Thinking About Religion and Violence

By: The Great Courses

Narrated by: Professor Jason C. Bivins PhD

In a world where violence in the name of religion can impact so many other people's lives, it's critical to understand the intersection between religion and violence. What's required is not to see religion as inherently violent but to recognize that the violence associated with religious groups and communities is worth exploring and interrogating.

In these 24 lectures, embark on a global, multidisciplinary investigation of religious violence. Delivered with honesty and sensitivity to the diversity of spiritual beliefs, these lectures examine the roots of this phenomenon and guide you toward more informed ways of thinking about it.

You'll consider how faiths like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism view concepts like human sacrifice, martyrdom, and penitence; the ways religious violence can be directed toward specific races and genders; concepts like heresy, witch hunting, and demonology; and more. You'll probe complex ideas and concepts that will help you fashion your own interpretations, such as "religion", "Other-ing", and "cult." And you'll burrow deep into both current issues relating to religious violence - as well as their historical and conceptual sources.

Professor Bivins doesn't take a clinical or pessimistic approach to the material. Rather, he's an engaging on-screen presence with a fierce open-mindedness to the varieties of religious experience. He's also optimistic about what we can learn from a comprehensive study of religious violence. And at the individual level, it starts with approaching the topic in a way that's immersive, insightful, thorough, and important for our times.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2018 The Great Courses (P)2018 The Teaching Company, LLC

Huh

Nice book for adults and family ages and adults are not looking at the same as a family

Amazing

A great truth journey into history. I am looking forward to more of his lectures.

Violence in Islam

I would like to address some of the criticism I’ve seen in these reviews. In particular, the criticism that the speaker doesn’t talk enough about or harshly enough about violence in Islam. This seems to me to be not at all accurate. In fact, the speaker spends just as much time talking about Islam as they do about Christianity. They do not make excuses for Islamic violence. However, they do try to combat the misconception that Islam is inherently more violent that other religions, positing that Islam has the capacity for both peace and violence, just like every other religion they discuss throughout the lectures. Overall this was a very interesting and informative lecture series.

Intriguing

I loved this course, learned so much! I plan on listening again soon & sharing with my friends.

I Gave it A Five With Reservations

I love Great Courses and enjoyed this one also.
Reservations:
1. Skip chapter 19…author talks about Islam and leaves out quite a bit.
2. The professor considers himself privileged male …chapter 24… discounting the decisions he made to better himself…decisions everyone can make in America.
3. Lastly, the professor never discusses what abrogation means in Islam

Other than that, well worth your time

Fantastic Course But Possible Bias

I rate this course 5/5 on all counts despite what I'm about to say. Religion, history, and culture are very nearly impossible to discuss in an entirely unbiased way (though the bias may be unintended). Frankly whether one interprets something as biased depends heavily on one's own beliefs and what one holds near and dear.

This is not a course on Islam and Violence. If you are looking for an in depth analysis of contemporary Islamic terror organizations or a deep look into religiously motivated violence in the 21st century Middle East, this course will disappoint you. It does mention violence related to Islam and Islamic terror groups, but it is contained to a lecture or two and a mention here and there. I personally enjoyed the broad scope of these lectures specifically because they did not spend too much time dissecting the current situation in the Middle East. I was looking for a broad overview that included many different religions and time periods and I got it.

A few points in the lectures, such as when Gush Emunim and the Kach Party were lumped together with Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda as some of the more influential terror groups in modern times, did leave me with raised eyebrows. My first thoughts were that, while it is important to point out that there have been terror groups in modern times from non-Islamic traditions, comparing GE and the Kach Party to Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda in scale seemed a bit much. However, I'm guessing this is an area where my opinion as a 20-something American might differ from that of a 60-something Palestinian. Regardless of whether my raised eyebrows were due to my own biases or another reason, the points Prof. Bivins brought up in relation to the Jewish terrorist organizations were interesting and relevant, and I learned from it.

Overall, I felt these lectures were informative, thought-provoking, and fairly unbiased given the sensitive nature of the topics discussed.

Intro. level wisdom

Dr. Bivins calmly and carefully threads together many types of “violence” and religious bases for them across centuries and spanning the globe. If there is a particular conflict or type of violence you want to delve into this won’t be the course for you, but I appreciated the broad swath of conflicts covered and the overarching message that attempting to better understand ourselves and each other can only help us move forward.

smart and fair-minded

A really stellar course -- lots of information that was new to me even though this is a subject I've done some reading in, and a thorough and fair-minded analysis. Bivins is a most engaging prof whom I'd love to invite to dinner with some of my brainier friends, and then sit back while they all talk.

I pretty much binge-listened.

A brave and unflinching set of lectures

Professor Bivins offers a calm, well-informed and thoroughly rational analysis of the nexus between religion and violence. Unlike some other Great Courses lecturers, he engages his audience in a mature and open discussion of this sensitive, politically freighted topic. Most important of all, Professor Bivins provides a compelling moral rationale for the course: we cannot address the problem of religiously inspired violence unless we first understand its antecedents and the mindset of the actors involved. Highly recommended.

Heaven help us!

Bivins does a good job staying dispassionate and disconnected from this minefield of a topic. He stays fair, evenhanded and non critical. He stresses egalitarianism but Islam was a very hard sell. I disagreed with a couple scripture interpretations but consensus is nearly impossible anyway. Overall a great job.