Introduction: ‘Defending the Faith: Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the 20th Century’

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of the history of religious competition and secular-religious politics in the twentieth century. It introduces two key terms of this volume, secularism and apologetics. It proposes apologetics as a novel way to understand not only how religious but also secular actors defend their ideological positions. Following a history of the term apologetics in church use, this chapter proposes a model of apologetics neutralized of its narrowly Christian context that can be used for comparison across time and space. This introductory chapter then offers some general findings about the nature of religious competition in the twentieth century, before discussing in a comparative fashion the contributions to this volume.