Ethics and War: Mark Juergensmeyer (Global & International Studies, UC Santa Barbara)

"The Global Religious Challenges to the Secular State"

Mark Juergensmeyer is director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, professor of sociology, and affiliate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics, and has published more than two hundred articles and twenty books, including the recently-released Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State. His widely-read Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, is based on interviews with religious activists around the world--including individuals convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, leaders of Hamas, and abortion clinic bombers in the United States--and was listed by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. 

One of Juergensmeyer's earlier books, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, covers the rise of religious activism and its confrontation with secular modernity. It was named by the New York Times as one of the notable books of the year.