Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows how religions generate political preferences of states, thus outcomes of international interaction, through scripture, priesthood, and historical narrative. It presents several first-cut results, including effects of religion as a whole and top-level comparisons of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The book describes deeply into scripture, classical and contemporary literature, and historical narrative, and flesh out the prevailing war ethic. It also presents results of empirical tests on the studied religion and selected major branches. The book discusses the war ethic of Christianity is classified as restrictive and results indicate that Christianity is associated with a lesser state propensity to resort to force. It also shows significant variance between Christianity’s major branches, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy.