Paganism, Christianity, Wicca, Muslim, Protestant, Jewish and Catholic are all terms that we’re intimately familiar with. Each term represents a group of people with like minded beliefs on God, religion, and to a certain extent, how individuals should regard and live their life. In theory, and according to the books of each denomination, the faithful should be the kindest, most tolerant, devoted, and accepting philanthropist in the world. Sadly, this is not how things usually work out. History has shown us that in the early days Christians used every trick in the bag to turn the old world Pagans to Christianity by leveraging terror tactics not unlike those used by the Muslim extremists since 9/11. Following the establishment of Christianity as THE religion for Roman Europe, no less than 12 Crusades were documented between 1095 and 1234 where Christians, Jews, and Muslims were pitted against each other under the guise of religious cleansing. Believe what you will, though, it seems that this was really just a simple ploy to expand the reach of the Roman Empire and the authority of the Pope himself. Let’s not forget one of the most significant and well documented example of ethnic and religious cleansing, Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany (followed by most of Europe) where the movement accounted for more than 12 million deaths (before World War 2) of which over 6 million were of Jewish faith.

Enough with history, lets fast forward to modern day. Do you think that things have changed? No. Palestine and Israel are fighting over holy land and scores of innocent Palestinians and Israelis are being killed every day over the right to inhabit the Golan Heights. While the Palestine/Israel conflict isn’t typically thought of as religious in nature, it’s hard to ignore the religious differences that help fuel the war. Muslim extremists are killing innocent civilians throughout the the world, and in retaliation NATO is waging war against these extremists with civilian causalities. To be perfectly fair, I feel that I must note that the official justification for the NATO retaliation is to protect the world from terrorism, but the extreme Muslim rhetoric associated with the terrorist attacks make it hard to not define the war as religious in nature. Finally, we continue to see and hear hate based rhetoric against same sex couples, pro-choice movements, and any social behavior that doesn’t conform to the teaching from the religious texts.

While I haven’t studied the texts of most religions in detail, I’ve known many people from each faith and even lived in countries where non-Christian religions were predominant. The amazing thing that I discovered through these relationships with individuals and experiences in foreign religious customs is that at a very distilled level, each religion has it’s similarities. True, most faiths differ on the identity of their deities, historical events of religious significance, and traditions for celebrating faith, but for the most part, they all preach faith in a higher order and love for your fellow living soul. I think the problem is that the most vocal followers get so entrenched in over analyzing texts and interpretations of stories recounted for thousands of years by millions of people that they loose sight of the fundamentals – faith and love. While these vocal religious extremists are typically the minority in all faiths, they are the ones who preach the loudest and convince armies of weak minded to join their cause.

It’s not all bad news though, as individuals, I think the majority of us are slowly edging into a more understanding society that is more open to accepting individual differences as long as core values of respect, love, compassion, and humanity are shared for the prosperous future of human kind. So next time someone challenges your beliefs, remind them that texts written by men segregate the human race, while faith in a higher order unites us and use the similarities between your views as philanthropists to move past your differences and unite for a greater good.