Can Religion Be a Force for Good?

If you listen to Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins religion is not only bad it's dangerous. They don't like liberals and moderates because they supposedly give cover to Fundamentalists. On the flip side they tend to be more literalist than the literalists and declare that only Fundamentalism is true religion and since Fundamentalism is dangerous, Religion is dangerous.
The recent protests in Burma suggest otherwise -- that people of faith can be a force for good and for change. They can be the moral conscience -- although one need not be religious to be moral -- of a people. They can also be contributors to violence and hatred. Religion speaks of the divine and seeks to be in sync with the divine, but its practitioners are very human.
In an LA Times op-ed piece Ian Buruma reflects on the positive force that Religion can be -- with the Burmese Monks as his focus.
He writes:

Nevertheless, faith has an important role to play in politics, especially in circumstances in which secular liberals are rendered impotent, as in the case of Nazi occupation, communist rule or military dictatorship.

Liberals are most needed when compromises have to be made, but not as useful when faced with brute force. That is when visionaries, romantics and true believers are driven by their beliefs to take risks that most of us would regard as foolhardy. It is, on the whole, not beneficial to be ruled by such heroes, but it is good to have them around when we need them.

In other words there is need for balance. The secular/pluralist state has great value, but it needs something else. We religious folk need to be reminded as well that we live in a pluralist world and need to respect the other.
The complete essay can be found here.

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