With the debate heating up over evolution vs. intelligent design, and religious leaders explaining Katrina as God's wrath on unholy life-styles, let alone religious ideas being invoked to justify suicide bombing, secular scholars are being asked to assess questions which are of a profoundly religious nature. Despite the efforts to purge religion from "rational" discourse, it may simply be the case that we cannot understand human societies and human cooperation without a proper rendering of the role of religion in society. Clearly Max Weber understood this, and one could persuasively argue that Peter Berger made a significant contribution to our quest to understand in his The Sacred Canopy.
Jurgen Habermas, one of the most wide ranging social theorists in the modern era, has in recent years focused on religion and the necessity in the modern world for religious and secular ways of life to find a way to coexist in harmony and peace. MIT published his Religion and Rationality and in the post 9/11 world the rise of "post-secular" societies represents a new set of challenges to Habermas's system of discourse ethics. Belief systems have once again moved to the forefront of social scientific discourse and political economy.
At GMU we have a new research center under the direction of the world's leading figure in the economics of religion, Larry Iannaccone. Larry's new Center for the Economic Study of Religion (CESR) has been established and he is developing courses and seminars in our graduate program at GMU and also conferences and publication projects.
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