Wanted: Faith for Peace and Love

Religion in the hands of irresponsible powers portends an even more conflict-prone future

- Samit Basu

THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN reasons for humankind to look towards religion: At a personal level, faith has helped individuals and families find hope; at a community level, religion has helped bring people together and benefited the poor through charity. Therefore, it’s easy to deduce that religion is always going to be around—if it has survived centuries of science, progressive civil-rights move ments and education-led rationalism, nothing in a digital future can erase it. Religion will exist, in one form or another, as long as humankind does.

Most futurist speculation on religion tends to focus on the relative population strengths of various religions in the future, and might note that religion is likely to continue to be the cause of conflict, well into the foreseeable future. But for people in our part of the world, the stakes are even higher.