Summary
Contents
Subject index
In a world plagued by religious conflict, how can the various religious and secular traditions coexist peacefully on the planet? And, what role does sociology play in helping us understand the state of religious life in a globalizing world? In the Fourth Edition of Gods in the Global Village, author Lester Kurtz continues to address these questions. This text is an engaging, thought-provoking examination of the relationships among the major faith traditions that inform the thinking and ethical standards of most people in the emerging global social order. Thoroughly updated to reflect recent events, the book discusses the role of religion in our daily lives and global politics, and the ways in which religion is both an agent of, and barrier to, social change.
Religion and Social Conflict
Religion and Social Conflict
We but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught return
To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips.
The combining of religious differences with other forms of struggle often leads to conflict and sometimes violence but also to nonviolent civil resistance of injustice. The twin crises of modernism and multiculturalism intensified the religious dimension of many ethnic, economic, and political battles, providing cosmic justifications for the most violent struggles. Multiculturalism produces complex patterns of conflict both between and within religious traditions that feed off one another and often intensify over time, making the 20th century the most violent yet in human history and launching waves of ...
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