In God's Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (War and Genocide, 4)

Despite the widespread trends of secularization in the 20th century, religion has played an important role in several outbreaks of genocide since the First World War. And yet, not many scholars have looked either at the religious aspects of modern genocide, or at the manner in which religion has taken a position on mass killing. This collection of essays addresses this hiatus by examining 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 descrete, 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. Cover 1 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Table of Contents 6 Introduction 10 Part I: The Perpetrators: Theology and Practice 30 Chapter 1: Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism: Armenians, Turks, and the End of the Ottoman Empire 32 Chapter 2: Genocide, Religion, and Gerhard Kittel: Protestant Theologians Face the Third Reich 71 Chapter 3: When Jesus Was an Aryan: The Protestant Church and Antisemitic Propaganda 88 Chapter 4: A Pure Conscience if Good Enough: Bishop Von Galen and Resistance to Nazism 115 Chapter 5: Between God and Hitler: German Military Chaplains and the Crimes of the Third Reich 132 Chapter 6: Christian Churches and Genocide in Rwanda 148 Chapter 7: The Churches and the Genocide in the East African Great Lakes Region 170 Chapter 8: Kosovo Mythology and the Bosnian Genocide 189 Part II: Survival: Rescuers and Victims 216 Chapter 9: The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children Into Muslim Households as a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide 218 Chapter 10: Transcending Boundaries: Hungarian Roman Catholic Religious Women and the "Persecuted Ones" 231 Chapter 11: Denial and Defiance in the Work of Rabbi Regina Jonas 252 Chapter 12: A Personal Account 268 Part III: Aftermath: Politics, Faith, and Representation 274 Chapter 13: Zionist and Israeli Attitudes Toward the Armenian Genocide 276 Chapter 14: Faith, Religious Practice, and Genocide: Armenians and Jews in France following World War I and II 298 Chapter 15: Orthodox Jewish Thought in the Wake of the Holocaust: Tamim Pa'alo of 1947 325 Chapter 16: Jewish-American Artists and the Holocaust: The Responses of Two Generations 351 Chapter 17: The Journey to Poland 359 Afterthought 381 Contributors 393 Index 398 Despite the widespread trends of secularization in the 20th century, religion has played an important role in several outbreaks of genocide since the First World War. And yet, not many scholars have looked either at the religious aspects of modern genocide, or at the manner in which religion has taken a position on mass killing. This collection of essays addresses this hiatus by examining 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. [from publisher's advertisement]