian conflict (Sunni vs Shi ‘a) has led to wars and massacres (for example, early disputes like the Battle of Karbala, later conflicts in the Safavid-Ottoman era).
• Islamic empires and polities sometimes incorporated religious pluralism under the dhimmi system, but in later eras increasing orthodoxy or reform impulses produced harsher treatment of minorities or suppression of heterodox groups (e.g. Ismailis, Kharijites).
• Islamic dynasties competed not only with Christian states but with each other, often using religious legitimacy or jihad rhetoric to justify campaigns or internal consolidation.

4.3 Early modern to modern era

• The Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal and other Islamic states engaged in wars that were partly religious (e.g. Ottoman wars against Christian powers) and partly political/imperial.
• With the decline or collapse of many Islamic empires in the 19th and early 20th century, Muslim polities confronted European colonial powers. Conflict in places like North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia often had a fusion of religious, national and anti-imperial frames (e.g. calls for jihad against colonial rule).
• In the modern era, some Islamist movements have sought to reconstitute political order in explicitly religious terms (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist revolutionary movements). These have sometimes engaged in violent conflict, insurgency, or resistance (e.g. in Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Afghanistan). (Wikipedia)
• Conflicts such as the Iran–Iraq War had religious dimensions (Sunni vs Shi ‘a), though their roots were also heavily political, territorial, and geopolitical.
• In places like Nigeria or Sudan, religious identity (Christian vs Muslim) overlays ethnic and resource conflicts, turning them into communal violence.

4.4 A balancing comment on Islam and claims of peace
The above observations reflect a common reading of the historical record where Islamic polities combined religious and political authority and fought expansionary wars. It is fair to note that sacred rhetoric and jurisprudence, including concepts of jihad, were part of statecraft and mobilisation. It is also necessary to observe that Muslim empires were hardly unique in fusing throne and altar, and that legal regimes such as the dhimmi system, though hierarchical, often permitted multi-confessional societies to function with fewer forced conversions than some contemporaneous Christian states. The sharper sectarian wars within Islam, notably Ottoman–Safavid, underscore how theology, identity and raison d’état interacted in ways broadly analogous to Catholic–Protestant struggles in Europe.

In sum, Islam’s early link with political rule and legitimacy gives it a particularly direct role in conflicts historically framed in religious vocabulary.

5. Comparative dynamics and turning points

Where this leaves the comparative balance
Across these late medieval and early modern theatres, Christianity and Islam each served as both banner and bureaucracy for war-making states. Judaism, lacking a sovereign state through most of this span, functioned chiefly as a boundary identity exposed to persecution in periods of stress. In every case, religious language amplified other interests and helped to harden or soften conflicts depending on the incentives of rulers and the legal room given to minorities.

5.1 Overlaps, conversion and identity conflict
Because the Abrahamic faiths share historical roots and overlapping geographies, their interactions have often involved conversion, protest, suppression of heresy, and boundary-defining conflict. For example:

• Christian theology traditionally claims a supersession of Judaism (in Christian doctrine, the “Old Covenant” is fulfilled in Christ), which laid a theological foundation for Christian dominance and marginalisation of Jews.
• Islam also presents itself as continuation and perfection of the Abrahamic tradition, and in some theological thought, views Christians and Jews as People of the Book (thus deserving protection but subordinate).
• These supersessionist ideas can produce rhetorical and normative frameworks that legitimise exclusion, conversion pressure, or dominance of one faith over another.

5.2 Role of scriptural and doctrinal motifs

• All three faith systems contain scriptural motifs that permit religiously framed conflict (for instance, concepts of holy war, divine command, punishment of apostasy, or defence of the faith). Scholars have argued that the “problem of indiscriminate holy war” is difficult to eliminate because such motifs exist in all the traditions. (learn.elca.org)
• But the practical interpretation of these motifs varies widely over time, with many religious thinkers emphasising pacifism, restraint, or moral limits.
• In Christianity, for example, the notion of “just war theory” (Augustine, later Thomas Aquinas) developed to regulate when war is morally justified.
• In Islam, the concept of jihad has both a nonviolent (inner struggle) and militant dimension; the rules of warfare (prohibitions on harming innocents, etc.) have been developed in Fiqh.
• In Judaism, though the Hebrew Bible includes commands to war (in ancient Israelite context), rabbinic Judaism in many eras emphasised restraint, diaspora survival, and avoidance of open conflict unless necessary.

5.3 Geopolitical and colonial transformations

• The arrival of European colonialism shifted much conflict into secular frameworks, but religious identity remained a potent marker.
• In many post-colonial states, religious identity (Christian, Muslim, Jewish minority where relevant) has been mobilised in national politics, civil wars or partitions.
• Confessional states (e.g. Lebanon) or religiously defined constitutions (some in Muslim-majority countries) make religion integral to governance and hence to conflict.
• In the modern period, secular ideologies (nationalism, communism) often displaced religious justifications, but religious revivalism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries re-emerged as a major force in conflicts (e.g. in the Middle East, South Asia, parts of Africa).

5.4 Interfaith conflict, alliances and syncretism

• Alliances across religious lines sometimes occur when political interests align—e.g. Christian rulers allying with Muslim rulers to suppress a rebellious sect, or Jews allying with one Christian power against another.
• In border zones or frontier regions, religious mixing, syncretism or plural coexistence have occurred (for instance, in parts of Iberia, Middle East, Ottoman multicultural cities).
• The notion of Convivencia in medieval Iberia is often invoked as one such example of interfaith accommodation, although historians debate the degree of harmony vs tension. (Wikipedia)
• Interfaith dialogues (from medieval to modern era) have emerged as religious actors tried to reduce conflict—though such efforts often faced resistance from more militant elements.

5.5 Turning points
Some pivotal episodes worth emphasising:

• Crusades (11th–13th centuries): powerfully symbolise religiously framed war between Christianity and Islam. The violent interactions also triggered persecution of local Jews in Europe and the Levant.
• Reformation and Religious Wars (16th–17th centuries): intra-Christian conflict in Europe demonstrates how religious identity can fragment Christian unity and become the basis of prolonged warfare (e.g. Thirty Years’ War).
• Fall of the Ottoman Empire & Mandate period: the dismantling of Ottoman millet systems (where non-Muslims had protected status) reshaped minority-majority relations in the Middle East. (Hoover Institution)
• Creation of the State of Israel (mid-20th century): placed Judaism again at the centre of territorial and religious conflict in a region with majority Muslim population and Christian minorities.
• Late 20th and early 21st century religious revival: Islamist movements, Christian fundamentalism, new Jewish identity politics have made religion again a mobilising force in conflict zones (Middle East, South Asia, Africa).
• Sectarian wars in Muslim world: e.g. in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, where Sunni-Shi‘a divides have become battlegrounds, sometimes intersecting with tribal, political or foreign intervention factors.

6. Synthesis: patterns, constraints, and ambiguities

6.1 When religion tends to matter
Religion is more likely to play a decisive role in conflict when:

• The religious community has institutional power (churches, mosques, religious states)
• Sacred territory or holy sites are contested (e.g. Jerusalem)
• The religious identity coincides with political, ethnic or national identity
• Religious elites or movements act to mobilise believers for conflict
• Secular legitimacy is weak, making religious legitimacy more salient

6.2 Constraints and mitigating influences

• In many places and times, religious institutions have acted as mediators, peacebuilders, or constraints on violence (e.g. interfaith councils, papal interventions).
• The structural realities of geography, economics, military capacity, diplomacy often dominate outcomes, with religion largely rhetorical or symbolic.
• Many religious scholars and traditions emphasise peace, reconciliation, humane conduct, forgiveness, and limits on coercion.
• Modern international norms, secular constitutions, human rights frameworks curb explicitly religious violence in many states.

6.3 Ambiguities and overlapping motives

• It is often difficult to disentangle when religion is primary and when it is a veneer or instrument for political power.
• Many conflicts that appear religious are in fact driven by resources, power, identity or colonial legacies, with religion as part of the framing.
• Within each faith, dissenting traditions (reformers, liberal strands) often resist the militant interpretations.
• Over time, the same religious tradition may be invoked alternately to justify war, to oppose it, or to critique violence.

7. The Modern Era

What we are witnessing now is a modernised form of religious-political symbiosis, one that no longer needs priests or temples to function. It operates through media, populism, and the manipulation of identity politics. The dynamic, however, is ancient: when power wanes, leaders turn to faith as emotional fuel.

The pattern is depressingly familiar and remarkably durable. Let’s unpack these parallels.

7.1 The United States – Christian Nationalism and Trumpism
In the United States, the alliance between right-wing populism and the Christian evangelical movement has become one of the most powerful examples of religion as a political weapon in the modern West.

• The rhetoric of “God’s chosen nation” and “divine purpose” recasts political opposition as moral evil, transforming elections into spiritual battles.
• By invoking Christian imagery and eschatological themes, Trump and his allies have built a form of civic religion that equates loyalty to leader, nation and God.
• This is not conventional piety but instrumentalised religiosity — using biblical language and persecution narratives to weld together fear, nationalism, and grievance.
• It mirrors the way medieval rulers sanctified war, only now the pulpit is digital, and the sermons come via cable news and social media rather than cathedrals.
• Several features make the Trump movement particularly dangerous beyond America’s borders.
• Inflexible thinking and cognitive closure
  Authoritarian populism thrives on moral binaries. When a political identity is framed as divinely or patriotically ordained, compromise becomes heresy. That inflexibility makes governance impossible and conflict inevitable. In psychological terms, it produces epistemic closure: followers interpret every event through the lens of persecution and righteousness. Attempts at dialogue or correction only reinforce the siege mentality. Once this mindset occupies the political mainstream of a nuclear superpower, it cannot help but influence allies, adversaries and the global information environment.
• Religious legitimation of oppression
  The invocation of “Christian values” by the American far right masks a programme that is neither Christian nor democratic. It redefines liberty as privilege for the in-group and casts social equality as a moral threat. Policies restricting reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ freedoms or minority protections are justified not through law or reason but divine sanction. This is political Calvinism without the theology: a moral hierarchy disguised as faith. When exported through aid programmes, NGOs or cultural diplomacy, it undermines human-rights work far beyond U.S. borders.
• Institutional capture and global contagion
  American institutions remain strong, but they are not immune. If a religious-authoritarian faction gained sustained control of Congress, the courts and executive branch, it would reshape the global landscape. U.S. soft power—the influence of its culture, funding and security guarantees—projects values as much as weapons. Should those values mutate into theocratic nationalism, it will embolden illiberal regimes elsewhere. Leaders such as Orban, Modi or Bolsonaro have already learned from Trump’s playbook: weaponise grievance, claim divine mandate, delegitimise critics, and erode checks and balances under the guise of moral renewal.
• The international echo effects
  The United States still defines much of the rhetorical terrain for democracy. When it normalises anti-pluralist language, others follow. Already, far-right parties in Europe cite American culture-war tropes to justify their own policies. Conspiracy theories born in U.S. churches and online forums spread across continents within days. What begins as domestic myth becomes transnational ideology.
• The strategic risk
  The combination of nuclear capability, deep polarisation and a leadership cult is historically unprecedented in a modern democracy. An impulsive leader surrounded by loyalists who equate his will with divine purpose presents an obvious danger to global stability. Even short of war, the erosion of U.S. reliability undermines collective action on climate, trade and security, leaving vacuums that authoritarian powers will fill

In short, international anxiety about “the disaster spilling into the wider world” is well founded. The forces at play, religious absolutism, populist resentment, and charismatic authoritarianism, have no natural containment boundaries. Information, capital and ideology are global fluids; once a great power embraces irrationalism, it leaks everywhere.

The antidote is neither despair nor imitation, but re-anchoring political discourse in secular reason and shared reality. That does not mean hostility to faith, but clear separation between private belief and public power. History shows that when nations forget that line, they do not simply drift into decline, they drag others with them.

7.2 Israel – Netanyahu and Religious Nationalism
In Israel, Netanyahu has fused political survival with religious absolutism by empowering the ultra-orthodox and far-right settler movements.

• The language of divine entitlement to land has been re-weaponised, blurring the distinction between national security and messianic conquest.
• The current government’s tolerance, and at times encouragement, of extremist rhetoric has enabled collective punishment and repression under the guise of biblical destiny.
• Like all such regimes, it relies on fear, external enemies and internal “traitors”, to justify the erosion of democratic norms.
• Historically, this is a tragic irony: a state founded as refuge from religious persecution now risks reproducing the logic of religious exclusion within its own polity.

7.3 Iran – Theocratic Authoritarianism in Decline
In Tehran, the Islamic Republic represents perhaps the most explicit instance of religion institutionalised as state power.

• The original revolution blended anti-imperialism with Shia theology, but four decades later the clerical establishment functions primarily as a self-preserving elite.
• The regime continues to invoke divine legitimacy to suppress dissent, especially among women and secular youth, while exporting its ideology through proxy groups abroad.
• Its theological rhetoric still commands loyalty among segments of the population, but its moral credibility has decayed. The inevitable result is coercion rather than consent.

7.4 Turkey – Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman Islamism
President Erdoğan has rebuilt Turkish identity around nostalgia for Ottoman grandeur, fusing nationalism with Sunni Islam.

• He has converted Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, expanded religious education, and recast secular opposition as culturally “foreign”.
• The approach mirrors the tactics of twentieth-century fascists who mythologised lost empires to justify centralised control.
• Religion here serves as emotional shorthand for authenticity, loyalty and moral purity, all convenient masks for patronage networks and corruption.

7.5 Hungary – Orban’s Christian-Ethnic Nationalism
Viktor Orbán’s rhetoric of “Christian Europe” presents Hungary as bulwark against both Islam and liberal secularism.

• By equating Christianity with national identity, he defines political dissent as betrayal of civilisation itself.
• The Church becomes not a spiritual institution but a cultural arm of the state, echoing Franco’s Spain or interwar Poland.
• In practice, it is less about theology than identity control, the use of religious heritage as a psychological border wall.

7.6 Common Mechanisms
Across these examples, several mechanisms recur:

• Religious nostalgia – invoking a mythic past when faith and nation were united.
• Moral absolutism – reducing complex social problems to good versus evil.
• Victimhood inversion – portraying the majority as a persecuted moral minority under siege by secular or foreign forces.
• Sanctification of authority – presenting leaders as instruments of divine will or national destiny.
• Erosion of pluralism – marginalising minorities, women, and dissenters under the pretext of moral renewal.

8. The United Kingdom

While the UK’s political and cultural landscape differs greatly from that of the United States, the underlying psychological and institutional vulnerabilities are much the same. The danger does not require open theocracy; it only needs moralistic politics cloaked in secular language.

Let us examine this in layers.

• The illusion of areligious politics
  Labour and, to a degree, the Conservatives both present themselves as secular parties. Yet British politics has always carried an unspoken Anglican and moralistic undercurrent. From parliamentary prayers and bishops in the Lords to moral framing in welfare and education, the state still confers quiet legitimacy upon religious institutions.

Under the current Labour leadership, overt religiosity is rare, but moral dogmatism, the secular equivalent of zeal, is very much alive. Ideological purity tests, intolerance of dissent within the party, and the quasi-religious tone of its social justice rhetoric echo patterns of faith-based orthodoxy. It is not theology, but it behaves as if it were: sin, heresy, redemption and excommunication now play out in political rather than ecclesiastical vocabulary.

The danger is that such moral absolutism, though clothed in progressivism, can easily slide into the same authoritarian logic as religious fanaticism. Both claim moral monopoly, both divide humanity into virtuous and damned, and both justify silencing those deemed impure.

• The British public’s soft spot for moral authority
  Unlike the United States, the UK rarely uses explicit religious rhetoric in policy. Yet Britons remain culturally conditioned to defer to moral authority, whether from clergy, monarchy, scientists, or government “experts.” When that moral authority is co-opted by the state, as seen during the COVID era’s unquestioning moral framing of compliance, religion is not required for obedience. The mechanism is the same: moral fear, not evidence, becomes the driver of conformity.
• Stalin and the myth of atheism
  Often misrepresented as an atheist, Stalin was not an atheist in any philosophical sense; he was a political theist, replacing God with the Party and priesthood with the secret police. His suppression of religion was not a rejection of faith but a reallocation of its machinery. The cult of personality that surrounded him, complete with iconography, hymns, and relics, was structurally religious.

Marx wrote that religion was the “opium of the people,” but he did not propose to destroy spirituality—only to remove the material conditions that made it necessary. Lenin and Stalin perverted that idea, turning communism itself into a secular theology, complete with saints, martyrs and heretics.

Authoritarian religion and authoritarian communism can coexist comfortably, because both depend on doctrinal obedience and central control of truth. Whether the absolute is divine or ideological, the function is identical, to regulate thought, suppress dissent and sanctify power.

• Modern echoes in Britain
  Britain today faces subtler risks, but they are real:
• Ideological sanctimony has begun to replace rational debate. Political morality, whether on immigration, gender, environment, or speech, often assumes the posture of faith, with excommunication (cancellation, professional ruin) for those who dissent.
• Moral populism is creeping in. The belief that political virtue overrides process or evidence. Once that takes hold, any government, of left or right, can justify increasingly coercive policies “for the good of society.”
• Institutional faith capture is visible in the education sector, where activist ideologies shape curricula with quasi-religious certainty, and in the civil service, where “values” have become as binding as laws.

The risk is not that the UK will suddenly embrace open theocracy; rather, that it will replicate the structure of religious absolutism without the scripture, a moral-political orthodoxy enforced by bureaucracy, media, and peer pressure instead of clergy and law.

• The lesson from all authoritarian systems
  Every totalising ideology, be it fascism, communism, nationalism, or organised religion, shares three instincts:

1. To control narrative – monopolising truth by moral or divine claim.
2. To sanctify power – making obedience a virtue.
3. To vilify dissent – equating criticism with sin or treason.

Britain is not yet there, but the rhetorical groundwork exists. The fusion of moral absolutism, cultural insecurity, and centralised control is a recipe that history recognises too well.

Britain’s antidote
Only a citizenry educated to distinguish morality from moralism and belief from proof can prevent the slide. True secular democracy is not hostile to faith; it simply insists that belief remains private and that the state never claims moral infallibility. Once either of those boundaries’ breaks, the descent begins, sometimes softly, sometimes at a gallop.

Religion and authoritarianism are not opposites; they are mirror systems of control, each promising salvation in exchange for surrender. Whether the altar stands in a cathedral or a parliament chamber is merely cosmetic.

9. Religion and Fascism

The popular image of fascism as an atheistic or anti-religious ideology is a convenient myth, mainly perpetuated by both the political left, to distance fascism from its own secular authoritarianism, and by religious institutions, eager to obscure their complicity. Fascism and religion were frequent collaborators, not opposites.

• The myth of “godless fascism”
  The idea that fascism was irreligious rests on two misunderstandings. The first is a confusion between anti-clericalism (opposition to Church interference in state affairs) and atheism (rejection of belief in gods). Mussolini in his early socialist years was indeed anti-clerical, but not because he rejected faith—he rejected rival authority. Once in power, he quickly recognised religion’s value as social glue. The second misunderstanding is that totalitarian regimes which exalt the state or the leader automatically supplant religion. They rarely do. They absorb it, rebranding it as patriotic faith.
• Mussolini and the Vatican – the model alliance
  By the mid-1920s Mussolini understood that to stabilise his rule he needed the Church. The Lateran Accords of 1929 were a masterpiece of political theatre: the fascist regime formally recognised the Vatican as a sovereign state, restored Catholic privileges in education and marriage, and received in return the Church’s blessing. Pius XI hailed Mussolini as “the man sent by Providence.” The Duce reciprocated by describing Fascism as “a religious conception of life.” Far from suppressing Catholicism, Mussolini institutionalised it as moral underpinning for national unity. Italian fascism did not displace God—it nationalised
• Hitler and the Churches – opportunism wrapped in piety
  Hitler’s relationship with religion was more cynical but equally manipulative. While his private remarks were contemptuous of Christianity’s ethics of meekness, he recognised its propaganda power. In Mein Kampf he cast his mission as fulfilling “the will of the Almighty Creator.” Nazi rallies were choreographed with quasi-liturgical precision: banners, hymns, processions, invocations of destiny. The regime signed the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican, guaranteeing Church rights in exchange for political neutrality. Protestant leaders were courted through the Deutsche Christen movement, which sought to align Lutheranism with Nazi racial ideology.

Even when the regime persecuted dissident clergy, it never denounced Christianity as false—it portrayed itself as defender of a purified, Aryan faith. Hitler frequently invoked Providence, and chaplains served in the Wehrmacht throughout the war. Nazi antisemitism, too, drew on centuries of Christian theological hostility; the regime merely racialised what had long been moral prejudice.

• Franco, Salazar and Catholic corporatism
  Francisco Franco in Spain and António Salazar in Portugal present even clearer examples of clerical fascism. Both regimes enshrined Catholicism as state religion. Franco’s Spain fused nationalism and faith into nacionalcatolicismo, bishops blessed his troops, crucifixes hung in classrooms, and opposition was cast as sin. The Church gained immense privileges in education and censorship; in return it sanctified Franco as saviour of Christian civilisation against atheistic Marxism. Similar arrangements existed in Vichy France and in Latin American military regimes from Argentina to Chile.
• Pinochet and the theology of order
  General Pinochet’s Chile, while operating under Cold War anti-communism rather than European fascism, replicated the same pattern. He wrapped repression in the language of divine order and anti-Marxist salvation. Catholic conservative groups and the evangelical right provided moral justification for his coup. Pinochet portrayed his rule as defending Christian civilisation, mirroring Franco’s rhetoric forty years earlier.
• Why the collaboration worked
  Fascism and organised religion share structural DNA: both prize unity, hierarchy, discipline and mythic destiny. Each views dissent as moral decay. When regimes promise national resurrection, churches readily provide ritual, legitimacy and networks. Religion offers fascism emotional depth; fascism offers religion political power. The result is a seamless moral-political totality.
• Stalin versus the fascists – convergent structures
  As already noted, Stalin’s relationship with the Orthodox Church was not fundamentally different. He neutered it, then harnessed it. During the Great Patriotic War, he reopened churches and reinstated the patriarchate to rally national morale. The fascists did the same in reverse: they flattered the Church from the outset. Both recognised that faith is the ultimate propaganda technology, binding people through emotion rather than reason.
• Post-war amnesia and moral laundering
  After 1945, the Western narrative deliberately sanitised this history. The Catholic Church emphasised its martyrs under Nazism while downplaying collaboration. The left portrayed fascism as pagan and godless to preserve the myth of religion as moral bulwark against tyranny. Yet archival evidence, from papal correspondence to parish records, reveals deep complicity. The Vatican’s “ratlines” aided numerous Nazi fugitives after the war, and clergy in Spain, Croatia and elsewhere directly participated in repression.
• The pattern persists
  Modern authoritarian movements continue to borrow the fascist formula: invoke divine mission, define enemies as moral pollution, and present obedience as virtue. Whether the rhetoric comes from pulpits or populist podiums, the technique is identical. Religion does not merely coexist with authoritarianism; it often acts as its moral amplifier.
• The enduring lesson
  Fascism was not atheist; it was devotion repurposed. It replaced humility with hero worship and rebranded salvation as national glory. The crucifix and the banner stood side by side because both symbolised submission to a higher will. To call such systems atheistic is to misunderstand both fascism and faith.

In the modern era, this is the new clerical populism, in which religion no longer needs churches or mosques as its primary infrastructure. It thrives through media ecosystems that mimic the emotional cadence of revivalist preaching, outrage, redemption, loyalty, damnation. The “amen” now arrives as a share or retweet.

The most disturbing aspect is that this strategy works even among the irreligious. Many followers of these movements are not devout; they respond to the sense of belonging and righteousness that religion, when politicised, uniquely provides. In effect, faith has been stripped of theology and reduced to a tribal operating system for authoritarian politics.

10. Conclusion

Across more than two millennia, the three Abrahamic religions have shaped, sanctified, and suffered from humanity’s perpetual struggle with power. Each began as a personal covenant, an attempt to frame moral order and purpose within a chaotic world, yet each evolved into institutional structures capable of uniting or dividing entire civilisations. What began as private faith became a public instrument, and from that transformation flowed both extraordinary human compassion and extraordinary cruelty, tapping in on both extremes of human existence.

History demonstrates that religion has never existed in isolation from politics. Its doctrines and hierarchies have legitimised empires, justified wars, restrained violence, inspired reform, and offered solace. Judaism, often as a dispersed and persecuted minority, endured as a faith of survival. Christianity, by merging with imperial power, became both missionary and militant, spreading spiritual doctrine through conquest and colonisation. Islam, born as a fusion of revelation and governance, carried political authority at its core, combining theology with empire. Yet none of these faiths can claim moral exclusivity. Each has, at different times, been both victim and oppressor, peacemaker and provocateur.

The persistence of religious conflict lies not in divine teaching but in human instinct. Leaders, whether kings or clerics, have long understood that religion is the most enduring instrument of obedience. Faith can bypass reason, turning loyalty into moral duty and violence into virtue. The crusades, jihads, inquisitions and pogroms of earlier centuries differ only in costume from the moral crusades of today’s populists. In every era, the same alchemy repeats: transcendence harnessed to power, rhetoric to fear, salvation to submission.

None of the Abrahamic faiths can claim to be “religion of peace”, history, since the formation of each, well beyond 2000 years for the Jews, demonstrates that political violence has always been justified using religious rhetoric and iconography to empower people to accept the will of the state.

No major religion with political influence, has a spotless record regarding peace. Each has, at different times, served as both balm and blade: a source of ethical restraint and compassion, yet equally a mechanism of justification for conquest, repression, or persecution.

The common thread across all epochs is not the theology itself but the human use of theology as a tool of power. Religion provides a uniquely potent narrative structure, divine purpose, moral certainty, communal belonging, that secular ideologies can seldom equal. When fused with political ambition or social anxiety, it allows rulers, movements, or even populist demagogues to reframe violence as moral duty. In this sense, religious rhetoric becomes a form of statecraft, a means to mobilise obedience and sacrifice without reliance solely on coercion.

From the Roman adoption of Christianity to Islamic caliphates, from medieval Christendom to modern Zionism and Islamist extremism, divine sanction has repeatedly been invoked to naturalise political power. Even when rulers were cynics rather than believers, they understood that religion conferred legitimacy, cohesion, and fear in ways that mere law or force could not.

A few key patterns reinforce these points:

1. Transcendent justification: Once authority is framed as divine, dissent becomes not only political but sinful, allowing suppression to appear righteous.
2. Symbolic continuity: Religious iconography—cross, crescent, Star of David—links present power to sacred history, granting the state an aura of timelessness.
3. Moral outsourcing: Individuals absolve themselves of moral agency when told violence is divinely endorsed, a dynamic visible in inquisitions, crusades, jihads and pogroms alike.
4. Identity consolidation: When faith is equated with citizenship, exclusion or persecution of minorities becomes not only permissible but patriotic.

Ironically, the moral philosophies within these religions often oppose what has been done in their names. Judaism’s prophetic tradition demands justice; Christianity’s gospel preaches mercy; Islam’s early community idealises compassion and restraint. Yet history shows that once belief systems become institutions, the survival of the institution eclipses its founding ethics.

Any opposition to these religions is not to spirituality itself but to the institutionalisation and weaponisation of belief, the process by which private conscience is collectivised, ritualised and then manipulated by hierarchies. This distinction is essential. Religion as personal philosophy can cultivate reflection, compassion and meaning; religion as organised power structure tends to harden into obedience, identity, and control.

It should be noted that each of the Abrahamic faiths originally conceived worship as direct and personal.

• Early Judaism placed its covenant between the individual (and much later, the community) and God, mediated through prophets rather than priests.
• Early Christianity, in its pre-Constantinian form, was intensely individual and often ascetic, centred on moral renewal rather than spectacle.
• Early Islam emphasised personal submission (Islam) and equality before God, with the mosque originally serving more as communal shelter than seat of authority.

Only later did all three evolve into structured hierarchy, rabbinate, church, and ummah, each claiming interpretative monopoly. Communal worship became both social glue and a powerful political tool. It offered rulers an audience, a pulpit and a mechanism for social surveillance disguised as devotion.

We must not forget that by and of itself, as noted, religion is not inherently evil or warmongering, the danger arises when ideology fuses with power, when the same mechanism that consoles become the mechanism that commands.

Modern authoritarian regimes have merely updated the technique. In the twentieth century, fascism and communism each replicated religious structure without theology, saints and martyrs replaced by heroes and revolutionaries, churches by party congresses, scripture by manifestos. Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and Stalin all understood the power of ritual, hierarchy and myth. Each exploited religion rather than rejected it, binding nationalism and devotion into a single creed. The crucifix and the banner, the sermon and the speech, served the same end: sanctifying obedience.

Today’s populist movements follow a similar pattern, though their altars stand in television studios and on digital platforms. From the United States to Iran, from Israel to Hungary, religion, or its secular echo, is again being weaponised. It no longer needs scripture to function. Moral absolutism, identity politics, and ideological purity tests have replaced doctrine, yet the psychology is identical. Zeal, grievance and belonging are once more the currencies of control. In this sense, authoritarianism and religion are not opposites but reflections: both promise redemption through surrender, both turn conviction into conformity.

The United Kingdom is not immune. Though outwardly secular, its politics retains a moralistic undercurrent that can harden into dogma. The modern risk is not theocracy, but a faithless faith, moral authoritarianism cloaked in secular virtue. History warns that when moral certainty replaces moral humility, and when belief, whether religious or ideological, becomes a measure of citizenship, liberty withers quietly before anyone notices it has gone.

Religion itself is not inherently malign. Its ethical cores, justice, mercy, compassion, remain profound human achievements. But when faith becomes hierarchy, or belief becomes policy, it ceases to elevate and begins to command. The danger lies not in prayer but in power: the moment any creed, divine or secular, claims exclusive custody of truth, it ceases to guide humanity and begins to govern it.

The long arc of history therefore delivers one clear lesson. Peace is not born from shared belief but from shared restraint, from societies mature enough to separate personal conscience from public authority. Whether the altar stands in a cathedral, a mosque, or a parliament chamber is irrelevant. The only true safeguard lies in remembering that no system, sacred or secular, has ever saved humanity from its own hunger for control, and that every generation must rebuild the fragile wall between conviction and tyranny.

Zealots, narcissists and the power-hungry have always recognised that faith can bypass reason; it appeals to loyalty, fear and transcendence, which no secular rhetoric can easily counter. This is why religious authority has been the most enduring political technology in history — more stable than empires, more persuasive than armies.

It is worth remembering that even many religious reformers shared this frustration. Spinoza, Erasmus, al-Maʿarri, Ibn Khaldun, Luther (in his early years), and Voltaire each, in their own way, argued that religion should be confined to the private sphere of conscience. Their error, if any, was underestimating how deeply humans crave collective belonging. The tragedy is that the moment belief becomes collective, it ceases to be wholly private, and power finds its way in.

 

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