Libmonster ID: IN-1461

Armstrong, Karen. (2014) Fields of Blood. Religion and the History of Violence. New York, Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf. - 512 p.

Today, the interdisciplinary scientific field "religion and violence" is one of the most rapidly developing and promising. Just in the last five years, leading university publishing houses have published several textbooks on this issue (not to mention a lot of books and articles), summer schools are held every year and conferences are organized. However, a new book by the British researcher Karen Armstrong, best known for her work in the field of comparative religious studies, is rather polemical in relation to this direction and, first of all, to its main axiom about the existence of what is called "religious violence". According to this axiom, religious ideas and images can, on the one hand, directly inspire acts of violence in one form or another, and, on the other, legitimize or promote violence.

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interpret them post factum. The author of the book, on the contrary, argues that to attribute such "innate" violence to religion is to make it a "scapegoat"; a similar point of view, by the way, is shared by Rene Girard, 4 quoted by her. Such a wary and hostile attitude towards religion is considered by it as an integral part of the secular project. Therefore, Armstrong's text - like her entire popularizing work in general-is aimed at apologizing for religion and exposing what she, following theologian William Cavanaugh, calls the " myth of religious violence "(pp. 15-16), while largely reproducing his argumentation. 5 It is argued that this" myth", which became one of the pillars of Western secularism, was first invented by Hobbes and Locke, who believed that the separation of church and state would provide people with protection from the innate "violence" of religion, although secularization itself was associated with violence against religious communities. The "religious wars" of the 17th and 18th centuries are thus presented as the "foundation myth" of modernity (p.249).

The author begins with a familiar critique of the concept of religion as Western and modern, which emerged in the XVII-XVIII centuries as part of the processes of secularization. She writes that the modern understanding of religion as a "personal spiritual experience" and faith emerged precisely at this time, along with Protestantism (p. 243). Before the church was artificially separated from the state, religion was fully incorporated into the cultural body, so even in the Greek and Latin languages that are close to us, there are no words that fully correspond to this concept of ours. Armstrong argues that what we now call "religion" was, until Modern Times, the meaning of life and life itself: as an example, she cites such "total" concepts as the Indian dharma or the Arab din. While it criticizes the concept of religion, it does not reject it in any way, but only reassembles it. Her own beliefs, which shine through in everything she writes about religion, can be roughly defined as mystical-ethical universalism. She believes, first of all, that-

4. См., например: Girard, R. (2003) "Violence and Religion: Cause or Effect?", Hedgehog Review 6 (1): 8 - 20.

5. Cavanaugh, William T. (2009) The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. Oxford University Press.

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We believe that all the "great world traditions" agree on the mystical identity of man and the deity, and secondly, that this is why they all ultimately postulate the sanctity of human life and the solidarity of the human race, as well as preach compassion and the need to follow the Golden Rule of Ethics.

In general, the author's approach is in line with the "soft" traditionalism introduced into world religious studies by Mircea Eliade, who extolled the" true being " of the sacred and criticized the profane and meaningless modern world. 6 Hence her constant references to Guenon's concept of philosophia perennis, which reduces the logic of religious consciousness in theory to platonism, and in practice to Hermeticism with its maxim "what is above is below". Thus, she writes that it was precisely this logic that led Zarathustra to preach the doctrine of two gods at war with each other in heaven as farmers and nomads on earth (p. 44), and the participants in the Judas Maccabee revolt to the idea that "earthly events" are an apocalypse, a "revelation" about the future. what is happening in the heavenly world at the same time (p. 132). Of course, such an approach cannot but cause doubts.

Turning to neuroscience, which is popular today in the framework of the so-called "cognitive religious studies", the author deduces human religiosity directly from the structure of the brain: it has both a more archaic layer responsible for the tendency to violence for survival, and a more "fresh" one that stimulates compassion. It is this latter that Armstrong associates with religiosity: the first known monuments of (religious) art - for example, rock paintings-allegedly demonstrate empathy and compassion for the animals that man is forced to kill in order to live. A significant part of her public recognition is due to this very humanistic idea - she is also the author of a book called "Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life", in which she acts more as a spiritual guru than as a historian of religion, and also a TED Prize winner thanks to a lecture on the meaning of religion as a driving force for establishing harmony.

6. See: Sedgwick M. Naperekor sovremennomu miru [Against the Modern world]. Traditionalism and Secret Intellectual History of the XX century, Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014, pp. 184-199.

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in the world 7. This sermon is also heard from time to time in this book. And since religion, by its very nature, cannot be associated with violence, the author has to look for another "scapegoat", which she finds in the state and all sorts of warlike aristocrats like kshatriyas and jun-tzus who run it.

Armstrong argues that if in ancient times religion and politics were a single whole, then earlier the language of religious ideas and images was also spoken in what we would now consider political ideology - because there was simply no other language. The history of violence begins not with religion, but with the emergence of an agrarian society with its hierarchy, class division, and exploitation-systemic or structural violence (here it actually follows Marx). According to Armstrong, this form of violence first emerged in Mesopotamia along with the privileged class. The needs of an agrarian society also led to the need for war, which at that time was not just a "sport for kings", but a real social and political necessity-hence the "bloody fields" in the title of the book. Social hierarchy, wars, and organized looting were appropriately interpreted in myths that are considered to be purely religious phenomena. However, as Armstrong writes, it is "the most thoughtful members of the ruling class" who first begin to criticize social injustice and external aggression of society, which is reflected in myths: the Sumerian gods are dissatisfied with Gilgamesh's campaign against Humbaba and punish his friend Enkidu with death, the war god Indra is called a "sinner", and Achilles ends up in the afterlife the world and gets no fame. Some of the author's declarations that most researchers of religion and violence would agree with - for example, that "the same religious beliefs and practices inspired diametrically opposite actions" (p. 393), - nevertheless contradict the main content of the work, the meaning of which is to consistently "purify" various acts of violence from their "religious" status.

In short, the author's goal is to prove that religion cannot be to blame and is not to blame, but something else is to blame, namely, the harsh reality of agrarian societies, the ambitions of empires, and the secularism of nationalism.-

7. Armstrong, K. (2011) Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. Anchor.

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states. During the few thousand years that first one thing, then another, and then another existed only because of violence, religion has tried to resist social injustice and keep the peace (p. 294). It is noteworthy that the author often compares two incomparable types of historical evidence: on the one hand, real facts of violence on the part of the state, and on the other - normative provisions recorded in the holy scriptures. At the same time, it ignores both the violent resources of the latter and their interpretation by religious people, which allows them to legitimize violence in one form or another.

Jesus, she said, preached an "inclusive and compassionate ethos" and was killed for it. Carried away by his own interpretation of the Gospels, the author completely forgets both about those believers who are more interested in the Last Judgment, the torments of hell and the confrontation with the enemies of Christ, and about passages like Lk 19: 26-27 8 or Mt 10: 34 9. The same goes for the founding fathers of Rabbinic Judaism, who prescribed nonviolent behavior at the same time that their co-religionists in Alexandria were throwing stones at Christians and Gentiles. In her book, she almost never mentions Buddhism, even in the Introduction declaring it entirely nonviolent, which is successfully refuted by modern research.10 And, of course, the famous Buddhist "violence out of compassion" had no chance to fit into the author's concept.

While Armstrong often points out the fickleness of religious tradition, she also often accuses Christians and Muslims of not following their own scriptures - even though changes in tradition usually manifest themselves in selective reading of the latter. In fact, it repeats the classic syllogism of religious apologetics: Islam against Islam.

8. " I tell you that to everyone who has it will be given, and from him who has not even what he has will be taken. But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and kill them before me."

9."Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."

10. See, for example, Zimmerman, M. (ed) (2006) Buddhism and Violence. Publications of Lumbini Internationa] Research Institute; Jerryson, M. and Juergensmeyer, M. (eds.) (2010) Buddhist Warfare. Oxford University Press; Tikhonov, V. and Brekke, T. (eds.) (2012) Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia (Routledge Studies in Religion). Routledge.

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violence, Muslims do it; therefore, they cannot be considered Muslims. The Twin Towers bombing was far from "normative Islam" and "basic principles of Muslim spirituality" and was carried out by people who were not familiar with them (p.383). Here Armstrong goes so far as to quote the psychiatric examination of the famous "last instructions", in which this text is declared "psychotic", and such accusations not only do not explain anything, but also indicate nothing more than the helplessness of the accuser. However, the author honestly admits that the terrorists themselves were motivated by religious motives, and this, in our opinion, is a fundamental point for defining religious violence. Considering modern terrorism to be a political phenomenon rather than a religious one, 11 and calling it a "crooked mirror" of secularism, Armstrong actually reproduces the well-known thesis of Zh. Baudrillard's original suggestion in his article "The Spirit of Terrorism" 12.

It defines any change in religious tradition that results in a particular group becoming violent as" distortion"," decomposition "or even" inversion " (in the case of Sikhs after Guru Gobind Singh). However, it reduces such processes to several patterns.

First, it is political ambitions or the support of certain groups by State authorities. Therefore, the activities of the Syrian Monophysite monks, for example, cannot be considered religious violence, since Eutyches was patronized by the emperor. This is especially true of the Crusades and the Inquisition-they were supposedly state-owned enterprises that had (almost) nothing to do with religion. In fact, these are the "dilemmas" of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam: people are essentially religious, but they cannot survive without the state, and it cannot survive without violence. It is precisely this confrontation between violent and compassionate impulses that is presented as one of the central ones.

11. A similar point of view, however, is shared by a number of reputable researchers of the issue, for example: Pape, R. (2006) Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Random House Trade Paperbacks.

12. Baudrillard J. (2002) L'Esprit du Terrorisme. P.: Editions Galilee.

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dilemmas of the history of any religious tradition.

Second, religious people can be driven to violence again by state repression: "state repression forms a' history of grievance 'that always radicalizes the religious tradition and can even turn its peaceful worldview into a violent campaign" (p.164). This is what happened, for example, to Sikhism and Islam in India during the Mughal era (b. 290) and was the main cause of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1978. Religion itself, again, remains innocent of anything - the imperial authorities and the actions of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi are to blame, respectively; in the latter's conflict with Shiite fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Khomeini, Armstrong is clearly on the side of the latter. American fundamentalists, according to her, did without violence, which is not confirmed by data - for example, explosions of abortion clinics and murders of doctors. Islamic fundamentalists, however, are more than likely to be violent, because they themselves are victims of violence from Western secularism and the secular nation - state; their violence is presented as almost exclusively defensive (p.305). Armstrong, therefore, almost unconsciously reproduces the classic narrative of any violent rhetoric, namely the claim to be "defensive" or "retaliatory" and the dualistic model of the struggle between good and evil - in this case, "peaceful" religion and "militant" secularism, which from time to time "infects" it with its harmful vibes. In the same way, it deals with violence in the "new religious movements" and argues that "of course, religion was not the cause of the tragedy" of the mass suicide of members of the" People's Temple " Jim Jones, who was generally an atheist (pp. 338-340). Modern research, again, suggests that the problem is more ambiguous and deserves more than three or four pages of text.13
In conclusion, Karen Armstrong writes:" It is simply not true that 'religion' is always aggressive "(p. 396). With this approval,-

13. Bromley, David G. and Melton, Gordon J. (eds) (2002) Cults, Religion and Violence. Cambridge University Press; Lewis, James R. (ed.) (2011) Violence and New Religion Movements. Oxford University Press.

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It is impossible to disagree with this statement, but it is equally wrong to say that religion is never aggressive. Most researchers of religion and violence, while recognizing that religious people can be pacifists or engage in peacemaking, do focus on the violent potential of the religious imagination. However, some people are more interested in the former than the latter: R. Scott Appleby, for example, on the basis of this dual potential of religion for war or peace, asserts the ambivalence of its sacred core 14. Armstrong, however, in contrast to him, pays very little attention to real peacemaking on the part of religious communities: for example, she writes about the medieval Truce of God - that is, the temporary suspension of military operations on the days set by the church (p. 209) - however, it can also be interpreted as a political, social, economic or any other phenomenon, that is, to deal with it in the same way as it does with religious violence, simply changing the set of "tags" to these or other phenomena. other historical events. However, it is mostly limited to pointing out the high compassionate ethos of various scriptures.

However, the main drawback of Armstrong's approach in comparison with the approaches of other researchers lies, in our opinion, in the fact that, oddly enough, she does not treat people's specific religious motivation with any respect and seriousness: after all, when a religious person creates violence, he is usually guided by some transcendent values that go beyond borders ethics - say, " by the will of God." St. John Chrysostom, for example, said that " if someone kills according to the will of God, this murder is better than any love of humanity. But if someone shows mercy out of love for mankind, but against the will of God, this mercy is more unworthy of any murder. It is not the nature of things, but the judgment of God, that makes them good or bad. " 15 You can treat this as you please, but you can ignore it in any way.

14. Appleby, Scott R. (2000) The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. Carnegie Corporation of New York; Omer, A., Appleby, Scott R. and Little, D. (eds) (2015) The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding. Oxford University Press.

15. John Chrysostom. Against the Jews. Word 4 [http://azbyka.ru/otechnik / Ioann_Zlatoust/protiv_iudej/, accessed from 30.08.2015].

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it is impossible, of course, if you still decide to "follow the actor" and "feed on disagreements", according to the appeals of Bruno Latour16. So Armstrong's educational work and humanism may be able to make the world a better place, but unfortunately, such things lie - or at least should lie-outside the boundaries of scientific research.

16. Latour B. Peresborka sotsial'nogo: vvedenie v aktorno-setevuyu teoriyu [Reassembly of the social: Introduction to the actor-network theory]. Moscow: Izd. dom Vysshey shkoly ekonomiki, 2014.

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