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Religion, Punishment, and the Law

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Religion, Crime and Punishment

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Abstract

The relationship between religion, punishment, and the legal system is complex. Religion has historically played a key role in the development of legal systems in a range of different cultural contexts. In this chapter, an evolutionary approach is employed to help us understand the role that religion plays in delineating both what acts count as morally wrong and hence are potentially subject to criminal sanctions, and how such violations should be dealt with. In particular, following Haidt (The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. London, UK: Penguin, 2012), we suggest that religion plays a particularly prominent role in defining acts that violate notions of purity and sanctity, especially those that relate to sexual behaviour. Because religion functions to bind individuals into large, cooperative moral communities it also can play a key role in regulating a range of behavioural acts that might be viewed as threatening social cohesiveness even though they might not result in any obvious harm to others.

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  1. Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Russil Durrant

  2. School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Zoe Poppelwell

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Durrant, R., Poppelwell, Z. (2017). Religion, Punishment, and the Law. In: Religion, Crime and Punishment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64428-8_5

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