Thinking About Religion and Violence

How can we change a world that produces so much religious violence? Professor Bivins starts with tools for individuals and proceeding from there through communities, nations, and international institutions.

In this lecture, do more than just focus on how to define terrorism. Instead, try and understand how and why terrorists see the world as they do - a task worth undertaking if we're serious about understanding contemporary problems with religious violence.

Here, look at Islam and violence from different perspectives. Shed light on the negative stereotypes and representations common to discrimination against Muslims.

Turn now to one of the more glaring and persistent traditions of anti-religious violence: anti-Semitism. Why has this form of historical suffering become an intimate component of Jewish identity?

In the first of two lectures on the power of stereotypes and misrepresentation to justify religious violence, look at how church reformers in Europe and the United States of America produced a series of enduring, negative images and stereotypes of Catholics: as degenerate, orgiastic, drunken, and power-mad.

Study the key characteristics that make a group a "cult," including a desire for authenticity and a new pattern of life that breaks with mainstream culture. Then, use Mormonism, China's Falun Gong, and the Solar Temple as ways to explore why some new religions provoke violence and others practice it.

Trace the role of violence in and around Native American traditions. How common is land displacement or outright theft?

How have religions wrestled with - but also condoned - the brutal institution of slavery (especially in the United States of America)? What you'll learn in this eye-opening lecture is that, while some of slavery's most powerful critics have been full-throated religious practitioners, the same can be said of slavery's defenders.

First, look at the historical relationship of religious ethics to public life in India. Then, consider the legacy of colonialism in contributing to the rise of interreligious violence (especially surrounding Sikhism).

A big challenge in understanding interreligious conflict is figuring out the role national identity plays. See why this is the case in modern-day Israel, where conflicts between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam demonstrate the fractious experience of overlapping histories and the limits of secular power in a complex religious world.

Focus on the role of war gods in human cultures and sacred texts. Then, take an extended look at the medieval Crusades, as well as Cold War religious imagery.

While sacred texts contain passages on warfare and violence, they also contain maxims, stories, and images exhorting believers to peace. What are the challenges of pacifism?

When is it permissible to go to war? Learn how Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all wrestled - morally, conceptually, strategically - with questions about how to balance religious ideals with real-world conflicts, and how religions define violence in the context of war as a necessary, limited evil.

Generally speaking, heresies exist in every religious tradition. Professor Bivins explains how religious violence can consist not only of physical harm against people or groups but of legal constraints, denials of basic liberties, and misrepresentation.

How have religious traditions responded to sexuality with demonization, social constraint, and physical assault? What are some of the oldest, most outlandish forms of religious self-discipline?

In this lecture, investigate the gendering of religious language and the treatment of women's bodies in religious practices like menstrual seclusion and self-sacrifice. Also, study the anxiety around women that occurred during the Salem witch trials, as well as competing interpretations of women's freedom and constraint in Islam.

Focus here on a very specific aspect of Other-ing: the idea of different races as the objects of religious violence. First, examine how religions generate racial ideas.

For humans, the world is always about to end. Using examples like the People's Temple, the Branch Davidians, and Aum Shinrikyo, as well as 19th-century America, explore the meanings of apocalypticism as a form of human meaning-making, as well as its role in the phenomenon of religious violence.

One of the most effective ways of demonstrating religious power is through trial and punishment. Examine the use of law and the meanings of public displays of violence as seen in historical cases of witch hunting and witch trials.

Discover how religious violence is almost always justified by portraying its targets as something other than human, or as malevolent. Professor Bivins explains how the social process of Other-ing has led religions to process and create fear through scapegoats, demons and monsters, false gods, and Antichrist figures.

Sacrifice is one of the most fundamental building blocks of religion. Here, examine how and why people commit self-harm and sacrifice for religious purposes.

Explore the special power and authority that sacred texts have for religious practitioners, and how some people invoke these stories and images to legitimize violence. Consider several prevalent themes found in sacred texts like the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Qur'an: vengeful deities, holy wars, and holy suffering.

Get a solid introduction to different ways of recognizing and studying religion as a way to start making sense of religious violence. Central to this lecture is the idea that religion and violence exist in a fluid relationship, which can make the boundary between religious and non-religious identities fuzzy as well.

What is the essence of religious violence? What are the historical trends that explain the relationship between religious beliefs and violence?