Studying Politics and Religion: How to Distinguish Religious Politics, Civil Religion, Political Religion, and Political Theology
In: Journal of Religion in EuropeSearch for other papers by Carsten Bagge Laustsen in
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The study of politics and religion is today fragmented to a degree that you can hardly refer to it as one academic field anymore. This article lists four fundamentally different approaches to the study of politics and religion: political religion; religious politics; civil religion; and finally, political theology. The article compares the four approaches on a number of significant parameters: their understanding of what religion is; their critical ambition; to which degree a preliminary distinction between politics and religion is presupposed; and most importantly, how to approach the relationship between religion and politics in an analytical, strategic sense. The ambition with this survey is to support a discussion between the four approaches with a view to reach a more complete understanding of the relationship between politics and religion in all its complexity.
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2)
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996).
-
3)
Mark Jürgensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
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4)
Benjamin Barber, McWorld versus Jihad, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995).
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5)
Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy. Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), here 107.
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9)
See Michael Angrosino, “Civil Religion Redux”, Anthropological Quarterly, 75/2 (2002), 239-267.
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10)
Osama Bin Laden, Messages to the World. The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, (London: Verso, 2005), here 160-172.
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13)
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, “Hold religionen indendørs”, Politiken, (2006). 20/5, 3rd section, 6.
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15)
Elizabeth S. Hurd, The Politics of Secularism in International Relations, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
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21)
Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant. American Civil Religion in the Time of Trail, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), here 3.
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23)
Maureen Henry, The Intoxication of Power. An Analysis of Civil Religion in Relation to Ideology, (London: D. Reidel, 1979), here 23.
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24)
Michael Hughey, Civil Religion and Moral Order, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983), here 66-69.
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27)
For instance, Allan Davies, The Crucified Nation. A Motif in Modern Nationalism, (Sussex: Sussex Academic Press, 2008) and Smith, Anthony, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
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29)
Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), here xv.
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32)
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (London: Harcourt Brace, 1979).
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33)
Slavoj Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?, (London: Verso, 2001).
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35)
Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation. History, Politics, and Salvation, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988).
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36)
Benedict de Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise. A Political Treatise, (New York: Dover, 1951).
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38)
Eric Vogelin, Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics and Gnosticism, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999).
-
39)
Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
-
40)
Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute – or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for?, (London: Verso, 2000) and Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf. The Perverse Core of Christianity, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2003).
-
41)
Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, (London: Greenwood Press, 1996).
-
42)
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology. Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), here 36.
-
43)
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
-
44)
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
-
45)
Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the Concept of the Political, (New York: Telos Press, 2007).
-
47)
Ole Wæver, Concepts of Security, (København: Institut for Statskundskab, 1997).
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50)
Niklas Luhmann, Introduction to Systems Theory, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), here 101-120.
-
52)
William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993).
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Studying Politics and Religion: How to Distinguish Religious Politics, Civil Religion, Political Religion, and Political Theology
In: Journal of Religion in EuropeSearch for other papers by Carsten Bagge Laustsen in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
The study of politics and religion is today fragmented to a degree that you can hardly refer to it as one academic field anymore. This article lists four fundamentally different approaches to the study of politics and religion: political religion; religious politics; civil religion; and finally, political theology. The article compares the four approaches on a number of significant parameters: their understanding of what religion is; their critical ambition; to which degree a preliminary distinction between politics and religion is presupposed; and most importantly, how to approach the relationship between religion and politics in an analytical, strategic sense. The ambition with this survey is to support a discussion between the four approaches with a view to reach a more complete understanding of the relationship between politics and religion in all its complexity.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 994 | 226 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 262 | 19 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 296 | 40 | 0 |
