Situating the nexus of politics and religion in the 21st century

This volume on religion and politics explores the nexus created by belief in doctrine and adherence to socio-political cultural conventions. This nexus has traditionally been approached from a standpoint that posits the idea of secularity as the governing principle. Hence, when politics and religion are seen as intersecting with each other the problem is seen in terms of encroachment or clash. Our approach challenges this orthodoxy. Our critical perspective offers a novel approach for understanding the nexus between religion and politics. In the first place we start from the idea that treats "democracy", the desirable face of politics, as a doctrine in the same way as "Christianity" is taken to be a doctrine. That is, each involves a particular system of beliefs, values and practices that over time ossify critical analysis such that contemporary debates become trapped within constantly shifting "fixed" positions. Such positions are fixed in the sense that they are seemingly beyond question, yet they are treated as constantly shifting in order for protagonists to justify their places as the appropriate authorities. Thus, for example, from our novel perspective, attendance to worship-acting on religious convictions-need not be a function of belief any more than voting-acting on political convictions-need be a function of belief in the efficacy of democracy (and hence of a belief in politics). Both religion and Politics involve institutional arrangements that give substance to a range of beliefs, and each arrangement can accommodate a diversity of beliefs that need not be entirely self-consistent. Both domains can be foregone conclusions in that each "works" simply because an institutional arrangement is present. Yet as configured within our contemporary Western societies, political and religious institutions serve to reinforce each other, no less than in non-Western, non-Christian societies. It matters little whether the political institutions are democratic or otherwise, nor does it matter what brand of religion is involved. In our view, the institutional intersections will vary according to historical contingency while at the same time exhibiting a level of constancy denied in orthodox accounts, especially those predicated on ideas about a "clash of civilizations" ( c.f. Huntington 1997)