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International politics after secularism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD
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Abstract

At the height of the influence of the secularisation thesis religion was understood to be absent from affairs of state and the law, including international politics and international law. As the critique of secularisation gained momentum this master narrative fell apart, and a new consensus began to take shape. The notion that religion had been ignored and should be ‘brought back in’ to International Relations took centre stage among many academics and practitioners. The assumption is that restoring religion in the right way will help address the problems associated with having ignored religion in IR, paving the way for the marginalisation of violent religion and globalisation of religious freedom. This article undertakes a critical analysis of this restorative narrative and the religious and political world it is creating. It then proposes a different approach to the intersection of religion and world politics after secularism. This approach draws attention to the authority of transnational actors such as the United States, United Nations, and European Union to shape the public administration of religious affairs globally. Channels through which this is accomplished include the promotion of religious freedom, humanitarian intervention, foreign aid, nation building and democratisation, counterterrorism and peace-building efforts, and the pronouncements of supra-national courts.

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Articles
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Review of International Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 5: The Postsecular in International Relations , December 2012 , pp. 943 - 961
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2012

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References

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27 The 2002 Executive Order 13280 creating a new CFBCI at USAID was meant to ensure that provisions of the 2001 Act were reflected in USAID policy.

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34 Clarke, ‘Agents of Transformation’, p. 85. This resulted in the publication of a report entitled ‘Working Together: Cooperation Between Government and the Faith Communities’ (London: Home Office Faith Communities Unit, 2004).

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41 Moyn uses this phrase in a review of Ikenberry's Liberal Leviathan in which Moyn argues that Ikenberry and other liberal internationalists provide ‘theoretical rationales for the American policy shop that they sometimes directly serve’. Moyn, ‘Soft Sells: On Liberal Internationalism’, The Nation (3 October 2011).

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51 Dressler and Mandair describe three trajectories in the critique of secularity: the socio-political philosophy of liberal secularism exemplified by Charles Taylor (and to some extent shared by thinkers such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas); the ‘postmodernist’ critiques of ontotheological metaphysics by radical theologians and continental philosophers that have helped to revive the discourse of ‘political theology’; and, following the work of Michel Foucault and Edward Said, the various forms of discourse analysis focusing on genealogies of power identified with the work of Talal Asad. Dressler and Mandair ‘Introduction’, p. 4.

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57 Sullivan, Yelle, and Taussig-Rubbo, ‘Introduction’, p. 8.

58 Evans acknowledges ‘the power of human rights approaches – when properly mediated through domestic, regional and international political processes – to influence the application of domestic law and administrative practice’. Malcolm D. Evans, ‘Advancing Freedom of Religion or Belief: Agendas for Change’, Lambeth Inter Faith Lecture, Lambeth Palace (8 June 2011).

59 Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights, p. 23.

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63 US Department of State, International Religion Freedom Report 2010, Thailand (17 November 2010), {http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2010/148897.htm}.

64 Bender, ‘Pluralism and Secularism’. This also means that there is no such thing as authentic religion or authentic secularism, as suggested in the epigraph.

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69 This is not to suggest that these debates are irrelevant. The critique of secularism is a necessary step in the process of decentring the secular-religious opposition, creating spaces in which new possibilities for theory and practice such as those explored in this Special Issue can emerge. See Hurd, , The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Gorski, Torpey, Kim, and VanAntwerpen (eds), The Post-Secular in Question. On the historical emergence of the category of religion see Masuzawa, Tomoko, The Invention of World Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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