The Violence of God & The War on Terror

All religions advocate peace, yet the growing significance of the connection between violence and religion cannot be denied. In this hard-hitting and provocative book, Jeremy Young explores the roots of this violence and finds it centrally located in the image and nature of God. Using the analogy of an abusive relationship, with God as a violent partner, Jeremy Young traces the influence of the psychology of such behaviour on Jewish, Christian and Islamic depictions of God. He argues that the monotheistic religions are responsible for so much violence in the world not because of distortions and misinterpretations, but because violence is at the irreducible core of their central visions of God. He describes how the dynamics of abuse influence historical and contemporary politics, and highlights the ways in which the images of God associated with the psychology of abuse continue to generate violence in the name of God in the contemporary world, including in 'the war on terror'. In conclusion, he explores how such cycles of abuse and victimization can begin to be reversed, and suggests how these insights may be applied constructively to a reform of Christian belief and within the contemporary political situation.