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The nostalgic view that the classical polytheist world is one of religious tolerance and coexistence, whereas monotheism, which is exclusivist, is responsible for much of the religious violence perpetrated between the rise of Christianity and the end of pre-modern history. A dominant model that of the religious marketplace, is related, and similarly benchmarks the conversion of Constantine and focuses attention on Christianity and the religions of Greece and Rome. The emphasis on violence and the raising of questions about the role of the rhetoric of violence in relation to it brings us to one final influential perspective from which religious conflict in early Christianity and late antiquity has been addressed. Theorization of religious conflict in historical period has been criticized for its Christianity-centred focus. Christianity emerges in a pluri-religious urban society where it is in competition for converts.

Relying on the works of Jasbir Puar and Marchal, the chapter explores the locus where sexuality, specifically the formation of masculinity, intersects with religious conflict, notably in the formation of late antique religious radicalism, using the homilies of John Chrysostom as a case in point. In a study engaging with religious conflict and notions of "just peace" in Augustine's thought, Serena Sharma highlights the importance of identifying, problematising, and addressing historical discursive grey zones. Inclusion is a very important feature in the operations of sexual exceptionalism and religious conflict. Two important strategies are at play in the sexual exceptionalism of religious conflict, namely inclusion, and teratogenisation. Chrysostom meticulously constructs the sexual perversity of his opponents in contrast to the sexual exceptionalism of his own group. The formation of masculinity in terms of sexual exceptionalism and perversity therefore has a leading role in religious conflict.

Religious violence needs to be analysed on a case-by-case basis and in the context of the particular local and historical circumstances in which it arises, a theoretical premise that has also been applied to late antiquity. Stephen Emmel has conducted a meticulous analysis of all available passages on religious violence in the Shenoutian corpus. The idea that religious violence was endemic in the late antique world has remained influential. Scholars of Late Antique Studies are becoming increasingly critical of the literary accounts that describe violence between Christians and "pagans". This chapter discusses three cases that have been taken as exemplary for widespread religious violence in late antique Egypt or even for the pervasive nature of religious violence in the late antique world. The expansion of Christianity at Philae conforms entirely to similar developments in the rest of the region or, for that matter, in Egypt as a whole.

Throughout 2015 and 2016 there have been constant violent protests, destruction of university property, and clashes between protesters and police and security personnel on various campuses. An apocalyptic worldview is essentially a violent worldview. In the eschatological lore that animates ISIS ideologically, the city of Dabiq in northern Syria near the Turkish border is the site of the end-time apocalyptic war. In the vision of the author of the Dabiq article, immersion in Western society is to be a hypocrite or an about-to-be apostate. The changes in social constitution of Spanish society also brought with them increasing clamour for a political voice. As the Republican government set about its programme of re-engineering Spanish society, to a large extent the Catholic Church became the central focus of the cultural wars escalating in the country. Two political forces played a central role in the unfolding of the civil war: the army and the Catholic Church.