Stephen Black wrote: > > 1) A general reason > > All religions have rituals of profound significance to its > practitioners. To non-believers, however, those practices can seem > bizarre, superstitious, and incomprehensible. One can understand the > discomfort of the believers to have to expose these practices to the > skeptical and possibly judgemental eye of outsiders. Or perhaps it > forces the believers to view their rituals as outsiders would see > them, which again may be disquieting. > > 2) A specific reason > > For justifiable historical reasons, Jews have good reason to be wary > of the motives of Christians, including or even especially those who > might want to attend synagogue services.
Stephen has hit on some excellent points. Putting it into a social psychological context, these are a number of reasons from the areas of social cognition (e.g. in-group/out-group biases and belief perseverance), social influence (e.g. conformity and group polarization), and social relations (e.g. prejudice and relative deprivation) that be used to examine inter-religious distrust and violence. If anyone is interested, I can send you a copy of a recently completed article which is under review for publication entitled, "Intra- and Inter- Religious Hate and Violence: A Psychosocial Model" written by a colleague and me. Best, Linda -- Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D. Book Review Editor, H-Genocide Associate Professor - Psychology Coordinator - Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Webster University 470 East Lockwood St. Louis, MO 63119 Main Webpage: http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/ mailto:woolflm@;webster.edu "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's (and woman's) best friend. . . . Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
