Suchergebnisse

An examination of the relationship between the Church of England & the English polity over the past decade, noting the impact of the change in political leadership & the replacement of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Issues that have generated friction between the Church of England & the government of Margaret Thatcher are discussed, including policies affecting ethnic relations, immigration law, social security provision, education & health service reforms, housing, overseas aid, & sanctions against South Africa. Greater involvement in political controversy on the part of the Anglican Church's episcopate confirms the extent to which the Church's leaders have become a specialized elite group set apart from the nation's governing elites. A narrowing of the social & psychological distance between senior Church spokesmen & their constituents has also occurred, promoting a comprehensive nationwide parochial network that brings parishioners into direct contact with points of tension in society & encourages their contributions to public debate. Criticism of the Church's leadership & the fundamental division between the leaders & their "new right" critics are discussed. It is concluded that recent changes in the Church's relationship with the surrounding society & polity may free it to contribute to the construction of new identities, allowing churches to become channels for the diffusion of cultural impulses on continental provenance. S. Millett

In relation to pol'al issues Cath's have their own att's & decline to join with other Christians, except to a very limited extent; & the efficiency & farsightedness of their lobbying & influence in pol'al circles outstrip similar efforts by other Christians. The strong links between the Free Churches & the Labor Party at the beginning of the cent have been considerably changed & weakened. Free Church att's to politics have been affected by the radical change in their relations to the established Church &, in common with other Christians, by the change in the aims of the politicians themselves with respect to soc questions. Christian att's towards politics & policy are expressed in 3 areas: by Bishops in the House of Lords, speaking on pol'al questions of the day; by Church representatives who work in the headquarter offices of their churches or on the consultative bodies of the British Council of Churches; & by the mass of Church lay & clerical opinion in the country as a whole. IPSA.

The article outlines a framework for the analysis of religion and foreign policy. Despite the increased attention to religion in international relations, questions remain. Particularly controversial, yet relatively unexplored, is the role of religion in the foreign policies of states. We extrapolate from theories in the fields of international relations and comparative politics to explore religion's potential avenues of influence on foreign policy. There are potential tools of analysis in these fields, which can be fruitfully extended and applied to understand the role of religion in foreign policy. We propose a framework within which various causal pathways and mechanisms can be situated. We also show how contributions from the field of religion and politics might be used to frame theories and specify further hypotheses about religion and foreign policy. After identifying the main threads of these lines of research, we discuss how to apply them to the question of the role of religion in foreign policy and set out a new research agenda. We conclude that the potential of these theoretical approaches to the analysis of religion has not yet been exploited. Adapted from the source document.

Modern politics dogmatically separates politics from religion, the state from promises of salvation. This article makes a case for the fundamentally political nature of transcendence. It argues that the changing relationships between authority and salvation depend on culturally crafted engagements of the spiritual and the temporal. In a first part, I examine four key configurations of the political in the history of the West, which can be grasped as extraordinary form of "absolute" politics. From the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, the Gregorian reform, Luther's Reformation, and the French Revolution, secular forms of territorial power are grounded in an engagement between the spiritual and the temporal. In a second part, I show how ultimate ends influenced the emergence of secular forms of power. Although they lack tangible immediate effects and appear impracticable, ultimate ends shaped meanings of secular politics. Ultimate ends have been ritualized in practices of the modern state and the modern self, making the return of religion an inherent pillar of political modernity. Finally, the politics of transcendence must go beyond the friend–enemy distinction by incorporating the potentiality of forms of nonviolent political action, where the ends are superior to the means.

Identifying & distinguishing the dominant features of civil religion, political theology, & public theology is an important aspect of the trans-Atlantic conversation about the role of religion in the common life. Civil religion is often a form of patriotic self-celebration that in the West, & particularly in the US, has often been expressed in terms of Christianity. Its defect lies in its lack of transcendental & thus critical reference. Political theology attempts to meet this defect by bringing the disciplines of theology & critical thought to bear on the relation between politics & religion. Political theology, however, too often equates or reduces the public to partisan or governmental policy, & understands the state as the institution that comprehends & guides all other spheres of society. Public theology seeks to remedy this by insisting that institutions of civil society precede regimes both in order of occurrence & by right, & insists that theology, in dialogue with other fields of thought, carries indispensable resources for forming, ethically ordering & morally guiding the institutions of religion & civil society as well as the vocations of the persons in these various spheres of life. 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

Michael Walzer's new book, Politics and Passion, is the attempt of a major liberal political theorist to modify the essentially triumphalist individualist thrust of much of liberalism. It is written in the spirit of the later work of John Rawls, who tried to listen to the communitarian critique of liberalism & then incorporate it in his more modest version of liberalism instead of letting it coopt liberalism. That effort, though, is much more carefully & extensively worked out by Walzer than by Rawls. Nevertheless, Walzer cannot accept any central normative role for religion in the life of a liberal polity, especially for the type of family-central, traditional community presented by Judaism & Christianity. Since most communitarians are religious, it is arguable whether they can accept the political role religion have been assigned in the liberal project by Walzer. Indeed, it can be argued that Walzer, like almost all liberals, assigns a much too ultimate role for freedom, making it the end of liberal striving & seeing it in opposition to & escape from more traditional forms of social life. It is thus argued that the individual freedom Walzer sees as transcending (although never completely) familial-religious community can be better achieved there, functioning more modestly & realistically as one of the best means to the common good &, therefore, not in opposition to it. Adapted from the source document.

'Power has shifted in Turkey over the last decade, both within business and the state, towards groups with religious-conservative rather than Kemalist-secular sensibilities. This book goes deep inside this transformation to analyze the role of Muslim business networks and their relationship with the state. You will not find a better guide to Turkey's emergent new capitalism.'- Dani Rodrik, Institute for Advanced Study, US

This article explores the complexities of the interaction between politics, religion and gender equality in contemporary Mexico, by analysing recent developments in public debate, legal changes and implementation of government policies in two areas: 1) the inclusion of emergency contraception in public health services in 2004; and 2) the decriminalisation of abortion in Mexico City in 2008, which was followed by a massive campaign to re-criminalise abortion in the federal states. Three main findings emerge from our analysis: first, that women's sexual and reproductive autonomy has become an issue of intense public debate that is being addressed by both state-public policy and society; second, that the gradual democratisation of the Mexican political system and society is forcing the Catholic Church to play by the rules of democracy; and third, that the character and nature of the Mexican (secular) state has become an arena of intense struggle within which traditional political boundaries and ideologies are being reconfigured. Adapted from the source document.