Religion: A Missing Component of Professional Military Education PKSOI Paper | 页面 4

FOREWORD
Thomas Matyok’s monograph on religion dares
us as military planners and conflict analysts to think
more deeply about religion. Since religion can be a
major driver of both peace and violence, Prof. Matyok
argues we need to do better in recognizing how religious factors play out in shaping human motivations
and aspirations in conflict situations.
Prof. Matyok’s contention is a new idea for U.S.
professional military education but draws on older
intellectual currents. The eighteenth century French
philosophe Voltaire believed that France began slipping down a dangerous slope of repression and intolerance after Louis the XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes
in 1685. (This Edict issued by Henry IV in 1598 granted
Protestants substantial rights in a nation considered
to be basically Catholic.) The revocation not only
drove a Protestant exodus and stoked up the hostility
of Protestant nations bordering France but set in motion wider forces of social intolerance that eventually
spilled over into the French Revolution and beyond.
When Louis XVI restored Protestant civil rights and
freedom to worship in 1787, his act was widely seen
as “too little, too late.” French society decisively overthrew the monarchical regime two years later for that
and many other grievances.
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes echoes down
as an historical warning today. Most national leaders and peace keepers seem convinced that religious
tolerance and inter-faith respect are now key to maintaining religion’s trajectory towards peace. The creation of an autonomous region in Mindanao, Philippines appears to be one institutionalized answer to the
creation of more space and tolerance for religious di-

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