Holzem, Andreas: Krieg und Christentum. Religiöse Gewalttheorien in der Kriegserfahrung des Westens: Einführung, in: Holzem, Andreas (ed.): Krieg und Christentum. Religiöse Gewalttheorien in der Kriegserfahrung des Westens (Krieg in der Geschichte 50). Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009, 13–104.

Are the big monotheistic religions themselves sources of intolerance and do they therefore carry potential for promoting violence and war? In the almost 100-page opening chapter of the volume “Krieg und Christentum”, which was published in 2009, Andreas Holzem uses this question as the starting point for his own reflections on the topic of “War and Christianity” (p. 13). In the course of the chapter, Holzem not only argues that the assumption of a general violence-promoting tendency of the monotheistic religions, which has been getting more and more attention in recent scholarly debate, is too short-sighted. He also comes up with fundamental conceptual and methodological considerations on how to investigate the functional relationship between war and religion in the first place.

In order to create a conceptual foundation for his own chapter as well as for the other chapters of the volume, Holzem first provides the reader with a definition of the term “religion”. According to it, religion is to be understood as a conglomerate consisting of institutionalised forms of religious life as well as of the collective and individual attitudes and actions that emerge from the structure of these institutions (p. 15–16).  The subsequent section takes a closer look at the functional relationship between religion and war in Western history. While earlier research has mainly focused on the legitimising and consolatory function of religion, Holzem puts the focus on a third function: the communication, or provision, of “Sinndeutungsmodellen” (models of interpretation). According to Holzem, such models have determined to a considerable degree how war was perceived in Western history (p. 17).

The author then examines the question of how to analyse the communication process of such religious models of war interpretation. In accordance with the above-mentioned definition of religion, Holzem suggests a combination of two methodical approaches: The first one focuses on the institutional structures of a religious community, which, according to Holzem, already contain a certain understanding of war (“institutionstheoretischer Weg”, p. 21). The second approach consists of semantic as well as symbol-historical investigations and thereby comprises elements of literary history, visual history, and media history (“semantisch-symbolgeschichtlicher Zugangsweg”, p. 21).

The other sections of the chapter, including a very detailed summary of the volume’s various findings (p. 28–70), cannot be discussed in detail here. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that Holzem’s findings on the relationship between Christianity and war in several historical contexts clearly show how different and complex this relationship can be and, therefore, how problematic the idea of a general violence-promoting tendency of the monotheistic religions in fact is. (p. 28; 70)

Overall, Holzem’s chapter as well as the entire volume “Krieg und Christentum” are an essential read for any historical or theological student or scholar dealing with the topic of “war and Christianity”. The authors highlight important new developments in this field of research and can therefore indeed make a decisive contribution to what Holzem calls a “profound renewed reflection of Christian theories of war in Western societies” (“gründliche Neureflexion christlicher Kriegstheorien in den Gesellschaften des Westens”, p. 6).