Violent and Nonviolent Religious Militancy
This chapter explores religious militancy as a multivalent phenomenon that includes both violent and nonviolent expressions. Religious militancy has too frequently been equated with violence in popular opinion and scholarly writing alike, a trend that has both marginalized and delegitimized the contributions of nonviolent religious actors. A brief examination of the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth-century United States illustrates how religion motivated activists on both sides of the debate, moving them toward either extreme violence or radical peace. Religiously militant peacebuilders can build upon the notion of “justpeace” to develop a comprehensive approach to addressing the multiple forms of violence, seeking not only to counter the influence of violent religious extremists but ultimately to win the internal argument within each host religious tradition.