Suchergebnisse

"Rival understandings of the meaning and practice of the religious and the secular lead to rival public perspectives about religion and religious freedom in North America. This book explores how debates over the American Office of Religious Freedom and its International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA, 1998) and very recent debates over the Canadian Office of Religious Freedom (2013) have pitted at least six basic, but very different meanings of the religious and the secular against each other in often undisclosed and usually unproductive ways. Properly naming this 'religious problem' is a critical first step to acknowledging and conciliating their practically polar political prescriptions. It must be considered how we are to think about religion in political offices, both the Canadian and the American experience, as an essentially contested term, and one which demands better than postmodern paralysis, what the author terms political theology. This is especially critical since both of these cases are not just about how to deal with religion at home, but how to engage with religion abroad, where real peril, and real practical policy must be undertaken to protect increasingly besieged religious minorities. Finally, a principled pluralist approach to the religious and the secular suggests a way to think outside the 'religious problem' and productively enlist and engage the forces of religion resurging around the globe.The book will be of great use to scholars and students in religion and foreign affairs, secularization, political theology, and political theory, as well as professionals and policy makers working in issues relating to religion, religious freedom, and foreign affairs."--Provided by publisher.

AbstractAbraham Kuyper, Dutch Prime Minister (1901–1905) and modern Calvinist, was a controversial figure, not least in his foreign affairs. Yet while Kuyper's legacy has been felt in the world of religious, especially Christian, political, and social theory, very little has been made of Kuyper's actual record as a foreign policy maker and a Prime Minister. So, what was Kuyper's "Christian" perspective and policy on foreign affairs? Using newly available English translations, this article outlines Kuyper's "overseas manifesto" made most plain in Our Program, and compares it against Kuyper's commentary and policy in three major foreign crises: the Boer Cause, in South Africa; the "pacification" of Aceh, in modern-day Indonesia; and finally, the calamity of the Great War in Europe. From these I will paint an introductory, if general, picture of a serious, religious foreign policy maker, and a commentator on world affairs; a complex picture of religiously inflected policy in the early 20th century, with lessons and warnings for scholars of religion and foreign policy today.