This book examines how Christian teachings on love and enmity shape group identity and conflict, with scripture and theology used both to justify violence and call for reconciliation. It explores interdisciplinary perspectives that combine socio-scientific approaches with biblical criticism.
By exploring historical, biblical, and contemporary examples, this volume illuminates how religious identity influences the construction of enemies and offers tools for critically engaging with faith-based conflict. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, theological analysis, and interdisciplinary research, the book provides a framework for rethinking community engagement across difference. The contributors examine how Christianity metabolizes neighbor–enemy distinctions, addressing the contemporary re-emergence of sharp divisions despite increased global engagement. The chapters leverage insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, literary criticism, historical analysis, reception history, and classical studies to understand how group self-identification generates both external conflict and internal conformity. This comprehensive approach helps readers understand the seeming intractability of religious enmity while offering pathways toward reconciliation and constructive dialogue in diverse religious contexts.
Biblical and Socio-Scientific Approaches to Religious Enmity
is ideal for scholars, students, clergy, and readers in theology, biblical studies, religious ethics, and political theology who seek to understand the intersection of faith, social identity, and enmity. It serves academics exploring socio-cognitive approaches to religious conflict as well as practitioners working to address religious polarization in contemporary communities and interfaith contexts.
This book examines how Christian teachings on love and enmity shape group identity and conflict, with scripture and theology used both to justify violence and call for reconciliation. It explores interdisciplinary perspectives that combine socio-scientific approaches with biblical criticism.
Introduction;
1. Reflections from Social Identity Theory on
Authoritarianism, Fundamentalism and Narratives of Nationalism and
Multiculturalism: From Ezra/Nehemia/Ruth to the Postcolonial Era;
2. From
Enmity to Empathy: Paul and (Re)-Defining the Boundaries of Us-ness;
3.
Adjustments to Mirror Reading: Finding Opponents, or Just an Audience, from a
Text;
4. Reconciliation and Josephs Power Over His Brothers in Genesis
50:15-21;
5. Figuring a Leader: The Depiction of Abijah in 2 Chronicles 13 as
Reinforcing Intra-Group Enmity;
6. Identity and Inclusion in Marks Gospel:
The Case of Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman (Mark 7:24-30);
7. Desertion
or Exclusion: Relationships with the Outgroup in the Johannine Writings;
8.
Staging Incest and Identifying the Enemy: Reading 1 Cor 5 in Light of the
Black Sheep Effect and Ancient Theatre;
9. They Do Not Keep The Law
(Galatians 6:13): Forceful Circumcision and the Fruit of the Spirit;
10.
Restoring the Enemy? Considering the Pauline Imperative of Galatians 6:1;
11.
Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul: Middle Management and the mediation of
theological and social capital;
12. Postcolonial perspectives on animosity
and enemies in Paul;
13. Judaism, Judeo-phobia, and the Conversion of the
Royal House of Adiabene;
14. Degradation ceremonies and the politics of the
vaccine mandate: An ethnographic analysis of the Melbourne Construction
Industry Protests, September 2021; Index.
Christopher A. Porter is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Theological School and Lead Investigator on the Figuring the Enemy project, investigating socio-scientific approaches to religious enmity, along with research focus on the Fourth Gospel and Acts from a social identity perspective.
Elizabeth E. Shively is Professor of Christian Scriptures at Baylor Universitys George W. Truett Theological Seminary and co-investigator on the socio-scientific stream of Figuring the Enemy Project. Her research focuses on the Gospel of Mark, narrative and rhetorical criticism, cognitive linguistics, and theological interpretation.
Kenneth I. Mavor is Senior Lecturer and Social Psychologist in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His research focuses on the nature of the personal and collective self, and how people cognitively manage multiple selves; the implications of social and personal identities for learning, belonging, and wellbeing in higher education; and the role of religious and political ideologies in social conflict and collective action.
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