Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence

by Jon Pahl

It is widely recognized that American culture is both exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent. Americans participate in religious communities in high numbers, yet American citizens also own guns at rates far beyond those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Since 9/11, United States scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows United States policy. Yet, according to Jon Pahl, to identify religious violence only with terrorism fails to address the long history of American violence rooted in religion throughout the country’s history. In essence, Americans have found ways to consider blessed some very brutal attitudes and behaviors both domestically and globally.
In Empire of Sacrifice , Pahl explains how both of these distinctive features of American culture work together by exploring how constructions along the lines of age, race, and gender have operated to centralize cultural power across American civil or cultural religions in ways that don’t always appear to be "religious" at all. Pahl traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history, using evidence from popular culture, including movies such as Rebel without a Cause and Reefer Madness and works of literature such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale, to illuminate historical events. Throughout, Pahl focuses an intense light on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bush’s Baghdad.

Genres: History, Religion, Politics

274 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Mary Gail O'Dea · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is crucial -- that American violence often has been cloaked in a narrative of "innocent domination" that snags religious principles and cultural religion hailing back to the Puritans to justify the most base attitudes and actions. Pahl teaches that we have often sacrificed in innocent while claiming innocence in order to restore national unity and to lessen in-group discord. This is an important scholarly book. I think it could have been even better. The last chapter in particular spends an inordinate amount of time showing us the Puritan epidemiological roots of the paradigm Pahl expounds. It i a heritage that is salient but could have been presented more economically and effectively.

[Marty Troyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only the American church had a faith strong enough to peer into the darkness of violence and our role in it.

Pahl explores how blended religion and violence are in the west. One of my takeaways is how strongly this blending is tied to the "nones" and "dones" on the American religious scene. in other words, our addiction to religious violence has led to too many people being done with religion, or who claim to have no religion.

Marty Troyer
Author, The Gospel Next Door