An Introduction to Religion and Politics: Theory and Practice - Paperback

by Jonathan Fox (Author)

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.

Author Biography

Jonathan Fox is the Yehuda Avner Professor of Religion and Politics in the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, the director of the Religion and State Project, and the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Religion and International Relations section of the International Studies Organization (ISA). He has published extensively on religion and politics.