This article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the religious economy approach by applying it to the religious revival across contemporary Russia and China. This comparison shows that the religious economy framework is beneficial in explaining some aspects of the communist and post-communist religious change, including macroeconomic market trends and why some faiths thrive while others fail. However, it has less explanatory power in explaining religious-state relations under market constraints — that is, how religious groups interact with state regulators to survive and grow; the range of options available to religious actors and their payoffs; and the political consequence of this interaction. This article draws on fieldwork in both countries to illustrate the benefits of grounding the religious economy approach more deeply in politics. The political economy of the marketplace reveals how and why religious groups engage the state to survive, and that they are becoming influential political and economic actors.

In the last two decades, several Muslim states and civil society groups have embraced interfaith dialogue as a means of engagement with non-Muslims, especially with Christians. Why do these actors initiate interfaith dialogue? Why do they follow different interfaith dialogue strategies? This article argues that Islamic actors initiate interfaith dialogue to signal their moderate stance to powerful others who are concerned with Islamic radicalization and violence. These Islamic interfaith actors follow different strategies because of their interfaith theology (ideas about the legitimacy of religious others) and the nature of state-religion interaction (secular versus religious states) in their home countries. To support its argument, this article examines three Muslim interfaith initiatives: the Gülen Movement in Turkey and beyond (Sunni-Sufi, a civil society-led project), Jordan's A Common Word initiative (Sunni, a semi-governmental project), and Saudi Arabia's interfaith efforts (Sunni-Wahhabi, a state-led project).

How do states decide to extend or withhold international recognition in cases of contested sovereignty? We focus on how religion shapes the incentives of states in making this decision, both at the domestic level through religious institutions and at the international level through religious affinities. States with transnational religious ties to the contested territory are more likely to extend recognition. At the domestic level, states that heavily regulate religion are less likely to extend international recognition. We test these conjectures, and examine others in the literature, with two new data sets on the international recognition of both Palestine and Israel and voting on the United Nations resolution to admit Palestine as a non-member state observer, combined with global data on religious regulation and religious affinities. In cases of contested sovereignty, the results provide support for these two mechanisms through which religion shapes foreign policy decisions about international recognition.

Religious dynamics in Europe, especially regarding religious pluralism, are largely affected by the characteristics of legal recognition of religious entities in individual countries. The implementation of the European Convention of Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights clearly points to democratic pluralism as the essential principle in treating religious entities by the state. On the other hand, the situation in European countries is very complex and certain tendencies opposite to the European Convention of Human Rights directions, particularly in terms of privileging of traditional entities, are still deeply entrenched. Recent changes in Slovenia, where two essentially parody religions have been registered, and in Hungary, where registration and recognition of previously registered churches have been annulled, are considered. It is argued that the implementation of the liberal course set by the Council of Europe is (still) largely dependent on the political situation in individual countries.

This article analyzes the role of religious actors at different stages in the long and gradual processes of democratization in Senegal. It examines the transformations in their political influence from pillars of the stable (but non-democratic) post-independence state, to a more ambiguous posture in the decade of democratic opening. A discussion of the interactive relationship between religious change and the transition to democracy over the course of the 1990s leads us to an analysis of the role of religious actors in debating the substantive content of Senegalese democracy in the decade that followed. The article concludes that while procedurally religious actors are playing an important role in the development of the democratic system in Senegal, substantively they are doing so in part by calling into question some understandings of what democracy entails. The ultimate evaluation of their contribution to the consolidation of democracy hinges at least in part on our conceptualization of democracy itself.

This article analyzes how the Muslim majority has engaged with, and contributed to parallel processes of democratization and European integration in post-Communist Albania. The assessment of Muslims' choices focuses on the Central organization, the Albanian Muslim Community, which is recognized by the state as the only authority in charge of all the administrative and spiritual issues pertinent to the community of Sunni believers, and serves as the main hub of respective religious activities in the country. The analysis of democratization, and Muslims' respective choices, are divided into two different periods, namely democratic transition (1990–1998) and democratic consolidation (1998–2013), each facing democratizing actors, including Muslim groups, with different challenges and issues. We argue that the existence of a useful pool of arguments from the past, the so-called Albanian tradition, has enabled Muslims to contravene controversial foreign influences and recast Islam in line with the democratic and European ideals of the Albanian post-communist polity. This set of historical legacies and arguments explain Muslims' similar positioning toward democracy throughout different stages marked by different institutional restrictions and state policies.

The rhetorical resistance to Apartheid in South Africa appealed to many sources of authority. In Christian communities, the New Testament was brought into creative conversation with traditional “confessional” texts, modern scholarship, and Marxist class analysis in order to develop contextually-located theologies and practices of resistance. This article highlights the important insights of Allan Boesak, Albert Nolan, and Itumeleng Mosala, which served the Apartheid struggle. After noting key differences in the methods and conclusions of these scholars, I suggest that another look at their insights may well be critical in developing Christian responses to the deep structural injustices of the post-Apartheid period.

Across Europe populist radical right (PRR) parties advertise themselves as defenders of Christian identity and values, but they do not seem to strongly attract religious Christian voters. This article tests a general framework for understanding this religion gap in 13 countries. Findings extend earlier research on religiosity and radical right attitudes, provide insight on East-West differences in the PRR phenomenon, and lend conditional support to the notion of a “vaccine effect” suggested by prior research.