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Summary Of When Religion Becomes Lethal By Charles Kimball

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This powerful text, “When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” is the centerpiece for understanding the truth behind centuries of spiritual history and politics between three different denominations. Dr. Charles Kimball focuses solely on identifying the negatives within politics and religion as a whole, and how unconstructive the two can actually be. Kimball gave a huge amount of historical insight on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and how each of the religions came about. He also discusses their different relationships and different viewpoints that they have for one another. Lastly, Kimball uses his years of experience to offer a new and much broader way to think about …show more content…

When different political views and spiritual beliefs are put together, the consequences behind that mixture are often dire and it ultimately results to violence. He emphasizes the importance of learning the past as well as the most up-to-date events of these particular religions. Kimball does his best to explain why those types of problems tend to occur, but he also gives us insight as to how these problems can be corrected, which could lead to a better hope for the future. All it takes is people of good faith as well people of goodwill to come together to speak aloud against the fundamentalists.
In the opening chapter, Kimball begins his discussion by describing his encounter with the then Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, in Qom, Iran on Christmas Day. He described the Ayatollah as being very charismatic and grandfatherly, as well as being an extraordinarily influential religious and political leader (Kimball, p. 1). The two discussed a number of important issues like the Iranian revolution, Christian-Muslim relations, Jesus, and the U.S. hostages (Kimball, p.

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