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Although Marvin and Ingle’s book is not unknown, I consider it an undiscovered classic: perhaps the most important ever written on nationalism. What is really true in any community, the authors contend, is “what its members can agree is worth killing for,” or what they can be “compelled to sacrifice their lives for.” What is sacred is “that set of beliefs for which we ought to shed our blood.” In short, nations require blood sacrifice. This profoundly disturbing idea becomes even more difficult to stomach when we realize that, according to Marvin and Ingle, the essential sacrificial victims are not enemies, but members of one’s own society. The authors identify soldiers as the “sacrificial class”: that group which enacts the ritual of blood sacrifice. Yet even as we perform this ritual, the creation of group sentiment requires that members remain “unaware of the mechanism that maintains the group.” Our deepest secret, the authors claim—the “collective group taboo”—is knowing that society depends for its existence on “violent, sacrificial death at the hands of the group itself.” I strongly suggest that everyone read and internalize the ideas contained within this great book. What would happen if the “totem secret” ceased to be a secret? If blood sacrifice gives rise to nations, what would happen to nations if people became aware of the sacrificial ritual that is required to maintain them?

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Terrorism and suicide bombings have created a flurry of scholarly research and writing on religious violence—including, most significantly, Western versions of “sacred violence.” Paul Kahn’s pathbreaking book is among the best. We deceive ourselves, Kahn contends, if we imagine that Western political practices operate in a secular world “untouched by faith and the experience of the sacred.” Nations become what they are when citizens are willing to sacrifice for a transcendent ideal. A community’s self-evident truths become real to the extent that people “are willing to die and kill for them.” Kahn identifies sacrifice as the core dynamic of Western politics. It is precisely the “violent destruction of the self” that is the “realization of the transcendental character of the sovereign.” Nations become real at the moment when the sovereign “takes possession of the body of the citizen.” The ideas put forth in Sacred Violence are revolutionary and disturbing. Yet Kahn’s presentation is calm, logical and well-balanced. Given the dispassionate voice with which Kahn presents his theory, will people be able to grasp the originality (and truth) of his argument? Time will tell.

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A Professor of Religion at Rutgers University and clinical psychologist, Jones has written an essential book on the dynamics of terrorism. At the heart of the religious impulse, Jones observes, lies the desire for an experience of “union with a transcendental or divine reality.” Terrorists link their wish for spiritual union with the idea of “sacrificial killing & apocalyptic purification.” Why is spilling blood necessary for redemption? Jones suggests that terrorists experience a “wrathful, punitive God” who must be appeased and placated. Conceiving of God as vengeful and overpowering, the suicide bomber feels he must “abject and humiliate himself.” The idea that the terrorist submits to a punitive God seems to make sense. Yet Jones presents data that contradicts this interpretation. He cites a leader of Hamas who avers that love of martyrdom is something “deep within one’s heart” and that the act of terror aims to “win the love of God.” When a soldier joins the military and goes to war—perhaps to die—we don’t say he has given himself over to a wrathful, punitive nation that requires abjection and humiliation. The enactment of sacrificial submission is not unique to terrorists. To fully comprehend this behavior, we must interrogate it within a cross-cultural context.

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We think we know what war is, but do we really? If the purpose of war was simply to designate a winner or loser, Scarry observes, then any other contest could be substituted. In The Body in Pain, Scarry presents a radical, but convincing, argument: warfare is undertaken as a unique mode of verification. In the dispute that leads to war, Scarry says, each side questions the legitimacy, and thereby “erodes the reality,” of the other country’s issues, beliefs and self-conceptions. In warfare, the “sheer material factualness of the human body” lends the cultural construct an aura of “realness” or “certainty.” In war, the “incontestable reality of the body”—the body in pain, the body maimed, the body dead and hard to dispose of—is “conferred on an ideology or issue” that has been deserted by benign sources of substantiation. History texts write about war from above the fray: “The British lost the battle. Fifteen hundred men were killed and twenty-five hundred wounded.” Scarry’s masterpiece brings us down to earth—where mutilated bodies support a grandiose ideal or scheme.

“In its breadth and humaneness of vision, the density and richness of its prose, above all in the compelling nature of its argument, this is indeed an extraordinary book.”—New York Times Book Review

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Roger Griffin has published extensively on Fascism and is recognized as an authority on this topic. In Modernism and Fascism, he presents his theoretical model by focusing on three case studies: the First World War, Nazism and Italy under Mussolini. Griffin seeks to identify a common “ideological driving force” that gives rise to various social movements. He theorizes that Fascism builds upon a “core myth”: the idea that one’s nation is in decline. The Fascist is intent upon bringing about the “phoenix-like rebirth” of one’s country through the creation of a “cohesive national state”—requiring that each individual “subsume his or her personality unquestionably but willingly within the greater whole of the national community.” In this important book, Griffin has uncovered and articulated, I believe, a psychological complex that is the source of diverse historical events. Griffin’s theory is applicable to the rise of Islamic terrorism, as well as to recent events in the United States. At the moment a people feels or believes that eternal verities are under siege, social movements come into being whose purpose is to “restore” what seems to have been lost.

“A product of enormous erudition and profound thought. I thought that nothing new and eye-opening can be said on the topic, and (Griffin) proved me wrong...”—Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Prof. of Sociology, Leeds University, UK

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Gentile, Professor of History at the University of Rome and a well-known authority on fascism and totalitarianism, defines political religion as a “developed system of beliefs, myths, rituals and symbols” that creates an aura of sacredness around a worldly entity, turning it into a “cult,” or object of worship and devotion. One such object in the modern world is the nation-state, which can appear as an “enthralling and awe-inspiring power” evoking a feeling of “absolute dependency.” Gentile presents a careful study of totalitarianism, a social movement seeking to bring about the “fusion of the individual in the organic and mystical union of the nation.” As people bind to an omnipotent God, so do we bind to nations—conceived of as omnipotent. We are aware that nationalism may take a destructive turn. However, we may forget that the idea of one’s nation serves to inspire, releasing energy and goading one to “industrious fervor.” The Olympic champion is rewarded with his or her national anthem being played. Gentile’s Politics as Religion sheds light on the sacred dimension of our “ordinary” political world.

"This book offers readers a wide and accurate account of various experiences of religions of politics ranging from American democracy (which Emilio Gentile analyzes with remarkable finesse) to Communism. Because of its clarity and the wealth of historical references it provides, it will be particularly useful for courses on politics and religion."—Maurizio Viroli, Princeton University

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Don’t be fooled by the subtitle. This study reveals an idea at the core of our political world. Beginning with St. Paul, Kantorowicz leads us through numerous authors and texts, showing us how the idea of the church as a “mystical body” transformed into the idea of the nation—another kind of mystical body. In 1571, Edward Plowden  articulated the concept of the “second body of the King.” The King, Plowden said, has two bodies: his natural body—and a body politic bound to his mortal body. Whereas the King’s Natural Body is subject to infirmities, the King’s second body—his body politic—is “utterly devoid of old age and other natural defects and imbecilities.” While the natural body and the body politic are incorporated in one person to form an indivisible unity, no doubt can arise regarding the “superiority of the Body Politic over the Body Natural.” Not only is the Body Politic “more ample and large than the Body Natural,” but in the body politic dwell certain mysterious forces that “reduce, or even remove, the imperfections of the fragile human nature.” So there it is in a nutshell: the source of the fantasy of omnipotence that defines our relationship to the nation-state.  A nation or body politic is a double of the self—the immortal part not subject to death and decay. In the Middle Ages, immortality was projected into the king. In the modern world, everyone is a king. Everyone can imagine they are bound to a body politic—and can partake of its immortality.

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Stein was a brilliant thinker and writer who  passed away shortly after the publication of this book. George Bush claimed that the 9/11 suicide bombers did what they did because they hated Americans. Stein documents that the terrorists’ fundamental relationship was not with the Americans, but with their God, Allah. Based on a close reading of a letter by Mohammed Atta to his fellow suicide bombers, Stein demonstrates that the bombers—perversely as it may seem—were not motivated by hate, but were driven by love: love of God. Their actions were designed to express the depth of their devotion to Allah—and thereby to win His satisfaction. Stein follows the suicide bombers as they carry out their plan—a solemn, ritual performance at the end of which the supplicants would “receive God’s approval by doing what pleases God—purifying the world of contaminating infidels.” Theorizing more broadly, Stein articulates a dynamic she calls “identificatory love,” whereby the individual seeks to merge with or submit oneself to a “remote, superhuman entity.” God the Father—Allah—was the entity to which the suicide bombers abjected themselves. The suicide bombers, themselves sacrificial victims, doomed others to share their fate.

"A superb book, based on a great deal of original scholarship... Carefully crafted and remarkably profound." -Peter Fonagy, University College, London