Synopses & Reviews
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 September 11, 2001, U.S. scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows U.S. 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 countrys history.
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 dont always appear to be “religious” at all. Pahl traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history and focuses an intense light on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bushs Baghdad.
Review
" is a wide-ranging, amply detailed, and ethically intelligent book with clear political stakes."-Rain Taxi,
Review
"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,
Review
“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,Xavier University
Review
“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, CSJ,author of Dead Man Walking
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 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
Review
"Empire of Sacrifice is the most broad-sweeping scholarly examination of religion and violence in the United States written to date." -Jeffrey Williams,American Historical Review
Synopsis
Spanning two decades of research and writing, this volume presents the influential and insightful work of Sally Alexander, one of Britain's most reputed feminist historians.
Whether analyzing women's factory work, the emergence of the Victorian women's movement, or women's voices during the Spanish civil war, or charting the lives of women in the inter-war years, Alexander's accounts are original and thoughtful. Moving from a discussion of class and sexual difference to a reading of subjectivity informed by psychoanalysis, Alexander exposes the relationship between memory, history, and the unconscious. Her focus ranges from a descriptive rendering of the 1970's Nightcleaners campaign to a more exploratory account of becoming a woman in 1920's and 30's London.
Becoming A Woman offers up a fascinating exploration of important historical moments and of the process of writing feminist history.
Synopsis
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.