Sacred Fury: Understanding Religious Violence

Accounts of religious violence litter our headlines. But how religious is this religious violence? And what drives adherents to attack in the name of their faith? Charles Selengut brings together approaches from a wide range of disciplines to comprehend all the forms of religious violence from around the globe. Drawing from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the 9-11 attacks, Heaven's Gate, the Catholic sex abuse scandal , and many other recent cases, Selengut explains the logics behind these seemingly senseless acts. Looking at religious violence through the perspectives of holy war, psychology, apocalypse; through perpectives of the body and of civilizations, Sacred Fury gives students a deep and rich understanding of what can drive the religious to violence. Because of its broad range of examples and perspectives, because of its clear, strong and yet sensitive tone, Sacred Fury provides the best introduction to the pressing questions of religious violence.