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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…
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According to reporting by Deutsche Welle journalist, many African countries exhibit a high level of religious tolerance with Sierre Leone being a primary example. Similar to Sierra Leone, many other nations in sub-Saharan Africa have a high degree of religious tolerance. This is perhaps contrary to expectations for what is a deeply religious and religiously…
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Are religions good or bad for society? This is the question that the Templeton Religion Trust initiative on The Social Consequences of Religion (CORE) seeks to answer. One project of that initiative Advancing Research on Religion and Cooperation (SPARRC) is now accepting Letters of Intent from investigators of all scientific backgrounds interested in this area.…
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The number of religious ‘nones’ has soared, but not the number of atheists – Why? | The Conversation
[R]ejecting a belief in God is by no means a sufficient condition for identifying as an atheist. So why do some individuals who do not believe in God identify as an atheist while others do not? In their study “Adopting a Stigmatized Label: Social Determinants of Identifying as an Atheist beyond Disbelief,” sociologists Christopher P.…
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In January 2024, Rev. Gina Stewart electrified the Joint National Baptist Convention with a convention speech that championed the cause of women in ministry. However, when the recording of her speech was mysteriously removed from the JNBC’s official Facebook page, it highlighted the enduring obstacles faced by women in ministry—particularly in the African American Church.…
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A growing body of research demonstrates that political involvement by Christian religious leaders can undermine the religion’s social influence. Do these negative consequences of politicization also extend to Islam? Contrary to scholarly and popular accounts that describe Islam as inherently political, we argue that Muslim religious leaders will weaken their religious authority when they engage…
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In the wake of 9/11, and with ongoing wars and tensions in the Middle East, questioning contemporary connections between and among religion, identity, and global governance is an exercise that is both important and timely. This volume, edited by Patrick James, addresses essential themes in international relations today, asking how we can establish when religious…
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Historians of religion have examined at length the Protestant Reformation and the liberal idea of the self-governing individual that arose from it. In Spiritual Despots, J. Barton Scott reveals an unexamined piece of this story: how Protestant technologies of asceticism became entangled with Hindu spiritual practices to create an ideal of the “self-ruling subject” crucial…
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This book explores hate speech and blasphemy by analyzing the colonial laws that continue to shape twenty-first-century structures of feeling. It is a study of secularism as global political form, as refracted through a single law: Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes outraging religious feelings. Frequently invoked in contemporary India, Section 295A…
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Religious Responses to Pandemics and Crises explores various dimensions of the interrelations between the individual, community, and religion. With their global scope, the contributions to this volume represent reflections on the rich and multifaceted spectrum of human responses in a variety of different religions and cultures to the current SARS-2-COVID-19 pandemic and similar crises in…
