Empire of Sacrifice

The Religious Origins of American Violence

Bibliographic Data

ID20031093
AuthorsJon Pahl (corresponding author)
Year2016
Pages257
Publication date2016-04-19
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueEmpire of sacrifice (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherNew York University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.18574/nyu/9780814767627.001.0001
OpenAlexW4232435615
Open LibraryOL23654833M
ISBN9780814767627
LanguageEN
Citations received10

It is widely recognized that American culture is both exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent. Americans participate in religious communities in high numbers, yet American citizens also own guns at rates far beyond those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Since 9/11, American scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows American policy. Yet, according to this book, to identify religious violence only with terrorism fails to address the long history of American violence rooted in religion throughout the country's history. In essence, Americans have found ways to consider blessed some very brutal attitudes and behaviors both domestically and globally. The book explains how both of these distinctive features of American culture work together by exploring how constructions along the lines of age, race, and gender have operated to centralize cultural power across American civil or cultural religions in ways that don't always appear to be “religious” at all. It traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history, using evidence from popular culture, including movies such as Rebel without a Cause and Reefer Madness, and works of literature such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale, to illuminate historical events. Throughout, the book focuses on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bush's Baghdad

Art · Criminology · Culture of the United States · Empire · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Power (physics) · Sacrifice · Sociology · Terrorism · Gender Studies · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · Christianity · Christianity and culture · Church history · Religious aspects · Social aspects · united states · Violence · Violence, religious aspects

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