Christianity and Violence

Christianity and Violence PDF Author: Lloyd Steffen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108848826
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
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.

Christianity and Violence

Christianity and Violence PDF Author: Lloyd Steffen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108848826
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Christianity and Violence in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Christianity and Violence in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period PDF Author: Fernanda Alfieri
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110643979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
The volume explores the relationship between religion and violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early modern period, involving European and Japanese scholars. It investigates the ideological foundations of the relationship between violence and religion and their development in a varied corpus of sources (political and theological treatises, correspondence of missionaries, pamphlets, and images).

The Crusades

The Crusades PDF Author: Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300101287
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
"Pulls off the enviable feat of summing up seven centuries of religious warfare in a crisp 309 pages of text."--Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World In this authoritative work, Jonathan Riley-Smith provides the definitive account of the Crusades: an account of the theology of violence behind the Crusades, the major Crusades, the experience of crusading, and the crusaders themselves. With a wealth of fascinating detail, Riley-Smith brings to life these stirring expeditions to the Holy Land and the politics and personalities behind them. This new edition includes revisions throughout as well as a new Preface and Afterword in which Jonathan Riley-Smith surveys recent developments in the field and examines responses to the Crusades in different periods, from the Romantics to the Islamic world today. From reviews of the first edition: "Everything is here: the crusades to the Holy Land, and against the Albigensians, the Moors, the pagans in Eastern Europe, the Turks, and the enemies of the popes. Riley-Smith writes a beautiful, lucid prose, . . . [and his book] is packed with facts and action."--Choice "A concise, clearly written synthesis . . . by one of the leading historians of the crusading movement. "--Robert S. Gottfried, Historian "A lively and flowing narrative [with] an enormous cast of characters that is not a mere catalog but a history. . . . A remarkable achievement."--Thomas E. Morrissey, Church History "Superb."--Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Speculum "A first-rate one-volume survey of the Crusading movement from 1074 . . . to 1798."--Southwest Catholic

Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror

Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror PDF Author: Philippe Buc
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812246853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror examines the ways Christian theology has shaped centuries of violence from Christianity's first centuries up to our own day, through the crusades, the French Revolution, and more recent American wars.

There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ

There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ PDF Author: Michael Gaddis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520241045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Focusing on the 4th and 5th centuries, Michael Gaddis explores how various groups employed the language of religious violence to construct their own identities, to undermine the legitimacy of their rivals, & to advance themselves in the competitive & high stakes process of Christianizing the Roman Empire.

Violence in Ancient Christianity

Violence in Ancient Christianity PDF Author: Albert Geljon
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004274901
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Ancient Christianity had an ambivalent stance toward violence. Jesus had instructed his disciples to love their enemies, and in the first centuries Christians were proud of this lofty teaching and tried to apply it to their persecutors and to competing religious groups. Yet at the same time they testify to their virulent verbal criticism of Jews, heretics and pagans, who could not accept the Christian exclusiveness. After emperor Constantine had turned to Christianity, Christians acquired the opportunity to use violence toward competing groups and pagans, even though they were instructed to love them personally and Jewish-Christian relationships flourished at grass root level. General analyses and case studies demonstrate that the fashionable distinction between intolerant monotheism and tolerant polytheism must be qualified.

Anti-Christian Violence in India

Anti-Christian Violence in India PDF Author: Chad M. Bauman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501751433
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Does religion cause violent conflict, asks Chad M. Bauman, and if so, does it cause conflict more than other social identities? Through an extended history of Christian-Hindu relations, with particular attention to the 2007–2008 riots in Kandhamal, Odisha, Anti-Christian Violence in India examines religious violence and how it pertains to broader aspects of humanity. Is "religious" conflict sui generis, or is it merely one species of intergroup conflict? Why and how might violence become an attractive option for religious actors? What explains the increase in religious violence over the last twenty to thirty years? Integrating theories of anti-Christian violence focused on politics, economics, and proselytization, Anti-Christian Violence in India additionally weaves in recent theory about globalization and, in particular, the forms of resistance against Western secular modernity that globalization periodically helps to provoke. With such theories in mind, Bauman explores the nature of anti-Christian violence in India, contending that resistance to secular modernities is, in fact, an important but often overlooked reason behind Hindu attacks on Christians. Intensifying the widespread Hindu tendency to think of religion in ethnic rather than universal terms, the ideology of Hindutva, or "Hinduness," explicitly rejects both the secular privatization of religion and the separability of religions from the communities that incubate them. And so, with provocative and original analysis, Bauman questions whether anti-Christian violence in contemporary India is really about religion, in the narrowest sense, or rather a manifestation of broader concerns among some Hindus about the Western sociopolitical order with which they associate global Christianity.

War, Peace, and Violence: Four Christian Views

War, Peace, and Violence: Four Christian Views PDF Author: Paul Copan
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 1514002353
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
In a world of war, terrorism, and constant threats to global stability, how should Christians honor Jesus Christ? Four experts in Christian ethics, political philosophy, and international affairs present four different views of just war, nonviolence, Christian realism, and church history, orienting readers to today's key positions.

Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity

Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Thomas Sizgorich
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812207440
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
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.

Letter to a Christian Nation

Letter to a Christian Nation PDF Author: Sam Harris
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0307265773
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 57

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Book Description
A criticism of Christianity from the secularist point of view.