Religious Beliefs and Practices in Relation to Peace and Justice.

This article discusses religious beliefs and practices in relation to peace and justice. Compassion has probably been the central concept in most of the world's great religions at least since about 800 B.C. On the basis of sacred scriptures of the great religions, one might expect to find favorable religious attitudes toward peace, equality, freedom, love and other such values. However the results of attitude studies conducted during the last 40 years do not confirm this hypothesis, at least so far as conventional religious beliefs are concerned. Attitude studies of the last 40 years strongly suggest that orthodox followers of the great religions today are more compulsive and conformist that they are compassionate. There are exceptions, of course, but the general rule remains that religious attitudes today among clergy and laity alike are generally opposed to peace, equality, freedom, love and other such compassionate human values. Whatever happened to religious compassion in the historical process of civilization? Russell argued that nothing happened so far as Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism are concerned, since their basic beliefs as recorded in the Old Testament were originally authoritarian, militaristic and punitive.