Contents -- Foreword / Rowan Williams -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part One. The Programming of Origins: Sacred Violence and Its Legacy -- A Covenant among Beasts: Human and Chimpanzee Violence in Evolutionary Perspective / Paul Dumouchel -- Liminal Crises: The Origins of Cultural Order, the Default Mechanisms of Survival, and the Pedagogy of the Sacrificial Victim / Pierpaolo Antonello -- Victims, Sacred Violence, and Reconciliation: A Darwinian-Girardian Reading of Human Peril and Human Possibility / Harald Wydra -- Empire of Sacrifice: Violence and the Sacred in American Culture / Jon Pahl and James Wellman -- Part Two. Rebooting Evolutionary Survival: Is Christianity Crucial? -- From Closed Societies to the Open Society: Parochial Altruism and Christian Universalism / Wolfgang Palaver -- Girard, the Gospels, and the Symmetrical Inversion of the Founding Murder / Paul Gifford -- Survival and Salvation: A Girardian Reading of Christian Hope in Evolutionary Perspective / Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly -- Part Three. Violent Reciprocities and Peace-Making in the Contemporary World -- Northern Ireland: Breaking the Inheritance of Conflict and Violence / Duncan Morrow -- Communities of Contrast: Modeling Reconciliation in Northern Ireland / Derick Wilson -- Responses to Morrow and Wilson -- Girardian Reflections on Israel and Palestine / Mel Konner -- South Africa: Positive Mimesis and the Turn toward Peace / Leon Marincowitz -- Peace-Making in Practice and Theory: An Encounter with René Girard / Scott Atran -- Part Four. Between Progress and Abyss: Our Modernity -- Nuclear Apocalypse: The Balance of Terror and Girardian "Misrecognition" / Jean-Pierre Dupuy -- Responses to Jean-Pierre Dupuy -- The "Intermediary" Case / Margo Boenig-Liptsin -- Misrecognition of "Misrecognition" / Paul Dumouchel -- Survival without Salvation? / Paul Gifford.

Girard, Climate Change, and Apocalypse / Michael Northcott -- A New Heaven and a New Earth: Apocalypticism and Its Alternatives / Michael Kirwan -- About the Authors -- Index.