Hasn't religion caused most of the wars?
Somebody counted. Of 1,763 wars catalogued across five thousand years, about 7% were religious — and a second encyclopaedia, compiled independently, came to 6%. That does not excuse the 7%, and the Crusades and the Inquisition are real. It means the sentence everybody repeats is not true, and it is checkable in an afternoon.
This one is usually said as though it were common knowledge, which is what makes it worth checking rather than arguing about.
The count
Phillips and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars catalogues 1,763 conflicts across roughly five thousand years. Of those, about 123 — seven per cent — are classed as religious.
That is one source, so here is a second. The Encyclopedia of War, edited by Gordon Martel, compiled separately, comes to six per cent. And a BBC-commissioned audit of major conflicts over three and a half thousand years found more than 60% with no religious motivation at all.
Three independent attempts, three answers in the same range. Whatever has driven human beings to kill each other, it has overwhelmingly been land, money, ethnicity, succession and empire.
What this does not do
It does not excuse the seven per cent, and Christians who deploy this statistic as though it settled something are missing the point.
The Crusades happened. The Inquisition happened. The wars of religion tore Europe apart for over a century. Being a small share of the total is not a defence of any of it, and a Christian’s response to those should be shame rather than arithmetic.
What the numbers do is narrower. They show that the claim as stated — religion causes most wars — is false. That is worth knowing precisely because it is repeated so confidently.
The twentieth century, carefully
There is a counter-argument that gets overplayed, and overplaying it costs credibility, so here it is with the qualifications attached.
The deadliest regimes in recorded history were not religious ones. Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia were officially atheist states, and each actively persecuted religion — closing churches, executing clergy, outlawing worship. The death tolls run into the tens of millions each.
Two honest caveats. Hitler does not belong on that list, whatever you may have seen: Nazi ideology was racial, not atheist, and citing him here is an error that will be corrected the moment you use it. And the point is not that atheism kills. Most atheists are peaceable, and it would be exactly the sloppy reasoning being complained about.
The conclusion the evidence actually supports is duller and more useful: the common factor is not what people believe about God. It is unchecked power in the hands of people convinced they are right — which is available to any ideology, including a secular one.
The question worth asking instead
There is a better version of this objection, and Christians should meet it rather than the weak one.
Not does religion cause violence, but does this religion’s teaching lead there. That is a fair question and it can be checked, because we have the founder’s own instructions.
Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Put your sword away. Whoever lives by the sword dies by it.
When Christians have gone to war for the faith they have had to work around their own texts. That is the test to apply to any belief system, including secular ones: not what its worst followers did, but what happens when someone follows it closely.
Objections answered
Isn't 'religious war' being defined narrowly to get that number?
It is a fair worry — the classification is a judgement call, and motives are usually mixed. Which is why the figure matters less than the range: three compilers, working independently with different definitions, all landed between six and seven per cent. To get to “most”, you would need to be wrong by a factor of seven.
Religion doesn't need wars to do harm.
True, and it is the stronger objection. Abuse, coercion and the covering-up of both are real, recent and documented. That has nothing to do with battlefield statistics, and the right Christian response is not a counter-argument.
Doesn't the Old Testament command war?
It records commands given to one nation, at one moment, about one land, and never presents them as a pattern — and the New Testament closes that door explicitly. That deserves its own answer rather than a line here, and it has one.
Shared ground, and where traditions differ
All Christians hold
All the traditions teach love of enemies and forbid coercion in matters of faith, and all of them have members who have violated both — which is the strongest evidence available that the failures are departures rather than applications.
Related questions
Inspired by Stand to Reason — "Debunking the Religious Wars Myth". The argument is theirs; the words here are ours.
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