Leadership Quote by Hans Kung

Kung’s sentence is built like an indictment that refuses the comfort of “isolated incidents.” “Time and again” does the heavy lifting up front: it frames religiously fueled violence as a pattern, not a scandalous exception, and it preempts the predictable defense that extremists are merely “misusing” faith. The rhythm escalates from attitude to action - “aggression” to “fanaticism” to “hate” to “xenophobia” - before landing on the blunt end state: “violent and bloody conflicts.” The list isn’t just descriptive; it’s prosecutorial, stacking charges until denial feels naive.

The subtext is aimed less at religion as belief than at religion as institution and identity machine. Kung targets “leaders and members,” widening culpability beyond charismatic demagogues to the congregations that reward them, obey them, or look away. “Inspire and legitimate” is the key pairing: religion doesn’t only motivate; it provides moral authorization, the aura of sacred necessity. Violence becomes not merely permitted but sanctified.

Context matters. Kung spent a career arguing for reform inside Catholicism while warning that the modern world can’t survive absolutist certainties. Coming from a theologian rather than a secular polemicist, the critique lands as an internal audit: faith is being held to its own claims about human dignity. Implicit is his broader project - interreligious ethics, the “no peace among nations without peace among religions” premise - and the hard truth beneath it: when communities treat identity as divine mandate, politics turns into holy war with better branding.