Violence in religious communities: theoretical foundations for studying spiritual violence

The violence practiced by religious collectives is a widely examined area in social sciences. Usually the subject of the study is inter-group violence between either different religious groups or between religious groups and other social entities. Intra-group violence, i.e., violence practiced by a religious community towards its own members, has received less attention. However, there have been increasing attempts to conceptualize these systems of violence. In the presentation, the concept of spiritual violence is developed in order to explain religious intra-group violence: it aims to create conceptual and theoretical foundations for understanding spiritual violence. The ideas of violence, power and authority elaborated by Hannah Arendt will be considered in relation to spiritual violence, and also, the notions of Johan Galtung and Willem Schinkel about structural violence and violence as a reduction of being will be pondered. Lastly, the article analyzes the idea of vulnerability as an element of spiritual violence.