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Rumi Forum Podcast


Rumi Forum was founded in 1999 with the mission to foster interfaith dialogue and intercultural understanding. The Forum aims to stimulate exchange of opinions in order to advance culture of democracy, freedom of thought, human rights and peace. For over 20 years, the Forum provides a common platform for building relationships, mutual learning and information exchange among adherents of different faiths. Our work has a particular focus on pluralism, peacemaking, interfaith dialogue, intercultural understanding, social harmony and community cohesion.

Jun 21, 2011

In his famous Riverside Church Speech of April 1967, "Beyond Vietnam," the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. identified America as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." How has this changed, or not, since 1967? And how has "religion" factored into the problems of episodic and systemic violence in America? Drawing on his book Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence (NYU, 2010), Professor Jon Pahl suggests some necessary rethinking of the categories of "religion" and "violence" in American history, with an aim to move the nation in its domestic and foreign policies beyond "sacrifice." Such a move may in fact already be underway, toward what Pahl calls, in the working title of his next book, A Coming Religious Peace.

Jon Pahl, Ph.D. is Professor of the History of Christianity in North America and Director of MA Programs for The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Jon earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has spoken with audiences from Ankara to Anaheim, on media outlets from the BBC to ABC, and has published numerous articles, columns, essays, and six books, including Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place and most recently Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence (NYU Press). Jon lives near Swarthmore, and enjoys gardening and playing his sax with his rhythm and blues band, "The Groove Daemons."