How Violence Shapes Religion

How Violence Shapes Religion PDF

Author: Ziya Meral

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1108429009

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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.

Violence and Vengeance

Violence and Vengeance PDF

Author: Christopher R. Duncan

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0801469090

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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.

Violence in God's Name

Violence in God's Name PDF

Author: Oliver J. McTernan

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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

From Jeremiad to Jihad

From Jeremiad to Jihad PDF

Author: John D. Carlson

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2012-06-06

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0520271661

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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.

Revelation, the Religions, and Violence

Revelation, the Religions, and Violence PDF

Author: Leo D. Lefebure

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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"Leo Lefebure extends the insights of Rene Girard into a multi-religious context. He examines the basic human dynamics that produce violence, and shows how the diverse experiences of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as Chinese and Indian religions, address this universal problem."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

God at War

God at War PDF

Author: Mark Juergensmeyer

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 0190079177

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"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"--

Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India

Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India PDF

Author: Chad M. Bauman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-02-02

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0190266317

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Every year, there are several hundred attacks on India's Christians. These attacks are carried out by violent anti-minority activists, many of them provoked by what they perceive to be a Christian propensity for aggressive proselytization, or by rumored or real conversions to the faith. Pentecostals are disproportionately targeted. Drawing on extensive interviews, ethnographic work, and a vast scholarly literature on interreligious violence, Hindu nationalism, and Christianity in India, Chad Bauman examines this phenomenon. While some of the factors in the targeting of Pentecostals are obvious and expected-their relatively greater evangelical assertiveness, for instance-other significant factors are less acknowledged and more surprising: marginalization of Pentecostals by "mainstream" Christians, the social location of Pentecostal Christians, and transnational flows of missionary personnel, theories, and funds. A detailed analysis of Indian Christian history, contemporary Indian politics, Indian social and cultural characteristics, and Pentecostal belief and practice, this volume sheds important light on a troubling fact of contemporary Indian life.

Fighting Words

Fighting Words PDF

Author: Hector Avalos

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published:

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 1615921958

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Is religion inherently violent? If not, what provokes violence in the name of religion? Do we mischaracterize religion by focusing too much on its violent side?In this intriguing, original study of religious violence, Prof. Hector Avalos offers a new theory for the role of religion in violent conflicts. Starting with the premise that most violence is the result of real or perceived scare resources, Avalos persuasively argues that religion creates new scarcities on the basis of unverifiable or illusory criteria. Through a careful analysis of the fundamental texts of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, Dr. Avalos explains how four scarce resources have figured repeatedly in creating religious violence: sacred space (e.g., the perception by three world religions that Jerusalem is sacred); the creation of holy scriptures (believed to be privileged revelations of God's will); group privilege (stemming from such beliefs as a chosen people or predestination, which also creates a group of outsiders); and salvation (by which concept some are accepted and others rejected). Thus, Avalos shows, religious violence is often the most unnecessary violence of all since the scarce resources over which religious conflicts ensue are not actually scare or need not be scarce.Comparing violence in religious and nonreligious contexts, Avalos makes the compelling argument that if we condemn violence caused by scarce resources as morally objectionable, then we must consider even more objectionable violence provoked by alleged scarcities that cannot be proven to exist. He also examines the Nazi Holocaust and the Stalinist Terror, which have been attributed to the pernicious effects of atheism or secular humanism. By contrast, Avalos pinpoints underlying religious factors as the cause of these horrific instances of genocidal violence.This serious philosophical examination of the roots of religious violence adds much to our understanding of a perennial source of widespread human suffering.Hector Avalos (Ames, IA) is associate professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, the author of five books on biblical studies and religion, the former editor of the Journal for the Critical Study of Religion, and executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion.

Religion and Violence

Religion and Violence PDF

Author: Paul R. Powers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-28

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1000097641

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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.

The Destructive Power of Religion

The Destructive Power of Religion PDF

Author: J. Harold Ellens

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2007-05-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0275997081

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Select chapters from the controversial 4-volume set examining the influence of sacred texts shaping human nature, society, politics and military strategy across the last 3,000 years.