The outlook for religious tolerance around the world has grown bleaker in the past decade, as religion has increasingly been hijacked to further political goals, says Jonathan Gallagher, United Nations liaison for the Seventh-day Adventist world church.

“Mixing politics and religion makes for a powerful, usually disastrous brew,” says Gallagher. “Yet in places from Indonesia, to India, to Central Africa, religious tenets are being invoked to further secular purposes, such as securing a political powerbase or expanding a group’s territorial control. Tolerance, compassion, and pluralism are fading in the face of social and political pressures.”

“How can you have a militant Christian, a militant Hindu, or a militant Muslim?” asks Gallagher. “These are all contradictory terms.”

Increasingly, however, media reports use descriptions such as “religious conflict” or “clashes between Muslims and Christians” or “a Hindu mob”, as reporters search for sound-bite explanations for violent conflict between different groups within a society.

Instead of rushing to religious judgment, it’s important to recognize the many other social forces at work, says Gallagher, including ethnicity, tribalism, political power-grabs, and competition for resources, such as land.

Unfortunately, religion can be exploited as an especially potent political tool. Religion is a “strong social glue,” explains Gallagher. “It goes straight to the heart of an individual’s sense of identity.  It can engender a strong sense of belonging to a particular social group. And, more significantly, it can define who the ‘enemy’ is—that is, one who does not belong in the group.”

As a church, Adventists are committed to showing that religion should not build barriers within society, but break them down, says Gallagher. “In our dealings at the United Nations, with different religious organizations, and within society, we want to reflect our belief in a loving Creator who made each person in His own image—worthy of respect, deserving of compassion, and with the freedom to believe according to the dictates of his or her own conscience.”