Globalization, Religious Change and the Common Good
by R. Scott Appleby in the Journal of Religion, Conflict and Peace
While hardly new in world politics, religion has returned in force to the international agenda. The Shi‘ite revolution in Iran (1978-1979) and the political awakening of the New Christian Right in the early eighties in the United States roughly coincided. Both events surprised journalists and politicians who bought in to a version of the secularization thesis and therefore underestimated or ignored the enduring power of religion to mobilize protest movements. The nineties saw the increasing prominence of Hamas (Sunni), Hezbollah (Shi‘ite), and Gush Emunim (Jewish) in shaping the conflict in the Middle East, the electoral and cultural successes of militant Hindu nationalism in India, and the spread of Sunni Muslim radicalism, Al-Qaeda style, in parts of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Yet the U.S. government was slow to respond effectively to situations where religion played a major role. Even after the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, it was commonplace to hear U.S. officials describe the Ayatollah’s revolution as fundamentally a secular movement—a socio-economic protest cloaked up in pseudo-religious wrappings. There is perhaps no more eloquent testimony to the secular bias that has distorted U.S. foreign policy than the fact that the word “religion” does not appear in the index Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger’s encyclopedic account of American statesmanship, published in 1994. Nor does it appear in the index to Paul Collier’s recent book about world poverty, The Bottom Billion, despite the fact that many of the conflicts involving religious actors occur in underdeveloped countries.
