In a turn to social psychology to help make sense of religious violence, this article deploys Robert Sternberg’s duplex theory of hate to analyze several case studies documented by Jessica Stern in her Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (HarperCollins, 2003). A modest Buddhist-Christian theological comparison is then explored to develop moral solidarity where previously it was absent. The Buddhist-Christian experiment contributes an alternative trajectory for human identity and meaning and contributes narratives for solidarity that scholars and practitioners may verify and modify in other religious traditions under analogous conceptual structures or cognate vocabulary. Instead of resolving the ubiquitous problem of religious violence, the article more modestly dwells on the antecedent conditions for violence evident across traditions, to which Buddhist and Christian resources can recommend opposing dispositions of interpersonal intimacy and moral solidarity. In both cases, a theology of participation proves instrumental.
