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1. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
Massimo Introvigne

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This issue of the JRV is dedicated to case studies illustrating the multiple relationships between new religious movements and violence. In this introduction, I propose a typological investigation of these relationships, distinguishing between acts of violence really perpetrated by NRMs—against their own members, opponents and critics, rival religionists, and the State or society at large—and episodes of violence of which the NRMs are the victims. Finally, I also propose a typology of acts of violence ascribed to NRMs, but of which they are in fact innocent, as the crimes are either imaginary, are not really “crimes,” or have been perpetrated by others, including the public authorities themselves.

articles

2. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
Liselotte Frisk

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This paper argues that the practice of “spiritual shunning,” defined as deliberate isolation of one person from a religious group for alleged spiritual reasons, may have been a significant factor in a murder case which happened in Sweden in 2004 in a small religious group with a Pentecostal background. The material consists of interviews with four former members, who describe the process of spiritual shunning as it existed in the group before it started to fall apart in the autumn of 2016. The four interviewees describe the process of spiritual shunning in roughly five stages: how they began to fall out of grace; when the door to Jesus definitely closed; the process of working their way back; being back in grace; and finally having the mission to help others move back to grace again. The informants describe very clearly the desperation they felt when they faced the possibility that they would not belong to the chosen ones when Jesus would soon come back, but would instead be burning in hell. Many sources document that the perpetrator of the crime in 2004 was spiritually shunned by the core group at the time of the murder. The murder was presented to her by the pastor who was later convicted for instigating the crime, as a way to pay off her spiritual debts.
3. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
Chas S. Clifton

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Although Wicca, or contemporary Pagan witchcraft, is by all definitions a new religious movement, it lacks many of the characteristics the NRMs often display, such as a charismatic founder(s), millenarian prophecies, or new forms of social order. Nor have Wiccans been identified with commonly studied forms of violence with NRMs, such as mass suicides, violence against former members, or attacks on surrounding populations. In 1980, however, as Wicca was on the verge of both a growth spurt and increased media attention, Loy Stone, a leader of one organization, the Church of Wicca, was tried for murder in Texas. The victim, a fifteen-year-old girl, was one of a large group of teenagers who had been committing acts of harassment and vandalism during October 1977 at the farm inhabited by Stone, his wife, and his elderly mother, actions I would categorize as falling into the folkloric definition of “legend trips.” The Stone case makes clear the persistence of abusive stereotypes of “devil-worshipers” in America. Finally, it challenged members of the Wiccan community to decide whether the Stones should be supported or rhetorically cast out.
4. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
Massimo Introvigne

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The sociological concept of “gatekeeping,” i.e., of filtering news for several purposes, allowing only some to reach the public, is useful to explain how often only negative news about “cults” are published by mainline media. This theory is illustrated through a case study of the murder of a young woman in a McDonald’s diner in Zhaoyuan, Shandong, China in 2014. The Chinese authorities, who were pursuing a campaign of repression against The Church of Almighty God, successfully allowed only information connecting the murder with that Church to reach the international media. When Western scholars studied the documents of the case, however, they concluded that the homicide had been perpetrated by a different Chinese new religious movement. They also realized that gatekeeping had the perverse effect of focusing the attention on the alleged connection with The Church of Almighty God, leaving outside of the gate essential information that would have allowed a serious study of the small group responsible for the murder, and a comparison with other crimes committed by new religious movements.

book reviews

5. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
James Bonk

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6. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
Aaron Ricker

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7. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
Carla Sulzbach

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8. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 3
Carole M. Cusack

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9. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Margo Kitts, Orcid-ID James Lewis Orcid-ID

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articles

10. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
James R. Lewis Orcid-ID

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Falun Gong (FLG) is a qi gong group that entered into conflict with the Chinese state around the turn of the century, and gradually transformed into a political movement. Qi gong, in turn, is an ancient system of exercises that have been compared with yoga, though qi gong exercises more closely resemble the gentle, meditative movements of Tai Chi. Falun Gong was founded in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by Li Hongzhi (LHZ) in 1992, in the latter part of what has been termed the qi gong “boom.” As the leadership of the PRC became increasingly critical of the traditional folk religion and superstition that was emerging within some of the qi gong groups, Li Hongzhi and his family emigrated to the United States. From the safety of his new country of residence, LHZ directed his Chinese followers to become increasingly belligerent, eventually staging a mass demonstration in front of government offices in Beijing on 25 April 1999. The movement was subsequently banned.
11. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
George D. Chryssides

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There are insufficient examples of collective religious suicides such as Heaven’s Gate (1997) to enable firm explanation when considered on their own. One must therefore look beyond such religious groups, drawing on the contribution of suicidology. Since Durkheim’s analysis of suicide relates principally to individuals, the phenomenon of suicide pacts affords a better model for explaining the phenomenon. Suicide pacts typically involve using poison, and the Heaven’s Gate group employed Derek Humphry’s precise recommendations for this. Suicide pacts involve mutual trust, and hence discussion is given to the way in which a charismatic leader secures group loyalty, typically asserting superhuman status, drawing on a pool of potential supporters, securing assent rather than discussion, and isolating the group from conventional reality. Although the ideas of leader Marshall Herff Applewhite seem irrational compared with conventional worldviews, his teachings had an inner logic that the group found persuasive.
12. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Carole M. Cusack

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From around 1000 CE, evidence for suicide in the West becomes more plentiful. Sources include chronicles, legal records, saints’ lives, and other religious texts. Motivations for suicide are familiar: “bereavement, poverty, and sudden disgrace or dismissal from a high post,” and some “suicides without obvious external motive” which clerics focused on, as they viewed acedia (apathy) as demonic (Alexander Murray, “Suicide in the Middle Ages,” 3). Among Christian objections to suicide are that it deprived lords of their property, it offended against humanity, it was linked to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, and it violated the commandment “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20: 13). Religious aspects of suicide motivations and punishments are here examined in terms of victims and perpetrators. Émile Durkheim’s sociology, which foregrounds anomie, dialogues with medieval historians to argue that suicide as a sin against God outweighed secular ideas of crime, and that claims of lenience toward women and those driven to self-murder are overstated.
13. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Mary Storm

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This is a study of ca. 13th–14th century self-sacrificial memorial stones (vīrakkal) from Nalgonda, India. Suicide is usually condemned, but sometimes accepted as self-sacrifice, during periods of social upheaval or religious crisis. The article asks why and when voluntary death was accepted in the medieval Indian culture of the Deccan Plateau. The hero stones discussed here probably represent Hindu Vīraśaiva worshippers. Hindu monotheistic Śaiva Vīraśaivism originated in The South-West of the Indian Deccan Plateau in the 10–11th centuries, then travelled to the Southeast of the Deccan by the 13th–14th centuries. Vīraśaivism (“The Heroic Worship of Śiva”) reflects distinctive elements of medieval South India. It upended Brahmanical authority, gender and caste exclusions, and it reflected the merger of the transgressive religious devotionalism of Tantra and Bhakti. Vīraśaivism also reflected the social, and biological stressors of the day, such as Hindu inter-sectarian tensions, Muslim invasions, civil warfare, famine, and epidemic disease.
14. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Paul Middleton Orcid-ID

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This essay problematizes the often repeated claim that Jewish and Christian traditions have always and unambiguously opposed suicide. By examining the suicide narratives in the Hebrew Bible and late Second Temple texts, alongside early Christian martyr texts which demonstrate not only enthusiasm for death, but suicide martyrdom, I argue that many Jewish and Christian self-killings conform to Greco-Roman patterns Noble Death. Finally, I consider the death of Judas Iscariot, and having removed any a priori reason to interpret his suicide negatively, I argue Matthew’s account of his self-killing compares favourably with Luke’s narrative, in which he is the victim of divine execution. Moreover, I conclude that Matthew’s main concern is to transfer the blame for Jesus’ death from Judas to the Jewish authorities, and that he has Judas impose on himself to the appropriate and potentially expiatory penalty for his action. Thus, I conclude, even Judas’s iconic suicide can be read quite plausibly as an example of Noble Death.
15. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Margo Kitts Orcid-ID

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The notion of a martyr, or martys, has undergone a significant conceptual shift since its first attestation in the Iliad, where the martyroi are those witnesses who punish oath-violators with gruesome deaths rather than those who suffer gruesome deaths, as in later usage. This essay traces the conceptual shift of the Greek term martys from the Homeric precedent through the Book of Revelation. Then it explores the visual focus on dying in the Iliad and in ancient martyr texts, as well as some rhetorical means for conveying it. It concludes with a glance at some common ritual features between the Iliad’s oath-sacrifices and Christian martyr spectacles.

book reviews

16. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
John T. Sidel

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17. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
P. G. T. Nanninga

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18. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Iselin Frydenlund

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19. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 2
Kelly Denton-Borhaug

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20. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 6 > Issue: 1
Jimmy Yu Orcid-ID

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