Abstract
The first problem in discussing the historiography of religion and genocide is to define the parameters, a difficult task, because all of the categories involved are open to interpretation. According to the definitions used, one will either find that almost nothing has been written about religion and genocide or that the body of relevant material is endless. What is Religion? Are we talking about organized, institutionalized religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha’i and the like? Or about religious impulses: belief, tradition, spiritualism, transcendence and ethical systems linked to some notion of divinity? Are we talking about a communal phenomenon or an individual matter? This discussion focuses on institutionalized religion but also pays attention to religion as it functions at the level of individuals and groups involved in situations of extreme violence — as perpetrators, targets/victims, witnesses/bystanders, but also as resistors/rescuers, beneficiaries and people left to deal with the aftermath. As for genocide, given the scope of this volume, I follow the legal definition associated with Raphael Lemkin and the 1948 United Nations Convention,1 but I also consider some cases of state-sponsored, extreme violence that are not legally and formally genocide or have not been widely acknowledged as such.
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Notes
Reproduced in C. Rittner, J. K. Roth and W. Whitworth, eds, Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches? (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2004), pp. 279–80. I gratefully acknowledge the students in my class at the University of Notre Dame on ‘Religion and Violence in Comparative Perspective’ (fall 2006) who helped me think through many of the issues discussed in this essay.
O. Bartov and P. Mack, eds, In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berghahn, 2001).
On the Crusades, see the useful overview by T. F. Madden, A Concise History of the Crusades (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999)
An in-depth analysis of the Inquisition is B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain (New York: Random House, 1995).
E. Wiesel, Night, trans. S. Rodway (New York: Penguin, 1981), p. 77.
Quoted in P. Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), pp. 248–9.
A. Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999);
H. McCullum, The Angels Have Left Us: The Rwandan Tragedy and the Churches (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, #66 in Risk Book Series, 1995).
P. Gourevitch, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998).
R. S. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
S. P. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
A more nuanced and informed analysis is M. Ruthven, A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America (London: Granta Books, 2002).
See B. Weisbrod, ‘Religious Languages of Violence. Some Reflections on the Reading of Extremes,’ in No Man’s Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century, eds, A. Lüdtke and B. Weisbrod (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), pp. 253–81.
R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. P. Gregory (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
B. Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).
See R. M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998)
J. Kirsch, God against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism (New York: Viking, 2004).
L. Kuper, ‘Theological Mandates for Genocide,’ Terrorism and Political Violence, 2, 3 (1990), 351–79.
Most influential are probably R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Antisemitism (New York: Seabury Press, 1974);
J. Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001);
D. J. Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).
S. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christians, Nazis, and the Bible (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming). 2004
See discussion in S. T. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context: The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
M. Sells, ‘Kosovo Mythology and the Bosnian Genocide,’ in In God’s Name, eds, Bartov and Mack, pp. 180–205
idem., A Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996).
See also B. Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
See the chapters on religion in S. P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the War for Kosovo, 3rd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999)
P. Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno: Ethnoreligious Warfare in the Balkans (New York: Continuum, 1994).
E. Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen (Munich: W. Fink, 1993; first ed. 1938).
P. Burrin, ‘Political Religion. The Relevance of a Concept,’ History & Memory, 9, 1–2 (1997), 321–49
S. Stowers, ‘The Concepts of “Religion,” “Political Religion,” and the Study of Nazism,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 42, 1 (2007), 9–24.
See G. L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (New York: 1975).
E. Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
O. Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
M. Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).
M. Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the French Revolution to the Great War (New York: Harper Collins, 2005);
idem., Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics from the Great War to the War on Terror (New York: Harper Press, 2006).
L. Tolstoy, Hadji Murad, trans. A. Maude (New York: Modern Library, 2003), pp. 85–94.
L. Ung, First they Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (New York: Perennial, 2001).
See some of the cases in F. Chalk and K. Jonassohn, eds, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).
R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law, 1944), pp. 84–5.
G. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993).
M. Fleming, ‘Gender and the Body Politic in the Time of Modernity,’ in The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, eds, R. Gellately and B. Kiernan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 111–12.
See A. D. Moses, ed., Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History (New York: Berghahn, 2004), although the essays in this volume do not focus on religion nor do they approach the issue in terms of cultural genocide.
M. Beti, Poor Christ, trans. G. Moore (London: Heinemann, 1956).
K. Jacobson, Embattled Selves: An Investigation into the Nature of Identity Through Oral Histories of Holocaust Survivors (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994).
S. Friedländer, When Memory Comes, trans. H. R. Lane (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979).
A. Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
G. Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage Books, 1983).
J. Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
C. R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).
R. Hoess, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, ed. S. Paskuly, trans. A. Pollinger (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), pp. 49–53, 72, 192.
M. Deselaers, Und Sie hatten nie Gewissensbisse? Die Biografie von Rudolf Hoess, Kommandant von Auschwitz, und die Frage nach seiner Verantwortung vor Gott und der Menschen (Leipzig: St. Benno Verlag, 1997, 2nd edn, 2001). Also of interest in recent German-language scholarship on religion and the perpetrators of the Holocaust is W. Dierker, Himmlers Glaubenskrieger. Der Sicherheitsdienst der SS und seine Religionspolitik, 1933–1941 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 2002).
R. Hochhuth, The Deputy, trans. R. and C. Winston (New York: Grove Press, 1964; German original 1963).
J. Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, trans. L. Coverdale (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), p. 12.
Quoted from S. Dicks, From Vietnam to Hell: Interviews with Victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Jefferson, NC, 1990, p. 30), in Bourke, ‘The Killing Frenzy,’ in No Man’s Land of Violence, eds, Luedtke and Weisbrod, 119.
See the contributions in D. L. Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003).
For discussion, see V. J. Barnett, Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).
Examples of the vast and varied output of these scholars include, E. L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York: Schocken, 1982)
S. L. Jacobs, Rethinking Jewish Faith: The Child of a Survivor Responds (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1994)
D. G. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984)
Z. Garber, Shoah: The Paradigmatic Genocide: Essays in Exegesis and Eisegesis (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999).
E. Levinas, ‘To Love the Torah More Than God,’ trans. H. A. Stephenson and R. I. Sugarman, with commentary by R. I. Sugarman, in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, 28, 2 (1979), 216–23.
Y. Eliach, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust (New York: Vintage, 1988).
M. Sebastian, Journal 1935–1944: The Fascist Years, trans. P. Camiller, introduction by R. Ioanid (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2000); excerpted as ‘Diary. Friends and Fascists,’ The New Yorker (2 October 2000), 107–13; entry from 11 October 1943 on 113.
P. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 130.
J. Magyar-Isaacson, Seed of Sarah: Memories of a Survivor (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990), pp. 80–2.
Y. Bauer, They Chose Life: Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust (New York: American Jewish Committee, Institute of Human Relations, 1973), p. 57.
L. Kuper and G. Remer, ‘The Religious Element in Genocide,’ Journal of Armenian Studies, 4, 1–2 (1992), 307–29.
F. Werfel, Forty Days of Musa Dagh (New York: Viking, 1934).
C. Boua, ‘Genocide of a Religious Group: Pol Pot and Cambodia’s Buddhist Monks,’ in State-Organized Terror: The Case of Violent Internal Repression, eds, T. Bushnell, V. Shlapentokh, C. K. Vanderpool and J. Sundram (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), p. 235.
G. Hamburg, ‘A Commentary on the Two Texts in Their Historical Context,’ in Russian-Muslim Confrontation in the Caucasus: Alternative Visions of the Conflict Between Imam Shamil and the Russians, 1830–1859, ed. and trans., T. Sanders, E. Tucker and G. Hamburg (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004), pp. 171–238.
D. LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 221.
C. E. King, The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies of Non-Conformity (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982). King is vice-chancellor of Staffordshire University. D. Garbe, Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium. Die Zeugen Jehovahs im Dritten Reich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993). Garbe is head of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum in Hamburg.
M. J. Penton, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics under Persecution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).
See lecture by L. N. Rivera-Pagan, ‘A Prophetic Challenge to the Church: The Last Word of Bartolomé de Las Casas,’ Princeton Theological Seminar, 15 November 2004.
An example of a strong scholarly endeavor to rehabilitate the reputation of the seventeenth-century missionary John Eliot is R. W. Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians Before King Philip’s War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
An informed and laudatory biography by a former student and rabbi is A. H. Friedlander, Leo Baeck: Teacher of Theresienstadt (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968).
Useful on Lichtenberg is K. Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois-University Press, 2004).
See A. Frossard, Forget Not Love: The Passion of Maximilian Kolbe, trans. C. Fontan (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1991).
See the influential biography by the Jesuit priest J. R. Brockman, Romero: A Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989).
See S. du Boulay, Tutu: Voice of the Voiceless (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1988). Du Boulay has also written biographies of other religious figures: Teresa of Avila, Bede Griffiths, Swami Abhishiktananada and Cicely Saunders.
C. ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie ten Boom, with J. and E. Sherrill (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1971).
See also the tribute by L. Baron, ‘Supersessionism Without Contempt: The Holocaust Evangelism of Corrie ten Boom,’ in Christian Responses to the Holocaust: Moral and Ethical Issues, ed. D. J. Dietrich (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), pp. 119–31.
P. Hoffmann, Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905–1944, rev. edn (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).
T. Blaha, Willi Graf und die Weisse Rose. Eine Rezeptionsgeschichte (Munich: Saur, 2003).
P. P. Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).
‘The majority of Jews evaded deportation in every state occupied by or allied with Germany in which the head of the dominant church spoke out publicly against deportation before or as soon as it began.’ H. Fein, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 67; see also chap. 4, ‘The Keepers of the Keys: Responses of Christian Churches to the Threat against the Jews,’ pp. 93–120.
Indeed, recognition of the vulnerability of Christian rescuers of Jews in post-World War II Poland is the point of departure for J. T. Gross, Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006).
M. Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000).
R. L. Rubenstein and J. K. Roth, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy (Atlanta, GA: John Knox, 1987).
J. K. Roth and M. Berenbaum, Holocaust: Religion and Philosophical Implications (New York: Paragon House, 1989).
D. Herzog, Sex after Fascism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
See also D. Herzog, ‘Pleasure and Evil: Christianity and the Sexualization of Holocaust Memory,’ in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, eds, J. Petropoulos and J. K. Roth (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), pp. 147–64.
R. L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism, 2nd edn (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 43–4.
See especially E. E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002).
I. V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
S. Totten, W. S. Parsons and I. W. Charny, eds, A Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2004).
S. Power, ‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper Collins, 2002).
M. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, 3rd edn (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003).
P. Maass, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996);
E. Vulliamy, Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia’s War (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994).
R. Dallaire, with B. Beardsley, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004).
Some exciting new work is included in M. Skidmore and P. Lawrence, eds, Women and the Contested State: Religion, Violence and Agency in South and Southeast Asia (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).
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Bergen, D.L. (2008). Religion and Genocide: A Historiographical Survey. In: Stone, D. (eds) The Historiography of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297784_8
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