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Religion and Geopolitics

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14650040600598619

1557-3028

John Agnew,

Religion and Society Interactions

Abstract Notes 1. See, for example, Steve Bruce, Politics and Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press 2003); and Fabio Petito and Pavlos Hatzopoulos (eds), Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2003). 2. For example, see Laurent Tranier, 'Les Indigènes Équatoriens Face au Défi Évangelique', Le Monde Diplomatique (april 2005) pp. 18–19. 3. William E. Connolly, 'The Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine', Political Theory 33, 6 (2005) p. 873. Connolly emphasises the role in the United States of right-wing talk radio, Fox News, and Internet bloggers in facilitating the resonance between the two sides of the alliance even as he notes the tensions that inevitably afflict such an unstable partnership. 4. On the United States of America as 'the Promised Land' see, for example, John Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2005) p. 96. 5. Bill McKibben, 'The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong', Harper's Magazine (August 2005) pp. 31–37, notes how when the self-guidance element of the Bible is emphasised among American Christians it tends to turn into a self-help program. For example, the best-selling 'Christian' book The Purpose-Driven Life has 'all the hallmarks of self-absorption' (p. 37). As McKibben also reports (p. 31) fully three-quarters of Americans surveyed report that the Bible teaches: 'God helps those who help themselves,' when this was a remark made by Ben Franklin, and 'Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor.' 6. William E. Connolly (note 3) p. 874. 7. For the history of Christian millennialism see, in particular, Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, expanded ed. (New York: Oxford University Press 1970); and Michael Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1974). On Messianic cults and fundamentalisms more generally, see, for example, Vittorio Lanternari, The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults (London: MacGibbon and Kee 1963); Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of 'Cargo' Cults in Melanesia (London: Paladin 1957); and Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), The Fundamentalism Project, Volumes 1-4 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1991–1993) 8. Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire (London: I.B. Tauris 2004) p. 123, in answering the question of Christianity, 'How did a pacifist religion become a religion of holy war?' suggests that much of it had to do with its becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire. It was then that a Chosen People refrain (inherited from Judaism) was conjoined with the Roman fusion of religion with state politics. 9. Of course, American Christianity on the whole (and certainly Christianity in general) should not be confused with this particular variety. At one time, indeed, evangelical Protestantism itself was a major force for progressive politics in the country, as it has been elsewhere. Although for much of the twentieth century this same creed also provided ready religious justification for US military interventions around the world (on this, see, for example, Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation [New York: ISI Books 2004]), there is still considerable doctrinal and political variety. For example, the Reverend Billy Graham, the most famous living US Christian evangelist, emphasises the model of Jesus for the Christian life and, inter alia, expresses concern that global warming should be addressed as part of humanity's 'stewardship' of the earth. His son, Franklin, however, represents a much more dogmatic fundamentalism that is, perhaps, a better reflection of the times among many American evangelical Christians than is the theology of his father (Peter J. Boyer, 'The Big Tent: Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism', The New Yorker (22 August 2005) pp. 42–55). 10. Although a case can be made for a longer running influence of certain Biblical interpretations on British and US foreign policies in the Middle East. 'Christian Zionism,' for example, is neither a new phenomenon in its insistence on Jewish control of the Holy Land in advance of the Second Coming of Christ nor without previous political influence on, for example, the famous Balfour Declaration of 1917. On this topic see Irvine H. Anderson, Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land, America, and Israel, 1917–2002 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida 2005). Of course, the obvious question to ask is whether short-run 'friends' like these are not really long-run enemies? 11. This not to say that Christian fundamentalists are directly running the US government, only that 'they constitute a significant force in the coalition that now holds a monopoly of power' and that 'One is foolish to think that their bizarre ideas do not matter' (Bill Moyers, 'Welcome to Doomsday', The New York Review of Books (24 March 2005) p. 10.) Together with right-wing Catholic allies on a wide range of social issues (abortion, etc.), however, their presence in the halls of power indicates how much US government is now dominated by mobilised fringe elements in the presence of majoritarian indifference to their crucial role in contemporary Washington DC (Garry Wills, 'Fringe Government', The New York Review of Books (6 October 2005) pp. 46–50.) Fervent minorities not only undermine unpopular absolutist regimes, as the Bolsheviks did in Tsarist Russia, but can also sabotage democratically fragile republics such as the United States when political institutions are easily subverted by moneyed interests and when electoral participation is low (see Agnew, Hegemony [note 4] ch. 5). 12. On some of the complexities involved, see, for example, John Agnew, 'Nationalism,' in James S. Duncan, Nuala Johnson, and Richard Schein (eds), A Companion to Cultural Geography (Oxford: Blackwell 2004). 13. Alice Hogge, God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (London: HarperCollins 2005); and James Travers, Gunpowder: The Players behind the Plot (London: The National Archives 2005). 14. See, for a recent good example of the genre, Michael D. Evans, The American Prophecies: Ancient Scriptures Reveal our Nation's Future (New York: Time Warner 2004). Quite why God should favour the rich and powerful Americans when the Jesus of the gospels, for one, always tended to side with the poor and downtrodden, is never explained. It is perhaps no coincidence that American fundamentalists are very taken with the C. S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia (notwithstanding their departure from Biblical literalism) where the stand-in for Jesus is Aslan, a lion, rather than say, for example, the animals most favoured by Jesus: the lamb and the donkey. As Adam Gopnik has noted (in 'Prisoner of Narnia: How C.S. Lewis Escaped', The New Yorker [21 November 2005] p. 92), 'The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side.' 15. Pollster Daniel Yankelovich, 'Poll Positions: What Americans Really Think about U.S. Foreign Policy', Foreign Affairs (September/October 2005) p. 10, claims that at least for now a sizeable chunk of the US population accepts extreme apocalyptic views: 'In the minds of white evangelical Protestants, the nation is faced with an apocalyptic threat.' 16. For a review of the range of attempts at such a Muslim 'geopolitics', see, in particular, Peter Mandaville, Transnational Moslem Politics: Reimagining the Umma (London: Routledge 2001); and, for some of the inspiration, David Cook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press 2005). The particular attraction of Muslims in Western countries to millennial Islam is addressed in Pnina Werbner, 'The Predicament of Diaspora and Millennial Islam', Ethnicities 4 (2004) pp. 451–76. For a fascinating discussion of the Koranic and other roots of the Muslim concept of umma and affiliated terms see Sohail H. Hashmi, 'Political Boundaries and Moral Communities: Islamic Perspectives,' in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) pp. 181–213. 17. Alex de Waal, 'Chasing Ghosts: The Rise and Fall of Militant Islam in the Horn of Africa', London Review of Books (18 August 2005) p. 8. 18. Khaled Abou El-Fadl, 'The Unbounded Law of God and Territorial Boundaries,' in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 226. 19. Rainer Brunner, 'Forms of Muslim Self-Perception in European Islam.' Hagar: Studies in Culture, Polity, Identities 6, 1 (2005) pp. 75–76. 20. Menachem Lorberbaum, 'Making and Unmaking the Boundaries of Holy Land,' in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 23; Daniel Statman, 'Man-Made Boundaries and Man-Made Holiness in the Jewish Tradition,' in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds) States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 42. Perhaps the most brilliant exploration of the consequences of the 'prison of roots,' for Jews in particular but also for everyone in general, is Jean Daniel, The Jewish Prison: A Rebellious Meditation on the State of Judaism, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell (New York: Melville House 2005). 21. Stuart E. Corbridge, 'Cartographies of Loathing and Desire: The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bomb, and the Political Spaces of Hindu Nationalism,' in Yale H. Ferguson and R. J. Barry Jones (eds), Political Space: Frontiers of Change and Governance in a Globalizing World (Albany, NY: SUNY Press 2002) p. 157. 22. Corbridge (note 21) p. 159. 23. Lily H. M. Ling, 'Borders of Our Minds: Territories, Boundaries, and Power in the Confucian Tradition,' in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 88. 24. J. L. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham NC: Duke University Press) p. 23, quoted in Ling (note 23) p. 88. 25. Daniel Bell, 'The Making and Unmaking of Boundaries: A Contemporary Confucian Perspective,' in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 59. 26. See, for example, John D. Carlson and Erik C. Owens (eds), The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press 2003). 27. Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (New York: Columbia University Press 2005). More generally on utopian thought and practice, see Krishan Kumar, Utopianism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press 1991). 28. Samuel Huntington, 'The Clash of Civilizations?' Foreign Affairs 72 (1993) pp. 22–49.