Explains how both distinctive features of American culture - being exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent - work together

It is widely recognized that American culture is both exceptionally religious and exceptionally violent. Americans participate in religious communities in high numbers, yet American citizens also own guns at rates far beyond those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Since 9/11, United States scholars have understandably discussed religious violence in terms of terrorist acts, a focus that follows United States policy. Yet, according to Jon Pahl, to identify religious violence only with terrorism fails to address the long history of American violence rooted in religion throughout the country’s history. In essence, Americans have found ways to consider blessed some very brutal attitudes and behaviors both domestically and globally.
In Empire of Sacrifice, Pahl explains how both of these distinctive features of American culture work together by exploring how constructions along the lines of age, race, and gender have operated to centralize cultural power across American civil or cultural religions in ways that don’t always appear to be "religious" at all. Pahl traces the development of these forms of systemic violence throughout American history, using evidence from popular culture, including movies such as Rebel without a Cause and Reefer Madness and works of literature such as The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale, to illuminate historical events. Throughout, Pahl focuses an intense light on the complex and durable interactions between religion and violence in American history, from Puritan Boston to George W. Bush’s Baghdad.

"An astute indictment of four centuries of American violence." - The Journal of Religion

"Empire of Sacrifice is a provocative and engaging work of cultural criticism worth reading for the questions it poses about religion and violence as categories, and for the many intersections of the two it finds in places where either religion or violence or both are hidden in plain sight." - The Journal of American History

"Empire of Sacrifice is a though-provoking work, sure to join other scholarly considerations of religious violence . . . the book will assist anyone interested in learning more about the religious roots of contemporary violence in American national policies." - Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

"Empire of Sacrifice is the most broad-sweeping scholarly examination of religion and violence in the United States written to date." - American Historical Review

"“Pahl intends his work as a call to take up the opportunity missed after 9/11, to ‘shape a remarkable global consensus against religious violence.’ This work’s basic paradox is that religions ‘produce violent power’ but exist ultimately to ‘eliminate violence.’ That paradox captures the troubling message but hopeful conclustion to the work." - CHOICE