Debates within a Single Church: Secularism and IR Theory

Abstract

» How does religion relate to International Relations Theory? « is a question circulating in International Relations. This essay considers the possibility that there is no universal definition of religion. This means that, in an important sense, the preceding question makes no sense. If the categories of religion and politics are the products of complex cultural, historical, religious and political negotiations, then what we need to ask is how do these categories become authoritative in particular times and places, and with what political consequences? To define the secular and the religious is a project with political implications. Religion participates with political authority in ever-changing formations that fail to align neatly with secular modernist assumptions. This essay takes a closer look at these assumptions.