Seminar about Faith and Violence Commenced in Columbia University

In the wake of the 11 Sept terrorist attacks, increasingly angles of religion and faith are becoming part of general news stories related to issues of public life, policy outcomes and community debate.

Supreme Court decisions to remove the Ten Commandments and other religious symbols from public property, the federal Court of Appeals ruling to remove “under God?from the Pledge of Allegiance, the steady barrage of lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging religion in public life -- these are situations in which secular culture has gained the upper hand and pushed religion to the periphery.

"A civil society has to understand how certain long-standing religious traditions have played in the cultural and historical experience of the society and to honor and respect that without privileging it," commented Dr. Rowland Sherrill, professor and chair of Religious Studies at Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis.

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has organized a seminar on 23 March to help Journalism professionals to respond with compelling stories drawn from a deeper base of knowledge, information and context when issues of religion and faith are part of the story.

Two respectable speakers were invited to the seminar. Dr. Mark Juergensmeyer, Director, Global and International Studies; Professor, Sociology and Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara is known worldwide for his research and writing on the rise of religious violence, his recent book is recognized as an authoritative text.

He spoke for the topic “Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence ? discussing the roots and relationships of religious violence and terrorism in the contemporary landscape.

Another speaker Dr. Steven Simon, Senior Analyst, RAND Corporation, Washington, D.C. is a specialist in the Middle East and terrorism and was a senior director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council during President Clinton’s administration. He explored the ideas in his book “The Age of Sacred Terror?

The seminar was commenced on Joseph Pulitzer World Room Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York on 23 March morning.