The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence offers a state-of-the-art overview of this diverse and crucially important subject. This timely volume brings together an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars who probe the complex relationship between religion and violence, now and in the past. Media accounts often announce the inherent connections between ‘fanatical’ believers and terroristic violence; but scholars have long recognized that such links are only one small part of a larger and more complex set of interactions. They argue that religious beliefs and practices are just as likely to provide resources for comfort and coping as to encourage violence and carnage.

The volume is divided into several major sections: Traditions and Movements, Disciplinary Perspectives, Concepts and Themes, and Case Studies, which explore specific incidences of both religious violence and instances where religion has contributed to the resistance of violence. A concluding section offers insights into the future direction of scholarship in the area. It also includes discussions of the ongoing importance of religion to terrorism, and religious competition and conflict in Africa. Each section offers high-quality, cutting-edge scholarship, as leading authorities seek to make sense of the problematic correlation between these two forces.

ANDREW R. MURPHY is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. His research focuses on the interconnections between religious and political thought and practice, most particularly in the Anglo-American tradition. He is the author of Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (2001) and Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11 (2009); he is editor or co-editor of The Political Writings of William Penn (2002), Religion, Politics, and American Identity: New Directions, New Controversies (2006); and Literature, Culture, Tolerance (2009).