TY - JOUR AU - Cowan, Douglas . PY - 2010/04/26 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Religion and Violence: A Sociological Look at the Dark Side of Faith JF - TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology JA - TRAILS VL - IS - SE - DO - UR - https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/religion-and-violence-a-sociological-look-at-the SP - AB - From the creation of the universe out of the sundered remains of defeated gods and goddesses to the placation through sacrifice and ritual of those deities who triumphed, from the fires of the Inquisition to nerve gas on the Tokyo subway, and from the Crusades to the attacks on the World Trade Center, religion and violence have been intimately related throughout most if not all of human history. However, because our cultural conception of "religion" makes a rough equation between "being religious" and "being good, moral, and decent," the violent aspects of religion tend to be seen as either aberrant and isolated incidents in our own tradition, or the sine qua non of someone else's belief. We avoid the dark side of faith because it challenges our very notions of what religion is "supposed" to be. In many ways, however, violence lies at the very heart of religion. ER -