Religion and Politics

Why do Muslim-majority countries exhibit high levels of authoritarianism and low levels of socio-economic development in comparison to world averages? Ahmet T. Kuru criticizes explanations which point to Islam as the cause of this disparity, because Muslims were philosophically and socio-economically more developed than Western Europeans between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Nor was Western colonialism the cause: Muslims had already suffered political and socio-economic problems when colonization began. Kuru argues that Muslims had influential thinkers and merchants in their early history, when religious orthodoxy and military rule were prevalent in Europe. However, in the eleventh century, an alliance between orthodox Islamic scholars (the ulema) and military states began to emerge. This alliance gradually hindered intellectual and economic creativity by marginalizing intellectual and bourgeois classes in the Muslim world. This important study links its historical explanation to contemporary politics by showing that, to this day, ulema-state alliance still prevents creativity and competition in Muslim countries.

Since the rise of the religious right, scholars have become increasingly interested in studying conservative Protestantism. Not only do conservative Protestants (CPs) make up at least a quarter of the US population; they differ from many Americans in gender-role attitudes, childrearing styles, political orientation, and other ways as well. In fact, religious factors often predict people’s political views better than do either class or gender, even though the latter two have received far more attention in the scholarly literature (Manza & Brooks 1997, Kellstedt et al 1996b). Unfortunately research in this area has been hampered by imprecise measurement and poor understanding of the various movements grouped together as CPs. This has muddied statistical results, stifled theoretical development, and blinded researchers to promising areas of analysis. Thus, in this chapter we first discuss the history and distinctive qualities of the various CP movements, then we use these insights to propose better survey measures, and finally we apply this knowledge to several substantive areas (i.e., gender-role attitudes, childrearing styles, tolerance, the .culture wars,. the religious right, and the reasons for the religious vitality of CP groups).

This book argues that hope is the indispensable precondition of religious practice and secular politics. Against dogmatic complacency and despairing resignation, David Newheiser argues that hope sustains commitments that remain vulnerable to disappointment. Since the discipline of hope is shared by believers and unbelievers alike, its persistence indicates that faith has a future in a secular age.

Drawing on premodern theology and postmodern theory, Newheiser shows that atheism and Christianity have more in common than they often acknowledge. Writing in a clear and engaging style, he develops a new reading of deconstruction and negative theology, arguing that (despite their differences) they share a self-critical hope. By retrieving texts and traditions that are rarely read together, this book offers a major intervention in debates over the place of religion in public life.

This paper represents the first systematic attempt at an analysis of religious nongovernmental organizations (RNGOs). Largely ignored as an organizational field, RNGOs constitute a new breed of religious actors shaping global policy–an organizational hybrid of religious beliefs and social activism at local, national, and international levels. This paper proposes a definition of RNGOs, traces the emergence of RNGOs from an historical perspective, and situates them in their current religious and sociopolitical contexts. Drawing on interviews and documentary data from a sample of 263 United Nations-affiliated RNGOs, the author proposes an analytical framework to examine the religious, organizational, strategic, and service dimensions of these organizations. Religious nongovernmental organizations' unique contributions to the redefinition of a just society as well as the sociopolitical challenges arising from their religious identity are discussed.

International Relations scholarship on religious freedom points to religious persecution as a major driver of political violence around the globe. If correct, the perceived persecution of conservative Christians in the United States (U.S.) may contribute to the radicalization of individuals who self-identify as conservative and Christian. Yet, in focusing on country-level indicators, previous empirical research on the “religious freedom peace” is generally silent on the role of individual-level perceptions in the formation and mobilization of grievances. This article represents a first attempt to fill this gap. As such, it asks if the religious freedom discourse articulated in conservative American media contributes to the radicalization of its domestic consumers through the cultivation of perceptions of persecution that are divorced from the generally high levels of religious freedom otherwise experienced in the U.S. Although the results of an original online survey experiment demonstrate that persecution discourse does indeed shape perceptions of threat to religious liberty, I find no support for the idea that it also leads to increased support for political violence, either directly or indirectly through misperceptions of persecution.

It is often assumed that the history of 19th-century France was determined by a struggle between anti-religious progressive reformers and Catholic reactionaries, culminating in laïcité. In this process, the role of socialism as a secular force is usually taken for granted. This article will argue that a more complex approach to socialism can contribute to a better understanding of secularization and the emergence of “modern” forms of religion. Firstly, it will be discussed that pre-1848 social reformers were highly religious, despite their depiction in historical narratives influenced by Marxism. Secondly, it will be shown that socialist ideas continued, after 1848, in new religious movements. This will be demonstrated on the basis of the intellectual development of the socialist Alphonse-Louis Constant who, under his pen-name Eliphas Lévi, is regarded as the founder of occultism. An analysis of his writings will help to illuminate the ambiguous relationship between socialism and secularization.

Religion, in promoting outlandish beliefs and costly rituals, increases ingroup trust but also may increase mistrust and conflict with outgroups. Moralizing gods emerged over the last few millennia, enabling large-scale cooperation, and sociopolitical conquest even without war. Whether for cooperation or conflict, sacred values, like devotion to God or a collective cause, signal group identity and operate as moral imperatives that inspire nonrational exertions independent of likely outcomes. In conflict situations, otherwise mundane sociopolitical preferences may become sacred values, acquiring immunity to material incentives. Sacred values sustain intractable conflicts that defy “business-like” negotiation, but also provide surprising opportunities for resolution.

McMath (2105) argues that while a child’s interest in future autonomy should generally be respected in relation to his own interests, the well-being of other parties may require that his autonomy be overridden in the interests of public health. At the same time, McMath seems conflicted about whether the seriousness of the threat of HIV, especially in developed countries, can in fact justify the sacrifice of individual freedom that is entailed by circumcision in infancy or early childhood (that is, the freedom to make one’s own decision about whether to undergo an elective genital surgery at an age of understanding). In this context, McMath’s discussion about the child’s interest in making decisions that reflect his mature preferences and values when he is older is compelling. But when considering arguments for paternalism in the name of public health, we suggest that McMath moves too quickly from certain empirical premises to associated policy proposals, skipping over gaps in evidence as well as important questions of value.

Objective. We examine racial differences in support for same-sex marriage, and test whether the emerging black-white gap is a function of religiosity. We explore how religious factors play a crucial role in racial differences, and how secular factors have varying effects on attitudes for whites and African Americans.Methods. Using data from the General Social Surveys, we estimate ordinal logistic regression models and stacked structural equation models.Results. We show that the racial divide is a function of African Americans' ties to sectarian Protestant religious denominations and high rates of church attendance. We also show racial differences in the influence of education and political values on opposition to same sex marriage.Conclusions. Religious factors are a source of racial differences in support for same-sex marriage, and secular influences play less of a role in structuring African Americans' beliefs about same-sex marriage.

Scholarly work on the nexus of religion, nationalism, and violence is currently fragmented along disciplinary and theoretical lines. In sociology, history, and anthropology, a macro-culturalist approach reigns; in political science, economics, and international relations, a micro-rationalist approach is dominant. Recent attempts at a synthesis ignore religion or fold it into ethnicity. A coherent synthesis capable of adequately accounting for religious-nationalist violence must not only integrate micro and macro, cultural and strategic approaches; it must also include a meso level of elite conflict and boundary maintenance and treat the religious field as potentially autonomous from the cultural field.

In this article we identify four principal dimensions of religious fundamentalism as they interact with the Internet: hierarchy, patriarchy, discipline, and seclusion. We also develop the concept of cultured technology, and analyze the ways communities reshape a technology and make it a part of their culture, while at the same time changing their customary ways of life and unwritten laws to adapt to it. Later, we give examples for our theoretical framework through an empirical examination of ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel. Our empirical study is based on a data set of 686,192 users and 60,346 virtual communities. The results show the complexity of interactions between religious fundamentalism and the Internet, and invite further discussions of cultured technology as a means to understand how the Internet has been culturally constructed, modified, and adapted to the needs of fundamentalist communities and how they in turn have been affected by it.

At 86, Jürgen Habermas remains one of the most inf luential living social philosophers in the world. Since the 9/11 attacks, he has focused on the problem of religion in the public sphere and helped to popularize the term 'post-secularism'. Despite this recent shift in his work, religion has always been a theme in his complex critical theory. In this paper, I trace the ways in which Habermas has situated religion over the span of his career, including significant shifts, and the ways in which his theory has been taken up by others. In conclusion, I point toward some directions for future engagement with his work in the study of religions.

Rowan Williams' attempt to speak for the common good and rein in the extremes of liberal individualism is at the core of his Hegelian co-ordination of ecclesiology and political theology. His is a managerial approach which co-ordinates his Anglican ecclesiology with a Hegelian political theology. Behind the approach of Rowan Williams lies a common liberal Anglican tradition of absorbing large tracts of Hegel's work to forge a political theology that is wedded to a liberal establishment ideology of managing not only the established Church of England and the global Anglican provinces, but also alternately co-opting and marginalising other more orthodox Christian theologies and churches. This paper aims to show how Williams' political thinking was secular from his first publication on politics, a paper on Welsh devolution based on an address given in 1979. This secular approach is rooted in a theological approach that advocates divine retreat from the world. I then analyse critically Williams' reading of Hegel in the three papers he wrote in the 1990s as he climbed the Anglican episcopal ladder. Reading Hegel enables Williams to theologise his secular post-Kantian political theory. I argue that Williams strives to read Hegel in a non-esoteric style, evading the hints towards Hegel's esoteric and pagan roots found in Gillian Rose and Andrew Shanks, to whom he is indebted for his reading of Hegel. Subsequently I show how all this has been incorporated into a managerial approach to types of theology, with an apophatic method peculiar to Williams being employed to manage more kataphatic and orthodox types. The doctrines of eschatology and creation constitute the outer poles of this method. This was the framework for Williams' discussion of the Islamic community in England and modern Palestine in his 2008 speech 'Islam in English Law'. The twin focus on England and Palestine, and on the definitions of religious community appropriated from J. N. Figgis and Gillian Rose, may account for the ambivalence towards the idea of the use of violence by the community in the speech.

Religion is among the most often overlooked factors in the study of international politics. Some reasons for this include a bias against the study of religion that dates to the origins of the social sciences, the influence on social scientists of classical liberal ideas of the desirability of separation of church and state, and the fact that religion is difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, it is argued here that religion influences international politics in three ways. 1) Religion influences the worldviews of many decision makers and the religious worldviews of constituents influence the environment in which decision makers act. 2) Religion is a source of legitimacy for political decisions and actions. 3) Religion is an issue that crosses borders in the form of domestic conflicts with international implications, international religious movements including fundamentalist movements and political Islam, the foreign policies of theocratic states and other governments guided by religious ideologies, the international movement for the support of religious rights, international issues that overlap with religious ones, and the world’s growing interdependence. All of this indicates that religion should be given more consideration in the study of international politics.

""Liberalism is widely regarded as a modern intellectual tradition that defends the rights and freedoms of autonomous individuals. Yet, in both colonial and postcolonial contexts, liberal theorists and policymakers have struggled to defend the rights and freedoms of political subjects whom they regard as “primitive,” “backward,” or in more politically-correct terms, “indigenous” (Pagden 1982; Damodaran 2006b; Viswanathan 2006; Jung 2008). Liberalism thus recurrently encounters its primitive other, a face-off that gives rise to a peculiar set of dilemmas and contradictions for political theory, policy, and practice in colonial and postcolonial contexts (Ivison 2002; Ivison et al 2000; Banerjee 2006; Ghosh 2006). In what ways can postcolonial law rid itself of its colonial baggage? How can the ideal of universal liberal citizenship overcome paternalistic notions of protection? How might “primitive” subjects become full and equal citizens in postcolonial societies?

To explore these dilemmas and contradictions, I study the intellectual trajectory of “primitivism” in India from the construction of so-called tribal areas in the 1870s to legal debates and official reports on tribal rights in contemporary India. As such, this paper has two principal aims: firstly, to read closely the legal provisions justifying colonial and postcolonial rule over tribal populations in order to highlight the ambiguities and paradoxes of primitivism as an ideology of rule in India, and secondly, to understand these legal texts in their proper intellectual and political contexts in order to develop an historically-inflected understanding of the continuing tension between the constitutional ideal of liberal citizenship and the disturbing reality of tribal subjecthood produced by colonial and postcolonial states in India. In doing so, I seek to put into conversation the small but influential literature on liberalism and modern empire with the voluminous writings on colonial anthropology and administration in British India.

My approach in this paper may be termed interpretive or hermeneutical. I read primary legal texts closely with particular attention to continuities and shifts in their languages and concepts. Furthermore, I situate these texts in their historical contexts in order to better appreciate how the hermeneutics of these texts share a two-way relationship with real-world policy and practice. For the colonial period, I focus on the Scheduled Districts Act (1874), selected administrative and missionary writings on tribal areas and peoples, and extracts from colonial constitutions and commissioned reports. For the postcolonial period, I study the debates over the Constitution of India and its provisions for scheduled tribes, key legislation and court decisions on tribal rights and livelihoods, and reports on tribal development from the 1960s onwards. Lastly, I invoke secondary sources by historians, political theorists, and anthropologists that explore the historical relationship between liberalism and modern empire as well as ideologies of rule that have used anthropological knowledge to justify their raison d’êtres.""

This study examines the extent of separation of religion and state (SRAS) between 1990 and 2002 in 152 states using the Religion and State database. The results show that when using a strict interpretation of SRAS—no state support for religion and no state restrictions on religion–no state has full SRAS except the United States. Even when discounting moderate amounts of government involvement in religion (GIR), greater than three quarters of states do not have SRAS. The findings also show that GIR has increased slightly between 1990 and 2002, economic development is associated with higher levels of GIR, states with Muslim majorities have higher levels of government support for religion, and democracies have higher levels of SRAS than do autocratic states but rarely have full SRAS. This contradicts the idea that SRAS is an essential element of democracy and predictions that religion will cease to be an important political and social factor in modern times.

"Corruption has become one of the most popular topics in the social scientific disciplines. However, there is a lack of interdisciplinary communication about corruption. Models developed by different
academic disciplines are often isolated from each other. The purpose of this paper is to review several major approaches to corruption and draw them closer to each other. Most studies of corruption fall
into three major categories: (i) rational-actor models where corruption is viewed as resulting from cost/benefit analysis of individual actors; (ii) structural models that focus on external forces that determine corruption; and (iii) relational models that emphasize social interactions and networks among corrupt actors. Focusing on actors’ behavior and the social context, this article explains corruption concepts taken from sociology, economics, organization studies, political science, social anthropology, and social psychology."

Quote as:
Salvatore, Armando. 1997. Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity, Reading: Ithaca Press.

This is my first book, based on my PhD thesis that won the MESA Malcolm Kerr Award in the Social Sciences, 1994. The book provides a 'genealogical' background to more recent work of mine, particularly the volume The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility.

This article is an inquiry into understanding why supranational religious identity often fails to act as a conflict resolution tool in religiously homogenous ethnic conflicts. Narrowing its focus down to the role of religious elites as potential peacemakers in such conflict zones, it proposes the divergence in their conceptualizations of religious and ethnic identities as an explanatory factor. Building on 62 in-depth interviews conducted in Turkey with Sunni Muslim Kurdish and Turkish religious elites, it identifies a threefold typology of religious and ethnic identities, as conceptualized by these elites: 1) religio-ethnic; 2) ethno-religious; 3) religious. After exemplifying each category with interview data it demonstrates the role these distinctions play in preventing the successful implementation of BMuslim fraternity^ as a solution to the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. With these findings, the article contributes to both the literature on religion in conflict resolution and that on identity formation and boundary making. While it invites the former to turn its gaze from macro-level structural factors to meso-and micro-level cultural factors in analyzing religious elite involvement in conflict resolution, it invites the latter to stop employing Bethnicity^ as an all-encompassing term (that covers a vast array of identity markers including religion) and focus, instead, on the gradations between religion and ethnicity as sources of identity.

In short, this essay does for the concept of the assemblage what Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben did for Foucault in their essays on the dispositif: it extracts from a large body of work the core formal features of its operative methodology or logic.

The study of religion and international religions has witnessed an exponential growth in recent decades. Courses and programs exploring the complex entanglements between faith and global politics have likewise mushroomed around the world. Despite this ferment, reflections on teaching religion and international relations have so far lagged behind. This forum seeks to remedy this general silence. It brings together a diverse range of scholars from a multiplicity of national, religious, method-ological, and theoretical backgrounds who teach across a variety of different geographical settings including North America, Europe, and East Asia. Contributors reflect on three broad themes. First, how do we engage with the contested character of religion as a category of analysis and practice , and with the multidisciplinary nature of its study? Second, how does the context within which we operate-be it geographical, cultural, institutional , or historical-influence and shape who, what, and how we teach? Third, how do we address the important and, at times, contentious personal and ethical challenges that our research and teaching on religion and politics inevitably raises in the classroom? Resumen: El estudio de la religión y de las religiones internacionales ha sido testigo de un crecimiento exponencial en las últimas décadas. De igual manera, los cursos y programas en los que se exploran los entre-lazamientos entre la fe y la política mundial han proliferado en todo el mundo. Pese a esta agitación, las reflexiones sobre la enseñanza de la re-ligión y las relaciones internacionales han quedado, hasta el momento, rezagadas. En este foro se apunta a poner fin a este silencio general-izado. En él, se reúne a diferentes académicos de una gran variedad de Bettiza, Gregorio et al. (2019) Teaching Religion and International Relations: Disciplinary, Pedagogical, and Personal Reflections. International Studies Perspectives, contextos nacionales, religiosos, metodológicos y teóricos que enseñan en distintos entornos geográficos, incluidos América del Norte, Europa y Asia del este. Los colaboradores reflexionan sobre tres grandes ejes temáticos. En primer lugar, ¿cómo interactuamos con el controvertido carácter de la religión como categoría de análisis y práctica, y con la naturaleza multidis-ciplinaria de su estudio? En segundo lugar, ¿de qué manera el contexto-ya sea geográfico, cultural, institucional o histórico-en el cual oper-amos influye y moldea a quiénes, qué y cómo enseñamos? En tercer lugar, ¿cómo abordamos los importantes y, en ocasiones, contenciosos desafíos personales y éticos que nuestra investigación y enseñanza sobre religión y política inevitablemente plantean en el aula? Extrait: L'étude de la religion et des relations internationales a connu une croissance exponentielle au cours des dernières décennies. Des cours et programmes décortiquant les relations complexes entre la foi et la poli-tique internationale ont également proliféré dans le monde entier. Malgré cette effervescence, les réflexions sur l'enseignement de la religion et des relations internationales se font toujours attendre. Cette tribune cherche à répondre à ce silence général. Elle réunit plusieurs spécialistes de na-tionalité, religion, méthode et théorie différentes qui enseignent dans une grande variété de pays en Amérique du nord, Europe et Asie de l'est. Les contributeurs réfléchissent sur trois grands thèmes. Premièrement, comment abordons-nous le caractère contesté de la religion en tant que caté-gorie d'analyse et de pratique ainsi que la nature pluridisciplinaire de son étude? Deuxièmement, comment le contexte dans lequel nous agis-sons-qu'il soit géographique, culturel, institutionnel ou historique-influence et façonne les personnes à qui nous enseignons, la matière que nous enseignons et notre méthode pédagogique? Troisièmement, comment abordons-nous les problématiques importantes et parfois contestées, personnelles et éthiques que nos recherches et notre enseignement sur la religion et la politique ne manquent pas de soulever chez nos étudiants?

Responding to the call for a deeper understanding of the religious phenomenon in planning – advanced, among others, by Leonie Sandercock and June Thomas in this journal – this paper argues that understanding religion in planning entails understanding religion’s constitutive other: secularism. This position draws on the burgeoning field of secular studies as well as examples of entanglement of religion, secularism, and planning in the United States and France. It problematizes a long-held assumption that good planning is based upon the notion of ‘religious indifference,’ for the assumption is conceptually anachronistic and practically untenable. This paper offers a set of methodological considerations as to how planners can radically rethink this assumption while effectively attending to the religious subjectivities of their constituencies and actively working through the structures of the modern state. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this analysis for planning practice against the backdrop of recent improvements fostered by the American Planning Association as well as the relevance of this analysis across international contexts.

"Over the last two decades a number of theoretical perspectives have emphasized the growing phenomenon of extremist political challenges. These challenges come from two main sources: largely secular radical right-wing populism and religious fundamentalism. Yet the relationship between the two is still theoretically and empirically limited. Researchers have
usually limited their discussion to only one of the phenomena, ignoring the fact that despite the basic distinction between the two (i.e., secular versus religious orientation), the literature
points to many commonalities. This article takes up the challenge by analyzing the predictive
power of socioeconomic, ideological, and security threat factors on voting behavior for populist radical right (PRR) parties and for religious fundamentalist (RF) parties. Data collected following the Israeli parliamentary election of 2003 (N = 808) offer a challenge to the conventional, secular wisdom of right-wing extremism. The radical right party family is multifaceted with at least two flanks – a hawkish nationalist flank on the one hand, and a ‘faith-based’ radical flank on the other. Implications of these distinctions for voting behavior scholars and radical right-wing scholars are discussed."

The criminalization of Muslims-framing an Islamic religious identity as a problem to be solved using state crime control logic-is undeniably in process in the United States. Local, state, and federal statutes target Muslims for surveillance and exclusion, and media sources depict Muslims as synonymous with terrorism, as others have shown. This paper analyzes the public's role in the criminalization of Islam, which I call "cr-Islamization." Drawing on in-depth, qualitative interviews in a major Southwest city during the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, I detail how the majority of 144 politically, racially, and economically diverse interviewees talk about Muslims as a potential "racial threat," using "fear of crime" language indicative of the mass incarceration era. This suggests that criminalization theory should be central to sociological studies of Muslims in the contemporary United States, and that criminal-ization rhetoric remains powerful, despite mainstream enthusiasm for criminal justice reform. I argue that criminalization's power might reside in its ability to mutate in the "post-racial" era. The mechanisms supporting crimmigration, the criminalization of black Americans, and cr-Islamization are related but not identical. Muslims are religiously and racially subjugated, but more economically secure compared to other criminalized groups. This paper's findings should prompt scholars to reexamine the relationships between racialization, criminalization, religious subjugation, and economic exploitation in the twenty-first century United States.

This study examines the role of religion in ethnic nationalism and revolutionary wars between 1945 and 2001 using the Minorities at Risk (MAR) and State Failure (SF) datasets. It asks whether religion is an important factor in conflict and whether the level of this importance has changed over time. Few previous quantitative studies on religion and conflict analyze data from earlier than 1980. The analysis of the MAR dataset shows that until 1980 religious and non-religious ethnic nationalism caused a near-identical amount of conflict but from 1980 onward, religious nationalist ethnic groups were responsible for increasingly more violent conflicts in comparison to non-religious nationalist groups. The analysis of the SF dataset shows a rise in religious violence beginning around 1965. The earlier date in the analysis from the SF dataset is attributed to the higher sensitivity of that dataset to changes in the level of violence. These results have several implications. First, they show that religion can influence conflict but it is not the only influence. Second, the influence of religion on conflict can change over time. Third, religion’s influence in conflict has been increasing. This contradicts modernization and secularization theory which were the dominant paradigms in the Western social sciences for most of the twentieth century and predicted the demise of religion as a relevant political and social force in the modern era.

The world's religions have strong traditions of contributing to theories and practices around justice. Recent debates on global justice within International Relations (IR), however, have largely overlooked possible contributions from religion. This article explores why religion is neglected, despite its potential for constructive involvement in the pursuit of global justice. I argue that dominant macro-level conceptions of both global justice and religion within IR have been limited by dualism. Combining reading of Bakhtinian dialogism and relational thought, I propose expanded understandings of both religion and global justice that move beyond dualism.

Religion can influence party politics in several ways: directly, through the activity of explicitly religious parties; indirectly, both through the lobbying activity of institutional actors such as churches and religious non-governmental organizations, and through the influence of religious values on the manifestos of non-explicitly religious parties. However, although several studies about specific contexts exist in the literature, an exhaustive comparative typological analysis of the role of religion in party politics is still missing. One of the main obstacles to a thorough classification is the notion of “religious party” itself, which many reject since it proves too restrictive and is often perceived as carrying a normative meaning. This article therefore proposes a typology of “religiously oriented parties”, which includes not only explicitly religious parties, but also formally secular parties that have significant sections of their manifestos dedicated to religious values, explicitly appeal to religious constituencies, and/or include significant religious factions. The article offers five types of religiously oriented parties: the conservative, the progressive, the fundamentalist, the religious nationalist, and the camp types. Each type is examined through several variables related to political parties more broadly: their organization, their relation with interest groups, their ideology, their social base, and their impact on the quality of democracy and on democratization processes.

Abstract
Some recent positions on Antonio Gramsci portray him as a vanguardist who outright rejects common sense and popular culture as playing a role in counter-hegemony or political resistance.  This manuscript seeks to provide a corrective to these recent portrayals. It does so by accurately evaluating Gramsci’s position on the dialectical relationship subaltern (popular) beliefs have to counter-hegemony; by considering his bottom-up stance on the relationship organic intellectuals
have to the subaltern; by focusing on his cutting edge position on ideological articulation; and in light of his articulations regarding the role of subaltern passion and subaltern-centered pedagogy for counter-hegemony. As a way to illustrate the significance of the subaltern for counterhegemony,
the potential of popular religion for counter-hegemony is explored.

Qigong—a regimen of body, breath, and mental training exercises—was one of the most widespread cultural and religious movements of late-twentieth-century urban China. The practice was promoted by senior Communist Party leaders as a uniquely Chinese healing tradition and as a harbinger of a new scientific revolution, yet the movement’s mass popularity and the almost religious devotion of its followers led to its ruthless suppression.

In this absorbing and revealing book, David A. Palmer relies on a combination of historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives to describe the spread of the qigong craze and its reflection of key trends that have shaped China since 1949, including the search for a national identity and an emphasis on the absolute authority of science. Qigong offered the promise of an all-powerful technology of the body rooted in the mysteries of Chinese culture. However, after 1995 the scientific underpinnings of qigong would come under attack, its leaders denounced as charlatans, and its networks of followers, notably Falungong, suppressed as “evil cults”.

According to Palmer, the success of the movement proves that a hugely important religious dimension not only survived under the CCP, but was actively fostered, if not created, by high-ranking party members. Tracing the complex relationships among the masters, officials, scientists, practitioners, and ideologues involved in qigong, Palmer opens a fascinating window on the transformation of Chinese tradition as it evolved along with the Chinese state. As he brilliantly demonstrates, the rise and collapse of the qigong movement is key to understanding the politics and culture of post-Mao society.

Co-Authored with Robert Audi (University of Notre Dame, Department of Philosophy)
NB: Please cite final version, which can be found at the JMP website, linked below.

Abstract:
Debates about the ethics of healthcare and medical research in contemporary pluralistic democracies often arise partly from competing religious and secular values. Such disagreements raise challenges of balancing claims of religious liberty with claims to equal treatment in healthcare. This paper proposes several mid-level principles to help in framing sound policies for resolving such disputes. We develop and illustrate these principles, exploring their application to conscientious objection by religious providers and religious institutions, accommodation of religious priorities in biomedical research, and treatment of patients’ religious views in doctor-patient encounters. Given that no sound set of guiding principles yields precise solutions for every policy dispute, we explore how morally sound democracies might deliberatively resolve such policy issues following our proposed principles. Taken together and carefully interpreted, these principles may help in guiding difficult decision-making in the indefinitely large realm where government, medical providers, and patients encounter problems concerning religion and medicine.

When and how do anti-system religious parties become incorporated into the political system of their countries? In recent decades, social scientists have sought answers to this question within the framework of the moderation literature. While moderation theory identifies key factors that influence party leaders' willingness to seek political incorporation, it is less successful in explaining the contingent outcome of the incorporation process. This article develops an alternative analytical framework for the study of political incorporation grounded in social performance theory. Through a case study of Islamic parties in Turkey between 1994 and 2011, the author demonstrates that political incorporation is as much a function of successful cultural performances on the public stage as the right alignment of institutional incentives and sanctions. As a result of the Justice and Development Party leaders' successful projection of a mainstream political identity between 2002 and 2011, secularist state elites in Turkey failed to establish legitimate grounds for a political intervention, which in turn provided the party with the time and opportunity to remove the institutional barriers to its incorporation.

HIV is God’s blessing examines the Russian Orthodox Church’s (ROC) role in combating the HIV and drug use epidemics in contemporary Russia.  Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork with a ROC rehabilitation and HIV prevention and care program in St. Petersburg, this book is the first anthropological analysis of these epidemics in Russia.  Beginning from the perspective of the anthropology of moralities, the book considers such critical issues as therapeutics as self-transformation, religious approaches to the relief of social suffering, HIV and injected drug use in the context of globalization and social change, and rehabilitation as moral training and the cultivation of self-governance and responsibility.  Ultimately, it is argued that while the ROC publicly condemns the influences of globalization and the West on post-Soviet Russia, the unintended consequences of the rehabilitation process in the Church-run program is the cultivation of new moral persons better equipped to succeed in the same neoliberal environment the Church blames for the HIV and drug use epidemics in the first place.  Thus, by working on the bare life of rehabilitants the program may help individuals overcome drug addiction, but at the same time is cultivating responsibilized citizen-subjects better attuned to a world the Church ultimately opposes.

Why and how do nations turn to religion to justify claims for statehood? This article addresses this question in both theory and practice, showing that religion plays multiple legitimating roles that shift dynamically according to the success they yield for national movements. I posit four legitimating models: (1) nationalism instead of religion (“secular nationalism”), (2) nationalism as a religion (“civil religion”), (3) religion as a resource for nationalism (“auxiliary religion”), and (4) religion as a source of nationalism (“chosen people”). Empirically, I analyze the roles of religion in Zionist efforts to legitimate a Jewish state in Palestine. I argue that Zionism has responded to persistent delegitimation by expanding the role of religion in its political legitimation. The right of self-determination, which stands at the core of the “secular Zionism” legitimation, has given way to leveraging Judaism, which in turn has been eclipsed by constructing a Zionist civil religion and a “chosen people” justification.

The author argues that for the last three decades pastoral theology, in keeping with most disciplines in the humanities, has implicitly accepted the normativity of capitalism. Thus capitalism has not undergone rigorous analysis or critique. This has become problematic in light of increasing evidence that the culture of late capitalism (neoliberalism) has become globally hegemonic, and is undermining social, interpersonal and psychological well-being. Operating in paradigmatic fashion, neoliberalism has founded new forms of suffering while transforming previous types of suffering into novel mutations. Unless pastoral theology incorporates awareness of these developments into its analysis of suffering, and into its theories for alleviating suffering, it will risk a crisis of credibility. The author concludes with a summary of five characteristics for a pastoral theology that no longer naturalizes capitalism.
Keywords: Pastoral theology, capitalism, neoliberalism, suffering, class, social psychology, soul

With the spectre of post-Spring Islamist rule looming, Christians in Syria and Egypt were forced to choose between quasi-secular autocracy and sectarian populism. The status quo ante under al-Assad and Mubarak, though democratically deficient, temporarily contained civil hostilities and afforded Christians with a modicum of secular protection and even prosperity, the degree of which sheds light on the relative absence of Syrian Christian protestors and the salient Coptic presence during the Egyptian revolution. This article explores how socio-economic and religious peripheral designations intersected with state policy to determine political (in) action amongst Christian minorities in two crucial countries of the region.