Religion, Conflict and Violence: Patterns East and West, Past and Present
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Kyoko Tokuno, James Wellman, Comparative Religion Program, Jackson
School of International Studies
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Website for the project: http://depts.washington.edu/religion/violence;
includes a Call for Papers for May 12-14 Spring Symposium
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SPONSORS: The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, The
College of Arts & Sciences, Department of Near East Languages and
Civilization, Comparative Religion Program, East Asia Center, Henry M.
Jackson School of International Studies, China Studies, and private donors.
Clifford Geertz’s Definition of Religion:
Classic Definition in the Field
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Religion is
– a system of symbols
– which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men
– by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
– clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that
– the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
Talal Assad’s Critique of Geertz
– Search for universal essence of religion separates religion from power
and inoculates religion from conflict/violence
– No universal definitions because the definition itself is an historical
product of discursive processes
– Socioeconomic conditions are the independent variable shaping religion
rather than religion shaping specific dispositions/social structures
Wellman/Tokuno Response to Asad:
– Agree, mistake to separate religion from power, as a legitimating force
of state power
– Mistake in Asad’s analysis to assume that religion is always at the
mercy of political/state forces
– Religion:
• Becomes the state/shares power w/state to coerce its values
• Uses ‘sacred violence’ to legitimize demands on individual/group
– Conflict/power are not separate from religion but is endemic to it
– Conflict can induce violence but can become a dynamic, creative force
Is a Universal Definition of Religion Possible?
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Yes; otherwise, the field becomes a miasma of confusion
Universal definition cannot offer an essence, but can provide a revisable
approximation and guide
– Dangers in the definitional game:
• too ambiguous or figurative;
• too narrow or broad;
• redundant or negative
– Definitions must also be judged on the basis of their own context and
historical period
Working Definition of Religion
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Religion is a system of symbols, composed of beliefs and practices, developed in a
communal setting, often institutionally legitimated, which negotiates and interacts with
a power or force that is experienced as within and beyond the self and group; this
power or force is most often referred to as god/spirit or gods/spirits. The symbolic and
social boundaries of religion mobilizes group identity and, at times, conflict and even
violence within and between groups.
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System of Symbols (Story)
Beliefs (Doctrines)
Practices (Rituals)
Communally reproduced (Tradition)
Institutionally legitimated (Authority)
Power transcending individual and group (Transcendence)
Boundaries create identity, conflict and potential violence (Conflict)
Advantages of Wellman/Tokuno Definition over Geertz’s
• Overcomes Geertz’s focus on symbols as chief carrier of religious
power
• Emphasizes the importance of practices/rituals as shaping tools
• Focuses on the communal and institutional legitimating processes
• Avoids the negativity of “aura of factuality” in estimating religious
experience
• Religion (most often) about spirits/gods, which distinguishes it and
makes it a subset of a general definition of culture
• Underlines that conflict (and potentially violence) are not marginal to
religion but are often the intended and unintended consequences of
religion
What is the Cause of Religious Violence?
Is it Monotheism?
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Argument: Monotheism’s “particularism” ‘We are the only true faith,’
becomes the agent of violence
Problems:
– Not all Monotheists are actively violent
– Non-monotheistic religions have been actively violent, using
particularism and killing or initiating conflict in the name of faith
– Not all Monotheistic faiths act in the same way—their actions are quite
fluid relative to circumstance/leadership
What is the Cause of Religious Violence?
Is it fundamentalism?
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American Protestant origin of the term
Scott Appleby’s recent work: Strong Religion, based on the mid-1990s
Chicago Fundamentalist Project, continues to use fundamentalism
– Why let the word burden the field with all of its pejorative and dogmatic
meanings?
– Appleby believes that the term best applies to Abrahamic religions and
not for religions from the East
– Appleby defines fundamentalism: Reaction to modernism
• Religion, conflict and violence in premodern periods
Internal Relations of Religion and Culture:
Minimalist and Maximalist Religion
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Terms adapted from Lincoln’s work, Holy Terror
Minimalist Religion:
– Religion that focuses on the inner, subjective lives of its followers;
beliefs and practices defend the individual/group from culture and state
– Religion that adapts well to modernity in the West with greater social
differentiation of cultural spheres (open religious market)
– Minimalist religion is not simply a function of modernity, premodern
precursors
– Minimalist religion is passively aggressive toward state/cultural powers,
believing that they have a secret knowledge that is a transcendental
force to overcome all powers
Maximalist Religion
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Maximalist religion:
– Religion that believes in a continuous line between metaphysical
worldview and concrete relations politically and culturally
– Maximalist religion has exemplars in premodern period, ancient world;
religion struggles with modernity and becomes the “enemy” of
Enlightenment critics in the West
– Maximalist religion is what is most often called fundamentalism
– Maximalist religion most often rationalizes state enforced religious
morality, or wants to dominate the state
• A proposition: The more a religion becomes maximalist, the greater
the tendency for conflict to move to violence
External Relations of Religion and Culture
• Established Religion:
– Orthodoxy, orthopraxy; mainstream; clerical; public and open;
conformed to wider status quo morality
• Sectarian Religion:
– Heterodoxy, heteropraxy; peripheral; lay led; syncretic; private or
secret; millenarian and subversive to status quo
Theories of Conflict and Violence
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Social/religious life creates conflict: tension with others; however, not all
conflict escalates to violence
Violence: to afflict physical or emotional harm on the self, other/group
Question: What moves religious conflict from tension to violence?
– Motivations based on worldview and leadership, discussed below
Types of Violence
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Types of violence, using Stevan Harrell’s typology:
– Vertical violence, from above (dominance), from below (resistance)
– Horizontal violence, competition/conflict within/between
individuals/groups over restricted economic/cultural resources
Types of Religious Violence
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Vertical Violence:
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Dominance (from above):
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Holy War: crusade, jihad (Religious group against the other)
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Sacrificial rites (Religious leaders against vulnerable members)
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Resistance (from below):
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Millennial movements (Protest movements)
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Martyrdom, self-immolation, asceticism (Protest/self-repression)
Types of Religious Violence
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Horizontal Violence:
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Internecine conflict: internal group violence to establish leadership
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Violence between groups; competition in open religious market over
limited cultural/economic capital
What is the Source of Religious Violence?
Motivation: Worldview, Leadership and Context
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Complex mixture of religious worldview and religious leadership.
– Worldview: Motivation is shaped by symbolic resources
– Leadership: Groups are galvanized by dynamic/charismatic leaders
– Context: Dominant religion/culture weaken/becomes oppressive
What is the Source of Religious Violence?
Worldview
– Religious Worldview that creates violence:
• Religious worldview has symbolic resources that point at a utopist
vision of total religious world
• Religious worldview can be this-worldly or other-worldly, though
most often related to a wider, normative transcendental vision
• The transcendental demand (hope) that the cosmic religious vision
become embodied, politically/culturally
What is the Source of Religious Violence?
Leadership
– Religious Leadership
• Most often led by young and aggressive male leadership that is
educated (modicum of status) and has some access to material
resources
• Belief that they have become agents of the vision
• Belief that the vision demands human initiative
• Belief and actions that the cosmic visions rationalizes the use of
violence for a larger moral imperative
What is the Source of Religious Violence?
Cultural Context
– Cultural Context that facilitates/shapes violence (i.e. our assertion is that
violence relative to religion is not a function of a context, but the context
shapes the contours of the conflict that occurs):
• Weakening of familial/social ties, no more constraint on conflict
• Secular/religious state becomes more oppressive against minority
religions/sectarian groups