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The controversy over mixing religion and politics has not kept religion apart from government. Religious groups participate in a wide variety of political activities. But religious groups in the United States are not organized as political parties or political machines. There is a relation between religious affiliation and party affiliation. The correlation, however, does not usually indicate a "religious" vote. In part, the relation reflects socio-economic status. For Catholics and Jews it is very much a result of awareness of minority status. As minority awareness declines, trends in voting change. There is no pattern of voting for or against candidates because of their religion. The importance of religion in a presidential election cannot be assessed on the basis of other elections. The election of a Catholic president would not change the nature of our government, but it would have an effect on American politics.

Bull, M. J.: Introduction: religion and politics - American and European experiences and contrasts. - S. 270-272 Madeley, J. T. S.: Unequally yoked: the antinomies of curch-state separation in Europe and the USA. - S. 273-288 Klausen, J.: Why religion has become more salient in Europe: four working hypotheses about secularization and religiosity in contemporary politics. - S. 289-300 Laurence, J.: The corporatist antecedent of contemporary state-Islam relations. - S. 301-315 Green, J. C.: American faith-based politics in the era of George W. Bush. - S. 316-329

Religion and politics have depended on and influenced one another since the origins of what we know as Latin America. Their relation is both mutual and multifaceted; mutual because religion and politics have evolved together over the years, taking material and symbolic support from one another, and multifaceted because it embraces interinstitutional conflict and accommodation (e.g., the "church-state" relations which dominated earlier scholarship) as well as more subtle and elusive exchanges whereby religious and political orders gave legitimacy and moral authority to one another. In this process, religious notions of hierarchy, authority, and obedience reflected and reinforced the pattern of existing social and political arrangements to such an extent that the two orders often seemed indistinguishable.

The themes of religion and politics and their relation in human societies have been a major subject for Cardinal Bernardin. He discussed them widely as a bishop and as a citizen, in the Conference of American Bishops, at universities – where he delivered speeches – among the believers of his archdiocese. As people of faith and citizens of all countries, we find that his questions are our questions too, his analysis is worth reading and studying. Does a separation of Church and State – as it can be seen in our Western culture – offer better ground to carry on two‐level policies, or is it better to have them both administered by a same body, as it happens in Muslim countries? In which ways can church and state cooperate and help each other? What is the role that we have to perform as Christians when called to give our contribution in the political life? This and much more finds extensive explanation in Bernardin's approach.

Jean-Marie Mayeur, La question laïque (XIXe–XXe siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 239 pp., 95 FF. IBSN 2–213–60013–9.Etienne Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français entre crise et libération (1937–1947) (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 293 pp, 130 FF. ISBN 2–020–28131–7.Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), 300 pp., £15.95. ISBN 0–8014–8320–4.Emiel Lamberts, ed., Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945–1995) (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), 511 pp. ISBN 9–061–86808–4.'Christians and political life' (taking the latter term in its widest sense) is a theme which continues to attract a great deal of interest among contemporary historians, in terms of both detailed research and broader surveys. René Rémond and Aline Coutrot demonstrated the interconnectedness of the two domains of religion and politics when they abandoned the restricted subject of relations between states and the Roman Catholic church and initiated the study of religion as an integral part of history, and the social sciences, as a whole. Approaches since 1966 have been greatly modified, as shown by the treatment of the material in the four works now to be reviewed.