Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence. By Jonathan Sacks. Hodder & Stoughton; 305 pages; £20. To be published in America in October by Schocken; $28.95.
THE Western world is less and less capable of offering any coherent spiritual alternative to the grim certainties of the terrorist groups which commit atrocities in the name of religion. That stark warning comes as a shock in the final pages of a book by a former chief rabbi of Britain whose earlier chapters have addressed, with diligence and sensitivity, an old conundrum. The puzzle that Lord Sacks sets out to solve is why a broadly similar set of narratives and role-models (in this case, the patriarchal figures shared by the Abrahamic faiths) can in some circumstances inspire compassionate humanism, and in others terrible and destructive sectarian hatred.
In an intelligent analysis of old and new connections between religion and violence, he dissects stories like those of Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob, and of course, Abraham himself. He tackles this task with the tenderness of a believer and the...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1LXlc3Y
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