Martin Riesebrodt's unconventional study provides an extraordinary look at religious fundamentalism. Comparing two seemingly disparate movements—in early twentieth-century United States and 1960s and 1970s Iran—he examines why these movements arose and developed. He sees them not simply as protests against "modernity" per se, but as a social and moral community's mobilization against its own marginalization and threats to its way of life. These movements protested against the hallmarks of industrialization and sought to transmit conservative cultural models to the next generation.

Fundamentalists desired a return to an "authentic" social order governed by God's law, one bound by patriarchal structures of authority and morality. Both movements advocated a strict gender dualism and were preoccupied with controlling the female body, which was viewed as the major threat to public morality.

Martin Riesebrodt is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Don Reneau is a translator based in Berkeley, California.

"A remarkable and most useful book . . . an indispensable source for scholars working in a wide range of disciplines who may be concerned with religion as a factor in a globalized culture and world system."—Journal of Religion

"A useful and stimulating study of fundamentalism." --Yaakov Ariel, Journal of American History

"A brilliant second-order investigation of the two most familiar cases of modern fundamentalism." --Humanities

"I know . . . no other book so theoretically sophisticated and helpful for classifying and studying fundamentalism in comparative perspective.” --John A. Coleman, Theological Studies

“Difficult issues of historical and theological detail are made readily accessible to the lay reader. I know of no better brief account of either . . . Protestsant fundamentalism in the U.S. from 1910 to 1928 [or] Shi’ite fundamentalism in Iran from 1961 to 1979. . . . In every respect this work is exemplary. . . . A model of theoretically informed but empirically rooted comparative sociology.” --Steve Bruce, American Journal of Sociology

"For all who want to make sense of fundamentalism as a long-term consequence of the modern world, Pious Passion will be required reading. It is also enjoyable, abounding in cogent arguments set forth in lucid prose and supported by compelling examples."—Bruce B. Lawrence, author of Defenders of God

"Riesebrodt's trenchant analysis brings the comparative study of religious activism to a new level of sophistication, exploring not only the ideological development of fundamentalist movements but also the changes in social structure that produced them. Pious Passion is a signal event in the modern social sciences, for it helps to establish a new academic field—the comparative study of fundamentalism."—Mark Juergensmeyer, author of The New Cold War?