Religion & Violence

Yesterday on The 700 Club, Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. His comments have sparked a firestorm of discussion (see Google News search results) and repudiation from the State Department.

Enter serendipity.

Also yesterday, National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation included a segment titled "Examining the Intersection of Religion and Violence." During the show, host Neal Conan discussed "correlations between Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and other theologies, and violent acts." His guests were two authors:

• Hector Avalos, associate professor of religious studies at Iowa State University and author of Fighting Words: The Origins Of Religious Violence, and
• Charles Kimball, professor of religion at Wake Forest University and author of When Religion Becomes Evil.

You can listen to the segment on the NPR website.