Mark Juergensmeyer. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Updated Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 332 pages.

Reviewed by Douglas Morgan

Mark Juergensmeyer’s analysis of the religious wellsprings of terrorism holds enormous significance for Seventh-day Adventists. He shows that concepts of "cosmic war," such as that which structures the entire Seventh-day Adventist worldview, undergird the religious "cultures of violence" that have lashed out at the modern world in such lethal, horrific ways.

Adventists, part of an international movement that has done so much to relieve suffering through health care and humanitarian activism, would rightfully blanch at any association of their community with the likes of the groups Juergensmeyer studies: al-Qaeda, Aum Shinrikyo (the group that released nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system), and white supremacist militias such as "Christian Identity," for example.

Yet consider the following points of contact. The Adventist "great controversy" story parallels the "Christian Identity" cosmic warfare scenario in crucial ways: Lucifer’s primordial rebellion against the government of God, human history as an arena of bipolar conflict with all forces either on God’s side or Lucifer’s, the unchanging centrality of Roman Catholicism’s role on the latter side, the certain involvement of the United States government in the final conspiracy to crush freedom, and the eventual annihilation of sinners. Moreover, a large majority of the Branch Davidians, who did engage the American "beast" in violent conflict, had a Seventh-day Adventist background. Convictions about cosmic war can, in short, be volatile stuff, and Adventists are not immune from the pull to earthly violence such views sometimes entail.

Such volatility, however, does not lead Juergensmeyer to the judgment that beliefs about cosmic warfare are fundamentally destructive to healthy religion. Indeed, he regards such views as basic to the religious imagination. What then, turns beliefs about spiritual warfare into "terror in the mind of God," which believers must in turn wreak on other human beings? On the one hand, Juergensmeyer points to geopolitical forces external to religious communities such as political oppression, socio-economic destitution, and the bombardment of Western modernity on the identity and dignity—the peoplehood—of traditional religious cultures.

Militant Islam, for example, reacts against the full array such threats: the imperialist oppression of the Palestinians and other Muslim peoples by the Western powers, the corruption of Muslim political leaders who have oppressed their own people, often while enriching themselves through alignment with the West, and the Western cultural imperialism that destroys the Islamic way of life.

On the other hand, religious communities that respond to these forces with violence generally display certain characteristics. They provide networks of support that absolutize connections between cosmic warfare and the arena of specific historical groups and institutions. Juergensmeyer calls this "satanization"—absolute, unalterable identification of earthly foes with cosmic foes. "A satanic enemy cannot be transformed," he points out, "it can only be destroyed" (217).

Moreover, "secondary enemies," such as moderates within the same religion or governmental authorities attempting mediation, can only be seen as co-conspirators with the "primary enemy," and thus must be opposed with the same trenchancy, and, if need be, violence.

All of this produces several effects: a transcendent moral justification for violence against the enemies, persistence in the struggle over the long haul in faith that the side of righteousness will ultimately prevail, and a sense of dignity and empowerment that comes with involvement in the struggle, even to the point of martyrdom.

The stunning horror of recent acts of terrorism and the analysis Juergensmeyer provides should compel Adventist reflection on both dangers and opportunities of supreme import. Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the absolute identification of the violent apocalyptic imagery, so central to our movement, with specific institutions, groups, or individuals. We still do this in the message we proclaim to the world, and now more than ever, it is grotesquely irresponsible to refuse to face up to it.

Working through this problem won’t be easy; the answers may not all be simple. At minimum, though, we need to be clear that apocalyptic symbols dramatize the absolute evil of certain principles, not people, of systems, not individuals. Apocalyptic symbols alert us to the fact that specific earthly powers do in fact manifest evil principles in horrendous ways that must be opposed and resisted. But absolute and unalterable identification of cosmic good with our side (remnant = Adventist Church) and cosmic evil with the other side (beast = Roman Catholicism) constitute dangerous steps toward terror in the name of God.

The opportunity highlighted by Juergensmeyer’s sobering study lies in the hunger for meaning beyond the secular ideologies of nationalism and global capitalism that the persistent appeal of militant religions movements demonstrates (227). With its remarkably international character, Seventh-day Adventism has a distinctive opportunity to feed this hunger with an alternative global ideology, a powerful witness to the Christian gospel, which calls into being a world community that transcends and defies nationalism, tribalism, militarism, consumerism, and the other idols of our time.

To meet this opportunity, we will need to communicate with much greater clarity that in our apocalyptic story of "cosmic warfare," patient, suffering love that honors the freedom of the other defeats violence, coercion, and hubris. That story can never justify violence.

If we do so, we will be better positioned to play a constructive role in two of the several possibilities Juergensmeyer outlines as ways of addressing the problem of religiously motivated terrorism. One approach he describes as "separating religion from politics" (235-38). In this context, our historic stress on liberty in matters of faith, and that liberty as the foundation for a broad range of human rights, can take on new vitality and significance. Such an approach, he is careful to point out, does not mean separating religious guidance and motivations from public life. The issue is coercion. Like the Iranian theologian Abdol Karim Soroush and other moderate Islamic thinkers, we must make the case that religion must not seek the coercive support of the state but does drive a social activism that seeks transformation through persuasion.

Hence the possibility of another approach, which Juergensmeyer calls "healing politics with religion" (238-43). Our cosmic warfare story points to the "healing of the nations." Authentic witness to such a story would entail campaigns for peace and justice using the nonviolent arsenal of the victorious Lamb.

© 2002 Spectrum/AAF