Betsy Perabo

Betsy Perabo is the author of Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War (Bloomsbury, 2017), which examines the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 as a case study in interreligious war, which she defines as war between countries or groups in which different religious traditions predominate. That is, the book explains how citizens of a nation in which Orthodox Christianity is the dominant religion describe and justify a war against a nation that is not Christian. As a work of both Russian history and Christian ethics, the book’s intended audience includes those who study Russia and Orthodoxy as well as Western Christian political theologians and just war theorists. Perabo is a professor of Religious Studies at Western Illinois University. She received an M.A. in Russian translation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a PhD in Religious Ethics from Yale University. She has published articles in Political Theology and the Journal of Military Ethics.