Sins of Omission: What "Religion and Violence" Arguments Ignore.

What happens when a truism in one area of the study of religion meets up with an uncertainty in another area? The truism in question is the idea that religion has a dangerous tendency toward violence. It is treated as a truism both in academic circles and in broader American culture. The uncertainty in question is about the nature of religion. The inability to define 'religion' has been described as 'almost an article of methodological dogma' in the field of religious studies. This article discusses the book "When Religion Becomes Evil," by Charles Kimball. Although the book is very popular, it is marred by the principal problem from which the 'religion and violence' genre suffers: its inability to provide any convincing way to distinguish the religious from the secular.