Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts

Maria Power, FRHistS, is a Senior Research Fellow in Human Dignity at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford.  She is the author of Catholic Social Teaching and Theologies of Peace in Northern Ireland (2020) and From Ecumenism to Community Relations: Inter-Church Relationships in Northern Ireland 1980-2005 (2007). She is editor of Building Peace in Northern Ireland (2011). Helen Paynter is a UK Baptist Minister, tutor in Biblical Studies at Bristol Baptist College, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, Bristol Baptist College. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including Telling Terror in Judges 19: Rape and Reparation for the Levite’s Wife (2020), God of violence yesterday, God of love today? Wrestling honestly with the Old Testament (2019), and Reduced Laughter:Seriocomic Features and their Functions in the Book of Kings (2016).

• Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Violence and Peace in the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa.- Chapter 3. Spectres of Violence and Landscapes of Peace: imagining the religious other in patterns of Hindu modernity.- Chapter 4. Jewish Interpretations of Biblical Violence.- Chapter 5. A Hermeneutic of Violence in Jewish Legal Sources: The Case of the Kippah.- Chapter 6. Buddhism and the dilemma of whether to use violence in defence of a way of peace.- Chapter 7. Apologists and Appropriators: Protestant Christian reckoning with biblical violence.- Chapter 8. Roman Catholic Teachings on Violence and Peace: The Credible Re-enactment of the Kingdom.- Chapter 9: Interpretations of Qurʾānic Violence in Shīʿī Islam.- Chapter 10. Sacralized Violence in Sufism.- Chapter 11. The Predicament of the Sant-Sipahi (Saint-Soldier): Sanctioned Violence and Martyrdom in the SikhTradition.- Chapter 12. Experiences with Violence: Studying Sacred Text in Interreligious Dialogue.