ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the debate over the uniqueness of the Holocaust through the lens of religious studies, more specifically, the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The AAR convenes thousands of professors of religion for annual professional meetings and shapes the scholarly agenda in the academic study of religion and theology. In the early 1990s, a group of scholars proposed creating a program unit called Religion, Holocaust and Genocide. This program unit would facilitate sustained scholarly work on the theological, ethical, exegetical, and philosophical implications of the Holocaust and genocide. The program unit was approved in 1993 and reviewed after seven years in 2000 by the AAR Program Committee, which criticized the program unit for “focusing primarily on the Holocaust.” By using an inclusive title, the unit’s initiators had glossed over the conflicts inherent in the relationship between the Holocaust and genocide. On the one side of this conflict were those who defended the categorical singularity and uniqueness of the Holocaust, while on the other side were those who alleged Eurocentric bias and systemic marginalization of the suffering of non-Western peoples, cultures, and religions.
