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Abstract
Whereas holy war is traditionally reduced to a legal category and a way of legitimating acts of violence that disappeared with the modern schism between political and religious institutions, this article proposes another view. In order to take the role of religion in holy war seriously, we should focus upon the effect of religion in the conduct of war, and the function which the use of religious violence fulfils in its social context. In this respect, the impact of secularization has been shallow, and just like religion in general, religious violence or holy war should rather be looked upon as a social constant. Along with the privatization of faith, the public role of the traditional church religion was slowly taken over by civil religion: With the national cult as medium, national war has been the modern expression of the social constant of holy war—an act of sanctification that can be understood only in religious terms.