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27 results in Cambridge Elements

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Violence and Religious Change in the Pacific Islands

Violence and Religious Change in the Pacific Islands
  • Garry Trompf
  • Published online:
    26 July 2023
    Print publication:
    31 August 2023
  • This Element considers patterns of violent behaviour among the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands while their vast region has been undergoing religious change, overwhelmingly toward Christianity. Major topics researched are religion-based violent reactions to early intruders (including missionaries); new religious movements resisting unwanted interference (including 'cargo cults'); anti-colonial rebellions inspired by spiritual impetuses both indigenous and introduced; and the persistence of traditional modes of violence (tribal fighting, sorcery and tough punishments) adapted to altered conditions.
Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion and Violence

Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion and Violence
  • Candace Alcorta, Richard Sosis
  • Published online:
    15 August 2022
    Print publication:
    01 September 2022
  • Religion and violence share a complex and enduring history. Viewing violence and religion from an evolutionary perspective situates both within a broader framework of aggressive, affiliative, and signaling behaviors across species. In this work the authors review genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors that influence violence, distinguishing two types of aggression that differ in underlying physiology and intent. The use of communicative signals to delimit aggression across species is surveyed and the emergence of human symbolic ritual as a signaling system for creating alliances and promoting in-group cooperation is proposed. Using Wallace's typology of religion, this Element explores differences across religious systems in relation to socioecological variation and examines the underlying mechanisms by which religion 'works'. The use of violence as both an 'honest signal' and a mechanism for inculcating religious belief is discussed, and the use of religion to incite, validate, and justify violence is reviewed.
Religious Nationalism in Contemporary South Asia

Religious Nationalism in Contemporary South Asia
  • Andrea Malji
  • Published online:
    12 August 2022
    Print publication:
    01 September 2022
  • This Element explores religious nationalism in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism and how it manifests in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. At the core, nationalists contend that the continuation of their group is threatened by some other group. Much of these fears are rooted in the colonial experience and have been exacerbated in the modern era. For the Hindu and Buddhist nationalists explored in this Element, the predominant source of fear is directed toward the Muslim minority and their secular allies. For Sikhs, minorities within India, the fear is primarily of the state. For Muslims in Pakistan, the fear is more dynamic and includes secularists and minority sects, including Shias and Ahmadis. In all instances, the groups fear that their ability to practice and express their religion is under immediate threat. Additionally, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim nationalists wish for the state to adopt or promote their religious ideology.
Sacrifice

Sacrifice
  • Themes, Theories, and Controversies
  • Margo Kitts
  • Published online:
    07 July 2022
    Print publication:
    28 July 2022
  • After over a century of grand theorizing about the universal dimensions to the practice of ritual sacrifice, scholars now question the analytical utility of the notion writ large. The word 'sacrifice' (Latin sacrificium) itself frequently is broken down into its Latin roots, sacer, sacred, and facere, to do or to make – to do or to make sacred – which is a huge category and also vague. Presuming it is people and places that are made sacred, we must question the dynamics. Does sacrifice 'make sacred' by summoning the presence of gods or ancestors? By offering gifts to them? By dining with them? By restoring or establishing cosmic order? By atoning for personal or collective sins? By rectifying social disequilibrium through scapegoating? By inducing an existential epiphany about life and death? While this short Element cannot cover all complexities and practices, it does treat critically some prominent themes, theories, and controversies concerning sacrifice, from ancient to present times.
Violence and the Sikhs

Violence and the Sikhs
  • Arvind-Pal S. Mandair
  • Published online:
    22 March 2022
    Print publication:
    21 April 2022
  • Violence and the Sikhs interrogates conventional typologies of violence and non-violence in Sikhism by rethinking the dominant narrative of Sikhism as a deviation from the ostensibly original pacifist-religious intentions and practices of its founders. This Element highlights competing logics of violence drawn from primary sources of Sikh literature, thereby complicating our understanding of the relationship between spirituality and violence, connecting it to issues of sovereignty and the relationship between Sikhism and the State during the five centuries of its history. By cultivating a non-oppositional understanding of violence and spirituality, this Element provides an innovative method for interpreting events of 'religious violence'. In doing so it provides a novel perspective on familiar themes such as martyrdom, Martial Race theory, warfare and (post)colonial conflicts in the Sikh context.
Violence in Pacific Islander Traditional Religions

Violence in Pacific Islander Traditional Religions
  • Garry Trompf
  • Published online:
    21 December 2021
    Print publication:
    27 January 2022
  • An Element on the role of violence in the traditional religions of the Pacific Ilands (Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia) and on violent activity in islander religious life after the opening of Oceania to the modern world. This work covers such issues as tribal warfare, sorcery and witchcraft, traditional punishment and gender imbalance. and moves on to consider reprisals against foreign intruders in the Pacific and the continuation of old types of violence in spite of massive socio-religious change.
Judaism and Violence

Judaism and Violence
  • A Historical Analysis with Insights from Social Psychology
  • Robert Eisen
  • Published online:
    02 September 2021
    Print publication:
    07 October 2021
  • This Element explores the potential in Judaism to incite Jews to engage in violence against non-Jews. The analysis proceeds in historical fashion, with sections devoted to the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic Judaism, medieval and early modern Judaism, and modern Zionism. The last topic is given special attention because of its relevance to the current Middle East conflict. This Element also draws on insights from social psychology to explain Jewish violence - particularly Social Identity Theory.
Lone Wolf Race Warriors and White Genocide

Lone Wolf Race Warriors and White Genocide
  • Mattias Gardell
  • Published online:
    04 June 2021
    Print publication:
    01 July 2021
  • When Brenton Tarrant live-streamed his massacre of fifty-one Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019, he was but one in a series of lone-acting white men committing violent crime to further the radical white nationalist aim to save the white race from extinction and establish a white ethnostate. From where did white nationalists get the notion of an ongoing white genocide? Why should 'resistance' against a perceived invasion of 'white' territory be launched by individual 'lone wolves' massacring noncombatants they have no prior relation to? How could slaughtering children be construed as a heroic act that a perpetrator wants to broadcast to the world? Based on a unique collection of interviews with lone wolves, their victims, and their supporters, and a close reading of lone wolf, fascist, and radical nationalist material and communication, this Element provides solid answers to these and adjacent questions of importance.
Violated and Transcended Bodies

Violated and Transcended Bodies
  • Gender, Martyrdom, and Asceticism in Early Christianity
  • Gail P. Streete
  • Published online:
    06 May 2021
    Print publication:
    03 June 2021
  • Given its eschatological orientation and its marginal position in the Roman Empire, emergent Christianity found embodiment, as an aspect of being in the world, problematic. Those identified and identifying as Christians developed two broad responses to that world as they embraced the idea of being in, yet not of it. The first response, martyrdom, was witness to the strength their faith gave to fragile bodies, particularly those of women, and the ability by suffering to overcome bodily limitation and attain the resurrection life. The second, asceticism, complemented and later continued martyrdom as a means of bodily transcendence and participation in the spiritual world.
Christianity and Violence

Christianity and Violence
  • Lloyd Steffen
  • Published online:
    20 April 2021
    Print publication:
    20 May 2021
  • How Christian people have framed the meaning of violence within their faith tradition has been a complex process subject to all manner of historical, cultural, political, ethnic and theological contingencies. As a tradition encompassing widely divergent beliefs and perspectives, Christianity has, over two millennia, adapted to changing cultural and historical circumstances. To grasp the complexity of this tradition and its involvement with violence requires attention to specific elements explored in this Element: the scriptural and institutional sources for violence; the faith commitments and practices that join communities and sanction both resistance to and authorization for violence; and select historical developments that altered the power wielded by Christianity in society, culture and politics. Relevant issues in social psychology and the moral action guides addressing violence affirmed in Christian communities provide a deeper explanation for the motivations that have led to the diverse interpretations of violence avowed in the Christian tradition.
Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness

Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness
  • Reflecting on Violence and Religion with René Girard
  • Wolfgang Palaver
  • Published online:
    30 December 2020
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021
  • Studies into religion and violence often put religion first. René Girard started with violence in his book Violence and the Sacred and used the Durkheimian term 'sacred' as its correlate in his study of early religions. During the unfolding of his theory, he more and more distinguished the sacred from saintliness to address the break that the biblical revelation represented in comparison to early religions. This distinction between the sacred and saintliness resembles Henri Bergson's complementing Emile Durkheim's identification of the sacred and society with a dynamic religion that relies on individual mystics. Girard's distinction also relates to the insights of thinkers like Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, and Emmanuel Levinas. This element explores some of Girard's main features of saintliness. Girard pleaded for the transformation of the sacred into holy, not their separation.
Great War, Religious Dimensions

Great War, Religious Dimensions
  • Bobby Wintermute
  • Published online:
    24 November 2020
    Print publication:
    03 December 2020
  • The First World War was a transformative event, affecting international culture, economics, and geopolitics. Though often presented as the moment heralding a new secular era of modernity, in actuality the war experience was grounded in religious faith and ritual for many participants. This Element examines how religion was employed by the state to solicit support and civic participation, while also being subordinated to the strategic and operational demands of the combatant armies. Even as religion was employed to express dissent, it was also used as a coercive tool to ensure compliance with the wartime demands of the state on civilians.
The Bahá'í Faith, Violence, and Non-Violence

The Bahá'í Faith, Violence, and Non-Violence
  • Robert H. Stockman
  • Published online:
    20 July 2020
    Print publication:
    13 August 2020
  • Both violence and non-violence are important themes in the Bahá'í Faith, but their relationship is not simple. The Bahá'í sacred writings see violence in the world – not just against Bahá'ís, but physical and structural violence against everyone – as being a consequence of the immature state of human civilization. The Baha'i community itself has been nonviolent since its founding by Baha'u'llah in the mid nineteenth century and has developed various strategies for responding to persecution nonviolently. This Element explores how their scriptures provide a blueprint for building a new, more mature, culture and civilization on this planet where violence will be rare and nonviolence prevalent.
Religious Terrorism

Religious Terrorism
  • Heather S. Gregg
  • Published online:
    26 June 2020
    Print publication:
    16 July 2020
  • How can the world's religions, which propagate peace and love, promote violence and the killing of innocent civilians through terrorist acts? This Element aims to provide insights into this puzzle by beginning with a brief overview of debates on terrorism, a discussion on religion and the various resources it provides groups engaging in terrorist acts, four arguments for what causes religious terrorism, brief examples of religious terrorism across faith traditions, and a synopsis of deradicalization programs. This discussion shows that, when combined with certain political and social circumstances, religions provide powerful resources for justifying and motivating terrorist acts against civilians.
Tibetan Demonology

Tibetan Demonology
  • Christopher Bell
  • Published online:
    18 June 2020
    Print publication:
    16 July 2020
  • Tibetan Demonology discusses the rich taxonomy of gods and demons encountered in Tibet. These spirits are often the cause of, and exhorted for, diverse violent and wrathful activities. This Element consists of four thematic sections. The first section, 'Spirits and the Body', explores oracular possession and spirit-induced illnesses. The second section, 'Spirits and Time', discusses the role of gods in Tibetan astrology and ritual calendars. The third section, 'Spirits and Space', examines the relationship between divinities and the Tibetan landscape. The final section, 'Spirits and Doctrine', explores how certain deities act as fierce protectors of religious and political institutions.
Islam and Suicide Attacks

Islam and Suicide Attacks
  • Pieter Nanninga
  • Published online:
    22 October 2019
    Print publication:
    31 October 2019
  • This Element explores the disputed relationship between Islam and suicide attacks. Drawing from primary source material as well as existing scholarship from fields such as terrorism studies and religious studies, it argues that Islam as a generic category is not an explanatory factor in suicide attacks. Rather, it claims that we need to study how organisations and individuals in their particular contexts draw tools such as Islamic martyrdom traditions, ritual practices and perceptions on honour and purity from their cultural repertoire to shape, justify and give meaning to the bloodshed.
Mormonism and Violence

Mormonism and Violence
  • The Battles of Zion
  • Patrick Q. Mason
  • Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    30 May 2019
  • In popular culture and scholarship, a consistent trope about Mormonism is that it features a propensity for violence, born of the religion's theocratic impulses and the antinomian tendencies of special revelation. Mormonism and Violence critically assesses the relationship of Mormonism and violence through a close examination of Mormon history and scripture, focusing on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Element pays special attention to violence in the Book of Mormon and the history of the movement, from the 1830s to the present.
Religious Culture and Violence in Traditional China

Religious Culture and Violence in Traditional China
  • Barend ter Haar
  • Published online:
    11 May 2019
    Print publication:
    30 May 2019
  • The basis of Chinese religious culture, and with that many aspects of daily life, was the threat and fear of demonic attacks. These were inherently violent and could only be counteracted by violence as well - even if this reactive violence was masked by euphemisms such as execution, expulsion, exorcisms and so on. At the same time, violence was a crucial dimension of the maintenance of norms and values, for instance in sworn agreements or in beliefs about underworld punishment. Violence was also an essential aspect of expressing respect through sacrificial gifts of meat (and in an earlier stage of Chinese culture also human flesh) and through a culture of auto-mutilation and ritual suicide. At the same time, conventional indigenous terms for violence such as bao 暴 were not used for most of these practices since they were not experienced as such, but rather justified as positive uses of physical force.
Human Sacrifice

Human Sacrifice
  • Archaeological Perspectives from around the World
  • Laerke Recht
  • Published online:
    08 January 2019
    Print publication:
    20 December 2018
  • Sacrifice is not simply an expression of religious beliefs. Its highly symbolic nature lends itself to various kinds of manipulation by those carrying it out, who may use the ritual in maintaining and negotiating power and identity in carefully staged 'performances'. This Element will examine some of the many different types of sacrifice and ritual killing of human beings through history, from Bronze Age China and the Near East to Mesoamerica to Northern Europe. The focus is on the archaeology of human sacrifice, but where available, textual and iconographic sources provide valuable complements to the interpretation of the material.
Islam and Violence

Islam and Violence
  • Khaleel Mohammed
  • Published online:
    20 December 2018
    Print publication:
    20 December 2018
  • After 9/11, many writers have posited the relationship between Islam and violence as either elemental or anomalous. Khaleel Mohammed defines Islam as transcending the usual understanding of religion, being instead like a 'sacred canopy' that provides meaning for every aspect of life. In addition, he shows that violence has both physical and psychological dimensions and expounds at length on jihad. He traces the term's metamorphosis of meaning from a struggle in any worthy cause to war and finally to its present-day extension to include martyrdom and terrorism. Finally, he covers the dimensions of violence in the Islamic law and the institutional patriarchy.

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