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Religion Empire And Torture
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Book Synopsis Religion, Empire, and Torture by : Bruce Lincoln
Download or read book Religion, Empire, and Torture written by Bruce Lincoln and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does religion stimulate and feed imperial ambitions and violence? Recently this question has acquired new urgency, and in Religion, Empire, and Torture, Bruce Lincoln approaches the problem via a classic but little-studied case: Achaemenian Persia. Lincoln identifies three core components of an imperial theology that have transhistorical and contemporary relevance: dualistic ethics, a theory of divine election, and a sense of salvific mission. Beyond this, he asks, how did the Achaemenians understand their place in the cosmos and their moral status in relation to others? Why did they feel called to intervene in the struggle between good and evil? What was their sense of historic purpose, especially their desire to restore paradise lost? And how did this lead them to deal with enemies and critics as imperial power ran its course? Lincoln shows how these religious ideas shaped Achaemenian practice and brought the Persians unprecedented wealth, power, and territory, but also produced unmanageable contradictions, as in a gruesome case of torture discussed in the book’s final chapter. Close study of that episode leads Lincoln back to the present with a postscript that provides a searing and utterly novel perspective on the photographs from Abu Ghraib.
Book Synopsis Torture and the Twilight of Empire by : Marnia Lazreg
Download or read book Torture and the Twilight of Empire written by Marnia Lazreg and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture and the Twilight of Empire looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through a close examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. By tracing the psychological, cultural, and political meanings of torture at the end of the French empire, Marnia Lazreg also sheds new light on the United States and its recourse to torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is nothing less than an anatomy of torture--its methods, justifications, functions, and consequences. Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their systematic use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to guerre révolutionnaire, a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population--especially women--and also on the French troops who became their torturers. She explores the roles Christianity and Islam played in rationalizing these acts, and the ways in which torture became not only routine but even acceptable. Written by a preeminent historical sociologist, Torture and the Twilight of Empire holds particularly disturbing lessons for us today as we carry out the War on Terror.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence by : Mark Juergensmeyer
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence written by Mark Juergensmeyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-11 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination, from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence surveys intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world. The forty original essays in this volume include overviews of major religious traditions, showing how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundations of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of violence and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. The essays also examine patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; and offer major analytic approaches, from literary to social scientific studies. The contributors to this volume--innovative thinkers who are forging new directions in theory and analysis related to religion and violence--provide novel insights into this important field of studies. By mapping out the whole field of religion and violence, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence will prove an authoritative source for students and scholars for years to come.
Book Synopsis Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars by : Bruce Lincoln
Download or read book Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars written by Bruce Lincoln and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-07-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of religion—historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude. The book begins with Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” and ends with “The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies,” in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things—inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor—as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian. Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.
Book Synopsis Holy Terrors, Second Edition by : Bruce Lincoln
Download or read book Holy Terrors, Second Edition written by Bruce Lincoln and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is tempting to regard the perpetrators of the September 11th terrorist attacks as evil incarnate. But their motives, as Bruce Lincoln’s acclaimed Holy Terrors makes clear, were profoundly and intensely religious. Thus what we need after the events of 9/11, Lincoln argues, is greater clarity about what we take religion to be. Holy Terrors begins with a gripping dissection of the instruction manual given to each of the 9/11 hijackers. In their evocation of passages from the Quran, we learn how the terrorists justified acts of destruction and mass murder “in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate.” Lincoln then offers a provocative comparison of President Bush’s October 7, 2001 speech announcing U.S. military action in Afghanistan alongside the videotaped speech released by Osama bin Laden just a few hours later. As Lincoln authoritatively demonstrates, a close analysis of the rhetoric used by leaders as different as George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden—as well as Mohamed Atta and even Jerry Falwell—betrays startling similarities. These commonalities have considerable implications for our understanding of religion and its interrelationships with politics and culture in a postcolonial world, implications that Lincoln draws out with skill and sensitivity. With a chapter new to this edition, “Theses on Religion and Violence,” Holy Terrors remains one of the essential books on September 11 and a classic study on the character of religion. “Modernity has ended twice: in its Marxist form in 1989 Berlin, and in its liberal form on September 11, 2001. In order to understand such major historical changes we need both large-scale and focused analyses—a combination seldom to be found in one volume. But here Bruce Lincoln . . . has given us just such a mix of discrete and large-picture analysis.”—Stephen Healey, Christian Century “From time to time there appears a work . . . that serves to focus the wide-ranging, often contentious discussion of religion’s significance within broader cultural dynamics. Bruce Lincoln’s Holy Terrors is one such text. . . . Anyone still struggling toward a more nuanced comprehension of 9/11 would do well to spend time with this book.”—Theodore Pulcini, Middle East Journal
Book Synopsis From Politics to the Pews by : Michele F. Margolis
Download or read book From Politics to the Pews written by Michele F. Margolis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-08-17 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most substantial divides in American politics is the “God gap.” Religious voters tend to identify with and support the Republican Party, while secular voters generally support the Democratic Party. Conventional wisdom suggests that religious differences between Republicans and Democrats have produced this gap, with voters sorting themselves into the party that best represents their religious views. Michele F. Margolis offers a bold challenge to the conventional wisdom, arguing that the relationship between religion and politics is far from a one-way street that starts in the church and ends at the ballot box. Margolis contends that political identity has a profound effect on social identity, including religion. Whether a person chooses to identify as religious and the extent of their involvement in a religious community are, in part, a response to political surroundings. In today’s climate of political polarization, partisan actors also help reinforce the relationship between religion and politics, as Democratic and Republican elites stake out divergent positions on moral issues and use religious faith to varying degrees when reaching out to voters.
Book Synopsis Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul by : David P. Gushee
Download or read book Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul written by David P. Gushee and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of a conference held Sept. 11-12, 2008 at Mercer University--Preface and Acknowledgements.
Book Synopsis Defending Constantine by : Peter J. Leithart
Download or read book Defending Constantine written by Peter J. Leithart and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2010-09-24 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Leithart weighs what we've been taught about Constantine and claims that in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. He reveals how beneath the surface of this contested story there lies a deeper narrative--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--with far-reaching implications.
Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero by : Shadi Bartsch
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero written by Shadi Bartsch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and accessible guide to the rich literary, philosophical and artistic achievements of the notorious age of Nero.
Book Synopsis Conversion and the Rehabilitation of the Penal System by : Andrew Skotnicki
Download or read book Conversion and the Rehabilitation of the Penal System written by Andrew Skotnicki and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cincinnati Penal Congress of 1870 ushered in the era of "progressive" penology: the use of statistical and social scientific methodologies, commitment to psychiatric and therapeutic interventions, and a new innovation--the reformatory--as the locus for the application of these initiatives. The prisoner was now seen as a specimen to be analyzed, treated, and properly socialized into the triumphal current of American social and economic life. The Progressive rehabilitative initiatives succumbed in the 1970s to withering criticism from the proponents of equally futile strategies for addressing "the crime problem": retribution, deterrence, and selective incapacitation. The early Christian community developed a methodology for correcting human error that featured the unprecedented belief that a period of time spent in a given penitential locale, with the aid and encouragement of the community, was sufficient in and of itself to heal the alienation and self-loathing caused by sin and to lead an individual to full reincorporation into the community. The "correctional" practice was based upon the conviction that cooperative sociability--or conversion--is possible, regardless of the specific offense, without any need to inflict suffering, or to use the act of punishment as a warning to potential offenders, or to undertake programmatic interventions into the lives of the incarcerated for the purpose of rehabilitating them. Andrew Skotnicki contends that the modern practice of criminal detention is a protracted exercise in needless violence predicated upon two foundational errors. The first is an inability to see the imprisoned as human beings fully capable of responding to an affirmative accompaniment rather than maltreatment and invasive forms of therapy. The second is a pervasive dualism that constructs a barrier between detainees and those empowered to supervise, rehabilitate, and punish them. In this book, Skotnicki argues that the criminal justice system can only be rehabilitated by eliminating punishment and policies based upon deterrence, rehabilitation, and the incapacitation of the urban poor and returning to the original justification for the practice of confinement: conversion.
Download or read book Torture written by John Perry and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis God and Empire by : John Dominic Crossan
Download or read book God and Empire written by John Dominic Crossan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2007-03-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of the Bible is a moral and ethical call to fight unjust superpowers, whether they are Babylon, Rome, or even America. From the divine punishment and promise found in Genesis through the revolutionary messages of Jesus and Paul, John Dominic Crossan reveals what the Bible has to say about land and economy, violence and retribution, justice and peace, and, ultimately, redemption. In contrast to the oppressive Roman military occupation of the first century, he examines the meaning of the non-violent Kingdom of God prophesized by Jesus and the equality advocated by Paul to the early Christian churches. Crossan contrasts these messages of peace with the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the Book of Revelation, which has been misrepresented by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify U.S. military actions in the Middle East. In God and Empire Crossan surveys the Bible from Genesis to Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation, and discovers a hopeful message that cannot be ignored in these turbulent times. The first-century Pax Romana, Crossan points out, was in fact a "peace" won through violent military action. Jesus preached a different kind of peace—a peace that surpasses all understanding—and a kingdom not of Caesar but of God. The Romans executed Jesus because he preached this Kingdom of God, a kingdom based on peace and justice, over the empire of Rome, which ruled by violence and force. For Jesus and Paul, Crossan explains, peace cannot be won the Roman way, through military victory, but only through justice and fair and equal treatment of all people.
Book Synopsis Achaemenid Studies by : Christopher Tuplin
Download or read book Achaemenid Studies written by Christopher Tuplin and published by Franz Steiner Verlag. This book was released on 1996 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aus dem Inhalt: Cyprus before and under the Achaemenids: Problems in Chronology, Strategy, Assimilation and Ethnicity u The Parks and Gardens of the Achaemenid Empire u The Place of Persia in Athenian Literatur: Tragedy, Persian Landscape and Geography, Comedy, Orators and Philosophers, General Observations u Appendix: The Location of Places Mentioned in the Fortification Archive u Bibliography u Index. (Franz Steiner 1996)
Book Synopsis Politics of Religious Freedom by : Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Download or read book Politics of Religious Freedom written by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious freedom has achieved broad consensus as a condition for peace. Faced with reports of a rise in religious violence and a host of other social ills, public, and private actors have responded with laws and policies designed to promote freedom of religion. But what precisely is being promoted? What are the assumptions underlying this response? The contributions to this volume unsettle the assumption that religious freedom is a singular achievement and that the problem lies in its incomplete accomplishment. Delineating the different conceptions of religious freedom predominant in the world today, as well as their histories and political contexts, the contributions make clear that the reasons for violence and discrimination are more complex than is widely acknowledged. The promotion of a single legal and cultural tool meant to address conflict across a wide variety of cultures can have the perverse effect of exacerbating the problems that plague the communities often cited as falling short. -- from back cover.
Book Synopsis Torture and the Roman Inquisition by : Kenneth Gambin
Download or read book Torture and the Roman Inquisition written by Kenneth Gambin and published by Midsea Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By using torture, the Inquisition was simply living up to contemporary standards, in the case of the Holy Office, it was their responsibility to save the soul of the accused at all costs. Fully illustrated with lots of interesting images.
Book Synopsis Anatomy of Torture by : Ron E. Hassner
Download or read book Anatomy of Torture written by Ron E. Hassner and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-15 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does torture "work?" Can controversial techniques such as waterboarding extract crucial and reliable intelligence? Since 9/11, this question has been angrily debated in the halls of power and the court of public opinion. In Anatomy of Torture, Ron E. Hassner mines the archives of the Spanish Inquisition to propose an answer that will frustrate and infuriate both sides of the divide. The Inquisition's scribes recorded every torment, every scream, and every confession in the torture chamber. Their transcripts reveal that Inquisitors used torture deliberately and meticulously, unlike the rash, improvised methods used by the United States after 9/11. In their relentless pursuit of underground Jewish communities in Spain and Mexico, the Inquisition tortured in cold blood. But they treated any information extracted with caution: torture was used to test information provided through other means, not to uncover startling new evidence. Hassner's findings in Anatomy of Torture have important implications for ongoing torture debates. Rather than insist that torture is ineffective, torture critics should focus their attention on the morality of torture. If torture is evil, its efficacy is irrelevant. At the same time, torture defenders cannot advocate for torture as a counterterrorist "quick fix": torture has never located, nor will ever locate, the hypothetical "ticking bomb" that is frequently invoked to justify brutality in the name of security.
Book Synopsis Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion by : Heinrich Meier
Download or read book Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion written by Heinrich Meier and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heinrich Meier’s guiding insight in Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion is that philosophy must prove its right and its necessity in the face of the claim to truth and demand obedience of its most powerful opponent, revealed religion. Philosophy must rationally justify and politically defend its free and unreserved questioning, and, in doing so, turns decisively to political philosophy. In the first of three chapters, Meier determines four intertwined moments constituting the concept of political philosophy as an articulated and internally dynamic whole. The following two chapters develop the concept through the interpretation of two masterpieces of political philosophy that have occupied Meier’s attention for more than thirty years: Leo Strauss’s Thoughts on Machiavelli and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract. Meier provides a detailed investigation of Thoughts on Machiavelli, with an appendix containing Strauss’s original manuscript headings for each of his paragraphs. Linking the problem of Socrates (the origin of political philosophy) with the problem of Machiavelli (the beginning of modern political philosophy), while placing between them the political and theological claims opposed to philosophy, Strauss’s most complex and controversial book proves to be, as Meier shows, the most astonishing treatise on the challenge of revealed religion. The final chapter, which offers a new interpretation of the Social Contract, demonstrates that Rousseau’s most famous work can be adequately understood only as a coherent political-philosophic response to theocracy in all its forms.
