The article refers to the phenomenon of sacred violence, which is one of the fundamental principles of traditional religious consciousness. There is a special relevance of the topic in the current conditions of a certain reassessment of religious moral and ethical norms and traditions. The author conducts a brief historical digression, showing that the sacred violence, not being inherently an immanent part of the Abrahamic religions, is very quickly incorporated into religious moral and ethical systems. Illustrating this provision with examples from the history of Judaism and Islam, the author dwells more on the phenomenon of sacred violence in Christian civilization. Particular attention is paid to the situation in which the concept of sacred violence appeared in the era of active secularization of European moral and ethical values. Various attempts of secular value-semantic systems and ideologies to assign themselves the right to sacralize violence are considered. The reasons why such attempts historically failed are emphasized. It is stressed that the transfer of the sacral concept from the sphere of the religious to the sphere of secular ideology is almost always fraught with a crisis of value meanings. Based on the studies of some researchers of modern Western secular culture, the author analyzes the approaches of modern religious movements to the topic of sacred violence. There are two types of them: liberal-radical and conservative-archaic, which attitudes to sacred violence differ in the choice of values that this violence should justify. The extreme importance of the problem of sacred violence in the context of the complex interaction of secular and traditional cultures is noted, and the difference in attitude towards sacred violence within these cultures is analyzed. In conclusion, some generalizing recommendations are given for a more detailed study of the problem under study.