Religion, the Public, and International Order

Abstract

The last two decades have seen massive productivity in literature tagged with generalized terms such as “religion,” “International Relations (theory),” “war,” “peace,” “order,” “culture,” and “secularism.” Scholars engaged with the role of religion in the public sphere have certainly been among the frontrunners bringing religion and culture back into social science conversations. However, most of these scholars are trained in disciplines other than genuinely “religious” or “political” studies. Most often, they are philosophers or sociologists. The works of Peter Berger (1999, 2008), or Jose Casanova's Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), are good examples of the impressive studies by sociologists of religion who have not been afraid to look across disciplinary boundaries. The large majority of the social scientists, particularly political scientists, however, jumped on the train of religious issues and international studies after 9/11. Among the books published over the last decade, there seems to be a note of partisanship to the disadvantage of certain world religions. While books written before 9/11 included a chapter on every world religion and conflicting issues (for example, Juergensmeyer 1994), among the books published over the last decade, there seems to be a note of partisanship, to the disadvantage of certain world religions. (Though, this may be only anecdotal evidence and, to be fair, the mass of literature on these topics is overwhelming.) What have been missing for a long time are systematic engagements with the conceptions but also practices of “religion” in the context of theoretical frameworks in IR. The Global Resurgence of Religion by Scott Thomas (2005) was among the first books to engage these issues, and there have been an increasing number of fine articles in various journals (case in point is issue 3:29 [2000] of Millennium). Other than that, only two self-claimed textbooks on the issue (Fox 2013; Haynes 2013) hold the fort on bookshelves. Widely acclaimed mainstream and policy-oriented books on the issue (Toft, Philpott, and Shah 2011), on the other hand, have increased social scientists' awareness of religion as an issue in their field. However, these shy away from applying various theoretical traditions to religious issues. International relations are more than simply the sum of foreign policies. Yet, when it comes to the study of religion in international relations this truism of IR theory tends to be ignored. Instead, scholarship has focused foremost on religion and foreign policy, and not on the complex interactions that characterize international relations. Thus, religion and international relations in theoretical terms is a rather uninvested field of research.