1005 SACRIFICE AND HOLY WAR CHAPTER II-6-1.4 Sacrifice and Holy War: A Study of Religion and Violence VOLKHARD KRECH I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VIOLENCE IN COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS STUDIES Religions are a part of the cultural interpretation of primary experience and as such are intimately bound up with the elementary conditions and driving forces of human life. Depending on their orientation, religions can channel, sublimate, or arouse both vital and destructive forces. Religions deal with the forces of nature and attempt to interpret them; they are also able both to avert and to unleash psychological driving forces and conflicts of interest in society. Religions are able to do this because they are symbolic systems behind the binding ways through which people understand themselves and the world. They are prone to generate conflict when they are “an aggregate state of a given culture ... arming itself to go to its limits” (Assmann, 1992:157). If religions are concerned with “the whole” and strive for ultimate values and binding ways of understanding themselves and the world, then particular conditions—be they economic, political, or broadly cultural and thus not necessarily inherent to the given religion—can often mean that representatives and adherents of these religions develop a certain fanaticism. However, whether or not their commitment is expressed violently depends on numerous variables both inherent and exterior to the actual religion. The history of religions has not been able to establish a definite correlation—be it positive or negative—between religion and violence. Religion can give violence content and an object, but it is not its original source. Nor is there suffi- cient evidence for the opposite correlation. Violence can be unleashed without religion, of course, and can also be averted without taking recourse to religion. However, what needs to be explained is the observation that religious convictions are particularly well suited to incite violence and to make it erupt. W. Heitmeyer and J. Hagan (eds.), International Handbook of Violence Research, 1005–1021. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 1005 In: Wilhelm Heitmeyer, John Hagan (Hrsg.), International Handbook of Violence Research. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1005–1021.