“Most of the terrible wars in the world are based upon religion. It seems to divide, rather than uniting. Perhaps, we are going wrong somewhere.”

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A
Context: It was a terrible war. The idea that the cost of the war is due to Lincoln is simply absurd. It was a terrible war because the country was deeply divided, and the question of the future of the nation, whether or not it would be based upon principles recognized as principles of individual liberty, or whether the idea of one race dominating another race would be accepted as a means for governance. Let me just read one short statement here that might interest you. "Since the Civil War, in which the Southern States were conquered, against all historical logic and sound sense, the American people have been in a condition of political and popular decay.... The beginnings of a great new social order based on the principle of slavery and inequality were destroyed by that war, and with them also the embryo of a future truly great America." That has been the position of defenders of the Confederacy from Alexander Stephens through Thomas DiLorenzo. Do you know the man who said that was Adolf Hitler?

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1993/oct/18/statement-on-the-defence-estimates in the House of Commons (18 October 1993). <br class="br">1990s

Why Do Religions Teach Love and Yet Cause So Much War?

Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/hinduism/2005/06/the-world-needs-love.aspx

Letter to Joseph Sturge (29 September 1852), as quoted in Gettysburg: The Last Invasion https://books.google.com/books?id=i5u1P0Fq4GYC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=0307594084&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj17N6CovLcAhUPUt8KHTa1CrgQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false (2013), by Allen C. Guelzo, p. xviii <br class="br">1850s

Phase the Second: Maiden No More, ch. XIII
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)
Context: There is no example of a country that is successful if its people are divided based on religion or ethnicity. If you look at the Middle East right now and the chaos that’s taking place in a place like Syria, so much of that is based on religious differences. Even though they’re all Muslim, Shia and Sunni are fighting each other. If you look in Northern Ireland, then Catholics and Protestants fought for decades and only now have arrived at peace. So in this globalized world where people of different faiths and cultures and races are going to meet each other inevitably -- because nobody just lives in a village anymore; people are constantly getting information from different places and new ideas and meeting people who are different from them –- it is critical for any country to abide by the basic principle that all people are equal, all people are deserving of respect, all people are equal under the law, all people can participate in the life of their country, all people should be able to express their views without fear of being repressed. And those attitudes start with each of us individually. It’s important that government play a role in making sure that it applies laws fairly, not arbitrarily, not on the basis of preferring one group over another.

To the twenty-fifth-anniversary meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1857)
1850s