A Sociotheological Approach To Understanding Religious Violence

The suicide bombings of Hamas, the attack on the Hebron mosque by Dr Baruch Goldstein, and Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building may appear to have been plots undertaken by a few lone wolves, but each came from a culture in which the justifications for violence were colored by their religious understanding of social reality. Theirs were not simply strategic acts chosen by astute political tacticians in trying to achieve clearly defined goals. Neither were they devious acts by a deranged few. Rather they were acts of violence that were sewn into the fabric of the religious world views of those who perpetrated them and endorsed by broad communities of support that shared their same religious points of view. Understanding these perspectives has occasionally been a challenge for social analysis.

In a co-authored piece in the Oxford handbook of Religion and Violence, Mark Juergensmeyer and Mona Kanwal Sheikh describe the emergence of a sociotheological trend in social analysis: It takes seriously the logic of theology—the religious reasoning of the actors—as well as their social setting, and tries to relate the two. The chapter initially defines this trend and how it has developed. Then it turns to the main area of sociotheological study, the analysis of epistemic worldviews. Finally it provides practical guidelines for conducting sociotheological studies. The guidelines are both normative about conducting what might be called “good sociotheology,” but at the same time they are meant to be operational tools for students interested in studying the religion-violence nexus from sociotheological perspectives.

From the Oxford University Press:
“The forty original essays in this volume include overviews of major religious traditions, showing how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundations of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of violence and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. The essays also examine patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; and offer major analytic approaches, from literary to social scientific studies. The contributors to this volume--innovative thinkers who are forging new directions in theory and analysis related to religion and violence--provide novel insights into this important field of studies.“