Article

Fire & Sword

Does Religion Promote Violence?

R. Scott Appleby

Among the forces that motivate people to torture and kill other people, religion is unique. In wars or other forms of collective violence it inspires the worst kind of killing—indiscriminate, unrelenting, insatiable. “Sacred rage” is the default mode of zealots driven by a devotion that is absolute, irrational, and inevitably divisive. These self-styled true believers are (...)


 

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about the writer

R. Scott Appleby, director of the Kroc Center for Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, is co-editor of the forthcoming Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics and Praxis.

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