Religion is becoming an increasingly important factor for theorists and policy makers alike in the consideration of United States foreign policy. In recent years a new school of faith-based diplomacy advocacy has emerged and begun to resonate with foreign policy practitioners. This article examines the efficacy of such faith-based approaches to foreign policy problems with a religious component and argues that such an approach is inherently flawed. The article argues that a combination of a distinct military culture, which feels itself morally superior to its civilian leadership and the activism of conservative evangelicals in the chaplaincy and military leadership makes such faith-based approaches unrealistic. While acknowledging a role for pluralist religious actors in foreign policy the article rejects a faith-based advocacy approach which can exacerbate rather than resolve foreign policy problems.

In the current polarized political climate there is heightened attention paid to the American state constitutional provisions known as “Blaine Amendments” or “No-Aid Provisions” that were passed between 1835 and 1959 to prohibit public aid to religious schools. Judgments about No-Aid Provisions have largely been made by scholars on an ad hoc basis using narrative-based historical accounts, emotive language and without clear classificatory criteria. Using content analysis this article constructs the first quantitative scale of No-Aid Provision strength and subjects it to statistical treatment to explain why some prohibitions are much stronger than others. It finds that larger Catholic populations, Republican dominance, and Federal Enabling Acts make No-Aid language more strident. In so doing this article adjudicates between competing explanations for No-Aid Provision strength in a way that illuminates the interaction of politics, religion and education in America.

Between the late 1970s and early 1990s, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) altered its First Amendment advocacy, shifting from being an ardent supporter of the strict separation of church and state to being a champion of the government accommodation of religion. At the same time, the denomination also became unswervingly pro-life. In this article, I use the SBC case to identify a previously under-analyzed link between abortion politics and church-state politics. I suggest that pro-life politics played an important role in the SBC's shift away from the separation of church and state. I focus on three areas where abortion politics aided this shift: (1) opposing separationists’ assertions that anti-abortion policies violated the Establishment Clause; (2) becoming allies rather than foes with Catholics; and (3) promoting a greater emphasis on the free exercise of religion. I conclude by discussing the implications for the relationship between religion, law, and politics.

The subjective correlates of abortion attitudes for six different religious traditions (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam). For all six groups, attitudes toward sexual morality exhibit the strongest relationship with abortion attitudes, followed by the effects of attitudes toward human life. Gender role attitudes are much less powerful predictors of abortion attitudes. Further, the multivariate models which explain abortion attitudes are remarkably similar across religious traditions, with inter-religious differences largely being attributable to differences in the marginal distributions of the independent variables.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in social scientific literature on the topic of “religious violence,” much of it arguing that there is a uniquely intense and disturbing connection between religion and political conflict and bloodshed. In this article, I challenge mainstream accounts of “religious violence” with an illustrative example from the 16th century of the theoretical and empirical problems with all such essentialist claims. The terms employed in the construction of “religious violence” might today just as easily be applied to the violence of the putatively “secular” nation-state. Furthermore, framing the debate in these sharp binary terms, as William Cavanaugh compellingly demonstrates, is itself part of a political project that had a very particular historical beginning and that conceals as much as it reveals about the nature of violence, both in the past and in the present.

This article is part of a special issue on the five Muslim democracies. It aims at understanding the role played by religion, and particularly by religiously oriented actors, in Turkey's democratization processes. The first section analyzes the different theoretical approaches to the role of religion in democratization. The second section analyzes the different phases of Turkey's political history since the 1980 coup, taking into account both democratization processes and the role played by religious actors in the political system, and trying to understand the possible relations between the two phenomena.

In 1967 the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status was revoked on the basis that it failed to meet the criteria outlined in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service. Between its loss, and eventual reacquisition in 1993, the Church of Scientology employed a number of political based tactics in an attempt to legitimize itself to the public sector. This article explores these tactics in relation to the religion's use of perception management. The article argues that the processes of both legal recognition and legitimization draw upon each other in a new faith's transition to mainstream theology. In this, the Church employed perception management in attempt to influence both processes. In exploring this, the paper contributes to our understanding of role that public legitimacy plays in a new faith's development.