Globalizing Family Values: The Christian Right in International
Politics, Doris Buss and Didi Herman, Minneapolis/London:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003, pp. xxxvii, 197.
When read against the backdrop of President George W. Bush's
successful re-election—a victory achieved, evidently, with support
from significant numbers of conservative Christian voters—this book
provides important observations, and perhaps to some readers, ominous
warnings about the strategies, ideology and policies of conservative
Christian political activists in general and the American contingent in
particular. That the Christian Right (CR) has taken to the international
arena in ever-increasing numbers in recent years may come as a surprise
for some. Indeed, until quite recently—particularly after the
American presidential elections of 1996—many observers concluded
that the bulk of activist CR organizations were a) waning in political
influence, and b) concentrating what remained of their energies upon the
domestic front to carry on the battle against those ubiquitous domestic
targets: liberalism and secular-humanism.