Through the renowned and best-selling writer of A BRIEF HISTORY of God, a sweeping exploration of religion and the annals of human violence.

For the very first time, religious self-identification is in the decrease in American. Some analysts possess cited as result in a post-9/11perception: that trust in general is normally a source of aggression, intolerance, and divisiveness-something harmful to society. But how accurate can be that look at? With deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong pieces out to find about Fields of Blood: Religious beliefs and the annals of Violence the truth about religious beliefs and assault in each one of the world’s great customs, taking us on an amazing journey from prehistoric occasions for this.

Even though many historians have viewed violence regarding the particular spiritual manifestations (jihad in Islam or Christianity’s Crusades), Armstrong looks at each faith-not just Christianity and Islam, but also Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Judaism-in its totality over time. As she identifies, each arose in an agrarian culture with plenty effective landowners brutalizing peasants while also warring among themselves over land, then the only real source of wealth. Nowadays, religion had not been the discrete and personal matter it would become for all of us but rather a thing that permeated all areas of society. And so it was that agrarian aggression, as well as the warrior ethos it begot, became destined up with observances from the sacred.

In each tradition, however, a counterbalance to the warrior code also developed. Around sages, prophets, and mystics there grew up neighborhoods protesting the injustice and bloodshed endemic to agrarian culture, the assault to which religion had become heir. Therefore by enough time the fantastic confessional faiths came of age, all realized themselves as eventually devoted to peacefulness, equality, and reconciliation, no matter the works of assault perpetrated in their name.

Industrialization and modernity have got ushered in an epoch of spectacular and unexampled violence, although, seeing that Armstrong explains, relatively small of it could be ascribed directly to religious beliefs. Nevertheless, she shows us how and in what measure religions, within their relative maturity, came to absorb modern belligerence-and what hope there could be for peacefulness among believers of different creeds in our time.

At an instant of rising geopolitical chaos, the imperative of mutual understanding between nations and faith communities has never been even more urgent, the dangers of action predicated on misunderstanding under no circumstances greater. Informed by Armstrong’s sweeping erudition and personal commitment to the promotion of compassion, Fields of Bloodstream makes vividly very clear that religion isn’t the problem.