Mark Juergensmeyer Libros

This collection of essays examines the complex role of religion in the 21st century, highlighting its connection to nationalism, political sects, and terrorism. While some religious movements oppose globalization, others advocate for moderation and justice. The authors explore how diverse religious perspectives can both challenge and contribute to global society.

From al Qaeda to Christian militias to insurgents in Iraq, a strident religious activism has seized the imaginations of political rebels around the world. This book provides a road map through this complex religious terrain. It puts a human face on conflicts that have become increasingly abstract.

How is religion changing in the twenty-first century? In the global era, religion has leapt onto the world stage, often in contradictory ways. Some religious activists are antagonistic and engage in protests, violent acts, and political challenges. Others are positive and help to shape an emerging transnational civil society. In addition, a new global religion may be in the making, providing a moral and spiritual basis for a worldwide community of concern about environmental issues, human rights, and international peace. God in the Tumult of the Global Square explores all of these directions, based on a five-year Luce Foundation project that involved religious leaders, scholars, and public figures in workshops held in Cairo, Moscow, Delhi, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and Santa Barbara. In this book, the voices of these religious observers around the world express both the hopes and fears about new forms of religion in the global age.

This dark, enthralling book not only documents the global rise of religious terrorism but seeks to understand the odd attraction of religion and violence' . . . Juergensmeyer is a powerful, skillful writer whose deeply empathic interviewing techniques allow readers to enter the minds of some of the late twentieth century's most feared religious terrorists.-Publishers Weekly

Completely revised and updated, this new edition incorporates the events of September 11, 2001 into Mark Juergensmeyer's landmark study of religious terrorism.

Based on the author's thirty years of fieldwork interviewing activists involved in religious-related terrorist movements around the world, this book explains why desperate social conflict and personal fears lead to extremes of both religion and war, and why invariably God is thought to be engaged in battle. Virtually every religious tradition leaves behind it a bloody trail of stories, legends, and images of war, and most wars call upon the divine for blessings in battle. This book probes the remarkably similar alternative realities that are created in the human imagination by both religious ideas and images of war in response to crises both personal and social.

Gandhi’s Way provides a primer of Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of moral action and conflict resolution and offers a straightforward, step-by-step approach that can be used in any conflict―-at home or in business; in local, national, or international arenas. This invaluable handbook, updated with a new preface and a new case study on terrorism in Northern Ireland, sets out Gandhi’s basic methods and illustrates them with practical examples. Juergensmeyer shows how parties at odds can rise above a narrow view of self-interest to find resolutions that are satisfying and beneficial to all involved. He then pits Gandhi’s ideas against those of other great social thinkers in a series of imaginary debates that challenge and clarify Gandhi’s thinking on issues of violence, anger, and love. He also provides a Gandhian critique of Gandhi himself and offers viable solutions to some of the gaps in Gandhian theory.Gandhi’s A Handbook of Conflict Resolution was previously published as Fighting with Gandhi and Fighting Fair.

Why has the turn of the twenty-first century been rocked by a new religious rebellion? From al Qaeda to Christian militias to insurgents in Iraq, a strident new religious activism has seized the imaginations of political rebels around the world. Building on his groundbreaking book, The New Cold War?: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, Mark Juergensmeyer here provides an up-to-date road map through this complex new religious terrain. Basing his discussion on interviews with militant activists and case studies of rebellious movements, Juergensmeyer puts a human face on conflicts that have become increasingly abstract. He revises our notions of religious revolution and offers positive proposals for responding to religious activism in ways that will diminish the violence and lead to an accommodation between radical religion and the secular world.

Beneath the histories of religious traditions--from biblical wars to crusading ventures and great acts of martyrdom--violence has lurked as a shadowy presence. Images of death have never been far from the heart of religion's power to stir the imagination. In this wide-ranging and erudite book, Mark Juergensmeyer asks one of the most important and perplexing questions of our age: Why do religious people commit violent acts in the name of their god, taking the lives of innocent victims and terrorizing entire populations? This, the first comparative study of religious terrorism, explores incidents such as the World Trade Center explosion, Hamas suicide bombings, the Tokyo subway nerve gas attack, and the killing of abortion clinic doctors in the United States. Incorporating personal interviews with World Trade Center bomber Mahmud Abouhalima, Christian Right activist Mike Bray, Hamas leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdul Azis Rantisi, and Sikh political leader Simranjit Singh Mann, among others, Juergensmeyer takes us into the mindset of those who perpetrate and support violent acts. In the process, he helps us understand why these acts are often associated with religious causes and why they occur with such frequency at this moment in history. Terror in the Mind of God places these acts of violence in the context of global political and social changes, and posits them as attempts to empower the cultures of violence that support them. Juergensmeyer analyzes the economic, ideological, and gender-related dimensions of cultures that embrace a central sacred concept--cosmic war--and that employ religion to demonize their enemies. Juergensmeyer's narrative is engaging, incisive, and sweeping in scope. He convincingly shows that while, in many cases, religion supplies not only the ideology but also the motivation and organizational structure for the perpetrators of violent acts, it also carries with it the possibilities for peace. Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000

Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination, from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence surveys intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world.