Recent decades have seen an upsurge in religious engagement initiatives by international organisations and ministries of foreign affairs. In this blog, Andrew Dickson asks how global the global religious engagement regime is.
In the first episode of 1670, a mockumentary following a family of 17th century Polish aristocrats, we are introduced to the Fr Jakub, the scheming youngest son. Fr Jakub is ‘already climbing the corporate ladder’ and explains he joined the priesthood because ‘I’ve always wanted a good job on a dynamic and evolving team in a fiscally stable organisation with a strong market presence’.
It’s a good line, and a telling one. For those who regard religion as long privatised, it’s only by transforming churches into secular institutions that we capture the myriad social roles they play. Today, these analogies are not only seized upon by Polish satirists, or by religious historians who suggest the Jesuits were ‘the world’s first global corporation’. Similar thinking also predominates amongst international policymakers.
Recent decades have seen an upsurge in religious engagement initiatives by international organisations and ministries of foreign affairs. Religion has become the ‘subject and object’ of international policy: whether in religion-related political violence, Freedom of Religion or Belief advocacy, or attempts to engage ‘religious actors’ within international development, peacebuilding, and climate policy. With nation-states exploring forms of religious diplomacy as a soft power tool and state-sponsored interreligious dialogue initiatives, scholars have begun speaking of a global religious engagement regime, and others of a global project of religious and social engineering.
In researching the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)’s growing, largely unstudied role in these developments, one question interesting me is how far this is a unified international project, or one shaped by domestic religion-state arrangements, histories and norms. In other words, how global is the global religious engagement regime?
How can these developments be seen as international? Within the FCDO, religious engagement is approached through a problem-solving lens: a source of innovation and new resources to solve thorny policy problems. To do so, an explanation is needed as to why religion matters, and how religious engagement avoids compromising the state’s religious neutrality (in-keeping with certain post-secular articulations of a beneficial religious public presence whilst maintaining secular principles). This explanation is found in a dominant paradigm of religious engagement, which has structured religion’s return to international policymaking institutions across Europe and North America.
This paradigm stresses that religion is a socio-political force in the same way that non-religious forces are. Religions are primarily people: leaders, agents, and communities with authority structures, motivations and interests that remain closed to outsiders. Their existence is an empirical fact; they are a powerful constituency that must be engaged with. Individuals are influential socio-political actors in their own right; groups are crucial, trusted providers of public services; and the co-ordinated socio-political action of billions affects the interests and security of nation-states. Theology remains none of the state’s business or concern; what’s required is simply tried and tested diplomatic techniques and outreach, applied to a new set of stakeholders. This is a rationale for religious engagement where ‘religion’ barely needs to be mentioned.
Alternative paradigms instead stress that religiosity itself is crucially socio-political. Religious beliefs condition socio-political action of religious adherents and are wielded by religious leadership to facilitate behavioural change; religious worldviews can enrich policy goals and further the political imagination; religious identities and practices provide solidarity and trust. While there are isolated examples of this in British foreign policy, this approach is far more associated with the War on Terror; early advocates for broader religious engagement directly critiqued a ‘War of Ideas’ approach, insisting that religion was negatively essentialised, and that such states cannot intervene effectively on religious ideology. The tendency for many advocates, however, has been to imply all religious traditions were tarred with the same brush, instead of considering how such strategies in the War on Terror rested on colonial foundations and racist dehumanisation of Muslims.
Considering the differing experiences for religious traditions also highlights very different roles they hold within British foreign policy. Once again, engagement with both the Church of England and the Holy See is often rationalised by policymakers on seemingly non-religious grounds, avoiding any charges of religious favouritism. These rationales move beyond religious engagement paradigms, however. Instead, they rest on longstanding, naturalised relationships with the British state. Policymakers stress the Church of England’s national role as almost religious public servants: an ethical voice in the public sphere, contributing to public services, political institutions and consultative processes. Engagement with the Holy See through official diplomatic representation is rooted in its unique status as a ‘state’ rather than a religion; statehood that also guarantees the Holy See membership of all major fora within the international system. Both religious organisations have also developed more significant capacity for diplomatic and policy engagement than many other religious traditions. The Fr Jakubs of today may not be joining an agile multinational, but if seeking ulterior motives for ordination, they have plenty of policy-relevant opportunities to explore.
Photo by Tom Kulczycki
This piece originally appeared on the Religion and IR blog at the Religion and International Relations Section of the International Studies Association.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE Religion and Global Society nor the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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