Lester R. Kurtz is Professor of Public Sociology at George Mason University, where he teaches the comparative sociology of religion, peace and conflict, social movements, globalization, and both Western and non-Western social theory. He has lectured regularly at the European Peace University and was previously Director of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Prof. Kurtz holds a Master's in Religion from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. He is editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Elsevier), coeditor of the two-volume Women, War and Violence (Praeger), Nonviolent Conflict and Civil Resistance (Emerald), Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective (Blackwell), and The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global (University of Illinois Press). He is also the author of numerous books and articles on religion and conflict peace, including The Nuclear Cage: A Sociology of the Arms Race (Prentice Hall) and The Politics of Heresy: The Modernist Crisis in Roman Catholicism (University of California Press), which received the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion's Distinguished Book Award. He is currently working on books titled Gods and Bombs: Religion and the Rhetoric of Violence and another on Fighting Violence.

Prof. Kurtz is the past Chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association as well as the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association, which awarded him its Robin Williams Distinguished Career Award in 2005. He received the Lester F. Ward Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied and Clinical Sociology in 2014 and has lectured in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America and has taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Delhi University in India, and Tunghai University in Taiwan.

About the Author
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Religious Life in the Global Village
Religion and the Globalization of Social Life
Religion and the Sociological Tradition
Tools of the Trade
Three Pillars of Analysis: Beliefs, Rituals, and Institutions
Major Themes in the Sociology of Religion
2. A Sociological Tour: Turning East
Types of Religious Traditions
Hinduism, or Sanatana Dharma
Buddhism
Sikhism
Religious Life in China and East Asia
3. The Tour: Western Religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Prolegomena: The Ancient Greeks
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
Kinship Network Continuities in Judaism and Islam
The Social Construction of Religious Traditions
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
4. Indigenous Religions
Indigenous Beliefs
Indigenous Rituals
Indigenous Institutions
Indigenous Environmentalism
5. The Religious Ethos
Constructing a Religious Ethos
Religion and Identity Construction
Religion and Stratification
Religious Taboo Lines and Ethical Systems
Religion and Sexuality
Religion and Politics
The Ethos of the Global Village
6. Modernism and Multiculturalism
From Local to Cosmopolitan
The Challenge of Modernism
Historical Outcomes of the Modernist Crisis
The Modernist Crisis and the 21st Century
The Crisis of Multiculturalism
7. Religious Movements for a New Century
Civil Religion and Nationalism
Religious Syncretism and Alternative Religious Movements
New Forms of Religiosity
Women's Movements
Religious Environmental Movements
Constructing and Reconstructing Religious Life
8. Religion and Social Conflict
A Theory of Religious Conflict
Religion and the Problem of Violence
Religious Contributions to Nonviolence
Islam and Nonviolence
Chaos or Community?
Notes
References
Glossary/Index