• Introduction: Why Do We Think About War?


• Chapter 1: The Odd Appeal of War


• Chapter 2: War as Alternative Reality


• Chapter 3: Religion as Alternative Reality


• Chapter 4: The Marriage of War and Religion


• Chapter 5: Can Religion Cure War?

Mark Juergensmeyer is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was founding director of the Orfalea Center of Global and International Studies. He is author or editor of over twenty books, including the award winning Terror in the Mind of God.

God at War explores the dark attraction between religion and warfare. 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 finds the connection between religion and warfare in the alternative realities created in the human imagination in response to crises both personal and social. Based on the author's thirty years of field work interviewing activists involved in religious-related terrorist movements around the world, this book explains why desperate social conflict leads to images of war, and why invariably God is thought to be engaged in battle.