REL 126
Religion, Politics, and Society: A Global Perspective
Last Offered Fall 2022
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed GBST 101
This course is not offered in the current catalog

In spite of predictions that religion would wither away in the face of modernization, even casual observation indicates that it remains a powerful force in contemporary political life. Our goal is to obtain an enhanced understanding and appreciation of the salience of religion in public life. The course will be divided into three parts. The first part focuses on different theoretical approaches to making sense of the relation between religion, politics, and society, discussing especially the concept of the ‘secular’ in Western thought and decolonial critique thereof. The second part will take a global perspective on the relation between religion and politics. We will discuss cases of Buddhism, Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism), Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam (Sunni and Shi’a), and Judaism. The third part focuses on religion in the USA. Here, we will discuss the role of religion in American political culture, the relation of religion to the state, the relevance of religious interests and their political mobilization, religious minorities in the United States, and many other aspects of religion in the US society. Although the study of religion and politics raises a host of deep philosophical questions, the principal aim of the course is to understand how religion affects politics (and vice versa), rather than to explore the normative dimensions of questions raised by the interaction of these two forces.