Fair enough – I would note my comments about religion are not about Christianity, but religion as a general concept. In the same way that Durkheim discussed it back in the day.

The key point was that institutions (in this case focusing on religion as an example) influence expectations and beliefs. As a result, these institutions and the “social capital” we may attribute to them, have positive and negative elements.

This framework can be applied to any institution, whether it is supported by progressive or conservative elements in general. And I find it a useful lens for understanding why both US conservatives and US progressives are bemoaning the fact that “things aren’t as good as they were in the 1970s” – this post was a primer for a post I’m going to pop up on that 😉

I’m not suggesting that no conflict anywhere has ever had a religious dimension, but religion as cause of conflict is much overstated. By the standards of historical global conflicts, the Crusades were not particularly “bloody”, and were primarily defensive on the part of the West to sustained territorial aggression by entities that had Islam for their religion, but where religion was far from being the only driving force behind the expansion. And I’d accept the Thirty Years War as having a strong religious dimension, but not the rest of post-Reformation European conflicts. As I noted, the bloodiest wars in history don’t seem to have had a strong religious dimension. And the Christian church has often acted as a force for restraining evil in warfare – eg the Just War teachings, and humanitarian treatment of prisoners. non-combatants etc.
I’m also not going to defend religion as generally good. The truth claims of various religions are in fundamental conflict. As a Christian, I find no more overall in common with a Muslim than with an atheist. Truth, when well-applied, is a force for good in the world. Error, however applied, is generally not. Of course, in today’s world few are willing to run too far with any sort of concept of truth.

I do not disagree that many of the teachings of the bible should reinforce the idea that war is bad – and that we need to love each other irrespective of our race or sex. Furthermore, the parable of the good Samaritan explicitly points out some of the shortcomings of group behaviour – and explicitly tells people to also look beyond their group!

However, the Crusades were a long lasting, bloody, and religiously motivated war. The constant conflicts between Protestants and Catholics were at least in part motivated by religion as well. I said “helped” as a single factor is never the driver of conflict – but religion is a type of group behaviour, and there are positive aspects to that, and negative aspects in terms of how we treat “other” groups.

I am also not saying that there wouldn’t be institutions that allow, or reinforce, these things in the absence of religion. Missing the idea of “opportunity cost” in this sense would be an unforgivable oversight!

Religion, and the history of how different religious groups have functioned in practice, gives us a lens into viewing the negatives AND positives of social capital. These issues are not unique to religion – but religion offers us a wealth of history to help think through the issues!