During the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders in New York in August 2000, a Zoroastrian priest told Gustav Niebuhr of the New York Times that he hoped the gathering would “suppress violence and terrorism that is going on in the name of religion.”

At the turn of the millennium there is, indeed, little question that religion—or, if one wants to be nice about it, the name of religion—has become increasingly associated with conflict around the globe. From Kosovo to Khartoum, from Jerusalem to Jakarta, the struggle for power and pelf both within and between countries can often now be cast in religious terms.

But it is not only as an occasion for violence and terrorism that religion has grown more consequential around the globe. Since the end of the cold war, ethnic and national identity have, at times for the better, taken on a pronounced religious character. In the context of a declining reliance on the power of secular governments to galvanize societies and solve social problems, religions and religiously affiliated institutions have begun to look like plausible candidates to step into the breach. And in some parts of the world, religious belief and practice appear to be on the rise.

All this has undermined the conviction that religion is a declining force in human affairs. The variously understood theory of secularization—whereby Western social thought tended to consider religious decline as an intrinsic dimension of modernization—has had some pretty rough sledding over the past couple of decades. Nor is it merely that religion is proving to be a tougher foe of modernization than anticipated. As Saïd Arjomand points out in this volume, the remarkable revival of Islam in the latter part of the 20th century has been in large measure a product of the very course of advancing literacy, technological development, and globalization that is the very essence of modernization today.

In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu argued that, in any society, religion ought to make up for deficiencies in the secular order of things, and vice versa: “As religion and the civil laws should aim principally to make good citizens of men, one sees that when either of these departs from this end, the other should aim more toward it.” Observing the United States with a Montesquieuian eye a century later, Tocqueville saw religion in Jacksonian America as in fact counterbalancing the tendency of our egalitarian democracy to lead its members into selfishness and an inordinate love of material pleasure. “The great advantage of religions,” he wrote, “is to inspire diametrically contrary urges.”

Recognizing religion as offering resources to different societies according to their different needs may be the most useful approach to understanding its varied roles on the international scene today. Assuredly, not all of these resources point in the direction of good citizenship. But in most parts of the world, religion is in a dynamic relationship with what all else is going on in society, and its capacity to step up to the plate or retire from the field depending on the exigencies of the times, is notable. Where religion is pushing against state authority in China, it is called upon to undergird it in India. Where religion is arrayed against civil society in Iran, it is promoting it in Latin America. Where religion is undermining pluralism in Africa, it has advanced it in Indonesia. And across the Former Soviet Bloc, all of the above seems to be happening at once.

The purpose of this volume is primarily to help American journalists— editorial writers as well as foreign editors and correspondents—better grasp the religious dimension of important international news stories, and to signal some areas to keep an eye on as these stories develop in the near future. Limits of time and resources prevented coverage of the entire waterfront. The religious aspects of conflicts in Northern Ireland and between Israel and her neighbors, to name just two very well known flashpoints, are not discussed at all. But an effort has been made to offer a picture comprehensive enough to suggest how religion functions in today’s world, even where a specific country or situation is not discussed per se.

Each of our seven contributors is a leading expert in his or her area of specialization; together they reflect a range of disciplinary expertise, from sociology and political science to history and anthropology. The group convened in Hartford in the fall of 1999 for a planning session, and the following April presented initial drafts at a conference attended by some two dozen print and broadcast journalists from around the country. What follows has benefited from the lively discussion that took place at the conference.

This is the second volume in a series underwritten by the Pew Charitable Trusts through a grant to the Greenberg Center. The first, Religion and American Politics: The 2000 Election in Context, has proved useful not only to working journalists but to a wider public of teachers and interested citizens as well. I hope this will do likewise.

(Introduction, Mark Silk)

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Copyright © 2000 THE LEONARD E. GREENBERG CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION IN PUBLIC LIFE, Trinity College

Contributors:

SAÏD AMIR ARJOMAND is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He serves as editor of International Sociology, the journal of the International Sociological Association, and is President of the International Association for the Study of Persian-speaking Societies. His books include The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi’Ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 and The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran. He is currently working on a constitutional history of the Islamic Middle East. Phone: (631) 632-7746.

EILEEN BARKER is Professor of Sociology with Special Reference to the Study of Religion at the London School of Economics. Her more than 170 publications include The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice? and New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction. In 1988, with the support of the British Government and mainstream religions, she founded INFORM, a nonprofit organization that provides information which is as objective and up-todate as possible about new religious movements. In 1999 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Phone: +44 (0) 20-7955-7289.

N. J. DEMERATH III is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, immediate past President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Council Member of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion. A long-time student of religion, his dozen books reflect a recent focus on religion and politics, both at home (A Bridging of Faiths: Religion and Politics in a New England City) and abroad (Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics). Phone: (413) 545-4068.

ROSALIND I. J. HACKETT is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is on leave for the 2000-2001 academic at Harvard University, where she is a Liberal Arts Fellow in Law and Religion at Harvard Law School and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions.

Widely published in the area of African religions and new religious movements, she is currently focusing her research on the implications of the expansion of the media sector in Africa for issues of religious freedom and conflict. She recently co-edited Religious Persecution as a U.S. Policy Issue and is author of the forthcoming Nigeria: Religion in the Balance. In August 2000 she was elected Vice President of the International Association for the History of Religions. Phone: (617) 493-4077 (2000-2001); (865) 974- 2466.

ROBERT W. HEFNER is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University and Associate Director at the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, where he directs the Program in Democracy and Civic Culture. He writes extensively on religion and politics in Southeast Asia, with special focus on Indonesia and Malaysia. His books include Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia, The Political Economy of Mountain Java, and Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam. During 1998-2000 he directed a Ford Foundation project on the politics of citizenship and ethno-religious pluralism in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Phone: (617) 353-2194.

DANIEL H. LEVINE is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He has published extensively on religion and politics in Latin America. His books include Religion and Politics in Latin America, Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism, and Constructing Culture and Power in Latin America. He served on the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion. Phone: (734) 763-3080.

MARK SILK is director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Associate Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, Hartford. From 1987 to 1996 he was a staff writer, editorial writer, and columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He edits Religion in the News, a review of news coverage of religion, and is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is the editor of Religion and American Politics: The 2000 Election in Context. Phone: (860) 297-2352.

ARTHUR WALDRON is Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. One of America’s leading students of Asian politics and culture, he is the author of The Great Wall of China, How the Peace was Lost, and From War to Nationalism: China’s Turning Point, 1924-1925. He also contributes frequently to scholarly journals and general circulation periodicals. Phone:(215) 898-6565.

Visit The Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life Website

The Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life was established at Trinity College in 1996 to advance knowledge and understanding of the varied roles that religious movements, institutions, and ideas play in the contemporary world; to explore challenges posed by religious pluralism and tensions between religious and secular values; and to examine the influence of religion on politics, culture, family life, gender roles, and other issues in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Nonsectarian and nonpartisan, the Center sponsors public lectures, organizes conferences and workshops, contributes to the liberal arts curriculum, and supports the publication and dissemination of materials for both academic and general audiences.

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