05/07/2026
CCSR Acting Director Jenny Wiley Legath has a chapter in the new volume from Routledge, _The Meaning of Weapons_. Legath examines the intersection of white evangelical Christianity and concealed handgun carry in the United States, arguing that evangelicals construct their religious commitments in such a way as to promote gun carry.
_The Meaning of Weapons: Material and Discursive Negotiations in Culture and Religion_, edited by Lucien van Liere and Erik Meinema, studies the role, representation, and materiality of weapons, focusing on what they mean to communities and individuals in various cultural, social, political, and religious settings.
Drawing on a range of case studies from across the globe, the chapters examine (1) how weapons are understood and used in different social, cultural, religious, theological, and ritual contexts; (2) their role within infrastructures of violence, that is, the socio-material, juridical, and spatial arrangements of weapons that enable or constrain violence; (3) processes of human socialization with weapons; (4) the infliction of violence through weapons; and (5) the representation of weapons in popular culture, games, myths, museums, and monuments.
The volume brings together insights from various disciplines including anthropology, religious studies, philosophy, history, and conflict studies. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for highly needed new theoretical and methodological directions to understand the meaning of weapons in our times.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Meaning-of-Weapons-Material-and-Discursive-Negotiations-in-Culture-and-Religion/vanLiere-Meinema/p/book/9781032847009