Category Archives: Books

From the Chair – Works on Religion & Politics

Dear All,

Professor Allen D. Hertzke wrote to us recently to let us know that two volumes he has edited are now available in paperback. For those who are interested, you can find information in the attached flyer about how to order copies, as well as via the links below.

Please do let us know if you have new publications or editions coming out or feel free to share them yourselves via APSA Connect. It's great for us all to know about and support one another's work and publications!

All best wishes,

Erin

Christianity and Freedom
Volume 1. Historical Perspectives

Leading historians uncover the unappreciated role of Christianity in the development of freedoms from antiquity through today.

Paperback | £29.98 | $39.99

Christianity and Freedom
Volume 2. Contemporary Perspectives

Examines the contributions of Christian minorities to societies across the globe in the midst of pressure and persecution.

Paperback | £29.98 | $39.99

Interview: Immediate Past Section Chair, Hurd, by E-International Relations

What motivated you to write your latest book Beyond Religious Freedom?

Beyond Religious Freedom is my response to what I see as a need to rethink how we approach the study of religion and politics in the field of international relations. There’s been a gold-rush mentality lately as scholars scurry to ‘get religion right’ – but many of these efforts are confused, or even troubling. The problem, as I discuss in more detail elsewhere, is that international relations ‘got religion’ but got it wrong. Beyond Religious Freedom encourages scholars to step back from the political fray. It neither celebrates religion for its allegedly peaceful potential nor condemns it for its allegedly violent tendencies. Instead, I propose a new conceptual framework for the study of religion and public life. It accounts for the gaps and tensions that I perceived between the large-scale international legal, political and religious engineering projects undertaken in the name of religious freedom, toleration, and rights, and the realities of the individuals and communities subjected to these efforts.

This disjuncture is reflected on the cover, in a photo taken by Samia Errazzouki of the desert with a sand berm in the distance and hand-made flowers sticking out of the sand in the foreground. The Moroccans built the berm in the 1980s during the war against the Polisario in an effort to divide Western Sahara, which they control, from the free zone controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The flowers … {more here}

The interview was conducted by John A. Rees during a symposium on ‘The Politics of Religious Freedom in the Asia-Pacific’ hosted by the Religion and Global Society Program, an initiative of the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

Book: Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion. Princeton University Press, 2015. – amazon | barnes&noble

Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, edited by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan (2012)

Columbia University Press is pleased to announce the publication of Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, edited by Ahmet T. Kuru Chair, Religion & Politics Organized Section] and Alfred Stepan.

"Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey contains some of the best essays on contradictory signs and ambivalence in contemporary Turkish politics. Its chapters, by the most prominent experts on their respective topics, are well written. Reading them together provides a very good sense of the content and the terms of the struggles and conflicts over the soul of Turkish democracy and its international mission."
-Cemil Aydin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought

While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several choices in policy have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing historical, social, and religious context for this behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state's position on religion to its involvement with the European Union.

Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the toleration of diversity during the Ottoman Empire's classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious heterogeneity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. The essays also offer a cross-Continental comparison of "multiple secularisms," as well as political parties, considering especially Turkey's Justice and Development Party in relation to Europe's Christian Democratic parties. Contributors tackle critical research questions, such as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire's ethno-religious plurality and the way in which Turkey's assertive secularism can be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military's "guardian" role in Turkey's secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism's presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey's contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.

Ahmet T. Kuru, is associate professor of political science at San Diego State University and chair of the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. He is the author of Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey.

Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University and a former Gladstone Professor of Government at All Souls College, Oxford University. His most recent book, with Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav, is Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies, and another book with Linz, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.

This book is part of the esteemed series Religion, Culture, and Public Life, series editors: Alfred Stepan and Mark C. Taylor.

To read an excerpt or find out more about this work go to:
http://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15932-6/democracy-islam-and-secularism-in-turkey

amazon | barnes&noble

Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey

Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey
(2009)

Ahmet T. Kuru
San Diego State University

Why do secular states pursue different policies toward religion? This book provides a generalizable argument about the impact of ideological struggles on the public policy making process, as well as a state-religion regimes index of 197 countries. More specifically, it analyzes why American state policies are largely tolerant of religion, whereas French and Turkish policies generally prohibit its public visibility, as seen in their bans on Muslim headscarves. In the United States, the dominant ideology is “passive secularism,” which requires the state to play a passive role, by allowing public visibility of religion. Dominant ideology in France and Turkey is “assertive secularism,” which demands that the state play an assertive role in excluding religion from the public sphere. Passive and assertive secularism became dominant in these cases through certain historical processes, particularly the presence or absence of an ancien régime based on the marriage between monarchy and hegemonic religion during state-building periods.

amazon | barnes&noble

Book: The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding

Daniel Dreisbach and Mark David Hall, Editors

amazon | barnes&noble

From the bn.com website:

The Sacred Rights of Conscience provides students and scholars a rich collection of primary sources that illuminate the discussions and debates about religious liberty in the American founding era. This compilation of primary documents provides a thorough and balanced examination of the evolving relationship between public religion and American culture, from pre-colonial biblical and European sources to the early nineteenth century, to allow the reader to explore the social and political forces that defined the concept of religious liberty and shaped American church-state relations.

Including material that has been previously unavailable or hard to find, The Sacred Rights of Conscience contains original documents from both public and private papers, such as constitutions, statutes, legislative resolutions, speeches, sermons, newspapers, letters, and diary entries. These documents provide a vivid reminder that religion was a dynamic factor in shaping American social, legal, and political culture and that there has been a struggle since the inception of the Republic to define the prudential and constitutional role of religion in public culture.

Daniel L. Dreisbach is William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life for the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C.

Mark David Hall is Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Political Science at George Fox University.