Author: Jon Pahl
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814767648
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
It is widely recognized that American culture is both exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent. Americans participate in religious communities in high numbers, yet American citizens also own guns at rates far beyond those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Since 9/11, United States scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows United States policy. Yet, according to Jon Pahl, to identify religious violence only with terrorism fails to address the long history of American violence rooted in religion throughout the country’s history. In essence, Americans have found ways to consider blessed some very brutal attitudes and behaviors both domestically and globally. In Empire of Sacrifice, Pahl explains how both of these distinctive features of American culture work together by exploring how constructions along the lines of age, race, and gender have operated to centralize cultural power across American civil or cultural religions in ways that don’t always appear to be "religious" at all. Pahl traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history, using evidence from popular culture, including movies such as Rebel without a Cause and Reefer Madness and works of literature such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale, to illuminate historical events. Throughout, Pahl focuses an intense light on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bush’s Baghdad.
Author: David Carrasco
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807046432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence? In City of Sacrifice,Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity. Majestic in scope, City of Sacrifice illuminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.
Author: Jon Pahl
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814768954
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
It is widely recognized that American culture is both exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent. Americans participate in religious communities in high numbers, yet American citizens also own guns at rates far beyond those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Since 9/11, United States scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows United States policy. Yet, according to Jon Pahl, to identify religious violence only with terrorism fails to address the long history of American violence rooted in religion throughout the country’s history. In essence, Americans have found ways to consider blessed some very brutal attitudes and behaviors both domestically and globally. In Empire of Sacrifice, Pahl explains how both of these distinctive features of American culture work together by exploring how constructions along the lines of age, race, and gender have operated to centralize cultural power across American civil or cultural religions in ways that don’t always appear to be "religious" at all. Pahl traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history, using evidence from popular culture, including movies such as Rebel without a Cause and Reefer Madness and works of literature such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale, to illuminate historical events. Throughout, Pahl focuses an intense light on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bush’s Baghdad.
Author: Kevin Annett
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781727005967
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
The Sacrifice is a heartfelt remembrance of a lost brother and uncle, and the hidden story of how he really died. Written collaboratively by Kevin Annett and his father Bill, this book describes the sinking of the destroyer HMCS Athabaskan just prior to D Day in April, 1944; and of how Sub. Lt. Robert Annett and ninety other Canadian sailors were left to drown in the English Channel by the British Admiralty. Drawing on navy and archival sources, the Annetts explore recent evidence that suggest it was "friendly fire" by a British Motor Torpedo boat, and not the Germans, that dealt the death blow to the already-crippled Athabaskan. The Sacrifice also delves into the broader British colonial history of crime and cover up, and of how those who fight for the Empire can end up being immolated by it. Combined with personal accounts of the impact of war on one family and of Robert Annett's self-sacrificial death for a wounded sailor, this work is a moving tribute to human courage amidst the stupidity of war.
Author: Thomas Besom
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 0826353088
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
The Inka empire was the largest pre-Columbian polity in the New World. Its vast expanse, its ethnic diversity, and the fact that the empire may have been consolidated in less than a century have prompted much scholarly interest in its creation. In this study, Besom explores the ritual practices of human sacrifice and the worship of mountains, attested in both archaeological investigations and ethnohistorical sources, as tools in the establishment and preservation of political power. Besom examines the relationship between symbols, ideology, ritual, and power to demonstrate how the Cuzqueños could have used rituals to manipulate common Andean symbols to uphold their authority over subjugated peoples. He considers ethnohistoric accounts of the categories of human sacrifice to gain insights into related rituals and motives, and reviews the ethnohistoric evidence of mountain worship to predict locations as well as motives. He also analyzes specific archaeological sites and assemblages, theorizing that they were the locations of sacrifices designed to assimilate subject peoples, bind conquered lands to the state, and/or justify the extraction of local resources.
Author: Sophia Moskalenko
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190689323
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
"This text examines the psychological effects of martyrdom and martyrs across the world. The authors discuss martyrdom and martyrs through the lens of current events, iconic historical figures, and popular culture"--
Author: Jennifer Wright Knust
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199876401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
An investigation of the multiple meanings and functions of sacrifice in diverse religious texts and practices from the late Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods.
Author: Susan Emanuel
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459627520
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
The religious transformations that marked late antiquity represent an enigma that has challenged some of the West's greatest thinkers. But, according to Guy Stroumsa, the oppositions between paganism and Christianity that characterize prevailing theories have endured for too long. Instead of describing this epochal change as an evolution within ...
Author: O. Hekster
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047428277
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
This volume presents the proceedings of the eighth workshop of the international network 'Impact of Empire', which concentrates on the history of the Roman Empire. It focuses on the impact the Roman Empire had on changes in ritual and further religious behaviour in the empire.
Author: John Carlyle O'Neill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781940014609
Category : Church history
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Exiled for their beliefs, the faithful have been imprisoned deep inside the salt mines of ancient Rome. For the empire, salt is a symbol of life and prosperity; for the Christian slaves who mine it, its only meaning is death. Barbaric persecution and cave-ins threaten to stamp them out entirely, but beyond the shafts their outlawed religion is growing more quickly each day.
