Global Rebellion

Why has the turn of the twenty-first century been rocked by a new religious rebellion? From al Qaeda to the Christian militia to insurgents in Iraq, a strident new religious activism has seized the imagination of political rebels around the world. Building on his groundbreaking 1992 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 manages to put a human face on religious conflicts that have become an increasingly abstract. He explores the new religious rebellions in their diversity-from American Christianity and Israeli Judaism to Indian Hinduism, Japanese Buddhism, and global Jihad-in order to address some basic questions: why are these rebellions religious? And why are they happening now? Juergensmeyer finds answers where two aspects of the post-cold war world intersect: the rise of globalization and the explosion of new religious politics. He argues that religious activism around the world has been provoked by the erosion of secular national identities and the collapse of faith in the moral basis for a secular state. This crucial book revises our notions of religious revolution and offers positive proposals for responding to it in ways that will diminish the violence and lead to an accommodation between radical religion and the secular world.

Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Sociology and Director of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.