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Many people now see religious violence as one of the defining
characteristics of the modern world. Instructors are often asked
about it in their courses that deal with religion. Classroom
discussion of violence committed in the name of religion can either
open the door to a more subtle appreciation of complex and divisive
social realities or allow students to display the kind of
ignorance, prejudice, and recalcitrance that can derail critical
analysis. The etiology of religious violence requires the kind of
careful distinctions that instructors must work hard to communicate
even in the best of classroom circumstances. Teaching Religion and
Violence is designed to help instructors to equip students to think
critically about religious violence, particularly in the
multicultural classroom. The book is organized into two sections.
The first, "Traditions," addresses topics and methods appropriate
for teaching violence in particular religious traditions. Each
essay provides a solid starting point for the instructor developing
a new course on violence in one tradition. The overarching aims of
the second section, "Approaches," are to suggest alternative
rubrics for initiating or furthering discussion of religion and
violence and to aid instructors in demonstrating the wide
applicability of the questions and concepts developed here. The
volume as a whole and each of the essays is firmly grounded in the
theoretical literature on religion and violence, in the theory of
pedagogy, and in the collective experience of its authors.
Drawing on a large body of previously untapped literature,
including documents from the Church Missionary Society and Bengali
newspapers, Brian Pennington offers a fascinating portrait of the
process by which "Hinduism" came into being. He argues against the
common idea that the modern construction of religion in colonial
India was simply a fabrication of Western Orientalists and
missionaries. Rather, he says, it involved the active agency and
engagement of Indian authors as well, who interacted, argued, and
responded to British authors over key religious issues such as
image-worship, sati, tolerance, and conversion.
The appearance of "religion" as a category describing a set of
practices and beliefs allegedly an aspect of all cultures dates
only from the modern period, emerging as Europe expanded trade
abroad and established its first colonial relations in the 17th and
18th centuries. The invention of Hinduism can be seen in the
encounter between modernity's greatest colonial power, Britain, and
the jewel of her imperial crown, India. This encounter was deeply
shaded by the articulation and development of the concept of
"religion," and it produced the now common idea that Hinduism is a
religion. The Bengal Presidency, home of Calcutta - the capital of
colonial India and center of economic gravity in the eastern
hemisphere - emerged as the locus of ongoing and direct contact
between Indians and colonial officials, journalists, and
missionaries. Drawing on a large body of previously untapped
literature, including documents from the Church Missionary Society
and Bengali newspapers, Brian Pennington offers a fascinating
portrait of the process by which "Hinduism" came into being. He
argues against the common idea that the modern construction of
religion in colonial India was simply a fabrication of Western
Orientalists and missionaries. Rather, he says, it involved the
active agency and engagement of Indian authors as well, who
interacted, argued, and responded to British authors over key
religious issues such as image-worship, sati, tolerance, and
conversion. Pennington retells the story of Christians' and Hindus'
reception of each other in the early 19th century in a way that
takes seriously the power of their religious worldviews to shape
the encounter itself and help to produce the very religions that
colonialism thought it "discovered." While post-colonial theory can
illuminate issues of power and domination, he demonstrates, history
of religions reminds us of the continuing importance of the sacred
and spiritual dimensions of the peoples under colonial rule.
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