Religion and World Politics: Home

Catalog description: "This volume offers a nuanced picture with specific instances of religion and politics in Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu contexts, broadly presenting the phenomenon of religion and politics via country and thematic case studies. Qualitative, quantitative, material, philosophical, and theological analyses draw upon social theory to show how (and why) religion matters deeply in each time and place. The authors and contributors demonstrate that religion is a significant force that drives societies and polities around the world, and that a radical change in the Western understanding of value-driven global politics is needed. Beyond the Death of God offers new, local voices to Western audiences—through essays that suggest the need for an appreciation of Divinity as a quintessence holding a significant place in the hearts, minds, social orders, and political organization of polities around the world."

Religion and World Politics provides a short, accessible, and practical introduction to how we can understand the place of religion in world politics in a more comprehensive, contextually relevant way. Is religion central or irrelevant, positive or negative in world politics today? So much political commentary and analysis focuses on these issues. But these are the wrong questions to be asking. Designed for practitioners, policymakers, and newcomers to the topic of religion and global politics, this book emphasises that religion is not something clear, identifiable, and definable, but is fluid and shifting. Consequently, we need analytical frameworks that help us to make sense of this ever-changing phenomenon. The author presents a critical, intersectional framework for analysing religion and applies this to case studies of three core areas of IR analysis: (1) conflict, violence, and security; (2) development and humanitarianism; and (3) human rights, law, and public life. These cases highlight how assumptions about what religion is and does affect policymakers, theorists, and activists. The book demonstrates the damage that has been done through policies and programmes based on unquestioned assumptions and the possibilities and insights to be gained by incorporating the critical study of religion into research, policymaking, and practice. This book will be of great interest to students of global politics, IR, religion, and security studies, as well as diplomats, civil servants, policymakers, journalists, and civil society practitioners. It will also benefit IR scholars interested in developing their research to include religion, as well as scholars of religion from disciplines outside IR interested in a deeper understanding of religion and world politics.

The effect of religious factors on politics has been a key issue since the end of the Cold War and the subsequent rise of religious terrorism. However, the systematic investigations of these topics have focused primarily on the effects of religion on domestic and international conflict. Scriptures, Shrines, Scapegoats, and World Politics offers a comprehensive evaluation of the role of religion in international relations, broadening the scope of investigation to such topics as the relationship between religion and cooperation, religion and conflict, and the relationship between religion and the quality of life. Religion is often manipulated by political elites to advance their principal goal of political survival. Zeev Maoz and Errol A. Henderson find that no specific religion is either consistently more bellicose or consistently more cooperative than other religions. However, religious similarity between states tends to reduce the propensity of conflict and increase the opportunity for security cooperation. The authors find a significant relationship between secularism and human security.

When American evangelicals flocked to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century to fulfill their Biblical mandate for global evangelism, their experiences abroad led them to engage more deeply in foreign policy activism at home. Lauren Frances Turek tracks these trends and illuminates the complex and significant ways in which religion shaped America's role in the late-Cold War world. In To Bring the Good News to All Nations, she examines the growth and influence of Christian foreign policy lobbying groups in the United States beginning in the 1970s, assesses the effectiveness of Christian efforts to attain foreign aid for favored regimes, and considers how those same groups promoted the imposition of economic and diplomatic sanctions on those nations that stifled evangelism. Using archival materials from both religious and government sources, To Bring the Good News to All Nations links the development of evangelical foreign policy lobbying to the overseas missionary agenda. Turek's case studies--Guatemala, South Africa, and the Soviet Union--reveal the extent of Christian influence on American foreign policy from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Evangelical policy work also reshaped the lives of Christians overseas and contributed to a reorientation of U.S. human rights policy. Efforts to promote global evangelism and support foreign brethren led activists to push Congress to grant aid to favored, yet repressive, regimes in countries such as Guatemala while imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions on nations that persecuted Christians, such as the Soviet Union. This advocacy shifted the definitions and priorities of U.S. human rights policies with lasting repercussions that can be traced into the twenty-first century.