Large-Scale Religious Change and World Politics

Abstract

This contribution has a simple purpose. It seeks to show that major religious changes are underway that will probably have profound implications for world politics. Few analysts of world politics or global history would doubt that religious change has played a central part in shaping the contemporary world. The emergence and maintenance of communities of religious believers — such as Christians, Jews, and Muslims — has been an important factor in the formation of states, empires and civilizations.¹ Many of the most characteristic aspects of contemporary political systems, at least arguably, also derive from the distinctive religious heritage of different states, peoples and areas of the world.² If one thinks of key contemporary European or North American political values, one might include individual liberty, the innate equality of all human beings at birth, liberal democracy, and human rights. All of these have been argued to derive from the Christian religious background of European and North American polities.³ These values are epitomized in the constitutions of such ‘secular’ states as the French Republic and the United States of America, not only in those polities where religious and political identities are formally linked.