⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:43-45 NIV)

One of the favorite lines that secularists and atheists like to trump is that religion is the source of most of the violence and conflict in the world today.

Of course, to reach that conclusion they must turn a blind eye to the 100 million+ killed by atheists this past century including the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and Communist China’s Mao Zedong. The atheistic duo are the two largest mass murderers in world history.

Recently, Evangelical Focus (EV) had an article about research done by Swedish historian Mattias Gardell that addresses the issue of the role that religion has played in armed conflict.

EV writes:

The Swedish historian of religion, Mattias Gardell, for example, has been able to show that more than 90 per cent of all armed conflicts in the world between 1945 and 2001 had something other than religion as their primary driver. 66 per cent of the conflicts were also between parties who nominally had the same religious affiliation (Christians fought Christians, Muslims fought Muslims, and so on).

And even in instances where religion seems to be a factor, politics is most often the leading actor.

READ: Islam and Christianity: different ideology around conflict and violence