REL 480.001
Religion and Sacred Violence
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Mithra slays the mythic bull.
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Professor
Dr. Tim Murphy
Office: 209 Manly Hall
Office Phone: 348-8513
Office Hour: TR 3:30-5:00pm
Course: W 3:30-5:50
Location: 210 Manly Hall
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The online readings for this course are posted in the form
of PDF files (Portable Document Format), stored on the Department's
"secure" server, and are therefore not freely available
on the Internet.
To open these files you must click on the links and, when
prompted, enter your Bama ID and Password.
If you have forgotten your Bama ID, but know your Campus Wide
ID (CWID), then please go here.
If you still have difficulty accessing these readings, then
contact the instructor by email.
Those who need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0
to open PDFs (a free software available on the web and which
is already installed on all campus computers) can go here.
Note: larger PDFs can take a long time to download
(due to a slow Internet connection) and a long time to print
(depending on your printer). Some students may therefore wish
to download these files in a computer lab on campus, and then
either print them there or store them on a floppy disk or
zip/junk drive (to read/print them late
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Description
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"No sangre, no espiritu." No blood, no spirit
says an old proverb. There appears to be a strong link between
the sacred and blood, or, to generalize, between religion
and violence. Why is this? Is it universal? Is it a necessary
connection? What what types of violence is religion/the sacred
associated? Is religion the underlying source of so-called
"religious violence" or is it merely a surface phenomenon?
What then causes religious violence, religious or non-religious
factors. Given its pervasivness, is religious violence at
the core of the social compact? Are religion, society, and
culture necessarily violent? What theories best help us to
answer these questions? This course will address these and
other issues in a non-normative manner, using examples from
the history of religion and methods common to the academic
study of religion.
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Syllabus to be posted (PDF)
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Books
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Eller, Jack David
Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence
Across Culture And History
Prometheus Books, 2010
ISBN: 1616142189
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Marvin, Carolyn
Blood Sacrifice & The Nation
Cambridge, 1999
ISBN: 0521626099
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