Interreligious Engagement in Global Politics: Some Conceptual Considerations

Abstract This paper traces the recent growth of interreligious engagement initiatives from the perspective of political science theories about the return of religion to international affairs. It argues that this body of scholarship provides an important conceptual background for understanding the proposals which have developed within these initiatives for political development and international cooperation. The first half of the essay places the growth of interreligious engagement strategies within the larger development of debates in political science and philosophy about the global crisis of liberalism and its implications for the “return” of religion to global politics. In order to do so, it revisits the work of Samuel Huntington and Jürgen Habermas, two seminal scholars in the field of religion and politics whose scholarly trajectories personify larger trends within the field. The second half of the essay then considers the specific form that interreligious engagement efforts have taken across the broader Middle East, a region which has experienced a particularly active period of interreligious growth over the last two decades, also in response to geopolitical dilemmas in the post-9/11 era. The essay ends with an analysis of the political concepts which have been developed within these engagement initiatives and the extent to which they respond to the crises described in the first half of the essay.