Laying Down the Sword

Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions—all are in the Bible, and all occur with a far greater frequency than in the Qur’an. But fanaticism is no more hard-wired in Christianity than it is in Islam. In Laying Down the Sword , “one of America’s best scholars of religion” ( The Economist ) explores how religions grow past their bloody origins, and delivers a fearless examination of the most violent verses of the Bibl