RELIGION AND VIOLENCE IN THE MODERN WEST

Catalog description

(Slashed with HIST 82415 ) This class explores the role of religion in conflict throughout the modern Atlantic World. It is commonly believed that Western societies underwent a process of secularization in the modern age. However, recent scholarship has proven that religious beliefs and behaviors have retained their power, popularity and causal agency. This course is designed to give graduate students an introduction to recent trends in the writing of the history of religion and violence. Religion will be taken as social, cultural and political history, rather than merely ecclesiastical or theological history. Violence will be taken as rhetorics and cultures of violence, as well as warfare and other acts of physical violence. We will start the class by discussion theories of religion, including "civil religion" as an alleged replacement faith in an era of secularity; sample current debates on the question of the religious causes of violence; then survey prominent monographs and articles that address this nexus historically.