Contribution to Book
"The Myth of Religious Violence"
The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence
(2011)
Keywords
- myth of religious violence;Ward,
- in defining religion - Oxford English Dictionary definition of religion,
- Christianity and belief in Superman;substantivists regarding religion - as basic,
- transhistorical and transcultural feature of human life;substantivists,
- restricting religion to beliefs and practices - like “God” or “gods”;functionalists,
- definitions of religion not on substance - but on the way it functions;functionalist accounts,
- based on empirical observations - of people's actual behavior;studying violence under the rubric of religion - simply unjustifiable;histories of religion - functionalism,
- fatal problems with substantivist accounts of religion;history of the category - religion existing,
- as a constructed category;power and religious/secular distinction - substantivist conceptions,
- not neutral descriptions of reality
Disciplines
Publication Date
2011
Editor
Andrew R. Murphy
Publisher
Blackwell
Citation Information
William T. Cavanaugh. ""The Myth of Religious Violence"" OxfordThe Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (2011) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/william_cavanaugh/45/