Religion and Violence (links)
(3 semester hours, RECU 65033/85033/95033)
Spring 2016, Brite Divinity School, Moore 209, Tuesday, 6:15-8:45

Instructor: Charles Bellinger c.bellinger@tcu.edu 817-257-7668

syllabus: http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/rel-viol2016syllabus.htm

Book to be reviewed will be chosen from this list, with instructor's approval: http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/resources/article2.aspx?id=10516 (do not choose an edited book)

supplement: http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/supplement_to_wabash_bibliography.htm

I will indicate on this page which books have been chosen already, when I receive that information. Each student must choose a different book.

Schedule: (reading assignments should be completed by the date next to which they are listed) This syllabus represents current plans that are subject to change. Such changes, communicated by the instructor, are not unusual and should be expected.
	date	themes	reading assignments	writing assignments
Week 1	Jan. 12	Introduction to Course	Sam Harris, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Harris_excerpts.htm Jonathan Sacks, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Sacks_Rel_Violence.htm Barack Obama, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Obama-San-Bernadino.htm
Week 2	Jan. 19	cases and theories of violence	Juergensmeyer, ch. 1-3, Kenneth Burke, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle" http://www.csun.edu/~hfspc002/442/txt/burke.pdf
Week 3	Jan. 26	continued	Juergensmeyer, ch. 4, 7-8, Ernest Becker, excerpts from Escape from Evil http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Becker_Escape.pdf
Week 4	Feb. 2	continued	Juergensmeyer, ch. 9-11, Wm. Cavanaugh, "Does Religion Cause Violence?" http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-sec/Cavanaugh-Does-Rel.htm Lisa Sowle Cahill, review of Cavanaugh http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Cahill-on-Cavanaugh.pdf	response to Juerg.
Week 5	Feb. 9	continued	Alice Miller, excerpts from For Your Own Good http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Miller_FYOG.pdf Ruth Stein, excerpts from For Love of the Father http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Stein.pdf Chantal Delsol, excerpts from The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Delsol_2016.pdf Paul Kahn, excerpts from Out of Eden http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Kahn_quotes.htm http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Kahn_Out_of_Eden.pdf Giorgio Agamben, excerpts from Homo Sacer http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Agamben_Homo_Sacer.pdf
Week 6	Feb. 16		Minister’s Week, no class
Week 7	Feb. 23	ethical perspectives	Reinhold Niebuhr, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Niebuhr-not-pacifist.pdf http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Niebuhr-bombing.pdf John Ford, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Ford-bombing.pdf John Howard Yoder, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Yoder-Nevertheless.pdf MLK, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/MLK-1957.pdf, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/MLK-enemies.pdf
Week 8	March 1	9/11 responses	Elshtain, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Elshtain-terror.pdf Hauerwas, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Hauerwas-9-11.pdf http://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/war-peace-amp-jean-bethke-elshtain George W. Bush, Speech given on Sept. 20, 2001, http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/bush_speech_sept20.htm Brian McLaren, "The Speech That Was Never Given" http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/McLaren.pdf Bellinger, The Trinitarian Self, 130-140	response on 9/11
Week 9	March 8		Spring Break, no class [book choice due]
Week 10	March 15		Ren� Girard, I See Satan Fall, 1-100 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vHAy3k4vWk http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Girard_books.htm Colloquium on Violence and Religion: http://violenceandreligion.com/ Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary: http://girardianlectionary.net/ more links: http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/resources/result-browse.aspx?topic=799&pid=520
Week 11	March 22	(Holy Week)	Ren� Girard, I See Satan Fall, 103-94	response to Girard
Week 12	March 29		Bellinger, The Trinitarian Self, 1-82 http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/Girard-Rights-Lang.htm
Week 13	April 5		Bellinger, The Trinitarian Self, 82-156	response to Bellinger
Week 14	April 12		[attendance at 12pm Community Conversation recommended] book reports SEE BELOW FOR BOOKS CHOSEN
Week 15	April 19		book reports
Week 16			book review due April 28, noon, 4-5 pages

The 29 students in the Religion and Violence course, taught by Charles Bellinger, will present brief oral book reviews of a wide range of literature on the topic. Anyone who wishes to attend part or all of the reviews is welcome. Location: Bass Conference Center, Harrison Building.

� Suzanne Halbert will review: Copan, Paul, and Matthew Flanagan. Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2014.

� Stephen Finocchiaro will review: Brueggemann, Walter. Divine Presence Amid Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2009.

� Cheongsoo Park will review: Williams, James G. The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

� Nick Scott will review: Eberhart, Christian. The Sacrifice of Jesus: Understanding Atonement Biblically. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.

� J.T. Thomas will review: Tyerman, Christopher. Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

� Dan Daniel will review: Williams, Jeffrey. Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

� Cassandra Bering will review: McTernan, Oliver. Violence in God�s Name: Religion in an Age of Conflict. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003.

� Sean Cunningham will review: Dumouchel, Paul. The Barren Sacrifice: An Essay on Political Violence. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015.

� Margret Fields will review: Marjorie Suchoki. Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Violence. New York: Continuum, 1994.

� Corey Meyer will review: Gilligan, James. Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

� Liz Mong will review: Waller, James. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

� Lance Marshall will review: Sacks, Jonathan. Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence. New York: Schocken Books, 2015.

� Jay Fuller will review: Armstrong, Karen. Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

� Ramiro Rodriguez will review: Aslan, Reza. How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror. New York: Random House, 2009.

� Jennifer Jacobson will review: Kirk-Duggan, Cheryl A. Refiner�s Fire: A Religious Engagement with Violence. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

� Jamie Plunkett will review: Wink, Walter. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York: Doubleday, 1998.

� Sean Phillips will review: Elizabeth Gerhardt, The Cross and Gendercide: A Theological Response to Global Violence Against Women and Girls. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academics, 2014.

� Zane Ridings will review: Volf, Miroslav. The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.

� Jonathan Sauder will review: Clarke, Steve. The Justification of Religious Violence. Malden, MA: Wiley, 2014.

� Kristin Vargas will review: Delsol, Chantal. The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2006.

� Nathan Kennedy will review: Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereignty and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

� Kristin Warthen will review: Kahn, Paul W. Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

� Lawton Hanson will review: Gray, John. Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2007.

� Charles Gnanamuthu will review: Gandhi. Gandhi on Non-violence. New York: New Directions, 1965.

� Scott Cooper will review: Merton, Thomas, and Patricia A. Burton. Peace in the Post-Christian Era. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004.

� Don Strickland will review: Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

� Lynne Waltman will review: Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 1999.

� Nathan Belyeu will review: Alison, James. Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay. New York: Crossroad, 2001.

� Zach Stiefel will review: Lischer, Richard. The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.