1 - Violence and Religion in Perspective

Summary

The relationship between religion and violence has been a subject of rapidly growing interest and concern to social scientists studying a broad range of religious groups and traditions. Violent acts and relationships are extremely diverse, of course, and so it is not surprising that the burgeoning literature on religion and violence incorporates analyses of numerous types of violence, groups, and contexts. A number of distinctions are conventionally drawn in distinguishing forms of violence. Violence is variously conceptualized as an act, a process, or a relationship. Violence may involve individual actions, as in the personal murder of one member of a religious group by another, an outsider by an insider, or an insider by an outsider. It may also involve collective action by or against a group, as in the cases of war, revolution, repression, and terrorism. Violence may or may not explicitly invoke religious objectives. For example, an individual who is a member of a religious group may simply be the perpetrator or victim of an act of violence, with no connection to a religious purpose, or violent acts may have a specific religious goal, such as assassination of a spiritual leader or execution for heresy. Violence may occur within the confines of a group, as in the case of schismatic conflict; it may also occur across institutional boundaries, as when the religious group is the target of political repression or the instigator of an attack against societal institutions.