Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics

Contemporary Review, Summer, 2009

Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics. Jeffrey Haynes. editor. Routledge. [pounds sterling]95.00. xii 432 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-41455-5. In the editor's words, this collection of essays 'examines the recent "return" of religion to politics and international relations'. In addition to the editor's introduction there are twenty-five essays by as many experts from round the world.

The contributions are grouped into four areas. In the first, writers take a general view of religions and politics with papers on Buddhism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity. Confucianism, Hinduism. Islam and Islamism. Shiaism and Judaism. In the second group we have more detailed investigations into religion and governance: secularisation, fundamentalisms, the tensions between religion and the state, democratisation. political parties, civil society and. finally, compartmentalisation among Christians and Mohammedans. The third part has more general papers looking at the relationship between religion and international relations, specifically the difficulties of integrating religion into IR theory, religion's relations with foreign policy, the role of transnational religious actors and religion and globalisation. The final part looks at the sometimes fraught relationship between religion, security and development: religious terrorism, preventing conflict, religion and women, international development and evangelical responses to global warming and human suffering. This is a wide-ranging collection that makes use of the latest approaches to a subject that divides as often as it unites, (A.C.T.)