Details

<p>Acknowledgments xi</p> <p><b>1 When God Plays Politics: Radical Interrogations of Religion, Power, and Politics 1</b></p> <p><b>2 Interrogating ‘Religion’ 8</b></p> <p>1. Religion Trouble 8</p> <p>2. ‘Seeing’ Religion: Six Common Clichés 11</p> <p>3. Gagging at the Feast of Two Unexamined Assumptions: Religion, All Good or All Bad 14</p> <p>4. The Religion-Is-No-Good Cliché 21</p> <p>5. The Second Set of Two Clichés: Religion Is Belief and Belief in God 24</p> <p>6. ‘Religion’s’ Private Parts 33</p> <p>7. Powerless in Paradise 35</p> <p>8. Two Ways to Eliminate ‘Religion’ 36</p> <p>9. Is Religion Our Phlogiston? An Historical Test Case 39</p> <p>10. Talal Asad’s ‘Religion’ Trouble 42</p> <p>11. The Trick of Defining ‘Religion’ 46</p> <p>12. Owning ‘Religion’ 50</p> <p>13. How Durkheim Took ‘Ownership’ of ‘Religion’ 55</p> <p>14. Religion and Its Despisers 59</p> <p><b>3 Interrogating ‘Power’ 62</b></p> <p>1. Confronting the Paradox of ‘Power’ 62</p> <p>2. How ‘Power’ Plays Havoc with Thinking about “Institutional Violence” 66</p> <p>3. Whom Should We Blame? ‘History’ on Trial 70</p> <p>4. History’s Helper: We Should Also Blame Foucault 81</p> <p>5. Problematizing Power in South Africa 84</p> <p>6. Foucault versus Foucault 88</p> <p>7. Thinking about Power as Auctoritas and Hierarchy 90</p> <p>8. What More Is to Be Done? Thinking about Power as Auctoritas and Social Force 97</p> <p><b>4 Interrogating ‘Politics’ 100</b></p> <p>1. Defining ‘Politics’ 100</p> <p>2. Where There Is No Politics: Despotism and Totalitarianism 102</p> <p>3. Autonomous Politics 105</p> <p>4. Where Our ‘Politics’ Makes No Sense 107</p> <p>5. Politics, the Construct 109</p> <p>6. Two Pernicious Views of ‘Politics’ 112</p> <p>7. History Lessons for Professor Morgenthau 116</p> <p>8. What Constitutionalism Owes the Council of Constance 119</p> <p>9. The Emergence of the Political . . . from the Religious 123</p> <p>10. Machiavelli and Luther: Critical Contributions to the Autonomy of Politics 125</p> <p>11. Foucault’s Fault II: ‘Everything Is Political’ 130</p> <p>12. The Hidden Fascism of Thinking that Everything Is Political 133</p> <p>13. Public and Private: No Absolute Line of Demarcation 135</p> <p>14. Resisting the Panopticon 136</p> <p>15. Afterword: The Autonomy of ‘Politics’ and the Nation-State 140</p> <p><b>5 Testing Interrogations of ‘Religion,’ ‘Power,’ and ‘Politics’: Human Bombers and the Authority of Sacrifice in the Middle East 142</b></p> <p>1. Is ‘Suicide’ Bombing Religious? 142</p> <p>2. Making Too Much of Religion in ‘Suicide’ Bombing: ‘Islamofascism’ 144</p> <p>3. Dying to Make Too Little of Religion in ‘Suicide’ Bombing: Robert A. Pape 147</p> <p>4. No Religion in ‘Suicide’ Bombing: Talal Asad 150</p> <p>5. How Religion Helps Explain Human Bombing 153</p> <p>6. Human Bombing Is “Catastrophe,” but also a “Triumph” of “Secular Immortality” 155</p> <p>7. Human Bombing = Jihad + Sacrifice 160</p> <p>8. Sacrifice or Suicide? 164</p> <p>9. But Do Any Muslims Really Think Human Bombers Are ‘Sacrifices’? 168</p> <p>10. Sacrifice Makes Authority 175</p> <p>11. How and Why Sacrifice Works: The Authority of Sacralization 176</p> <p>12. How and Why Sacrifice Works: No Free Gifts 180</p> <p>13. Concluding Remarks 182</p> <p>References 187</p> <p>Index 196</p>

<p>“Overall the book is an excellent contribution.”  (<i>Political Studies Review</i>, 1 January 2013)</p> <p>“But as a powerful myth-buster of some of the great fallacies about religion and politics, or even as a primer in the study of religion for undergraduates, it works very well and would serve to provoke lively debate.”  (<i>Modern Believing</i>, 1 April 2012)</p> <p>"The book is written in an accessible and engaging style, and readers who are new to the field of religion and politics will find it readable and helpful". (Religion, September 2010)</p>

<b>Ivan Strenski</b> is Holstein Family and Community Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of numerous books, including: <i>Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Nationalism and Social Thought</i> (2002); <i>Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice</i> (2003); <i>The New Durkheim: Essays on Philosophy, Religious Identity and the Politics of Knowledge</i> (2006); <i>Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion</i> and <i>Thinking About Religion: A Reader</i> (both Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).

Religion. Power. Politics. Ideas and institutions that have been laden with a baggage of meanings picked up through the course of history – and which, unfairly or not, are often defined by these historic and social contexts. In this thought-provoking book, Ivan Strenski unpacks the central concepts and influences of religion, politics, and power, and provides a new theoretical framework to think about what they mean in today’s society. In addition to offering radical critiques of the religious and political perspectives of thinkers such as Talal Asad and Michel Foucault, Strenski moves beyond the theory in applying his intellectual framework to a variety of real-world issues, including insights into suicide bombers in the Middle East. <p>Erudite and engaging, <i>Why Politics Can't be Freed From Religion</i> provides a timely and highly original contribution to our understanding of these concepts. It tries to dislodge readers from conventional thinking about politics and religion, and in doing so, helps make sense of the complexities of our twenty-first-century world.</p>

"Going beyond the religion-is-good and the religion-is-bad clichés, while also distancing himself from fashionable academic eliminationists, Ivan Strenski examines the connections among religion, power and politics. Is religion merely ‘used’ by fanatics, as if it were an inert hammer that can be picked up or dropped at will? Is it to be equated with belief? Or with power, à la Foucault? Or is it, rather, inseparable from authority? Most readers are likely to have their presuppositions shaken by Strenski’s <i>Manifesto</i>."<br /> —<i><b>Gustavo Benavides</b>, Villanova University</i>

GB