In God's Name

by Bartov, Omer; Mack, Phyllis

• ISBN13: 9781571813022
• ISBN10: 1571813020
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

Despite widespread trends of secularization in the twentieth century, religion has played an important role in several outbreaks of genocide since the First World War. This collection of essays examines the intersection between religion and state-organized murder in the cases of the Armenian, Jewish, Rwandan, and Bosnian genocides. Rather than a comprehensive overview, it offers a series of discrete, yet closely related, case studies that shed light on three fundamental aspects of this issue: the use of religion to legitimize and motivate genocide; the potential of religious faith to encourage physical and spiritual resistance to mass murder; and, finally, the role of religion in coming to terms with the legacy of atrocity.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(23)
Omer Bartov
Phyllis Mack
PART I. The Perpetrators: Theology and Practice
Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism: Armenians, Turks, and the End of the Ottoman Empire	23	(39)
Ronald Grigor Suny
Genocide, Religion, and Gerhard Kittel: Protestant Theologians Face the Third Reich	62	(17)
Robert P. Ericksen
When Jesus Was an Aryan: The Protestant Church and Antisemitic Propaganda	79	(27)
Susannah Heschel
A Pure Conscience Is Good Enough: Bishop von Galen and Resistance to Nazism	106	(17)
Beth Griech-Polelle
Between God and Hitler: German Military Chaplains and the Crimes of the Third Reich	123	(16)
Doris L. Bergen
Christian Churches and Genocide in Rwanda	139	(22)
Timothy Longman
The Churches and the Genocide in the East African Great Lakes Region	161	(19)
Charles de Lespinay
Kosovo Mythology and the Bosnian Genocide	180	(29)
Michael Sells
PART II. Survival: Rescuers and Victims
The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children into Muslim Households As a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide	209	(13)
Ara Sarafian
Transcending Boundaries: Hungarian Roman Catholic Religious Women and the ``Persecuted Ones''	222	(21)
Jessica A. Sheetz-Nguyen
Denial and Defiance in the Work of Rabbi Regina Jonas	243	(16)
Katharina von Kellenbach
A Personal Account	259	(8)
Gabor Vermes
PART III. Aftermath: Politics, Faith, and Representation
Zionist and Israeli Attitudes Toward the Armenian Genocide	267	(22)
Yair Auron
Faith, Religious Practices, and Genocide: Armenians and Jews in France following World War I and II	289	(27)
Maud Mandel
Orthodox Jewish Thought in the Wake of the Holocaust: Tamim Pa'alo of 1947	316	(26)
Gershon Greenberg
Jewish-American Artists and the Holocaust: The Responses of Two Generations	342	(8)
Matthew Baigell
The Journey to Poland	350	(22)
Michal Govrin
Conclusion	372	(12)
Ian Kershaw
List of Contributors	384	(5)
Index	389