ABSTRACT
The global rise of religious politics is found in every religious tradition, spurred on by the widespread perception that secular nationalism is an ineffective and insufficient expression of public values and moral community in a global era. Modern movements of religious activism, therefore, are subjects of controversy within both religious and secular circles. Religious politics of the twentieth century was often a sort of Hegelian dialectic between two competing frameworks of social order: secular nationalism and religion. The rise of religious conflict at the end of the twentieth century and during the first decade of the twenty-first is an indication of the power of religious ideologies to challenge the right of secular nationalism to sanction killing. Religious activists often command a greater degree of loyalty than do secular politicians. Their interests can subsume national interests.
