Religion and Conflict

The aim of the pathway in Religion and Conflict is to offer students the opportunity to pursue advanced study in a vibrant and rapid developing field of considerable contemporary importance. Claims and counterclaims about the causal relationship between religion and conflict appear regularly in scholarly literature, as well as the discourse of religious leaders, the media, and policy-makers, across the globe. Religious motivations are, for example, widely cited as a principal cause of terrorism in the world today, and sacred texts are regularly said to contain the potential to incite hatred, as well as, paradoxically, to be indispensable tools in conflict resolution. The pathway is intended to equip students to critically evaluate such claims and provide them with the knowledge and intellectual skills necessary to become informed contributors to current debates about the place of religion in conflict.

 

Students taking the pathway will have the opportunity to engage with major theoretical approaches and research methods employed in the field as well as the chance to scrutinise a number case studies, textual, historical and contemporary, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. In addition to allowing a deeper engagement with the specific subjects analysed and introducing them to the complexity necessarily inherent in the field, the case studies will provide a means of exploring the wider implications of questions raised by the study of religion and conflict more generally. Students will also undertake a sustained piece of research in the form of the dissertation, that will allow them to engage with a topic in depth. The pathway will provide a firm foundation for those who wish to pursue further postgraduate studies, but it is also intended to give those that do not, a critical understanding of religion and conflict that will prove extremely valuable in other contexts.

 

Each module of the Religion and Conflict pathway is taught through four or five two-hour seminars and is assessed by a 5,000-word essay due at the end of term. The subject of each essay must be agreed with the supervisor and approved by the Module Coordinator and Degree Committee. The essay titles must relate closely to the subject of at least one seminar in each module undertaken in the pathway.

Students who wish to write a dissertation in the area of Religion and Conflict are required to undertake the Michaelmas Term module and recommended to take one of the following in Lent term: Ethnographic Approaches to Religion and Conflict or The Religion, Politics and Policies of Democratic Backsliding or Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and ‘Christian Europe’.

 

In addition to the assessed essays, and dissertation, students will normally undertake the exercise specific to the Religion and Conflict pathway. However, in consultation with the Pathway Coordinator, they may opt for one of the other options offered. See the Exercise section for details.

 

Three pathway-specific study-skills seminars will also be offered for all participants.

 

Module 1. Michaelmas Term. Theories and Issues in the Study of Religion and Conflict

 

Module Coordinator: Justin Meggitt, jjm1000@cam.ac.uk

This module will seek to introduce students to the critical study of religion and conflict by scrutinising current theoretical debates about the place of religion in a variety of forms of conflict, from genocide to domestic violence, and by closely analysing indicative and emblematic scriptural, historical, and contemporary case studies.

 

Module aims

• To provide a critical overview of the dominant theories of the relationship between religion and conflict.
• To examine in-depth questions raised by the study of the scriptural, historical, and contemporary dimensions of religion and conflict by means of specific case studies.
• To introduce, analyse and problematise a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of religion and conflict.
•  

Module objectives. By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Critically evaluate the prevalent theories of the relationship between religion and conflict.
• Develop an informed understanding of the claims made about religion’s role in contemporary conflict.
• Understand historiographical debates concerning the role of religion in past conflicts and the ways these conflicts continue to shape the present.
• Analyse claims about the relationship between religious texts and acts of violence in current scholarship.

 

Seminar topics

 

Seminar 1. Introduction to Key theories and Issues in the Study of Religion and Conflict

This seminar offers a critical introduction to leading theories on the relationship between religion and conflict. It will examine how religious ideas, practices, and institutions contribute to inciting, legitimising, or mitigating violence, from genocide to domestic abuse. Special attention will be given to definitional challenges and their implications, as well as competing claims about causality.

 

 

Seminar 2. Contemporary Case Studies: Terrorism and the Military

In this seminar two case studies will be examined. The first will focus on the 'religious turn' in terrorism studies, especially the so-called 'New Terrorism' thesis that emerged in the late 20th century and gained salience after 9/11. The claim that a new, religious form of terrorism has appeared, that is distinguishable from earlier kinds by its indiscriminate use of violence and disinterest in this-worldly strategic goals, will be critically analysed. The second case-study will explore the experiences of Rastafari serving in the UK Armed Forces, a community which represents several tensions as members of a deeply anti-colonial and often anti-violent faith group but employed in professions which revolve around violence and death by employers with inextricable imperialist histories. The session will examine how Rastafari personnel (re/)interpret core philosophies in contexts which can feature ignorance surrounding Rastafari faith alongside racism and discrimination.

 

Seminar 3. Contemporary Case Study: Polarisation in the USA

This seminar will examine the role of religion in current American politics. Looking through the lens of a theologian, and anthropologist, a political scientist and an historian, this session explores socio-economic, theological, cultural and historic dimensions to evangelical support for the MAGA-movement. Based on the sources, students will consider how ‘religion’ explains this support and reflect on the consequences of polarisation in church life.

 

Seminar 4: Historical Case Study: Slavery, Others, and the Emergence of the Human in Early Modern Period

This seminar will consider the contested role of religion in early modern Atlantic and Mediterranean slaveries, and the theological and legal concepts used to both justify and criticise its practice. It will examine the dominant historiographical debates and their contemporary interpretations, paying particular attention to such themes as conversion, holy war, orientalism, and race, as well as addressing questions about legacy and memorialisation.

 

Seminar 5. Scriptural Case Study: Book of Revelation

This seminar will focus on the contextual and interpretative history of the Book of Revelation, and hermeneutical approaches associated with its implication in violence. It will explore contested readings of the themes of persecution, suffering, martyrdom, judgement and vengeance found in current critical literature on Revelation, and debates about their real, metaphorical and mythic qualities, as well as the gendered representations of violence and victimhood. The reception history of Revelation, as it relates to acts of violence — and anti-violence — will also be examined.

 

 

Assessment. The module is assessed by a 5,000 word essay due at the end of term. The subject of each essay must be agreed with the supervisor and approved by the Module Co-ordinator and Degree Committee. The essay titles must relate closely to the subject of at least one seminar in the module.

 

Sample essay questions

Students can choose to focus on specific religious texts, traditions, or historical events in formulating their question but the following suggestions may prove helpful.

 

Seminar 1: Theories of Religion and Conflict  

• What is the relationship between religion and conflict?  
• Is religious violence a secular myth?  
• Can we speak of a ‘return of religion’ in the 21st century?
• Can we think of religion separate from its (institutional) tradition?
•  

Seminar 2: Contemporary Case Study: Terrorism and the Military  

• Does religion cause terrorism?  
• How have philosophies/theologies identified externally as 'anti-violent' been reinterpreted in violent contexts?
• How are historical experiences of colonial violence understood/experienced by faith communities serving within the UK Armed Forces?
•  

Seminar 3: Contemporary Case Study: Polarisation in the USA

• Is one’s religious identity part of one’s political preference, or is one’s political preference part of one’s religious identity?
• Was ‘Jesus at the Capitol’ representative of evangelicals in the MAGA-movement?
•  

Seminar 4: Historical Case Study: Slavery, Others, and the Emergence of the Human in Early Modern Period

• How significant were theological concepts in the construction of race in the early modern period?  
• Were enslaved people in the early modern Mediterranean victims of a religious conflict?  
•  

Seminar 5: Scriptural Case Study: Book of Revelation  

• Can sacred texts incite violence?  
• Does the eschatological hope of the Book of Revelation ameliorate or accentuate violence?  
• How are Indigenous epistemological lenses utilised to interpret violent imagery within Revelation?

 

Module 2. Lent Term. Ethnographic Approaches to Religion and Conflict

Module Coordinator: Joseph Webster (jw557@cam.ac.uk)

 

This module will introduce students to anthropological approaches to the study of religious conflict, and will do so primarily through critical examination of ethnographic case studies, while also considering the role of anthropological theory in explaining ethnographic data. The empirical focus will be on contemporary Protestant fundamentalism in Britain and America, but we will also examine the relationship between these versions of Protestantism, and the religiosity of the ‘far right’.  

 

Module Aims

1. To provide a critical overview of anthropological methods and theories relevant to the study of religious conflict.
2. To critically examine several key ethnographic case studies to better understand the contemporary dynamics of religious conflict, considered within a specific and grounded context, namely Protestant fundamentalism in the UK and US.
3. To consider how anthropological approaches to the study of religious conflict might differ from other approaches, especially emic theological approaches embraced by the Protestant fundamentalist groups covered in the module.

 

Module Objectives

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

1. Understand what anthropological theory and ethnographic case studies bring to the study of religious conflict.
2. Critically evaluate a range of ethnographies of religious conflict to assess their theoretical insights, as well as their methodological strengths and weaknesses.
3. Understand and evaluate the intellectual worth of the broader anthropological approach to religious conflict, as related to moral and cultural relativism, an empirical focus on particularism and cultural difference, and a commitment to reflexivity and self-critique.

 

Seminar topics

 

Seminar 1. Exclusive Brethren Antichrists: Accusations of Evil and Political Conflict on the Aberdeenshire Coast

In this lecture/seminar we will discuss the case of the Exclusive Brethren, a socially separatist religious group who eagerly anticipate the imminent apocalypse. By examining the premillennial dispensationalism of Brethren ‘founding father’ John Nelson Darby, we will attempt to understand the relationship between contemporary politics and the imagination of future religious conflict. Among other topics, we will track various Brethren identifications of the Antichrist as a way to consider how accusations of this-worldly evil may be fertile ground for the development of social processes of ‘othering’ – processes which are crucial for sustaining and reproducing religious conflict.

 

* Key ethnography: Webster, J. (2013) The Anthropology of Protestantism: Faith and Crisis among Scottish Fishermen

 

Seminar 2. The Religion of Orange Politics: Fraternity and Hate in Scotland and Northern Ireland

In this lecture/seminar we will discuss the Protestant commitments of the Orange Order and other loyalist groups active in Scotland, as well as their connection to ‘post-Troubles’ Northern Ireland. By questioning what we might mean by ‘sectarianism’, and by interrogating why, according to some in the Orange Order, religious bigotry and hate are morally good, we will attempt to rethink the social role of conflict in the production of social cohesion. From fraternal drinking and football violence, to contentious parading and political campaigning, this session will examine the role of religion in imagining and enacting ethno-nationalist conflict between Catholics and Protestants since signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

 

* Key ethnography: Webster, J. (2020) The Religion of Orange Politics: Protestantism and Fraternity in Contemporary Scotland

 

Seminar 3. Racism and Islamophobia: The Religion of the Far-Right in Contemporary Britain

In this lecture/seminar we will examine how racism and Islamophobia come to take on religious expressions within certain white-majority communities in Britain. At issue is how far-right politics – as both a narrative and a form of activism – deploys the notion of Britain as a ‘Christian nation’ to the exclusion of those they regard as somehow culturally or ethnically incommensurable with Britain’s (imagined) ‘Christian heritage’. Seen as an ‘invented tradition’, Britishness may be actively redefined as a kind of religion, with civic nationalism giving way to ethno-religious nationalism as a result. By examining ethnographic accounts of the National Front and the English Defence League, this session will consider what happens when religious identity becomes inseparable from claims about ‘race’, as well as from experiences of racism.  

 

* Key ethnography: Pilkington, H. (2016) Loud and Proud: Passion and Politics in the English Defence League

 

Seminar 4. American Protestant Fundamentalism: From ‘Cultural Wars’ to Political Violence

In this lecture/seminar we move from Britain to the United States to consider how Protestant exceptionalism produces cultural conflicts that sometimes spill over into actual religious violence. By re-examining Susan Harding’s ethnographic account of Jerry Falwell’s ‘Moral Majority’ and comparing it to imaginations of religious and political conflict at the heart of ‘Survivalist’ and ‘Prepper’ culture, this session will consider what, if anything, has changed in over 40 years of American Protestant ‘Culture Wars’. With the rise of nationalist populism under the Presidency of Donald Trump, to what extent is American Protestant Fundamentalism an ally of such conflicts, or might the relationship between Trump and radical Christianity be other than we often assume?

 

* Key Ethnography: Harding, S. (2000) The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics

 

Sample essay questions

In order to facilitate ethnographic comparison, students must choose to focus on two or more ethnographic case studies covered in the module when formulating their question, with at least one being taken from the ‘key ethnographies’ listed at the bottom of each seminar description. Other ethnographies can be selected by the student, in consultation with the Course Coordinator. When selecting ethnographies, the following sample essay questions may prove helpful:

 

Seminar 1: Exclusive Brethren Antichrists: Accusations of Evil and Political Conflict on the Aberdeenshire Coast

 

• How does anticipating a future apocalyptic conflict change life in the present?
• Beyond the moral condemnation of specific individuals, what might the social and cultural impact be of identifying various Antichrists?

 

Seminar 2. The Religion of Orange Politics: Fraternity and Hate in Scotland and Northern Ireland

 

• Is religious hate good?
• In what way is football hooliganism akin to religious conflict?

 

Seminar 3. Racism and Islamophobia: The Religion of the Far-Right in Contemporary Britain

 

• Can ‘race’ be a religion? / Can religion be a ‘race’?
• How important is the process of ‘othering’ in creating and perpetuating religious conflict?

  

 

 

Seminar 4. American Protestant Fundamentalism: From ‘Cultural Wars’ to Political Violence

 

• What is the role of language in stimulating religious conflict?
• Are religious conflicts really cultural conflicts in disguise?

 

Module 3. Lent Term: The Religion and Policies of Democratic Backsliding

Module Co-ordinator: Dr Marietta van der Tol, mdcv2@cam.ac.uk

Module outline

This module offers students an opportunity to explore ideologies and practices behind the label ‘democratic backsliding’ and the many ways in which religion is invoked, lived and contested. Students will study the contexts of Europe, Russia, the United States, India, Israel, Turkey and Brazil, as well as engage the many transnational configurations of ideas, practices, and movements. As such, the module draws on a combination of religious studies, politics, and international relations.

The module will equip students to handle a spectrum of concepts with a measure of sophistication, including ‘illiberalism’, ‘conservatism’, ‘anti-liberalism’, and ‘authoritarianism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘populism’, ‘civilisationalism’. Through engagement with literature as well as primary sources and policy briefings, students will learn about the importance of language and how language may be used flexibly to speak to a wide range of constituencies.

The module provides students with a robust introduction to legal, governmental, and especially constitutional dimensions to democratic backsliding and resilience, and how these impact ‘liberal’ and ‘illiberal’-leaning democracies differently. Students will learn about the difference between legality and legitimacy, and study threats to judicial independence.

Students will engage with transnational and geopolitical aspects of democratic backsliding, its relevance for the Russo-Ukrainian war, and new fault lines emerging in global politics. Throughout, students will study the different roles that religion plays as a source of both democratic backsliding and resilience, which inevitably question the binary of the sacred vs the secular, and open conversations about diffuse meanings of religion in politics.

 

Module structure

1. Defining          the     concepts:    illiberalism,   conservatism,    anti-liberalism, authoritarianism
2. Nations, civilisations, and ‘the people’
3. Law, legalism and legitimacy
4. Flexible coalitions, transnational organisations

 

Seminars

The paper is comprised of 4 two-hour seminars. Students are expected to read widely and be ready to discuss the literature based on selected primary sources in

class. Further readings are intended to guide students who want to explore topics in greater depth.

 

Assessment

The module is assessed by a 5,000-word essay. Essay questions will be provided.

 

Sample essay questions

 

• Is religion constitutive to the transnational configurations of illiberalism?
• Does legitimacy rely on legality or does legality rely on legitimacy?
• Are ‘Forging’, ‘Bending’, and ‘Breaking’ a matter of legal interpretation?
• Are there similarities between the religious rhetoric of Holy Rus and the MAGA- movement?

 

Readings

 

1. Defining the concepts: illiberalism, conservatism, anti-liberalism, authoritarianism

Readings for this week focus on definitions of illiberalism, conservatism, anti-liberalism and authoritarianism. While ideas associated with these concepts and ideologies may

overlap in the context of democratic backsliding, it is important to look at particular socio- political contexts to determine the significance of such overlaps. For example, conservatism has different social, moral, and economic resonances in Russia, the USA and Europe –

students are invited to reflect on the question to what extent conservatism is constitutive of practices of democratic backsliding, aka ‘illiberalism’.

 

*** Marlene Laruelle, ‘Illiberalism: A conceptual introduction’, East European Politics Vol. 38, No. 2 (2022): 303-327.

*** Andra s Sa jo, Rena ta Uitz & Stephen Holmes, The Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism,

xxi-xxv, 3-32, 60-81.

*** Katharina Bluhm & Mihai Varga, New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe (Routledge, 2022).

*** Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (Palgrave 2024).

 

2. Nations, civilisations, and ‘the people’

Readings for this week focus on how religion relates to nationalism, populism and

civilisationalism. Looking at distinctions between ‘believing’, ‘behaving’, and ‘belonging’, students are invited to reflect on the nature of political claims on religion and the

relationship between political and religious authorities. Students will critically engage the meaning of ‘the secular’, ‘the West’ and ‘liberalism’, and consider to what the nature is of the supposed ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere on a national, local, and regional

scale.

 

*** Daniel Nilsson DeHanas, ‘The spirit of populism: sacred, charismatic, redemptive,

 and apocalyptic dimensions’, Democratization (2023), 1-21.

*** Rogers Brubaker, ‘Populism and nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism, Vol 26, No. 1 (2020): 44-66.

*** Luca Ozzano, The Masks of the Political God, ECPR Press, 2020.

*** Marietta van der Tol & Philip Gorski, ‘Secularisation as the fragmentation of the

 sacred and of sacred space’, Religion, State and Society, Vol. 50, No. 5 (2022): 495-512.

*** Tobias Cremer, The Godless Crusade (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

*** Olga Malinova, ‘Nation and Civilisation as templates for Russian identity

construction’, in Ka re Johan Mjør, Sanna Turoma, Russia as Civilization: Ideological

 Discourses in Politics, Media and Academia (Routledge, 2020), 27-46.

*** Priya Chacko, ‘Disciplining India: paternalism, neo-liberalism and Hindutva

 civilizationalism’, International Affairs, Vol. 99, No. 2 (2023): 551-565.

 

3. Law, legalism and legitimacy

Readings for this week look at the spectrum of governmental practices that constitute democratic backsliding, sometimes described as ‘forging’, ‘bending’, or ‘breaking’ the law.

Students will take a closer look at democratic institutions, studying the impact of democratic backsliding on the independence and functioning of the highest courts in

Poland, Hungary and Israel. Moreover, students will learn about the concepts of legality and legitimacy, and the way in which the relationship between the two can be

fundamentally disrupted by broad political references to ‘the people’ – and the potential impact thereof on the rights of religious, ethnic or sexual minorities.

 

*** Marietta van der Tol, Constitutional Intolerance: the fashioning of the other in Europe’s constitutional repertoires (Cambridge University Press 2025).

*** Kim Lane Scheppele, ‘Autocratic legalism’, The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (2018): 545-584.

*** Fabio de Sa e Silva, ‘From Backsliding to Illiberalism and Beyond: Law and

 Regressive Political Change in Brazil, India, and South Africa’, in The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism.

*** Jasper Theodor Kauth, ‘Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies’, in The Oxford

 

Handbook of Illiberalism.

*** Andrea Pirro & Ben Stanley, ‘Forging, bending, and breaking: enacting the “illiberal

 playbook” in Hungary and Poland’, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2021): 86-101

 

4. Flexible coalitions, transnational organisations

Readings for this week focus on the role of religion in the formation of flexible

transnational networks and coalitions operating across the far-right spectrum. Students will learn about ways in which Russian Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are conscripted in these networks, especially on political contentious matters relating to gender, sexuality, feminism, abortion, and the family. Students will also learn about the extent to which transnational coalitions navigate different demands on a national, regional and international level, and familiarise themselves with the key-incongruences that pertain to geopolitical interests, NATO, and the future of Ukraine.

 

*** Mikhail Suslov, ‘Holy Rus: The Geopolitical Imagination in the Contemporary Russian

 Orthodox Church’. Russian Politics & Law 52, no. 3 (2014): 67-86.

*** Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner, The Moralist International (Fordham, 2022).

*** Petr Kratochví l, Geopolitics of Global Catholicism (Routledge, 2024).

*** Rita Abrahamsen et al, ‘Confronting the International Political Sociology of the New

 Right’, International Political Sociology, Vol. 14, No. 1 (2020): 94-107.

*** Marietta van der Tol (et al), eds, The Many Faces of Christianism: The Russian World in Europe (Brill, 2025).

*** Neil Datta & David Paternotte ‘“Gender Ideology” Battles in the European Bubble’, in: Gionathan Lo Mascolo, The Christian Right in Europe, Transcript 2023, 43-60.

*** Rebecca Sanders & Laura Dudley Jenkins, ‘Patriarchal Populism: The Conservative

 Political Action Coalition (CPAC) and the Transnational Politics of Authoritarian Anti-

 Feminism’, The International Spectator, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2023):1-19.

*** Ishan Ashutosh, ‘The transnational routes of white and Hindu nationalisms’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2022): 319-339.