Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

Susan J. Palmer, Martin Geoffroy and Paul L. Gareau (eds), The Mystical Geography of Quebec: Catholic Schisms and New Religious Movements.

Adam Possamai — 2021-04-28

Susan J. Palmer, Martin Geoffroy and Paul L. Gareau (eds), The Mystical Geography of Quebec: Catholic Schisms and New Religious Movements. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. xiii + 274, ISBN: 978-3-03033-061-3.

Allan Heaton Anderson, Spirit-Filled World: Religious Dis/Continuity in African Pentecostalism.

Ibrahim Abraham — 2021-04-28

Allan Heaton Anderson, Spirit-Filled World: Religious Dis/Continuity in African Pentecostalism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. xii + 274, ISBN: 978-3-030-08845-3 (pbk). EUR 84.99.

Patrick Drazen, Holy Anime! Japan’s View of Christianity.

Katherine Buljan — 2021-04-28

Patrick Drazen, Holy Anime! Japan’s View of Christianity. Maryland, MD: Hamilton Books, 2017, iii + 195 pp, ISBN: 978-0-7618-6907-8, (pbk). $29.99.

Margaret Arnold, The Magdalene in the Reformation.

Lauren McGrow — 2021-04-28

Margaret Arnold, The Magdalene in the Reformation. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018, pp. 312, 9 photos, ISBN: 978-0-674-97999-4 (hbk). US$29.95.

Introduction to Special Issue on Religion and Violence

Kathleen McPhillips — 2021-04-28

Ventures of Women in Relation to Religion and Violence

Morny Joy — 2021-04-28

This article is one of gratitude to three scholars—Grace Jantzen, Hannah Arendt and Judith Butler—who encouraged my feminist leanings. Jantzen’s reading of Arendt’s The Human Condition (1959) prompted her move from a literal to a figurative form of the term ‘natality’. Arendt’s emphasis on human suffering also attracted Jantzen. Instead of rejecting Arendt’s ‘natality’ as a literal mode of maternity, Jantzen affirmed Arendt’s position, where, together with constructive work, ‘natality’ can initiate dynamic change. Such a new beginning, inherent in birth, is recognized in the world only because newcomers possess a capacity of beginning, of something new, i.e., of action. ‘It initiates the dynamic element of action, and thus natality, which is inherent in all human activity’ (Arendt 1959: 10–11). Judith Butler’s publications have provided provocative challenges since Gender Trouble (1990). Recently, however, Butler has invoked ethical responsibility in an era of ‘senseless death’. She recommends a new bodily ontology which may initiate another dynamic change.

From Pacifism to Tyrannicide

Dianne Rayson — 2021-04-28

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s (1906–1945) engagement in conspiracies to assassinate Hitler appears to some as a distinct movement from his earlier position on pacifism. This article examines the contributing factors to this apparent contradiction and addresses Bonhoeffer’s ethical rationale for religious violence in the context of the Third Reich. The article recognises the currency of Bonhoeffer’s decision-making in contemporary political scenarios and in relation to philosophical positions on ethics. Bonhoeffer’s ethical frames of Christonomy, Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit (vicarious representative action and contextuality) are discussed in the context of his engagement with the underground Confessing Church and in opposition to the Deutsche Christen (German Christian) church’s complicity with the Reich. The article then turns towards the seminal issues of the Anthropocene, climate change, mass migration and biodiversity loss, asking whether religious violence might be justified in the face of this existential crisis.

The Christchurch Mosque Massacre

Douglas Pratt — 2021-04-28

On 15 March 2019 New Zealand was subject to a violent terrorist act seemingly born of a number of threads of extremism. A white supremacist, motivated by a mix of race hatred, anti-immigration sentiment and palpable hostility toward Muslims, callously executed over 50 persons at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, injuring many others. What motivated this attack? What lies behind it? What has emerged in the aftermath? It is tempting to simplify, to pin the underlying cause on one element, such as racism. This article analyses and discusses the mosque massacre and its driving ideology in light of five ‘lenses’, or threads, of terrorism. Religion, the fifth of these, was a critical component of the choice of target and arguably integral to the complex ideology that, at least in part, inspired and motivated the attacker. Responses to the event, including signs of hope evident in its aftermath, will also be discussed.

Reconceptualising Law

Alex Deagon — 2021-04-28

This article explores the idea of violence and peace in Christian theology. In particular, it considers the idea of violence as comprised of antagonism and alienation, and ultimately a ‘pagan’ celebration of war and death. Even the famed pax Romana is itself the violent suppression of violence. Drawing on Augustine, the article contrasts this ‘pagan’ violence with the Christian idea of ontological peace—the harmonious ordering and fellowship of difference between God and humanity, or what John Milbank calls ‘the reconciliation of virtue with difference’. Though this Christian critique is historically situated, it creates an opportunity to reconceptualise our modern legal system so that we may move from a liberal atomistic individualism to a more harmonious community of being, governed by ‘the law of love’.

‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’

Christopher J. van der Krogt — 2021-04-28

The Islamic State movement (IS, formerly ISIS) is widely denounced by both Muslims and non-Muslims as ‘un-Islamic’, for, among other deeds, attacking fellow Muslims, inciting international terrorism, and taking female captives as sex slaves—all in the name of jihad. IS’s propaganda magazines Dabiq (15 issues) and Rumiyah (13 issues), published between July 2014 and September 2017, sought to justify and explain the movement’s ideology and actions, presenting its credentials as an almost uniquely authentic expression of current Sunni Islam. Drawing on these magazines, this article constructs a systematic overview of IS’s jihad doctrine, showing its indebtedness to both traditional sources, the Qur'an, sunna and fiqh, and to more recent Salafi Jihadi thought. IS aims to revive the genuine Islam of the Prophet and the first generations of Muslims, rejecting the modernist view of military jihad as purely defensive. While clearly Islamic and heavily indebted to traditional sources, IS’s jihad doctrine is anachronistic, apocalyptic, selective and sectarian.