God and Global Order
The Power of Religion in American Foreign Policy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5706765 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Croft, S Croft (0000-0003-4823-129X, University of Warwick, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 133-135 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Church and State (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-969X • E-ISSN: 2040-4867 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jcs/csr015 |
| OpenAlex | W2032663016 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
This is a volume that is very important for those engaged in the study of international relations, but it promises more than it delivers. It calls for the development of a Christian International Relations, without strongly specifying what that singular entity might comprise and exclude. It is a clarion call for the connection of fields that have been treated as diverse in the academy though seen as deeply interconnected in the (post-9/11) policy worlds of religion/faith and politics/international relations. The keystone is the Introduction, which is titled “Naming Religion Truthfully.” Chaplin and Joustra challenge those who are specialists in international relations with the charge that the field is dominated by secularism and that those within the field do not recognize that secularism is itself a faith. International relations scholarship, as a field of secularism, needs to be challenged by Christian scholars, and they need to work for a growing desecularization, which would be both positive for scholarship and liberating. “Recognizing religion—naming it truthfully—will make International Relations more productive (perhaps even more predictive) as a richer conceptual apparatus alerts practitioners to a much wider range of relevant empirical data” (p. 11). The demand is that scholars should not, as I and many others have done, “simply” examine faith group influences in the international realm but should establish a Christian perspective in international relations. “Scholarship is not a faith-free zone of neutral, rational understanding” (p. 13). It is hard to imagine a more thorough challenge to the way in which international relations scholarship is established in the English-speaking world, unless, of course, the challenge to create a Christian International Relations was to be matched with the demand to create, say, an Islamic International Relations.
Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Faith · Foreign policy · International relations · International relations theory · Political science · Politics · Realm · Scholarship · Secularism · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2018 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |