Religion and World Change: Violence and Terrorism versus

Our article portrays religion as a double-edged sword that can both encourage and discourage world change, and can facilitate both violent and peaceful ac-tivism. The article demonstrates how the meaning system approach to religion can shed light on the complicated relationship between religion and world change by illuminating the meaning of world change and the means to achieve it, inherent differences across religious groups, the complexity and malleability of religious meaning systems, and processes that can facilitate either the status quo or vio-lent and peaceful activism. The article discusses context and personality variables that may determine whether religion supports world change and either violent or peaceful activism. It recommends intensive collaboration between researchers, policy–makers, and religious leaders in the contexts of national and international conflicts and religious terrorism. Obedience to God may involve submission to any number of well-established earthly au-thorities which claim to speak in God’s name; it may also describe the spontaneous heroism of a conscientious individual who challenges the powers that be (Walzer, 1982, p. 57). Paradoxically, religions support both peace and the sword (Appleby, 2000, p. 27). The violent message of Osama bin Laden, and his al Qaeda network, which suggests that a positive divine-guided world change can be achieved by religious holy war (jihad) against the infidel West, as well as against “apostate ” regimes in ∗Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Israela Silberman, Departmen