The State as an Actor in Religion Policy

The State as an Actor in Religion Policy

Author: Maria Grazia Martino

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 3658069457

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Maria Grazia Martino and her contributing authors highlight the different solutions found by European countries with different ecclesiastical law systems, different distributions of Christian denominations and different percentages of Muslim immigrants: Germany, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Italy and Greece. Churches and religious communities are actors from civil society. The state sets the framework for their activities, first and foremost by formal legal acts in ecclesiastical law. Besides this field of law, religion policy has increasingly developed into a policy field of its own. Which incentives and steering tools used by the state cause which kind of behavior, which role in society and which self-understanding among churches and religious communities? This edited volume answers these questions.


Religious Actors and International Law

Religious Actors and International Law

Author: Ioana Cismas

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0198712820

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This book assesses whether a new category of actors-religious actors-has been constructed within international law. Religious actors, through their interpretations of the religion(s) they are associated with, uphold and promote, or indeed may transform, potentially oppressive structures or discriminatory patterns. This study moves beyond the concern that religious texts and practices may be incompatible with international law, to provide an innovative analysis of how religious actors themselves are accountable under international law for the interpretations they choose to put forward. The book defines religious actors as comprising religious states, international organizations, and non-state entities that assume the role of interpreting religion and so claim a 'special' legitimacy anchored in tradition or charisma. Cutting across the state / non-state divide, this definition allows the full remit of religious bodies to be investigated. It analyses the crucial question of whether religious actors do in fact operate under different international legal norms to non-religious states, international organizations, or companies. To that end, the Holy See-Vatican, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and churches and religious organizations under the European Convention on Human Rights regime are examined in detail as case studies. The study ultimately establishes that religious actors cannot be seen to form an autonomous legal category under international law: they do not enjoy special or exclusive rights, nor incur lesser obligations, when compared to their respective non-religious peers. Going forward, it concludes that a process of two-sided legitimation may be at stake: religious actors will need to provide evidence for the legality of their religious interpretations to strengthen their legitimacy, and international law itself may benefit from religious actors fostering its legitimacy in different cultural contexts.


Religion and the State in American Law

Religion and the State in American Law

Author: Boris I. Bittker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-10-06

Total Pages: 1001

ISBN-13: 1107071828

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This book provides a comprehensive overview of religion and government in the United States, providing historical context to contemporary issues.


Transnational Islamic Actors and Indonesia's Foreign Policy

Transnational Islamic Actors and Indonesia's Foreign Policy

Author: Delphine Alles

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-14

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1317655923

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The past fifteen years have seen Indonesia move away from authoritarianism to a thriving yet imperfect democracy. During this time, the archipelago attracted international attention as the most-populated Muslim-majority country in the world. As religious issues and actors have been increasingly taken into account in the analysis and conduct of international relations, particularly since the 9/11 events, Indonesia’s leaders have adapted to this new context. Taking a socio-historical perspective, this book examines the growing role of transnational Islamic Non-State Actors (NSAs) in post-authoritarian Indonesia and how it has affected the making of Indonesia’s foreign policy since the country embarked on the democratization process in 1998. It returns to the origins of the relationship between Islamic organisations and the Indonesian institutions in order to explain the current interactions between transnational Islamic actors and the country’s official foreign policies. The book considers for the first time the interactions between the "parallel diplomacy" undertaken by Indonesia’s Islamic NSAs and the country’s official foreign policy narrative and actions. It explains the adaptation of the state’s responses, and investigates the outcomes of those responses on the country’s international identity. Combining field-collected data and a theoretical reflexion, it offers a distanced analysis which deepens theoretical approaches on transnational religious actors. Providing original research in Asian Studies, while filling an empirical gap in international relations theory, this book will be of interest to scholars of Indonesian Studies, Islamic Studies, International Relations and Asian Politics.


Religious Leaders and Conflict Transformation

Religious Leaders and Conflict Transformation

Author: Nukhet A. Sandal

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-02-16

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1107161711

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The book introduces a theoretical framework to understand the role of religious leaders in conflict transformation and peacebuilding.


Politics and Religion

Politics and Religion

Author: Sami Nair

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1483293068

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In Paris in the autumn of 1989 three Muslim girls, observing their own religious custom, went to school wearing Muslim headscarves. The ensuing political storm, which continued unabated into 1990, has brought sharply into focus one of the fundamental questions related to Western democracy: the nature of the relationship between religion and the state. The 'scarves affair' was primarily a dispute between practitioners of Islam and the secular state. However, the controversy in France and similar recent controversies elsewhere have forced a general and radical reappraisal of the wide and complex issue of religion and its relation to politics. This issue of Contemporary European Affairs is a contribution to that debate.


An Introduction to Religion and Politics

An Introduction to Religion and Politics

Author: Jonathan Fox

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-13

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1351729179

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This fully revised edition offers a comprehensive overview of the many theories of religion and politics and provides students with an accessible, in-depth guide to the subject’s most significant debates, issues, and methodologies. It begins by asking the basic questions of how social scientists see religion and why religion remains relevant to politics in the modern era. Fox examines the influence of religious identity, beliefs, institutions and legitimacy on politics, and surveys important approaches and issues found in the literature on religion and politics. Four new chapters on religious policy around the world, political secularism, and religious freedom and human rights have been added to fully revised content covering religious identity, rational choice approaches to religious politics worldviews, beliefs, doctrines, ideologies, institutions and political mobilization, fundamentalism, secularization, and religion and conflict. This work will be essential reading for all students of religion and politics, comparative politics, international relations, and security studies.


Pope Francis as a Global Actor

Pope Francis as a Global Actor

Author: Alynna J. Lyon

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-02-08

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3319713779

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Pope Francis confuses many observers because his papacy does not fit neatly into any pre-established classificatory schemes. To gain a deeper appreciation of Francis’s complicated papacy, this volume proposes that an interdisciplinary approach, fusing concepts derived from moral theology and the social sciences, may properly situate Pope Francis as a global political entrepreneur. The chapters in this volume ask what difference it makes that he is the first pope from Latin America, how and why different countries in the world respond to him, how his understanding of scripture informs his ideas on economic, social, and environmental policy, and where politics meets theology under Francis. In the end, this volume seeks to provide a more robust understanding of the enigmatic papacy of Francis.


Making Religion, Making the State

Making Religion, Making the State

Author: Yoshiko Ashiwa

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0804758417

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This volume combines the perspective of religion as a constructed category of modernity with the analytic focus and empirical grounding of institutional social science to develop a new approach to the study of state and religion in modern and contemporary China.


The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity

The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity

Author: Andrew Dawson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-20

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1317648633

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The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity engages with one of the most characteristic features of modern society. An increasingly prominent and potentially contentious phenomenon, religious diversity is intimately associated with contemporary issues such as migration, human rights, social cohesion, socio-cultural pluralisation, political jurisdiction, globalisation, and reactionary belief systems. This edited collection of specially-commissioned chapters provides an unrivalled geographical coverage and multidisciplinary treatment of the socio-political processes and institutional practices provoked by, and associated with, religious diversity. Alongside chapters treating religious diversity in the ‘BRIC’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, are contributions which discuss Australia, Finland, Mexico, South Africa, the UK, and the United States. This book provides an accessible, distinctive and timely treatment of a topic which is inextricably linked with modern society’s progressively diverse and global trajectory. Written and structured as an accessible volume for the student reader, this book is of immediate interest to both academics and laypersons working in mainstream and political sociology, sociology of religion, human geography, politics, area studies, migration studies and religious studies.