Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence

by Jon Pahl

Overview

It is widely recognized that American culture is both exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent. Americans participate in religious communities in high numbers, yet American citizens also own guns at rates far beyond those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Since 9/11, United States scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows United States policy. Yet, according to Jon Pahl, to identify religious violence only with terrorism fails to address the long history of American violence rooted in religion throughout the country’s history. In essence, Americans have found ways to consider blessed some very brutal attitudes and behaviors both domestically and globally.
In Empire of Sacrifice, Pahl explains how both of these distinctive features of American culture work together by exploring how constructions along the lines of age, race, and gender have operated to centralize cultural power across American civil or cultural religions in ways that don’t always appear to be "religious" at all. Pahl traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history, using evidence from popular culture, including movies such as Rebel without a Cause and Reefer Madness and works of literature such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale, to illuminate historical events. Throughout, Pahl focuses an intense light on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bush’s Baghdad.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814767627
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/02/2010
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jon Pahl is professor of the history of Christianity at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of many books, including Paradox Lost: Free Will and Political Liberty in American Culture, 1630-1760 and Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Rethinking Violence and Religion in America
Rethinking “Violence”
Rethinking “Religion”
Rethinking “Religious Violence” in America
2 Sacrificing Youth: From Reefer Madness to Hostel Spectacles of Sacrifice in the Cinema of Adolescence
A Theater of Terror, or Innocent Martyrs to the “Beast in the Boudoir”
Beyond Hollywood’s Happy Endings
3 Sacrificing Race
From Christian Ambivalence to a Total System of Bodily Discipline “A Severe Cross”
4 Sacrificing Gender
Asa’s Tale: Patriarchy Lost
Abigail’s Tale: Providential Power
The Hidden Hand in Handmaids’ Tales
5 Sacrificing Humans: An Empire of Sacrifice from Mary Dyer to Dead Man Walking
Sacrifice and Empire Building from the Aztecs to Puritan Boston via John Bunyan
Mimesis in Massachusetts, 1656–1657
Ecstatic Asceticism: The Domination of Discourse and Rhetorical Inversion, 1658–1661
Sacrificial Rites and an Imagined Community, 1660–1776
Dead Man Walking and an American Empire of Sacrifice
Epilogue: Innocent Domination in the “Global War on Terror”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

"Empire of Sacrifice is a provocative and engaging work of cultural criticism worth reading for the questions it poses about religion and violence as categories, and for the many intersections of the two it finds in places where either religion or violence or both are hidden in plain sight."

The Journal of American History - Jonathan H. Ebel

"[This book] is a wide-ranging, amply detailed, and ethically intelligent book with clear political stakes."

Rain Taxi

"An astute indictment of four centuries of American violence."

The Journal of Religion - Dan McKanan

"Empire of Sacrifice is the most broad-sweeping scholarly examination of religion and violence in the United States written to date."

Jeffrey Williamsn Historical Review

"Pahl exquisitely illumines the pathway by which religion has made possible American empire and poignantly sketches those who have had to sacrifice to create the superpower we know today. Empire of Sacrifice is an admirable experiment in pulling back the curtain on the religious and cultural mechanisms that are often lost in what Pahl calls our national obsession with & innocent domination. His case studies are finely tuned windows into the ways in which religion has both abused and freed Americans along lines of gender, race, and class. This book acts as a clarion call for us to think twice when we are called upon to & sacrifice in the name of Goda strategy that all too often hides our violence in the cloak of religion."

James K. Wellman

Pahl exquisitely illumines the pathway by which religion has made possible American empire and poignantly sketches those who have had to sacrifice to create the superpower we know today. Empire of Sacrifice is an admirable experiment in pulling back the curtain on the religious and cultural mechanisms that are often lost in what Pahl calls our national obsession with ‘innocent domination.’ His case studies are finely tuned windows into the ways in which religion has both abused and freed Americans along lines of gender, race, and class. This book acts as a clarion call for us to think twice when we are called upon to ‘sacrifice’ in the name of God—a strategy that all too often hides our violence in the cloak of religion.”-James K. Wellman, Jr.,author of Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest

From the Publisher

In this scholarly but generally readable monograph, Lutheran Theological Seminary professor Pahl traces the confluence of violence and religion in the United States. He argues with scholars who situate religious violence largely outside of American borders, claiming instead that it is a “recurrent feature in the formation and development of the United States.” Pahl emphasizes the ways in which, throughout U.S. history, the notion of “sacrifice” has rendered killing justifiable and even holy. Building on the work of theorists like René Girard and Mark Juergensmeyer, Pahl lays out four historical case studies—about youth, race, gender, and capital punishment—to develop his theory: “Americans have found ways to consider blessed some rather brutal attitudes and behaviors... in patterns that are identifiably religious.” His examination, in the epilogue, of the fusion of Christian symbols with military domination in the war on terror, while no longer a unique idea, is more extended and nuanced than most. Particularly helpful is Pahl’s term “innocent domination,” describing a cultural attitude that champions violent systems while remaining convinced of its own virtuous intent. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"A true achievement of Empire of Sacrifice is its untangling of the & blissful logic that preserves American virtue at all costs. Illuminating the cultural and religious assumptions that justify subtle and not-so-subtle forms of violence, this book invites a healthy self-critical stance on American civil religion and social practices. After reading Empire of Sacrifice, it is impossible to avert ones eyes to the disturbing, complicated confluence of religion and violence in American culture."

Jennifer Beste

"Empire of Sacrifice is a though-provoking work, sure to join other scholarly considerations of religious violence . . . the book will assist anyone interested in learning more about the religious roots of contemporary violence in American national policies."

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion - Rebecca Moore

"By uncovering the many ways Americans have misused religion to justify violence, Pahl holds up hope to end the histories of dead men walking. His work contributes to a more peaceful, forgiving, loving and just future for America."

Sr. Helen Prejean

"“Pahl intends his work as a call to take up the opportunity missed after 9/11, to ‘shape a remarkable global consensus against religious violence.’ This work’s basic paradox is that religions ‘produce violent power’ but exist ultimately to ‘eliminate violence.’ That paradox captures the troubling message but hopeful conclustion to the work."

CHOICE

"Empire of Sacrifice is the most broad-sweeping scholarly examination of religion and violence in the United States written to date."

American Historical Review - Jeffrey Williams