The Churches' Support for War

 

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    God is always on the side of the big battalions.
    Attributed to Henri de la Tour d"Auvergne, Viscomte de Turenne (1611-1675)

     

    Since God condoned and encouraged war, and participated in it himself, it was natural that his Churches should do the same. For many centuries the clergy played an active part in war, a fact of which we are reminded by the chess piece known in English as a bishop. Junior clergy, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, popes and patriarchs all took an active part in warfare.

    Until the Middle Ages Christians waged war mainly to convert by force the people they considered heathens. During the Middle Ages they concentrated on Muslims, with a few European excursions to slaughter Jews, dissident Christians and political enemies of the Church. By the fifteenth century the Church was powerful enough to become more ambitious. Pope Nicholas V, in his bull Romanus Pontifex (1452) declared war on all non-Christians throughout the world, not merely sanctioning but actively promoting conquest, colonisation and exploitation of non-Christians peoples and their lands.

    Countless clergymen had been crusaders. Senior clerics led armies into battle with varying degrees of success. Pope Leo IX led his army against marauding forces in southern Italy in 1053 but fared badly. Pope Julius II, on the other hand, was acknowledged to be a better soldier than a theologian. A keen military strategist, he had no qualms about donning armour and fighting on behalf of God and the Papal States. Known as Il Terribile he led a number of victories in the Italian wars of the early sixteenth century. He sent Christopher Bainbridge, Archbishop of York, to lead a military expedition against Ferrara in 1511.

    Because the Church maintained that it should not be responsible for shedding blood, clerical warriors favoured weapons that battered rather than pierced flesh. Thus, for centuries the mace was the favourite ecclesiastical mode of killing in battle. Apart from this small qualm, churchmen had no doubts about the propriety of killing.

    Head of a War Mace, traditionally identified as the favoured weapon of medieval Ecclesiastical warriers.
    (in fact ecclesiastics seem to have used the same range of weapons as other knights)

    Senior clerics would ride up and down the battle lines before the fighting started, wearing their ecclesiastical robes, often holding holy relics, giving blessing and absolution.

    When the Anglican Church was established, the 37 th of the 39 Articles expressly stated that it is lawful for Christian men to wear weapons and serve in wars.

    Pope Julius II (centre, wearing his papal tiara and armour)
    exhorting European rulers to join him in a war against Venice
    (You can make out the Kings of Castile, England and France, and the Holy Roman Emperor)

    Some clerics are remembered mainly for their war records. Robert of Geneva, a cardinal and papal legate, was one. He is most notable for his part in the papacy's battle against Florence. At Cesena in 1377 he persuaded the locals to lay down their arms with promises of mercy. When they did he sent in his mercenaries to kill them — 8,000 men, women and children. This was not untypical. Thousands of Waldensianss in Calabria were massacred by Roman Catholic troops in 1560 under Grand Inquisitor Michele Ghislieri, later Pope Pius V, and now a saint.

    For many cnturies Christians were taught that God and his heavenly helpers gave great Christian leaders magical swords to help them. A sword called Durandal was supposedly given to Charlemagne by an angel. It contained a tooth of Saint Peter, the blood of Saint Basil, some hair from Saint Denis, and a piece of clothing of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was supposedly the sharpest sword in all existence. In the Song of Roland, the sword is given to Roland and he uses it to defend himself against thousands of Muslim attackers.
    (Illustration shows Roland receiving Durandal from Charlemagne)

    A "blessed sword" (ensis benedictus) and a "blessed hat" were together given by popes to Catholic leaders for making war on behalf of the pope. Each gift was blessed by the reigning pope on Christmas Eve in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The sword was up to 2 metres long, with the hilt embellished with the pope's coat of arms, and the blade engraved with the pope's name. The hat was a cylinder made of red velvet with two lappets hanging down (like those on a bishop's mitre). The pope sprinkled the sword and hat with holy water and incensed them three times. The recipient was dressed in a suplice, like a cleric, and the pope asked him to kill the pope's enemies: "Therefore, may your hand remain firm against the enemies of the Holy See and of the name of Christ, and may your right hand be lifted up, intrepid warrior, as you remove them from the earth ..."

    Not all recipients are known; among those whose names have been preserved, are twelve emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, ten kings of France, seven kings of Poland, and six kings of Spain. Additionally, three or four blessed swords and hats were given to kings of England, two or three to kings of Scots, and three each to the kings of Hungary and Portugal. Recipients also included various princes, including heirs-apparent, archdukes, dukes, noblemen, military commanders, as well as cities and states

    Pope Alexander III hands a holy sword to the Venician Doge Sebastiano Ziani,
    Doge of Venice from 1172 to 1178. (The papal side had been victorious over Holy Roman Emperor Frederic Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano 1176)
    Pope Alexander III Receiving and Blessing Doge Sebastiano Ziani (oil on panel),
    painting by Bassano, Francesco (Francesco da Ponte) (1549-92)

    Prisoners of war could not expect mercy and were frequently tortured or murdered. As a boy of eight, Erasmus had witnessed 200 prisoners broken on the wheel outside the gates of Utrecht on the orders of the city's bishop. Again, this was far from exceptional. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were characterised by numerous religious wars in Europe. With a single respite, such wars were endemic from the 1520s until 1648.

    Henry Beaufort, better known as Cardinal Beaufort, was a fifteenth century Cardinal Bishop of Winchester. He exemplified several characteristics of the Church in the late Middle Ages. He fathered an illegitimate daughter, Jane Beaufort, in 1402. As Bishop of Winchester, he drew revenues from licensing prostitutes (known as Winchester Geese). A member of the royal house of Plantagenet, he was elevated to Cardinal in 1426. As Papal Legate for Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia, he personally led an army against the Hussites, which were routed at Tachov on 4 August 1427. His other notable contribution to human history was to preside over the trial of Joan of arc, another divinely inspired warrier.

    Joan of arc interrogated in her prison cell by Cardinal Winchester [Henry Beaufort].
    By Hippolyte (Paul) Delaroche, 1824, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France.

    Zwingly, the famous reformer, died in the Battle of Kappel in 1531, trying to force Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland to become Protestant ones. Some wars, such as the Bishops" Wars, which started in 1639, boast ecclesiastical titles reflecting the issue being disputed, in this case the validity of the episcopacy. European nations divided on sectarian lines on every conceivable issue. The Thirty Years" War was typical. In 1618 the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II decided to eradicate Protestantism in Bohemia. His Roman Catholic army fought and routed a Protestant one, and started to extirpate the Protestant population. The King of Denmark, Christian IV, sent another Protestant army, which was joined by German Lutherans and Calvinists. It too was defeated and the massacres resumed. Now the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, led yet another Protestant army into battle. It enjoyed great success until Gustavus was killed. On both sides the slaughter continued at a rate that Europe had never seen before. Eventually, for political reasons, France joined in on the side of the Protestants, although France was still persecuting its own Protestant population. After 30 years of fighting, a settlement was concluded in 1648 at the Peace of Westphalia. The population was so reduced that there were not enough people left to rebuild the towns, resume trade, or even plant the fields. Estimates of the numbers killed vary from a tenth to over half of the population. The truth lies somewhere between the two, but whatever the exact proportion it is certain that millions died and millions were orphaned by Christian forces in the name of God.

    Prince-Bishop Franz Von Waldeck
    wearing his armour and his bishop's mitre
    carrying a sword as well as a crozier.

    The coats of arms of many old bishoprics still feature various types of military weapon - A number of Anglican bishops have swords in their coats of arms reflecting their temporal power.

    Arms of the
    Bishop of London
    Arms of the
    Bishop of St-Albans
    Arms of the
    Bishop of Winchester
    Arms of the
    Bishop of Exeter

    Churches were always ready to affirm God's support for causes, however disreputable they might now appear. The clearances of the Scottish highlands in the eighteenth century were assisted by churchmen. Scottish ministers threatened their flocks with eternal hellfire if they did not follow instructions to abandon their homes to make way for sheep.

    Klemens August of Bavaria 1700-1751, Bishop of Cologne
    still wearing armour in the eighteenth century

     

    On the other side of the Atlantic, the extirpation of entire tribes of Native Americans was hailed as the will of God. In the Far East, God was seen to be behind the First Opium war of 1839-42. He may or may not have cared about opening up the opium trade within China, but missionaries were certain that he wanted them to have access to the country, and he had done this by giving victory to the Christian forces. Some wars have been prolonged unnecessarily by Christian Churches. For example Southern clergymen prolonged the American Civil War long after the Confederates had any hope of winning. Clergymen simply could not accept that God could let them lose. God's unfulfilled promises delivered through the Southern Churches contributed significantly to the approximately 600,000 killed and one million injured.

    Killing rates had by then been increased by an invention of a clergymen following in the ancient Christian tradition of clerical military engineers. The percussion cap was patented by the Rev. A. J. Forsyth of Belhelvie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1807. Forsyth was principally interested in killing animals. He had noticed that sitting birds would startle when smoke from the powder pan of his flintlock shotgun give them warning of the shot. His invention of a new firing mechanism deprived the birds of their early warning so made it easier to kill them.

    The Puckle gun (or Defence gun) was a crew-served, manually-operated flintlock revolver patented in 1718 by James Puckle, a British inventor, lawyer and writer. It was one of the earliest guns to be referred to as a "machine gun". Puckle developed two configurations of the design: one fired conventional round bullets and was intended for use by Protestants against Catholics. The second fired square bullets and was intended for use by Christians against Muslims (square bullets were thought to cause more physical damage than round ones). They would, according to Puckle's patent, "convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilization".
    (Source: James Puckle's 1718 patent, number 418.)
    The diagram below is an advertisement for the Puckle Gun.

    The last senior churchman to take part in war was Leonidas Polk, Bishop of Louisiana, who enlisted in the Confederate army with rank of Major General during the American Civil War. More junior clergy continued to fight for longer, even when they were technically prohibited from doing so, into the twentieth century. Despite the provisions of canon law, Christian priests and ministers enlisted in order to fight in World War I. Almost 80,000 priests enlisted from the Roman Catholic Church alone. When the USA joined in the war on the side of the allies, American priests and ministers affirmed that the Kaiser was not a Christian, that his empire was blasphemous, that the war was a holy war, that God had summoned the American people to join it, that the German people deserved to be exterminated, that Jesus himself would have joined the American army, and that conscientious objectors could not be true Christians*. In Europe, clergymen preached in support of the war, and those who chose not to enlist were sent white feathers by their righteous Christian neighbours just as, centuries before, those who failed to enlist for the Crusades had been sent distaffs or knitting needles. Despite what American clergymen said about the Kaiser, the three European emperors involved in World War I were all devout Christians. So were their most hawkish senior ministers. Bishops confirmed the righteousness of their respective causes. The Right Reveverend Francis Chavasse, Bishop of Liverpool, told British conscientious objectors on 26 May 1916 that they should leave the country if they refused to fight. The only opposition to that war came from Secular freethinkers, Quakers and a few eccentric fringe Christian groups. Atheists like Bertrand Russell were imprisoned for campaigning for peace and suffered in other ways (Russell for example was deprived of his lectureship at Trinity College, Cambridge).

    In more recent wars the Churches have maintained their records. The majority of mainstream Churches in World War II informed their followers that God was on their side (even when members of the same denomination fought on opposite sides). In Germany all the main denominations collaborated with the Nazi war effort: Roman Catholic, Protestant and nonconformist alike. Nazi atrocities were carried out almost entirely by Christians — roughly two-thirds Protestant, one third Roman Catholic. Only Jehovah's Witnesses denounced Nazism as totally evil, refused conscription, and took the consequences. By contrast, in the whole of the Third Reich, only seven Roman Catholics refused conscription*.

    Papal States contract Remington Model 1868 Pontifico Rolling Block rifle with bayonnet.
    Presented by the Pope to the Dutch politician Petrus Regout, mid 19th century

    Since World War II, Christians have continued to fight and kill each other. Christian factions in the Lebanon killed not only Muslims but also members of rival Christian factions. In the Balkans, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholic Christians have been killing each other for centuries. An American cardinal (Spellman) could be relied on to confirm that the USA's war against Vietnam was a war in support of the Christian faith.

    The fighting between Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s was only a coda to similar atrocities in the past. The sectarian violence that has persisted in Northern Ireland since 1968 is another coda, this time to the religious wars conducted throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In all there have been thousands of murders since the troubles started in Northern Ireland. Sometimes the murders are carried out in churches. Claims that these murders are purely political are undermined by the fact that no one except the devout are involved. All of the murderers caught have been staunch Roman Catholics or staunch Protestants, as are all of the spokesmen for the two sides. In other parts of the world, where the public spotlight is dim, one Church or another is likely to sanction sectarian killing, and sometimes to join in. Roman Catholics, including many priests and nuns, were for example implicated in the widespread massacres in Rwanda in 1994*. As one Nairobi based journalist comments:

    When I think of the Vatican's record in Africa, I think of its failure to acknowledge what really happened in Rwanda, where priests and nuns not only led death squads to Tutsi refugees cowering in their churches, but provided the petrol to burn them alive, took part in the shootings and raped survivors. Rwanda was Africa's most devout Catholic nation, and the role the church played in condoning and fostering the Hutu extremism that climaxed in genocide is as shameful as its collaboration with the Nazis.*

    Belgian priests have been implicated in encouraging killings for generations. Father Guy Theunis, of the Roman Catholic Order of the White Fathers, was just the most recent Belgian to be charged with crimes against humanity for his role in encouraging the 1994 Rwandan genocide*. Rwandan priests and nuns were convicted for their parts in the massacres.

    All of the main Churches have a poor record with respect to warfare. All have supported their own wars and massacres, and all have lent support to national wars. The injured were generally left to die, either of their wounds, or at the hands of their captors. Few Christians thought of aiding the wounded or of protecting non-combatants. After all, wars and suffering were ordained by God. In the nineteenth century people outside the Christian mainstream made the first significant efforts to prevent wars or minimise related suffering. Henri Dunant (1828-1910), a Swiss freethinker and anticlerical philanthropist, was responsible for founding the International Committee of the Red Cross and for the Geneva Convention held in 1864. Dunant's inspiration was the suffering he had seen on the battlefield at Solferino in 1859. Christians had been accustomed to such sights for centuries, but few had done anything practical about it, and none had done anything as significant as Dunant. Indeed it not easy to think of any mainstream Christian who made a contribution as significant as the Muslim leader, Saladin, 700 years earlier.

    Contemporary medieval records leave no doubt that churchmen took an active part in war, but the Churches have been remarkably effective in effacing any suggestion of the fact from modern popular culture. In France, even the bishops on the chess board have become "fools". Warrior bishops rarely feature in novels, plays or films. They are very slowly re-emerging in historical re-enactment groups, as shown below.

     

    Conscientious objection to war is another phenomenon from outside mainstream Christianity. St Augustine had said that war could be waged if it was waged by the command of God. Christians had interpreted this as a right to wage war on behalf of God. Soon the right became a duty. Thus it was positively sinful not to participate in a war on God's behalf. So it was that that the concept of conscientious objection to war could not be tolerated. It amounted to setting one's own conscience above that of God. This was still the prevailing orthodoxy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before World War I the National Secular Society and other freethinking individuals opposed compulsory military training in secondary schools. During the war they fought for the rights of conscientious objectors. For such positions they were roundly condemned by the mainstream Churches. The only significant support from any religious group came from the Quakers. The idea of creating a world where war would be impossible was another non-Christian ambition. It might have been idealist, but at least it led to some action. Atheists like H. G. Wells and Gilbert Murray worked for a world parliament as a way to reduce or eliminate war. Their efforts culminated in the League of Nations (1919) and its successort, the United Nations (1945).

    A Russian Orthodox priest blesses weapons (circa 1994)
    for soldiers before they are sent off to Chechnya to kill Muslims.

    For many non-Christians the idea that any god might condone or participate in any war is absurd. The emerging mainstream Christian view of war concurs. A few small heretical sects have also held this view consistently from early times. The Quakers have held this view since their founding in the seventeenth century and the Jehovah's Witnesses since their founding in the nineteenth century, but for all other Christians it is novel, and has been adopted only since it became the prevailing secular view. Not all Christians have yet decamped and joined the secular ranks. In the second half of the twentieth century a number of studies have been carried out into attitudes towards war, especially in the USA. What they reveal is fairly consistent. Roman Catholics and Protestants are more accepting of war than average, while atheists are not only less accepting of it, but also more likely to be actively opposed to it*. Religious wars — crudades as much as Jihads — are particularly repellent to non-believers.

    Only after a secular pubic outcry in 2010 did the Pentagon stop buying gun sights stamped with New Testament referrences to use against Moslems in Iraq and Afghanistan*.

    The whole Christian movement remains full of military allusions: Church Militant, Soldiers of Christ, Salvation Army, Church Lad's Brigade, Crusade, Lord's Resistance Army, etc. Christian Churches continue to explicitly “wage war” on unbelievers. Anyone one who voices public criticism of Christianity can expect to receive communications from devout Christian foot soldiers assuring them that they will burn in hell for all eternity, and threatening personally to accelerate the entry process. No Church ever seems to do anything to stop their foot soldiers making such death threats, and why should they? After all Jesus himself promised imminent and everlasting hell-fire to unbelievers.

     

     

    St. Mercurius killing Roman emperor Julianus, Church of St. Mercurius, Old Cairo

     

    St Barbara, patron saint of gunners, depicted on a cannon

     

    Miniature of Edmund Crouchback with St. George; English illumination by ‘The Workshop of the Walter de Milemete treatises’, in a Book of Hours. Eraly 14th century; after 1322

     

    Manuscript BNF Nouvelle acquisition française 15941 Miroir Historial (Vol 3), Folio 2r, 1370-1380, Paris, France, Bibliothèque Nationale

     
     
     
    Gustave-Dore-The_Destruction_Of_Armies_Of_Ammonites_Moabites - Ch2 20, 22-3.jpg
     

    Albrecht Durer, St. George

     

    United States Army Special Forces

     

    The Last Crusader by K. F. Lessing

     

    The Dedication by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1908.

     

    The Crusaders Massacre the Inhabitants of Ceasarea - Gustave Dore

     

    Saul slays Ahimelech and his priests

     

    St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Ms. Vad. 302 II, fol. 35v, 13th century manuscript

     

    Thomas Cecill, Elizabeth I receiving a lance from Truth and defeating the Catholic dragon, ca. 1625.

     

    The Angels of Mons - A First World War fiction that was later "verified" by eye witnesses.

     

    The Angels of Mons - A First World War fiction that was later "verified" by eye witnesses.

     

    The Angels of Mons - A First World War fiction that was later "verified" by eye witnesses.

     

    Polish priest blessing wz. 36 grenade launchers, Kraków, 1936

     

    French soldiers gather around a priest as he blesses an aircraft on the Western Front, 1915.

     
     

    Romanian Priest Blesses Romanian soldiers

     

    Part of the Miseries of War series of engravings by Jacques Callot (1592–1635), c. 1633.

     

    Morgan M.638 Maciejowski Bible f32

     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    A World War I propaganda cartoon depicting the Kaiser kissing the devil.
    (The Kaiser standing on tip-toes is loaded with impications)

     
     
     

    For God, Kaiser and Fatherland!

     
     
     
     

    Chester, A patriotic song popular during the American Revolution.

    Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
    And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
    We fear them not, we trust in God,
    New England's God forever reigns
    .

    Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,
    With Prescot and Cornwallis join'd,
    Together plot our Overthrow,
    In one Infernal league combin'd.

    When God inspir'd us for the fight,
    Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc'd,
    Their ships were Shatter'd in our sight,
    Or swiftly driven from our Coast.

    The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
    Our troops advance with martial noise,
    Their Vet'rans flee before our Youth,
    And Gen'rals yield to beardless Boys.

    What grateful Off'ring shall we bring?
    What shall we render to the Lord?
    Loud Halleluiahs let us Sing,
    And praise his name on ev'ry Chord.

     
     

    The Great and Holy War
    How World War I Became a Religious Crusade
    By Philip Jenkins

    Philip Jenkins, the author of The Lost History of Christianity, Jesus Wars, and The Next Christendom, is the Distinguished Professor of History and a member of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University

    The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. Thanks to the emergence of modern media, a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was given to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels and apparitions, visions and the supernatural was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the major religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - paving the way for modern views of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism.

    Holy war rhetoric was not new to World War I, having been used to rousing effect during the Crusades. As Jenkins (History and Religious Studies/Baylor Univ.; Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses, 2011, etc.) delineates, the "highly material conflict" of 1914 and the messianic zeal undertaken by Germany and Russia especially rendered this a uniquely disastrous and foreboding phenomenon. Not only did the powerful states of the czar and kaiser glorify in the language of divine providence in justifying their aggression, but the church leaders in the West also employed violent language involving Christian duty and honor to save Christian civilization from "God's enemies," the barbaric Germans. World War I erupted during a time when religious themes still resonated powerfully with rural and peasant societies, and medieval imagery of battling knights and angels was used frequently in propaganda. For Protestant Germany, the war heralded God's special mission for the nation. Yet rumors of German atrocities unleashed tales of Christ-like suffering. Spiritual calls to sacrifice and martyrdom underpinned the militarism and nationalism of the embroiled nations, and as the grisly slaughter grew, shocking people with the numbers of dead-the French lost 27,000 men on Aug. 22, 1914, alone at the Battle of the Frontiers-so did the use of the language of the apocalypse. Superstition among soldiers was common, as were sightings of angels and the walking dead on the battlefields. While the war was largely a Christian struggle, the Ottoman Empire jumped in with stirring calls to sacrifice one's life "for the safety of the faith." Indeed, as Jenkins carefully portrays, the war changed everything, from the collapse of the old order to the compromising and weakening of world faiths.

     

     

    Modern reenactment of Medieval warfare

     

     

     

     

     

     

    More Christian Violence and Warfare

     

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    Notes

    §. The New York Times, 11 th September 1950.

    §. See Johnson, A History of Christianity, pp 478-9.

    §. Johnson, A History of Christianity, p 490.

    §. See The Economist, "Sin and Confession in Rwanda", 14 th January 1995; The Times "Church Blamed for Rwanda Genocide", 28 th February 1995; and other press reports in January and February 1995.

    §. Michela Wrong “Blood Of Innocents On His Hands”, Cover Story in the New Statesman, 11 th April, 2005

    §. The Times, 9 September 2005, p50 “Rwandans hold;White Father" over genocide. Father Guy Theunis was a category one genocide suspect — reserved for alleged leaders of the 100-day slaughter. A score of witnesses denounced Theunis during his gacaca trial for having supported the genocide. Theunis spent two and a half months in jail before being transferred to Belgium. Once there, he was released while Belgian police investigated the case.

    §. Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi, The Social Psychology of Religion, pp 107-8, cites a number of studies that confirm the general pattern of Christian hawkishness and non-Christian dovishness.

    In a study carried out in 1971 it was shown that Protestants and Catholics both favoured stepping up the war in Vietnam (Catholics 70 per cent, Protestants 67 per cent). Of those with no religious affiliation only a minority (40 per cent) favoured stepping up the war. Tygart, C. E. (1971) "Religiosity and University Student anti-Vietnam War attitudes: a negative or curvilinear relationship?", Sociological Analysis, 32, pp 120-9. Participation in protest demonstrations was positively correlated with lack of religious belief and negatively correlated to the practice of praying. Astin A. W., (1968), "Personal and environment determinants of Student Activism", Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance, 1, pp 149-62. In 1970, 61 per cent of participants in a demonstration against the war in Vietnam reported no religious affiliation, although the population as a whole was overwhelmingly religious. The studies cited are mainly of students, but it has been shown (by Tygart, op cit.) that students are similar to the general public in their views. The proportion of unbelievers in the US was around 7 per cent at the time these studies were carried out.

    §. Trijicon Inc., a Michigan arms company held multimillion-dollar contracts with the Pentagon for advanced gun sights widely used against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. For years it has put scriptural references on its products, a practice started by its deceased founder, a devout Christian. See the New York Times, 21st Jan 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/22guns.html.

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