Religion, Politics, and Hope in Charles Kimball's "When Religion Becomes Lethal": A Review

Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011)


Anyone who watches CNN, FOXNews, or MSNBC should read this book. In fewer than 200 pages, Kimball leads his readers from the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the latest disputes over Jewish settlements in the occupied territory of Palestine, Christian opposition to the construction of an Islamic center in Manhattan, and the bizarre rants of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Real people—militant Muslims, cocksure Christians, and hard-core Jewish settlers “prepared to facilitate the final conflagration”—populate these pages.

Kimball goes behind the news-media and talk-show sound bites to reorient popular perspectives on major events and introduce important players in the interaction of religion and politics among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. For example, the widespread talk of a “clash of civilizations” among scholars and the public alike “reinforces a simplistic and dangerously inaccurate perspective.” Support for Israel among American politicians is entirely understandable if for no other reason than “Criticizing Israel has been political suicide in the United States.” As for September 11, 2001, “the world did not change on that fateful day. On that day, the United States of America simply joined the rest of the world, in a disturbing way. . . . The lethal threat posed by violent extremists claiming inspiration from their religion and prepared to die in suicidal self-sacrifice was [now] just as real in the United States as it had been in Beirut or Jerusalem.”

What separates Kimball from the often-heard sensationalists and fear-mongers who dominate the radio and television airwaves is his insistence that the world’s three great monotheistic religions contain within them and share in common convictions, perspectives, and centuries of practice living together that are fertile ground for hope and for action instead of despair, immobilization, and counterproductive responses to the challenges of the next decade and beyond. Explosive? Yes. Lethal? Yes. Hopeless? No. Kimball explains why on all three fronts.

This book is required reading for anyone who wants to—or presumes to—understand the interaction of religion and politics from Murfreesboro to Mecca and from Tulsa to Tel Aviv.