How Violence Shapes Religion

How Violence Shapes Religion
Author: Ziya Meral
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2018-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108429009

Religion and violence are intrinsic to the human story. By tracing their roots in human experience, Meral reveals that it is violence that shapes religion.

How Violence Shapes Religion

How Violence Shapes Religion
Author: Ziya Meral
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2018-08-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1108653677

Is there an inevitable global violent clash unfolding between the world's largest religions: Islam and Christianity? Do religions cause violent conflicts, or are there other factors at play? How can we make sense of increasing reports of violence between Christian and Muslim ethnic communities across the world? By seeking to answer such questions about the relationship between religion and violence in today's world, Ziya Meral challenges popular theories and offers an alternative explanation, grounded on insights inferred from real cases of ethno-religious violence in Africa and the Middle East. The relationship between religion and violence runs deep and both are intrinsic to the human story. Violence leads to and shapes religion, while religion acts to enable violence as well as providing responses that contain and prevent it. However, with religious violence being one of the most serious challenges facing the modern world, Meral shows that we need to de-globalise our analysis and focus on individual conflicts, instead of attempting to provide single answers to complex questions.

Violence in God's Name

Violence in God's Name
Author: Oliver J. McTernan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2003
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

A timely exploration of the links between religious faith and global violence--and how to break them.

Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity

Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity
Author: Thomas Sizgorich
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2012-03-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812207440

In Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity, Thomas Sizgorich seeks to understand why and how violent expressions of religious devotion became central to the self-understandings of both Christian and Muslim communities between the fourth and ninth centuries. Sizgorich argues that the cultivation of violent martyrdom as a path to holiness was in no way particular to Islam; rather, it emerged from a matrix put into place by the Christians of late antiquity. Paying close attention to the role of memory and narrative in the formation of individual and communal selves, Sizgorich identifies a common pool of late ancient narrative forms upon which both Christian and Muslim communities drew. In the process of recollecting the past, Sizgorich explains, Christian and Muslim communities alike elaborated iterations of Christianity or Islam that demanded of each believer a willingness to endure or inflict violence on God's behalf and thereby created militant local pieties that claimed to represent the one "real" Christianity or the only "pure" form of Islam. These militant communities used a shared system of signs, symbols, and stories, stories in which the faithful manifested their purity in conflict with the imperial powers of the world.

Violence and Vengeance

Violence and Vengeance
Author: Christopher R. Duncan
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0801469090

Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts between migrants and indigenous people over administrative boundaries spiraled into a religious war pitting Muslims against Christians and continues to influence communal relationships more than a decade after the fighting stopped. Christopher R. Duncan spent several years conducting fieldwork in North Maluku, and in Violence and Vengeance, he examines how the individuals actually taking part in the fighting understood and experienced the conflict.Rather than dismiss religion as a facade for the political and economic motivations of the regional elite, Duncan explores how and why participants came to perceive the conflict as one of religious difference. He examines how these perceptions of religious violence altered the conflict, leading to large-scale massacres in houses of worship, forced conversions of entire communities, and other acts of violence that stressed religious identities. Duncan's analysis extends beyond the period of violent conflict and explores how local understandings of the violence have complicated the return of forced migrants, efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation.

From Jeremiad to Jihad

From Jeremiad to Jihad
Author: John D. Carlson
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2012-06-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520271661

Violence has been a central feature of America’s history, culture, and place in the world. It has taken many forms: from state-sponsored uses of force such as war or law enforcement, to revolution, secession, terrorism and other actions with important political and cultural implications. Religion also holds a crucial place in the American experience of violence, particularly for those who have found order and meaning in their worlds through religious texts, symbols, rituals, and ideas. Yet too often the religious dimensions of violence, especially in the American context, are ignored or overstated—in either case, poorly understood. From Jeremiad to Jihad: Religion, Violence, and America corrects these misunderstandings. Charting and interpreting the tendrils of religion and violence, this book reveals how formative moments of their intersection in American history have influenced the ideas, institutions, and identities associated with the United States. Religion and violence provide crucial yet underutilized lenses for seeing America anew—including its outlook on, and relation to, the world.

God at War

God at War
Author: Mark Juergensmeyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2020
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190079177

"This book explores the dark attraction between religion and warfare and explains why religion needs war and war needs religion. Virtually every religious tradition leaves behind it a bloody trail of stories, legends and images of war, and most wars call upon the divine for blessings in battle. This book probes the connection between religion and warfare-- the remarkably similar alternative realities that are created in the human imagination by both religious ideas and images of war in response to crises both personal and social. Based on the author's thirty years of field work interviewing activists involved in religious-related terrorist movements around the world, this book explains why desperate social conflict and personal fears lead to extremes of both religion and war, and why invariably God is thought to be engaged in battle"--

Religion and Violence

Religion and Violence
Author: Paul R. Powers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2020-07-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000097641

Does religion cause much of the world’s violence? Is religion inherently violent? Would violence disappear if religion did? Is true religion a force for peace? Is religion a mask for power and self-interest? What aspects of religion make violence more—or less—likely? Religion and Violence: A Religious Studies Approach explores the potential of classic social theories to shed light on the relationships between religion and violence. This accessible and engaging book starts from the premise that both religion and violence are ordinary elements of social life and that rather than causing violence religion plays a crucial role in the management of violence. Ideal for any student approaching the topic of religion and violence for the first time, this core textbook includes chapter overviews and summaries, guides for applying theory to real-world events, discussion questions, and case studies. Further teaching and learning resources are available on the accompanying companion website.

Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion

Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion
Author: Caroline Blyth
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2018-02-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3319706691

This book explores the Bible’s ongoing relevance in contemporary discussions around rape culture and gender violence. Each chapter considers the ways that biblical texts and themes engage with various forms of gender violence, including the subjective, physical violence of rape, the symbolic violence of misogynistic and heteronormative discourses, and the structural violence of patriarchal power systems. The authors within this volume attempt to name (and shame) the multiple forms of gender violence present within the biblical traditions, contesting the erasure of this violence within both the biblical texts themselves and their interpretive traditions. They also consider the complex connections between biblical gender violence and the perpetuation and validation of rape culture in contemporary popular culture. This volume invites new and ongoing conversations about the Bible’s complicity in rape-supportive cultures and practices, challenging readers to read these texts in light of the global crisis of gender violence.