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Despite the commonly held Western view that secularisation has taken religion out of the political sphere, the relationship between religion and politics is at the heart of many of the critical issues of our time. The role of the church in nationalist movements in Eastern Europe, and the influence of Islam on Middle Eastern politics are two clear examples. Politics and Religion in the Modern World sets out to examine what makes religion and politics such a potent combination in countries around the world. It is an important analysis of the relationship between religion and politics, which will be recommended reading for students of political science, religious studies, and sociology.

European societies have experienced a decrease in the social importance of religious issues. Values and attitudes towards gender roles have also changed in the last decades. In European countries, people have become more egalitarian with respect to the position of women in society. The author tries to identify the relationship between secularization and changes in gender values. As a result of secularization, the individual value system has become fragmented and religious values have lost their coordinating role. The investigation employs cross-national and longitudinal analysis of European Values Survey data (1990, 1999), most of the European countries being included in the study. The results indicate the decreasing impact of traditional religious belief on values related to gender roles during the 1990s in Europe and a common pattern of relationships between gender values and religiosity in most European societies. (author's abstract)

Organized religion does not claim to be perfect and is aware of certain hazards to its mission inherent in its very structures. Preoccupation with organizational machinery or spiritual compromise for the sake of institutional survival may defeat the goals it pursues. There is always a tension between the ideal and human efforts to attain it. Not imperfec tion in relation to proclaimed standards, but insincerity or cyni cism regarding them merits the charge of "unethical." Organized religion acts unethically whenever it compromises its prophetic role for the sake of institutional self-preservation, prestige, or power. Its dilemma arises from the fact that it must interact with the power structures in society which, as well as its own adherents, often seek to use religion to support their own interests instead of responding to its insights. To teach and inspire while understanding the shortcomings of humanity, to generate power from within instead of manipulating power from without, and to co-operate with other agencies for the common good without exploiting them or becoming their instruments for compromising goals—these are some of the ethical problems of organized religion.

La réémergence du facteur religieux est un défi théorique pour les analyses des relations internationales, qui doivent concevoir des catégories d'interprétation inédites, ainsi que des cadres analytiques et des outils méthodologiques nouveaux. L'impact de la religion sur la politique internationale est multiple et constitue une source de légitimation publique. Intégrer le facteur religieux dans les RI éclaire d'abord la relation ambivalente entre dynamique religieuse et monde occidental post-westphalien privatisé, l'impact social et politique des différents systèmes de croyances à travers le monde, et le lien entre exclusivité et religion. Deuxièmement, la démarche expose les interactions complexes entre religion, guerre et sécurité, bien au-delà des approches primordiales-essentialistes et modernistes-instrumentales. Troisièmement, elle révèle la contribution potentielle de la tradition religieuse à une nouvelle éthique de responsabilité internationale.

A happy result of the Bicentennial can be increased self-knowledge. The danger, however, is that one may focus too exclusively on the United States, thus magnifying out of proportion both our virtues and our faults.Such distortion is evident in the current discussion of American civil religion. The turmoil of the late sixties and the self-examination of the seventies have encouraged consideration of the civil beliefs and practices widely shared by Americans. Robert Bellah, Will Herberg, Martin Marty, and Sidney Mead are among those who have recently written on the subject. Too often learned commentators have failed to note that American civil religion is an expression of general social patterns. It is therefore useful to take a look at non-American civil religions in several traditional and revolutionary societies.

La política y la religión siempre han estado estrechamente relacionadas en tanto que ambas dependen de la manera en la que el hombre se ve a sí mismo y al mundo que lo rodea. Pero una de las características principales de la democracia, el sistema político mayormente aceptado en el mundo de hoy, es su secularización. La democracia ya no permite tronos, y la religión ha sido reducida a una posibilidad de tantas que tienen los individuos al momento de elegir cómo quieren vivir sus vidas. No obstante, todo sistema político implica una religión diferente, y viceversa. La democracia no es de hecho el momento del fin de la religión, sino una reconfiguración absoluta de la experiencia religiosa que podría llegar a ser considerada la más auténtica de todas. El presente artículo investiga la mutua dependencia entre política y religión a partir de la cosmovisión que el hombre tiene de sí mismo en el contexto de la democracia asumiendo el desafío planteado a la libertad religiosa desde el horizonte político que se propone como tarea el camino de la paz

Abstract
Affiliation with different religions can have different effects on practitioners' trust in state institutions and in social actors. Based on a survey of 3,740 residents in Hong Kong in 2021, we examine the relationship between religious affiliation and believers' trust in the political authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong and in civil actors in the city. We find that affiliation with traditional Chinese religions and Eastern religions has a positive and significant effect on believers' trust in the political authorities, whereas belief in Western religions does not have such an effect. Affiliation with Western religions, however, has a stronger positive and significant effect on interpersonal trust and on tolerance for unconventional behaviour. These findings shed light on the interaction between the government and religious groups in Hong Kong after 1997.