The recent atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina have stunned people throughout the world. With Holocaust memories still painfully vivid, a question haunts us: how is this savagery possible? Michael A. Sells answers by demonstrating that the Bosnian conflict is not simply a civil war or a feud of age-old adversaries. It is, he says, a systematic campaign of genocide and a Christian holy war spurred by religious mythologies.

This passionate yet reasoned book examines how religious stereotyping—in popular and official discourse—has fueled Serbian and Croatian ethnic hatreds. Sells, who is himself Serbian American, traces the cultural logic of genocide to the manipulation by Serb nationalists of the symbolism of Christ's death, in which Muslims are "Christ-killers" and Judases who must be mercilessly destroyed. He shows how "Christoslavic" religious nationalism became a central part of Croat and Serbian politics, pointing out that intellectuals and clergy were key instruments in assimilating extreme religious and political ideas.

Sells also elucidates the ways that Western policy makers have rewarded the perpetrators of the genocide and punished the victims. He concludes with a discussion of how the multireligious nature of Bosnian society has been a bridge between Christendom and Islam, symbolized by the now-destroyed bridge at Mostar. Drawing on historical documents, unpublished United Nations reports, articles from Serbian and Bosnian media, personal contacts in the region, and Internet postings, Sells reveals the central role played by religious mythology in the Bosnian tragedy. In addition, he makes clear how much is at stake for the entire world in the struggle to preserve Bosnia's existence as a multireligious society.

Michael A. Sells is Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Religion at Haverford College. He is the author of several books on religion, including Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994).

"[President] Clinton's favorite Balkans book [is] A Bridge Betrayed, by Haverford College religion professor Michael Sells, which argues that the various ethnic groups actually had gotten along well for centuries. Sells, of Serbian descent, writes that strife in the Balkans can be blamed, not on historic enmity but on more recent anti-Muslim Serbian nationalist rantings. Clinton apparently liked this book so much that he sent it around to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen, national security adviser Sandy Berger and Joint Chiefs Chairman Henry Hugh Shelton as required reading."—Al Kamen, Washington Post Magazine

"Michael Sells demystifies the horror of 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia by documenting its roots in the nineteenth-century revival of Serb nationalist culture. . . . The Bridge Betrayed is unique. . . . Anyone seeking to understand and prevent a recurrence of this firestorm in the Balkans will find this brilliant study indispensable."—Roy Gutman, Newsday Washington

"[A] finely written, well-argued book. . . . Sells' book makes a major contribution to recent literature on Bosnia, exploring the war's religious dimension and above all the role of Christian religious mythology in preparing the ground for genocide."—Paul Hockenos, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Sells's well-written, impassioned, and informed book represents a deepening of the ongoing discourse about the collapse of Yugoslavia."—Kirkus Reviews

"Sells brings a deep historical perspective to bear on recent events, and he powerfully indicts not only those Balkan leaders who manipulate popular fears and fanaticism to further their expansionist aims, but also those Western politicians and diplomats who helped obscure the truth about the campaign by Serb and Croat religious nationalists to destroy the uniquely rich culture of Bosnia."—William Finnegan, staff reporter for The New Yorker and author of A Complicated War

Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Historical Studies category, American Academy of Religion