Review: God at War: A Meditation on Religion and Warfare, by Mark Juergensmeyer

Abstract

Those familiar with Mark Juergensmeyer’s work, particularly the successive editions of Terror in the Mind of God, will find him returning to themes and issues that have long preoccupied him. When Juergensmeyer considers religious violence, his attention focuses not on the actual mechanics of fighting but on the concept of war itself. He wants to figure out how the concept of war can come to dominate a particular view of the world and decisively shape the self-understanding, motivation, and actions of particular individuals and groups.In general, Juergensmeyer wants to unravel “why war needs religion and why religion needs war” (3). He ends up emphasizing how both war and religion offer totalizing worldviews that situate the perceived chaos and disorder of the world within an alternative reality that promises a triumphant establishment of order and endows both individuals and communities with meaning and purpose. Accordingly, religion can enhance a worldview focused on war by describing any battle in absolute terms, demonizing opponents, and providing moral justifications for acts of killing or giving up one’s own life, among other things. Juergensmeyer terms such religious legitimated violence “cosmic war,” which envisages “radical divine intervention in human history, an existential battle between religion and irreligion, good and evil, order and chaos” (76).Especially important, however, is Juergensmeyer’s caution that violent religious language only rarely inspires actual violent actions. For the most part religious violence remains in the realm of rhetoric and the imagination. Instances where rhetoric sparks actual physical violence are the exception rather than the rule. Juergensmeyer returns to that idea in the brief concluding chapter when he considers whether religion might prevent, restrict, or limit war. There he argues that keeping war on a symbolic level and contained within the realm of the cultural imagination might be a way of reducing its horrific impacts on human life. Appealing to Freud’s notion that symbolic violence can help to release violent impulses, Juergensmeyer mentions religion, literature, and even video games like Fortnite as ways of providing outlets for violent impulses without causing actual harm.Unlike some contemporary commentators, Juergensmeyer avoids making blanket assertions about whether religion is inherently violent, preferring instead to examine in detail the particular contours and dynamics of specific events. In fact, one of the signal strengths of both this book and the rest of Juergensmeyer’s work on religion and violence is the telling use of detail. Each chapter begins with a specific vignette based on Juergensmeyer’s own experience or his interviews with a wide array of individuals. Although he does not offer a sustained analysis of any of those brief examples, those bits of evidence help to ground his discussion as it moves nimbly through an impressive range of examples.This short book, based on lectures delivered in several venues, will be of interest to anyone interested in religious violence and should be accessible to intermediate and advanced students as well.