¹ This essay takes inspiration from several excellent overviews of the field of religion and politics, including Gill, Anthony, “Religion and Comparative Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001)Google Scholar; and Wald, Kenneth, Silverman, Adam, and Fridy, Kevin, “Making Sense of Religion in Political Life,” Annual Review of Political Science 8 (2005)Google Scholar. Also useful were several excellent review essays on the role of ideas in politics, including Checkel, Jeffrey T., “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50 (January 1998)Google Scholar; Berman, Sheri, “Ideas, Norms, and Culture in Political Analysis,” Comparative Politics 33 (January 2001)Google Scholar; Blyth, Mark, “Any More Bright Ideas? The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy,” Comparative Politics 29 (January 1997)Google Scholar; Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn, “Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001)Google Scholar. See also Wald, Kenneth and Wilcox, Clyde, “Getting Religion: Has Political Science Rediscovered the Faith Factor?” American Political Science Review 100 (November 2006)Google Scholar.

² There is a vast literature on the subject of religion in the public sphere. On religious resurgence, see, for example, Marty, Martin and Scott, R.Apple by's multivolume series on fundamentalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995)Google Scholar. On religion in public life, see Casanova, Jose, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and for more IR-oriented themes, see fnn. 32 and 33 of this article. There are also countless case studies of religious lobbies and their role in democratic politics, the rise of religiously inspired social movements, the development of religious discourse in public life, among other themes, many written by historians, sociologists, and theologians. For guidance on this very large literature, see the Web site of the APSA section on Religion and Politics for excellent syllabi and book reviews.

³ A recent example of one such excellent book is Monsma, Steven and Soper, Christopher, The Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997)Google Scholar. See also Madeley, T. S. and Enyedi, Zsolt, Church and State in Contemporary Europe: The Chimera of Neutrality (London: Frank Cass, 2003)Google Scholar. One book that acknowledges the need to go beyond comparative statics is Jelen, Ted Gerard and Wilcox, Clyde, eds., Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: The One, the Few and the Many (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; nevertheless, the bulk of the book consists of case studies offered as “data to help develop theories and refine concepts” in future work.

⁴ Hatzopolous, Pavlos and Petito, Fabio, Religion in International Relations: The Returnfrom Exile (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 6,12Google Scholar; Scott Thomas, “Taking Religious and Cultural Pluralism Seriously,” in Hatzopolous and Petito, 24; Carlson, John and Owens, Erik, “Reconsidering West-phalia's Legacy for Religion and International Politics,” in Carlson, John and Owens, Erik, eds., The Sacred and the Sovereign (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 14Google Scholar. For an excellent historical account of the concept of sovereignty, see Philpott, Daniel, “Sovereignty: An Introduction and Brief History,” Journal of International Affairs 48 (Winter 1995)Google Scholar.

⁵ See Finnemore and Sikkink (fn. 1); and Checkel (fn. 1). See also Philpott, Daniel, “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,” World Politics 55 (October 2002), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Huntington, , Clash of Civilizations (New York: Touchstone, 1997)Google Scholar.

⁷ Barber, , Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁸ Juergensmeyer, , The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁹ Gill (fn.l).

¹⁰ In nineteenth-century Europe, many liberals campaigned to secularize public institutions like education and marriage that had previously been the exclusive domain of the church.

¹¹ The creation of Catholic parties threatened to end the church's monopoly on representation of the Catholic community; it challenged the church's hierarchical control over Catholics; and, most importantly, it signaled endorsement of democratic principles, a position distinctly at odds with the church's official doctrine at that time (p. 48).

¹² Strategic calculation of organizational interest also explains the confessional parties’ gradual “conversion” to enthusiasm for democratic principles and practices. Lay leaders in the parties came to realize that much of their political power and legitimacy derived from electoral success (not church support) and that the best way to reinforce their position (as well as ensure autonomy from church control) lay in embracing parliamentary ways rather than cleaving to church directives.

¹³ The Zentrum, tainted by its association with the rise of Nazism, commanded a smaller popular base.

¹⁴ See Gill's intervention in the debate regarding his book posted on www.providence.edu/las/ discussion.htm (last accessed August 2,2007).

¹⁵ For a brilliant account of the expressive side of religiously inspired violence, see Markjuergensmeyer, , Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar. The importance of expressive as opposed to instrumental behavior is not limited to the realm of religion in politics. This is a well-explored phenomenon in the field of ethnic politics. See, among others, Horowitz, Donald, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar, especially the references to the work by Henri Tajfel therein.

¹⁶ This work builds on a long tradition of work on culture and politics starting with Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba and taken up by Ronald Inglehart and the host of Eurobarometer and Afrobarometer studies that followed. See Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture (Boston: Little Brown, 1965)Google Scholar; and Inglehart, , Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, among his many other works. Note that Mark Tessler has used these methods to good effect to study the dynamic of religion and politics in the Muslim world. See, among others, Tessler, , “Islam and Democracy in the Middle East,” Comparative Politics 34 (April 2002)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Quote taken from the frontispiece of Sacredand Secular.The Cambridge series is edited by David Leege and Kenneth Wald.

¹⁸ The current consensus among the sociologists of religion seems to be that modernity is not antithetical to religious piety and that modernization does not spell secularization. See, for example, Eisenstadt, Shlomo, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000)Google Scholar; and Katzenstein, Peter, introductory chapter, in Byrnes, Timothy and Katzenstein, Peter, eds., Religion in an Expanding Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. For an especially spirited refutation of the secularization thesis, see Stark, Rodney, “Secularization, R.I.P.,” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999)Google Scholar. Norris and Inglehart revive the secularization thesis by demonstrating that religiosity is negatively correlated with level of economic development.

¹⁹ Modernization is defined here to mean the twin processes of material development (industrialization and urbanization) and intellectual development (the advance of science and rationality in intellectual inquiry).

²⁰ This approach is also referred to as “the religious market theory.”

²¹ The study, cited by Norris and Inglehart on p. 13, was carried out by Mark Chaves and Philip Gorski.

²² They continue: “Virtually all of the world's major religious cultures provide reassurance that,... the universe follows a plan .. . if you follow the rules, everything will turn out well, in this world or the next. This belief reduces stress, enabling people to shut out anxiety and focus on coping with their immediate problems” (p. 19).

²³ Norris and Inglehart also identify other factors that contribute to U.S. religiosity, including high levels of immigration from Latin American and Asian countries where religious devotion remains strong. But their primary explanation focuses on the increased vulnerability many Americans feel with regard to their existential security as compared with their West European counterparts.

²⁴ For example, measures of attendance at houses of worship would undercount religiosity in reli-Jjjous traditions that do not emphasize collective prayer.

²⁵ Supporting this is the fact that the vast majority of scholarly studies cited by Norris and Ingle-hart are published in sociological venues such as The American Sociological Review, The British Journal of Sociology, and The American Journal of Sociology.

²⁶ The relationship between the vitality of religion and its political salience is by no means simple. For example, in much of the Middle East, the incidence of religious belief in society has remained relatively constant over the past century but the political salience of religion has skyrocketed over the past thirty years.

²⁷ This argument is persuasively made by Bleich, Erik, “From International Ideas to Domestic Politics: Educational Multiculturalism in England and France,” Comparative Politics 31 (October 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ See Monsma and Soper (fn. 3).

²⁹ Hence the title of the book edited by Hatzopoulos and Petito (fn. 3).

³⁰ The series is edited by Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil.

³¹ Weilrnan, James Jr., ed., Belief and Bloodshed: Religion and Violence across Time and Tradition Lanham, Md:Rowman and Littlefield, 2007Google Scholar); Juergensmeyer, Mark, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley:University of Californial Press, 2003Google Scholar) ; Stern, Jessica, Terror in the Name of God (New York:Harper Collins, 2003Google Scholar); McTernan, Oliver, Violence in God's Name (Maryknoll, N.Y.:Orbis, 2003Google Scholar).

³² Appleby, R. Scott, The Ambivalence ofthe Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (New Rowman and Littlefield, 2000Google Scholar); Johnston, Douglas, Faith-BasedDiplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (New York:Oxford University Press, 2003Google Scholar); Johnston, Douglas and Sampson, Cynthia, eds., Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (New York:Oxford University Press, 1994Google Scholar).

³³ Witte, John Jr., and Van der Vyver, Johan D., Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective (The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff, 1996Google Scholar); Turner Johnson, James, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1981Google Scholar).

³⁴ Fox, Jonathan, “Religion as an Overlooked Element of International Relations,” International Studies Review 3 (Autumn 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

³⁵ Desch, , “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies,” International Security 23 (Summer 1998CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

³⁶ See, for example, Katzenstein, Peter, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York:Columbia University Press, 1996Google Scholar).

³⁷ Desch (fn. 35), 160.

³⁸ This is a paraphrase of Desch (fn. 35), 160.

³⁹ A similar argument is made by Craig Parsons, who shows that ideas can have independent causal impact in international affairs in contexts that are structurally indeterminate. See Parsons, , “Showing Ideas as Causes,” International Organization 56 (Winter 2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁴⁰ Barnett, “Identity and Affiances in the Middle East,” in Katzenstein (fn. 36), cited in Desch (fn. 35),163. For some other interesting discussion of the interplay of ideas and interest in shaping international politics, see Philpott, Daniel, “The Religious Roots of Modern International Relations,” World Politics 52 (January 2000Google Scholar); and Nexon, Daniel, “Religion, European Identity, and Political Contention in Historical Perspective,”Google Scholar in Byrnes and Katzenstein (fn. 18).

⁴¹ By their own admission: “(R)eligion is not the main driving force behind international relations” (p. 7).

⁴² See Finnemore and Sikkink for more on the paradigm wars of IR and the contrast between this subfield's dynamics with that of comparative politics (fn. 1,404).

⁴³ See Goldstein, Judith and Keohane, Robert, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, Political Change (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1993), 6Google Scholar. Surprisingly, this same imperative was sounded by one of the editors of the Palgrave Macmillan series more than ten years ago. See Lapid, Yosef, “Culture's Ship: Returns and Departures in International Relations Theory,” in Lapid, Yosef and Kratochwil, Friedrich, eds., The Return of Culture and Identity in IR (Boulder, Colo.:Lynne Rienner, 1996), 9Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ See Parsons (fn. 39); see also Desch (fn. 35).

⁴⁵ The classic example of identity defining interest (though not specifically cited by Thomas) is the case of working-class citizens in Europe whose identity as members of a national group (German, French) defined their sense of interest and led them to fight alongside their conationals rather than unite as proletarians and resist the call to war.

⁴⁶ As the source of this insight, Thomas cites Finnemore, Martha, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1996Google Scholar).

⁴⁷ Yee, Albert, “The Causal Effect of Ideas on Policies,” International Organization 50, no. 1 (1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁴⁸ See Finnemore and Sikkink (fn. 1).

⁴⁹ Checkel (fn. 1).

⁵⁰ This disjointedness also constitutes a problem “from the point of view of academic marketing and disciplinary recognition” (a problem the subfield shares with other puzzle-driven segments of comparative politics) that undermines the goal of raising the subfield's profile and increasing its impact on the discipline as a whole. See Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol, “Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science,” in Katznelson, Ira and Milner, Helen, eds., Political Science: State ofthe Discipline (New York:W. W. Norton, 2002), 697Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Several sociologists and historians, including Casanova (fn. 2) and Juergensmeyer (fn. 31), have written insightful accounts of how religion has shaped public life, but their work is primarily ide-ographic rather than nomothetic; it does not engage in the sort of structured comparison that a com-parativist would employ to generate and test hypotheses. See also Almond, Gabriel, Appleby, R. Scott, and Sivan, Emmanuel, Strong Religion: Tie Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2003Google Scholar).

⁵² For exposition of these outstanding questions, see Berman (fn.l).

⁵³ Berman (fn. 1); Blyth (fn. 1); Finnemore and Sikkink (fn. 1).

⁵⁴ See Carrie Rosefsky Wickham's innovative work on learning among Muslim activists (Paper presented at Princeton University, Department of Near Eastern Studies, March 2007). For more on how structural factors, both social and institutional, shape religious interpretations, see Schwedler, Jillian, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (New York:Cambridge University Press, 2006Google Scholar); and Wictorowicz, Quintan, ed., Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 2004Google Scholar).

⁵⁵ For more on the Janus- faced nature of religion, see Smith, Kristin, “From Petrodollars to Islamic Dollars: The Strategic Construction of Islamic Banking in the Arab Gulf” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2006Google Scholar).