The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

A peculiar and fascinating aspect of many responses to mass atrocities is the creative and eclectic use of religious language and frameworks. Some crimes are so extreme that they "cry out to heaven," drawing people to employ religious vocabulary to make meaning of and to judge what happened, to deal with questions of guilt and responsibility, and to re-establish hope and trust in their lives. Moreover, in recent years, religious actors have become increasingly influential in worldwide contexts of conflict-resolution and transitional justice. This collection offers a critical assessment of the possibilities and problems pertaining to attempts to bring religious - or semi-religious - allegiances and perspectives to bear in responses to the mass atrocities of our time: When and how can religious language or religious beliefs and practices be either necessary or helpful? And what are the problems and reasons for caution or critique? In this book, a group of distinguished scholars explore these questions and offer a range of original explanatory and normative perspectives.

Thomas Brudholm is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Consulting Researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies. He has his Ph.D. in philosophy and his publications focus on conceptual and normative issues arising in the aftermath of mass violence. Brudholm has been visiting scholar at prestigious research institutes in Denmark and abroad, including CERI/Sciences Po (Paris). He has edited and contributed to several books, and, in 2008, he published Resentment's Virtue: Jean Amry and the Refusal to Forgive. He has contributed articles to the Journal of Human Rights, the Hedgehog Review, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, and Law Contemporary Problems (forthcoming). Thomas Cushman is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Wellesley College. He is the author and editor of many books on topics including counter-culture in Russia, genocide, George Orwell, human rights, and the war in Iraq. He is the founder and was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Human Rights. He is an Honorary Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and a Faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and has been Visiting Professor at Brandeis University and Birkbeck College, University of London.