This book represents the accumulated professional insights and experience of expert college and university instructors who teach and write about the intersections of religion and violence. The introduction discusses the pedagogical challenges that any instructor faces when they design and deliver a course on religion and violence for undergraduates entering college in the post-9/11 world. Its first section, “Traditions,” provides historical and topical overviews of the teachings of several major religious traditions of the world on such topics as warfare, sacrifice, terrorism, and the coercive ... More

This book represents the accumulated professional insights and experience of expert college and university instructors who teach and write about the intersections of religion and violence. The introduction discusses the pedagogical challenges that any instructor faces when they design and deliver a course on religion and violence for undergraduates entering college in the post-9/11 world. Its first section, “Traditions,” provides historical and topical overviews of the teachings of several major religious traditions of the world on such topics as warfare, sacrifice, terrorism, and the coercive propagation of a faith. Its authors examine the primary texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Sikh tradition as well as recent global events to provide teachers the resources and classroom strategies that are effective for cultivating critical thinking and interdisciplinary inquiry among college students about these topics and about the role of religious discourse in human civilization. In the book’s second section, “Approaches,” other professors describe their own courses and classroom experience. In describing how they teach contested sacred space, film, popular culture, Gandhi, American religious history, and the Just War Tradition, these seasoned professionals share the lessons they have learned about how to foster careful analysis among a generation of students coming of age in an increasingly media-saturated, conflict-ridden world.