Book Review: Marc Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 312 pp., no price given hbk.)
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030805 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium
904
Marc Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions,
Violence, and Peacemaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 312 pp., no
price given hbk .).
Between Eden and Armageddon is an insightful examinati on of reli gious
motivatio ns for war a nd peace and, despite some li mitations, is a must-read for
anyone interested in the in fluence of religion on violence and conflict. The main
theme of Marc Gopin’s book is that altho ugh religion can clearly be a source of
war, violence, and intolerance, it can also be a source of peace. That is, every
major religion has at so me point expressed a commitme nt to the value of peac e.
The author argues that in order to solve the many conflicts that involve religion, a
greater und erstanding of how various reli gious traditions have suppo rted both
violent and p eaceful trends in the past and present is necessary. This would give us
both a greater understand ing of why conflict s occ ur, and con sequently how t o
prevent the m. It would also give us the to ols to emphasise th e peaceful rather t han
the viol ent aspects of religion an d to find commona lities between religiou sly
differentiated c ombatants that can serv e as the first step toward mut ual
understanding and conflict resolution.
Gopin argues that many instances o f religio us hatred are rooted in i ndividual
psycholo gy. He applie s this method ology to a few cases. For example, he contend s
that the root o f the antago nism be tween the secular and Haredi (Je wish ultra
orthodox ) elements o f contempo rary Israel is that each si de blames the othe r for
pain they have suffered from antisemitism in general and the Holocaust in
particular. He also arg ues that th e fear of peace in some parts o f Israeli soci ety is
due to a lack of a peaceti me Jewish identity becau se the cu rrent one is based on
enduring cen turies of pain at the hands of n on-Jews. He suggest s that a solution to
this so cietal division is to re formulate it into the t ype of fo rmalistic disagreeme nt
that occurs bet ween Rabbis when they disagree over matters o f Jewish law; one
where the t wo sides respe ct each other and agree to d isagree. This arrangement can
be reached thro ugh conflict resolution procedure s.
This foc us on only a few Abrahamic religious trad itions, in particular the Jewish
tradition, is perhaps the most serious drawbac k to thi s book. Th e narrow foc us is
especially disappointing considering that the arguments made within the book are
much more widely applicable. However, given that the author is a Rabb i, it is
understand able that he focuses o n the material with which he is most familiar. T he
examination of Jewish, and occasionally other, theologies and psychologies of war
and p eace are insig htful and provid e a good model fo r how othe r religious
theologies can be used toward the author’s goal of developing theologies of
coexistenc e and peace. However, his argumen ts could have been made stronger by
placing them in a mo re multi-religious context.
Gopin’s goal of using religion to further peace instead of violence in no t a new
one, but it is one that has probab ly been given too little attention in recent times.
This la ck of atten tion is explain ed in part as being due to the fea r of deali ng with
religion at all by sec ular politic ians whose power is based on secular ideologies,
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