Conclusion: How Shall We then Live?

Abstract

It was stated at the outset this book seeks to examine the way the global resurgence of religion is challenging our understanding of how culture and religion influence international relations. At the heart of this challenge, at least for those of us in the West, is the way it challengs our understanding of what it means to be modern, opening up the possibility of multiple ways of being modern. We have to understand that the sacred, and considerations of religion and spirituality are an inherent part of a postmodern world.

These are not mathematical symbols or hydrocarbon molecules that the scholars are studying their subject matter consists of living feeling men [and women]. It would be a melancholy comfort, if we were all blown up into a cloud of radioactive dust [or by weapons of mass destruction today], to realize that the scientific scholars knew exactly why this was happening. Men live by the things they cannot prove, and we lose much, if in our search for the reasons for human behavior, we forget the truth about man is not as important as the miracle that man exists at all. ¹

—Charles O. Lerche and Abdul A. Said School of International Service The American University