How can one define or justify religious violence? Are religions violent or are people? The difficulty in answering these questions lie in the fact that religion is based on belief and interpretation, both of which are arbitrary and subjective forms of evidence. In his book Holy Terrors, Bruce Lincoln breaks down religion and writes that it is defined by four domains: discourse, practice, community, and institution. Through his explanation, he successfully breaks down religion and helps explain why violence, along with various other aspects, are characteristics of religion.
One of Lincoln's most compelling arguments was his statement that, "religious discourse can recode virtually any content as sacred, ranging from the high-minded and progressive to the murderous, oppressive, and banal, for it is not any specific orientation that distinguishes religion, but rather its metadiscursive capacity to frame the way any content will be received and regarded." This brings up the strength of the role that interpretation plays in religion. It poses the idea that religion can be, and often is, used as a form of justification for acts that break a societies collective moral code. Furthermore, Lincoln states that "no practices are inherently religious, and any may acquire a religious character when connected to a religious discourse that constitutes them as such," which expands on the role of interpretation even more. It suggests how susceptible something, no matter how seemingly perverse to the masses it may be, is to becoming a practice justifiable by religion. As long as a religious leader can find in their scripture a historic act, story, or phrase that can be interpreted to condone an act such as violence, violence then becomes a religious act.
Although I may be taking this to the extreme and applying these ideas directly to violence rather then other nonviolent religious practices, these ideas help to explain the foundation and existence of religious violence. After all, the individuals who commit these violent acts in the name of religion are often not inherently violent psychopaths, but persons inspired by their religious ideology.
We were definitely on the same wavelength when we were writing our posts. Your argument about interpretation and re-purposing text to fit a certain agenda reminded me of something I learned in my Medieval literature classes. In certain literary canons, such as the Arthurian legends, which are compositions of many different stories, written at different times, by different people, the authors would often make huge alterations to the original stories. They would edit important scenes out, add new characters, symbols...all to send a specific message to their readers. Perhaps this doesn't apply as much to modern day, but it makes me wonder what amount of sacred text has already been tampered with in order to promote a certain interpretation.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your point that differences in interpretation canlead to the justification of religious violence. And to add to Sarah's point, different English translations of the Bible that we had to look at in New Testament in Context have hugely different meanings just because of the translateor's choices. There's also a ton of evidence of interpolation, so I imagine that there are tons of people that have used the idea of sacred to promote their own agenda. I'm interested to hear more of what you have to say about people who are not using religion as justification for violence but committing violence based on religious ideology.
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