Can Religion Cure War?
Since war and religion are similar conceptual entities—imagined views of alternative reality—the question this chapter explores is whether either will ever wither away or cease interacting with the other. This chapter begins with the case of the Moro movement in the Philippines and how peace began to descend upon the region in part by transforming images of warfare into peaceful struggle and reverting religious images into the traditional mythology of religious activity. There are several ways that religion can play a positive role in lessening the violence of war: by limiting war as the ethical idea of a just war suggests; by treating war metaphorically, as in the war on poverty; or in the symbolic displacement of violence that war images provide. More likely images of war and religion will persist in our culture and in personal imaginations. As long as we understand that these are imagined constructs and contain them within our own imagination, and make a clear distinction between the mundane worlds and the alternatives, we will be able to abide the continuation of these two creative though potentially destructive ways of perceiving the world.