The Question of Religion and World Politics

ABSTRACT

In this essay we introduce this special volume on the role of religion in world conflict. We develop a common definition of religion which focuses on five ways religion can influence society and politics: (1) as a basis for identify; (2) as a belief system that influences behavior; (3) through formal religious doctrines; (4) as a source of legitimacy; and (5) through its religious institutions. We discuss why the issue of religion has in the past received little attention from social scientists. Finally, we develop a set of common questions which the other authors in this volume address. These questions are designed to create a better understanding of the role religion plays in world conflict as well as how international relations theory can help us understand this role.

Notes

Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22–49; Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).

Fred Halliday, “A New World Myth,” New Statesman 10, no. 447 (1997): 42–43; Stephen N. Walt, “Building Up New Bogeymen.” Foreign Policy 106 (1997): 177–89.

Alexander Wend, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Kenneth D. Wald, Religion and Politics in the United States (New York: St. Martins, 1987).

R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

M. Benjamin Mollov, Power and Transcendence: Hans J. Morgenthau and the Jewish Experience (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 3–8.

Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? (Berkeley: University of California, 1993).

Jonathan Fox, “Do Religious Institutions Support Violence or the Status Quo?” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 22, no. 2 (1999): 119–39.

Jeffrey K. Hadden, “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory,” Social Forces 65, no. 3 (1987): 589–91.

Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

Kenneth Westhus, “The Church in Opposition,” Sociological Analysis 73, no. 4 (1976): 314.

R. Scott Appleby, Religious Fundamentalisms and Global Conflict. Foreign Policy Association Headline Series 301 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1994), 7–8; Jeff Haynes, Religion in Third World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 21–23.

Vendulka Kabalkova, “Towards an International Political Theology,” Millennium 29, no. 3 (2000): 682–83.

Huntington's detractors also made a number of other arguments—that the world is uniting into a single society, that he got his facts wrong, and that he ignored some other important factors which contradict his theory. For a full discussion of Huntington's theory and the debate surrounding it, see Jonathan Fox, “Ethnic Minorities and the Clash of Civilizations: A Quantitative Analysis of Huntington's Thesis,” British Journal of Political Science 32, no. 3 (2002): 415–34; Jonathan Fox, Religion, Civilization, and Civil War Since 1945 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).

Daniel Philpott, “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,” World Politics 55, no. 1 (2002): 66–95.

Daniel Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Millennium. Religions in International Relations [Special Issue]. 29, no. 3 (2000).

Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999).

Jeffrey Kaplan, “Introduction,” Terrorism and Political Violence 14, no. 1 (2002): 2.

Jonathan Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late 20th Century: A General Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 65–68.

For example, at a recent symposium on religion and international relations at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, on April 14, 2003, Jonathan Gallagher made precisely this argument.

See, for example, Anthony Gill and Arang Keshavarzian, “State Building and Religious Resources: An Institutional Theory of Church-State Relations in Iran and Mexico,” Politics and Society 27, no. 3 (1999): 431–65; Bruce Lincoln, ed., Religion, Rebellion and Revolution (London: Macmillin, 1985).

Barry Rubin, “Religion and International Affairs,” in Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, ed. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 23.