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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Religious intolerance, persecution & conflict > General
Heresy and Citizenship examines the anti-heretical campaigns in late-medieval Augsburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Strasbourg, and other cities. By focusing on the unprecedented period of persecution between 1390 and 1404, this study demonstrates how heretical presence in cities was exploited in ecclesiastical, political, and social conflicts between the cities and their external rivals, and between urban elites. These anti-heretical campaigns targeted Waldensians who believed in lay preaching and simplified forms of Christian worship. Groups of individuals identified as Waldensians underwent public penance, execution, or expulsion. In each case, the course and outcome of inquisitions reveal tensions between institutions within each city, most often between city councils and local bishops or archbishops. In such cases, competing sides used the persecution of heresy to assert their authority over others. As a result, persecution of urban Waldensians acquired meaning beyond mere correction of religious error. By placing the anti-heretical campaigns of this period in their socio-political and religious context, Heresy and Citizenship also engages with studies of social and political conflict in late medieval towns. It examines the role the exclusion of religiously and socially deviant groups played in the development of urban governments, and the rise of ideologies of good citizenship and the common good. It will be of interest to scholars and students interested in medieval urban and religious history, and the history of heresy and its persecution.
Experiencing the dimension that lies beyond our empirical grasp of the world has always been a challenge for human beings, for it can expose the limitations of our agency. Such experience, while potentially terrifying, can also furnish a basis for religious faith or hope of a better future. The intercultural essays in this volume analyze ways of dealing with the beyond, including magic, religion, myth, and all-promising utopias.
An award-winning journalist's extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years--a revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance that's "the best of the genre, profound, poetic, and sorrowful" (The Atlantic). In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians--who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives--and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold--a grime-stained scrap of fabric--that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal. Now, Padnos recounts his time in captivity in Syria, where he was frequently tortured at the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate, Jebhat al Nusra. We learn not only about Padnos's harrowing experience, but we also get a firsthand account of life in a Syrian village, the nature of Islamic prisons, how captors interrogate someone suspected of being CIA, the ways that Islamic fighters shift identities and drift back and forth through the veil of Western civilization, and much more. No other journalist has lived among terrorists for as long as Theo has--and survived. As a resident of thirteen separate prisons in every part of rebel-occupied Syria, Theo witnessed a society adrift amid a steady stream of bombings, executions, torture, prayer, fasting, and exhibitions, all staged by the terrorists. Living within this tide of violence changed not only his personal identity but also profoundly altered his understanding of how to live. Offering fascinating, unprecedented insight into the state of Syria today, Blindfold is "a triumph of the human spirit" (The New York Times Book Review)--combining the emotional power of a captive's memoir with a journalist's account of a culture and a nation in conflict that is as urgent and important as ever.
Combining rich documentation selected from the five-volume series on Jewish Responses to Persecution, this text combines a carefully curated selection of primary sources together with basic background information to illuminate key aspects of Jewish life during the Holocaust. Many available for the first time in English translation, these letters, reports, and testimonies, as well as photographs and other visual documents, provide an array of first-hand contemporaneous accounts by victims. With its focus on highlighting the diversity of Jewish experiences, perceptions and actions, the book calls into question prevailing perceptions of Jews as a homogenous, faceless, or passive group and helps complicate students' understanding of the Holocaust. While no source reader can comprehensively cover this vast subject, this volume addresses key aspects of victim experiences in terms of gender, age, location, chronology, and social and political background. Selected from vast archival collections by a team of expert scholars, this book provides a wealth of material for discussion, reflection, and further study on issues of mass atrocities in their historical and current manifestations. The book's cover photograph depicts the 1942 wedding of Salomon Schrijver and Flora Mendels in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. Salomon and Flora Schrijver were deported via Westerbork to Sobibor where they were murdered on July 9, 1943. USHMMPA (courtesy of Samuel Schryver).
'For anyone who enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy or Educated, Unfollow is an essential text' - Louis Theroux 'Such a moving, redemptive, clear-eyed account of religious indoctrination' - Pandora Sykes 'A nuanced portrait of the lure and pain of zealotry' New York Times 'Unfolds like a suspense novel . . . A brave, unsettling, and fascinating memoir about the damage done by religious fundamentalism' NPR A Radio Four Book of the Week Pick for June 2021 As featured on the BBC documentaries, 'The Most Hated Family in America' and 'Surviving America's Most Hated Family' It was an upbringing in many ways normal. A loving home, shared with squabbling siblings, overseen by devoted parents. Yet in other ways it was the precise opposite: a revolving door of TV camera crews and documentary makers, a world of extreme discipline, of siblings vanishing in the night. Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in the Westboro Baptist Church - the fire-and-brimstone religious sect at once aggressively homophobic and anti-Semitic, rejoiceful for AIDS and natural disasters, and notorious for its picketing the funerals of American soldiers. From her first public protest, aged five, to her instrumental role in spreading the church's invective via social media, her formative years brought their difficulties. But being reviled was not one of them. She was preaching God's truth. She was, in her words, 'all in'. In November 2012, at the age of twenty-six, she left the church, her family, and her life behind. Unfollow is a story about the rarest thing of all: a person changing their mind. It is a fascinating insight into a closed world of extreme belief, a biography of a complex family, and a hope-inspiring memoir of a young woman finding the courage to find compassion for others, as well as herself. --- More praise for Unfollow 'A beautiful, gripping book about a singular soul, and an unexpected redemption' - Nick Hornby 'A modern-day parable for how we should speak and listen to each other' - Dolly Alderton 'Her journey - from Westboro to becoming one of the most empathetic, thoughtful, humanistic writers around - is exceptional and inspiring' - Jon Ronson 'A gripping story, beautifully told . . . It takes real talent to produce a book like this. Its message could not be more urgent' Sunday Times
Religion was thought to be part of the problem in Ireland and
incapable of turning itself into part of the solution. Many
commentators deny the churches a role in Northern Ireland's peace
process or belittle it, focusing on the few well-known events of
church involvement and the small number of high profile religious
peacebuilders. This new study seeks to correct various
misapprehensions about the role of the churches by pointing to
their major achievements in both the social and political
dimensions of the peace process, by small-scale, lesser-known
religious peacebuilders as well as major players. The churches are
not treated lightly or sentimentally and major weaknesses in their
contribution are highlighted. The study challenges the view that
ecumenism was the main religious driver of the peace process,
focusing instead on the role of evangelicals, it warns against
romanticising civil society, pointing to its regressive aspects and
counter-productive activities, and queries the relevance of the
idea of 'spiritual capital' to understanding the role of the
churches in post-conflict reconstruction, which the churches
largely ignore.
The first major study of the principality of Antioch, reasserting its significance and challenging the dominance of Jerusalem in modern crusading historiography. The First Crusade wrought many changes across the medieval world, not least in Levant, where the expedition culminated in the Frankish conquest of much of Syria and Palestine. This book is the first major study of the early history of one of these Latin settlements, the principality of Antioch; it reasserts the significance of Antioch, and challenges the dominant position of the kingdom of Jerusalem in modern crusading historiography. Thomas Asbridge examines the formation of Antioch's political, military and ecclesiastical frameworks and explains how the principality survived in the hostile political environment of the Near East. He also demonstrates that Latin Antioch was shapedby the complex world of the Levant, facing a diverse range of influences and potential threats from the neighbouring forces of Byzantium and Islam. Historians of the Frankish East and of medieval Europe in the eleventh century will find this an important contribution to crusading history; it is also a significant contribution to the study of frontier societies and medieval communities. THOMAS S. ASBRIDGE is lecturer in early medieval history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.
Leading scholars use the lenses of history, sociology, political science, psychology, philosophy, religion, and literature to examine, disentangle, and remove the disguises of the many forms of antisemitism and anti-Zionism that have inhabited or targeted the English-speaking world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although in principle one can be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic, authors document and trace the numerous parallels and continuities between the hoary tropes attached for centuries to the Jewish people and the more recent vilifications of the Jewish state. They evaluate-and discredit-many of the central claims anti-Zionists have promoted in their relentless effort to delegitimize the Jewish state. They show how mainstream anti-racist communities, courses and texts have ignored-or denied-the antisemitic hatred that pervades much of the Muslim world.
The relationship between religion, intolerance and conflict has been the subject of intense discussion, particularly in the wake of the events of 9-11 and the ongoing threat of terrorism. This book contains original papers written by some of the world's leading scholars in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology exploring the scientific and conceptual dimensions of religion and human conflict. Authors investigate the following themes: the role of religion in promoting social cohesion and the conditions under which it will tend to do so; the role of religion in enabling and exacerbating conflict between different social groups and the conditions under which it will tend to do so; and the policy responses that we may be able to develop to ameliorate violent conflict and the limits to compromise between different religions. The book also contains two commentaries that distill, synthesize and critically evaluate key aspects of the individual chapters and central themes that run throughout the volume. The volume will be of great interest to all readers interested in the phenomenon of religious conflict and to academics across a variety of disciplines, including religious studies, philosophy, psychology, theology, cognitive science, anthropology, politics, international relations, and evolutionary biology.
The interdisciplinary study investigates the relationship between Norse and Saami peoples in the medieval period and focuses on the multifaceted portrayal of Saami peoples in medieval texts. The investigative analysis is anchored in postcolonial methodologies and argues for the inherent need to decolonise the medieval source-material as well as recent historiography. This is achieved by presenting the historiographic and political background of research into Norse-Saami relations, before introducing an overview of textual sources discussing Saami peoples from the classical period to the late 1400s, an analysis of the textual motifs associated with the Saami in medieval literature (their relevance and prevalence), geo-political affairs, trading relations, personal relations and Saami presence in the south. By using decolonising tools to read Norse-Saami relations in medieval texts, influenced by archaeological material and postcolonial frameworks, the study challenges lingering colonial assumptions about the role of the Saami in Norse society. The current research episteme is re-adjusted to offer alternative readings of Saami characters and emphasis is put on agency, fluidity and the dynamic realities of the Saami medieval pasts.
This book offers an in-depth presentation of traditional Jewish approaches to interpersonal conflict resolution. It examines the underlying principles, prescriptive rules, and guidelines that are found in the Jewish tradition for the prevention, amelioration, and resolution of interpersonal conflicts, without the assistance of any type of third-party intermediary. Among the topics discussed are the obligations of pursuing peace and refraining from destructive conflict, Rabbinic perspectives on what constitutes constructive/destructive conflict, judging people favorably and countering negative judgmental biases, resolving conflict through dialogue, asking and granting forgiveness, and anger management. It also includes detailed summaries of contemporary approaches to interpersonal conflict resolution, theories and research on apologies and forgiveness, and methods of anger management.
Shinners, dissos, and dissenters is a long-term analysis of the development of Irish republican media activism since 1998 and the tumultuous years that followed the end of the Troubles. It is the first in-depth analysis of the newspapers, magazines and online spaces in which strands of Irish republicanism developed and were articulated in a period in which schism and dissent underscored a return to violence for dissidents. Based on an analysis of Irish republican media outlets as well as interviews with the key activists that produced them, this book provides a compelling snap shot of a political ideology in transition as it is moulded by the forces of the Peace Process and often violent internal ideological schism that threatened a return to the 'bad old days' of the Troubles. -- .
Fundamentals of Jewish Conflict Resolution offers an in-depth presentation of traditional Jewish approaches to interpersonal conflict resolution. It examines the underlying principles, prescriptive rules, and guidelines that are found in the Jewish tradition for the prevention, amelioration, and resolution of interpersonal conflicts, without the assistance of any type of third-party intermediary. Among the topics discussed are the obligations of pursuing peace and refraining from destructive conflict, Rabbinic perspectives on what constitutes constructive/destructive conflict, judging people favorably and countering negative judgmental biases, resolving conflict through dialogue, asking and granting forgiveness, and anger management. This work also includes detailed summaries of contemporary approaches to interpersonal conflict resolution, theories and research on apologies and forgiveness, and methods of anger management.
This new study examines the relationship of atheism to religious tolerance from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in a broad array of literary texts and political and religious controversies written in Latin and the vernacular primarily in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The main authors featured are Desiderius Erasmus, Sebastian Castellio, Jean Bodin, Michel de Montaigne, Dirck Coornhert, Justus Lipsius, Gisbertus Voetius, the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus, and Pierre Bayle. These authors reflect and inform changing attitudes to religious tolerance inspired by a complete reconceptualization of atheism over the course of three centuries of literary and intellectual history. By integrating the history of tolerance in the history of atheism, Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment: Atheist's Progress should prove stimulating to historians of philosophy as well as literary specialists and students of Reformation history.
This book offers interdisciplinary and cross-national perspectives on the challenges of negotiating the contours of religious tolerance in Europe. In today's Europe, religions and religious individuals are increasingly framed as both an internal and external security threat. This is evident in controls over the activities of foreign preachers but also, more broadly, in EU states' management of migration flows, marked by questions regarding the religious background of migrating non-European Others. This book addresses such shifts directly by examining how understandings of religious freedom touch down in actual contexts, places, and practices across Europe, offering multidisciplinary insights from leading thinkers from political theory, political philosophy, anthropology, and geography. The volume thus aims to ground ideal liberal democratic theory and, at the same time, to bring normative reflection to grounded, ethnographic analyses of religious practices. Such 'grounded' understandings matter, for they speak to how religions and religious difference are encountered in specific places. They especially matter in a European context where religion and religious difference are increasingly not just securitised but made the object of violent attacks. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, geography, religious studies, and the sociology and anthropology of religion.
Racism and sectarianism makes an important contribution to the discussion on the 'crisis of anti-racism' in the United Kingdom. The book looks at two phenomena that are rarely examined together - racism and sectarianism. The author argues that thinking critically about sectarianism and other racisms in Northern Ireland helps to clear up some confusions regarding 'race' and ethnicity. Many of the prominent themes in debates on racism and anti-racism in the UK today - the role of religion, racism and 'terrorism', community cohesion - were central to discussions on sectarianism in Northern Ireland during the conflict and peace process. The book provides a sustained critique of the Race Relations paradigm that dominates official anti-racism and sketches out some elements of an emancipatory anti-racism. -- .
This illuminating, in-depth studypresents a wealth of case material, demonstrating the many manifestations of religious violence-not just war and terrorism, which are the focus of so many discussions of religiously motivated violence-but also more prevalent forms. The author, an anthropologist, devotes separate chapters to: * sacrifice (both animal and human); * self-mortification (including self-injury, asceticism, and martyrdom); * religious persecution (from anti-Semitic pogroms to witchhunts); * ethno-religious conflict (including such hotspots as Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia); * religious wars (from the ancient Hebrews' wars and the Christian Crusades to Islamic jihad and Hindu righteous wars); * and religious homicide and abuse (spousal abuse, genital mutilation, and "dowry death," among other manifestations). In the final chapter, "Religion and Nonviolence," the author examines nonviolent and low-conflict societies and considers various methods of managing conflict. This book goes a long way toward helping us understand the nature of violence generally, its complicated connections with religion, and how society in the future might avoid being blindsided by the worst aspects of human nature.
Embracing Epistemic Humility: Confronting Triumphalism in Three Abrahamic Religions builds a case that encourages advocates of world views, especially the children of Abraham Jews, Christians and Muslims to embrace an attitude of epistemic humility toward their world views and thereby defeat the triumphalism which, on the contemporary scene, has infected the world views of all too many in the Abrahamic tradition. Triumphalists see their world view as the ultimate repository of spiritual truth: all other world views are inferior and their adherents need to be converted forcefully, or silenced, or destroyed to prevent their cancerous views from metastasizing.Embracing such epistemic humility is not only the antidote to triumphalism but it is also a powerful motivator to transform world view competitors into comrades engaged in a struggle to combat evil and to promote human flourishing."
On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over sixty percent of the community. In this collective biography, nine Catholic survivors share personal and compelling stories about the aftermath of the bomb and their lives since that day. Examining the Catholic community's interpretation of the A-bomb, this book not only uses memory to provide a greater understanding of the destruction of the bombing, but also links it to the past experiences of religious persecution, drawing comparisons with the 'Secret Christian' groups which survived in the Japanese countryside after the banning of Christianity. Through in-depth interviews, it emerges that the memory of the atomic bomb is viewed through the lens of a community which had experienced suffering and marginalisation for more than 400 years. Furthermore, it argues that their dangerous memory confronts Euro-American-centric narratives of the atomic bombings, whilst also challenging assumptions around a providential bomb. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki presents the voices of Catholics, many of whom have not spoken of their losses within the framework of their faith before. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and war history.
Islamophobic hate crimes have increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7. More recently, the rhetoric surrounding Trump's election and presidency, Brexit, the rise of far-right groups and ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks worldwide have promoted a climate where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have become 'legitimised'. The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia provides a comprehensive single-volume collection of key readings in Islamophobia. Consisting of 32 chapters accessibly written by scholars, policy makers and practitioners, it seeks to examine the nature, extent, implications of, and responses to Islamophobic hate crime both nationally and internationally. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Criminology, Victimology, Sociology, Social Policy, Religious Studies, Law and related Social Sciences subjects. It will also appeal to scholars, policy makers and practitioners working in and around the areas of Islamophobic hate crimes.
This comprehensive and thought-provoking volume examines the role and function of religion in Hezbollah's political strategy in the context of contemporary Lebanese politics and global security. The book demonstrates how Hezbollah uses religious mechanisms such as taklif shari (religious assessment), ijtihad (interpretation) of jihad, and fatwa (religious verdict) as political tools to mobilise the Shi'a in Lebanon and the Middle East and to build political support. The comprehensive content analysis scrutinised speeches of Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, from 2000 to 2013. The results provide and inform a wide-scoping discussion of Nasrallah's uses of rhetorical devices and context to imbue religious elements into Hezbollah politics to mobilise and motivate supporters. Additionally, a case study analysis of Hezbollah's intervention in the Syrian conflict is also included. This further demonstrates Hezbollah's strategic use of political pragmatism and religious rhetoric to link its political and military agendas and to transition the Party from a resistance group in Lebanon to a regional actor with a regional priority. As such, readers are provided with new and interesting insights into Hezbollah's ideology and identity as a domestic and regional non-state actor, and the social mobilisation of Shi'a in Lebanon and the region. Providing a nexus between religion, politics, and security, the book will be a key resource for students and researchers interested in religious studies and Middle East politics.
The first comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interpenetration of religion and war in the West from C4 to early C13. Warfare in all histories and cultures shows evidence of the driving need to sanctify the cause, from the personal devotions of individuals to the grand designs of the architects of battle. In his important study David Bachrach takes a first thorough look at warfare in western Europe and its interaction with Christianity, from the initial appearance of the pacifist sect to the medieval popes' certainty of the crusades as "holy war". Religion played a necessary and crucial role in the conduct of war during late Antiquity and the middle ages. Military discipline and morale depended in significant part on religious rites carried out by priests and soldiers in the field and by their supporters on the home front. Just as importantly, warfare in the late Roman empire and its western successor states had a profound impact on Christian religious practice and doctrine: liturgical developments - in prayer, communion, confession, penance - can be linked to the military needs of the Christian Roman world and the Christian states of medieval Europe. Even more profound was the transformation of Christianity itself from pacifism to a faith which justified and eventually glorified killing on behalf of the Church. This volume provides the first comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interpenetration of religion and war in the West during almost a thousand years, fromthe accession of Constantine the Great in the early fourth century until the eve of the Fourth Lateran Council in the early thirteenth. With its often new interpretations of a vast array of sources, Religion and the Conduct ofWar has much to say to historians and others on the nature of war and its relationship with faith. DAVID S. BACHRACH is Associate Professor of History, University of New Hampshire.
Rohingya men, women and children have been fleeing from their homes for forty years. The tipping point came in August 2017, when almost 700,000 were wrung from Myanmar in a single military operation. There are now very few members of this Muslim minority left in the country. Instead, they live mostly in Bangladesh's refugee camps; or precariously in Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia and scatterings elsewhere. With the Rohingya almost entirely in exile, 'I Feel No Peace' is the first book-length exploration of what their existence abroad looks like. Journalist Kaamil Ahmed draws on hundreds of hours of interviews, and on relationships that he has built over years with Rohingya in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand and throughout the diaspora. He speaks to families who have had their children snatched, and people kidnapped to feed a system of human trafficking that is nourished by the community's suffering. Among the most disturbing and under-reported of his revelations is the complicit role of the UN and NGOs in the plight of the Rohingya. But Ahmed also describes stories of resilience and hope, painting a nuanced picture of how a scattered community survives. The characters of 'I Feel No Peace' are complex, heart-breaking and unforgettable.
"It incarnates every unclean beast of lust, guile, falsehood,
murder, despotism and spiritual wickedness." So wrote a prominent
Southern Baptist official in 1899 of Mormonism. Rather than the
"quintessential American religion," as it has been dubbed by
contemporary scholars, in the late nineteenth century Mormonism was
America's most vilified homegrown faith. A vast national campaign
featuring politicians, church leaders, social reformers, the press,
women's organizations, businessmen, and ordinary citizens sought to
end the distinctive Latter-day Saint practice of plural marriage,
and to extinguish the entire religion if need be.
This book treads new ground by bringing the Evangelical and Dissenting movements within Christianity into close engagement with one another. While Evangelicalism and Dissent both have well established historiographies, there are few books that specifically explore the relationship between the two. Thus, this complex relationship is often overlooked and underemphasised. The volume is organised chronologically, covering the period from the late seventeenth century to the closing decades of the twentieth century. Some chapters deal with specific centuries but others chart developments across the whole period covered by the book. Chapters are balanced between those that concentrate on an individual, such as George Whitefield or John Stott, and those that focus on particular denominational groups like Wesleyan Methodism, Congregationalism or the 'Black Majority Churches'. The result is a new insight into the cross pollination of these movements that will help the reader to understand modern Christianity in England and Wales more fully. Offering a fresh look at the development of Evangelicalism and Dissent, this volume will be of keen interest to any scholar of Religious Studies, Church History, Theology or modern Britain. |
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