At the heart of many religions are sacred texts that depict or even incite sexual violence. Most of this violence is directed against women and girls. Sexual Violence and Sacred Texts opens up an informed, passionate, interfaith dialogue for scholars and activists seeking to transform social problems that impact women and girls globally. Situated within struggles toward gender equity and widespread spiritual flourishing, these essays empower religious leaders, academics, and laypersons to confront and to creatively engage with sacred texts that re-inscribe sexual violence.

At the heart of many religions are sacred texts that depict or even incite sexual violence. Most of this violence is directed against women and girls. Sexual Violence and Sacred Texts opens up an informed, passionate, interfaith dialogue for scholars and activists seeking to transform social problems that impact women and girls globally. Situated within struggles toward gender equity and widespread spiritual flourishing, these essays empower religious leaders, academics, and laypersons to confront and to creatively engage with sacred texts that re-inscribe sexual violence.

"It is widely recognized that the Hebrew Bible is filled with rape and sexual violence. However, feminist approaches to the topic remain dominated by Phyllis Trible's 1984 Texts of Terror, which describes feminist criticism as a practice of "telling sad stories." Pushing beyond Trible, Texts after Terror offers a new framework for reading biblical sexual violence, one that draws on recent work in feminist, queer, and affect theory and activism against sexual violence and rape culture. In the Hebrew Bible as in the contemporary world, sexual violence is frequently fuzzy, messy, and icky. Fuzzy names the ambiguity and confusion that often surround experiences of sexual violence. Messy identifies the consequences of rape, while also describing messy sex and bodies. Icky points out the ways that sexual violence fails to fit into neat patterns of evil perpetrators and innocent victims. Building on these concepts, Texts after Terror offers a number of new feminist strategies and approaches to sexual violence: critiquing the framework of consent, offering new models of sexual harm, emphasizing the importance of relationships between women (even in the context of stories of heterosexual rape), reading biblical rape texts with and through contemporary texts written by survivors, advocating for "unhappy reading" that makes unhappiness and open-endedness into key feminist sites of possibility. Texts after Terror also discusses a wide range of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen. 43), Tamar (2 Sam. 13), Lot's daughters (Gen. 19), Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11), Hagar (Gen. 16 and 21), Daughter Zion (Lam. 1 and 2), and the Levite's concubine (Judg. 19)"--

In Sacred Witness, Susanne Scholz discusses the wide range of rape texts in biblical literaturesome that long have troubled readers, others that should have but didn't, such as texts of marital rape, for example, or metaphorical speech about God as rapist. Assuming the androcentric nature of these writings, Scholz asks how we may read these texts in order to find some redemptive meaning for women, children, and men who have been injured by sexual violence and by "cultures of rape." Sacred Witness provides illuminating reflection on some of the most troubling texts in the Hebrew Bible.

Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements stages a critical engagement between religious texts and the problem of sexual violence. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are widespread on college and university campuses; they also occur in sacred texts and religious traditions. The volume addresses these difficult intersections as they play out in texts, traditions, and university contexts. The volumegathers contributions from religious studies scholars to engage these questions from a variety of institutional contexts and to offer a constructive assessment of religious texts and traditions.

From ISIS attacks to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Sacred Fury explores the connections between faith and violence in world religions. Author Charles Selengut looks at religion as both a force for peace and for violence, and he asks key questions such as how “religious” is this violence and what drives the faithful to attack in the names of their beliefs? Revised throughout, the third edition features new material on violence in Buddhism and Hinduism, the rise of ISIS, “lone wolf terrorists,” and more. This up-to-date edition draws on a variety of disciplines to comprehend forms of religious violence both historically and in the present day. The third edition of Sacred Fury is an essential resource for understanding the connections between faith and violence.

This book provides understanding and practical guidance for those traumatized by sexual abuse, their families, friends and therapists. Stephanie Mines' approach can be applied with or without a therapist and involves healing through the therapeutic use of art-making in all its forms. A key to healing is treating trauma as a "sacred wound" on the model of the shaman's initiatic wounding. Stories of men and women healed through expressive therapies, sexual abuse in the name of spirituality, sexual abuse and the family, support resources including extensive lists of organizations and publications, and examples of patients' expressive work.