Religion in politics
Religion in politics covers various topics related to the effects of religion on politics. Religion has been claimed to be "the source of some of the most remarkable political mobilizations of our times".[1]
Religious political doctrines
Various political doctrines have been directly influenced or inspired by religions. Various strands of
.Christian political movements range from Christian socialism, Christian communism, and Christian anarchism on the left, to Christian democracy on the centre,[3] to the Christian right.
Beyond
An extreme form of religious political action is
Religious political issues
Religious political issues may involve, but are not limited to, those concerning freedom of religion, applications of religious law, and the right to religious education.
Religion and the state
States have adopted various attitudes towards religions, ranging from theocracy to state atheism.
A theocracy is "government by divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided".[5] Modern day recognised theocracies include the
A more modest form of religious state activity is having an official state religion. Unlike a theocracy, this maintains the superiority of the state over the religious authorities. Over 20% (a total of 43) of the countries in the world have a state religion, most of them (27) being Muslim countries.[8] There are also 13 officially Buddhist countries such as Bhutan,[9] while state churches are present in 27 countries.
In contrast to religious states,
Some states are explicitly atheistic, usually those which were produced by revolution, such as various socialist states or the French First Republic.
There have also been cases of states
Religion and political behaviour
Frameworks on religion and political identity
Understanding religion’s impact on
Daniel N. Posner holds the former perspective: that religion should be conflated with identity. He underlines that identity is important in politics not because of some “passions [or] traditions it embodies”, but because it reflects “the expected behaviour of other political factors”.
The latter perspective has been argued by relatively recent scholars, advocating for “(More) Serious”[11] attention to religion in Comparative Politics. Grzymala-Busse outlines three often overlooked characteristics of religion which differentiate it from other markers of identity:
- Its power to transcend national boundaries. Religion ss arguably the largest unit to which individuals claim loyalty (Islam claims roughly 1.5 billion adherents, Christianity roughly 2 billion – respectively 22% and 33% of the world’s population).[11]
- Its demanding commitment by followers to a specific lifestyle, affecting political views – religion proposes an alternative lifestyle defined by “supernatural” forces.[15]
- Its strength of resistance to
Considering these characteristics, it becomes possible to consider religion as a unique identity
Debates about religion in politics
There have been arguments for and against a role for religion in politics. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has argued that "faith and state should be kept separate" as "the most sinister and oppressive states in the world are those that use God to control the minds and actions of their populations", such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.[19] To this, Dawn Foster has responded that when religion is fully unmoored from politics it becomes all the more insular and more open to abuse".[19]
See also
- Christianity and politics
- Judaism and politics
- Political aspects of Islam
- List of political ideologies § Religious ideologies
- Religion and politics in the United States
References
- ^ Jelen, Ted G. (2002). Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. p. 1.
- ^ Fuller, Graham E., The Future of Political Islam, Palgrave MacMillan, (2003), p. 21
- ISBN 9781136159015.
- ^ "Hate In God's Name". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
- ^ "Theocracy | political system". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
- ^ "Inside Iran - The Structure Of Power In Iran | Terror And Tehran | FRONTLINE | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
- ^ "Vatican City Created". National Geographic Society. 2013-12-16. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
- ^ "Religion". www.bhutan.com. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
- ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
- ^ a b c d Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Why Comparative Politics Should Take Religion (More) Seriously,” Annual Review of Political Science 15, no. 1 (June 15, 2012): 421–42, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-033110-130442
- ^ Kenneth D. Wald and Clyde Wilcox,“Getting Religion: Has Political Science Rediscovered the Faith Factor?,” American Political Science Review 100, no. 04 (November 2006): 523, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055406062381.
- ^ Posner, Daniel N. Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- ^ Chandra K, ed. 2012. Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Political Science, New York University.
- ^ Stark R, Finke R. 2000. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- ^ Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth, “The Political Economy of Gender: Explaining Cross-National Variation in the Gender Division of Labor and the Gender Voting Gap,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 1 (2006): 1–19, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3694253.
- ^ Trejo 2009. “Religious competition and ethnic mobilization in Latin America: why the Catholic Church promotes indigenous movements in Mexico.
- ^ Guy Grossman,“Renewalist Christianity and the Political Saliency of LGBTs: Theory and Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa,” The Journal of Politics 77, no. 2 (April 2015): 337–51, https://doi.org/10.1086/679596.
- ^ a b "Should religion play a role in politics?". New Internationalist. 2019-01-29. Retrieved 2019-12-01.