I live in the US and for us the concept of two Christian factions being in conflict is just so foreign. You drive around just about anywhere in the US and you will come across Protestant churches right next to Catholic ones.
I've been saying lately that the resolution of conflict is not peace, the resolution of conflict is love.
It seems putting walls up is a way to avoid conflict, or try to avoid it, but I wonder if the conflict just festers, and the actual resolution would be unity.
Except the challenge can be it just takes a few people in a group to say "if you love them, you don't love us" and thus we run away into our corners, pretending that we don't love everyone.
These days there is still political conflict, but there's less contrast between each side's religious makeup. Therefore the conflict won't appear to be a religious conflict.
However, there are atheists and protestants ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Irish_nationalists#... ) in the "catholic" IRA, and the IRA killed British soldiers regardless of religion (and there are lots of Catholics in the British army) etc. and British Catholics were not often sympathetic to the IRA (nor Catholics from the rest of the world) and we were just as likely to get bombed by them as anyone else in Britain.
A book I have on Irish history quotes a study that found that the more often Catholics in the Republic went to church the less likely they were to support Sinn Fein (the political party linked to the IRA).
Foreign? Christian factionalism is deeply ingrained in american culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism_in_the_United...
Mostly directed towards catholics and mormons.
> You drive around just about anywhere in the US and you will come across Protestant churches right next to Catholic ones.
Anywhere? No. Most catholic churches are in catholic areas and protestant churches in protestant areas. And I'm pretty sure most protestant churches official stance is that the catholic pope is the anti-christ. At least it was when I went to church not too long ago. Not sure what the catholic stance is nor do I really care.
Also, these "religious" conflicts are deep down ethnic or political conflicts. We don't have religious factionalism because our politics is pretty much controlled by one political party (republican-democratic party). Once that political stranglehold gets broken, we'll probably ethnic and religious factionalism.