U.S. foreign policy has "got religion' -- accidentally

Q: The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is recommending that the U.S. government develop a strategy to make religion 'integral' to American foreign policy. Should U.S. foreign policy get religion?

R. Scott Appleby, co-director of the Task Force on Religion and the Makinig of U.S. Foreign Policy, and I spent most of his waking hours and many of mine in the 1990s relating to the question of religion in international affairs. Half way in time between the Iranian Revolution and 9/11 we were commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to pursue only one feature of one kind of religion: 'militancy' in 'fundamentalism' and its equivalents in (eventually) over 20 religions or religious movements. We had the company of about 100 scholars from all over the global and religious map, and produced five large volumes ("The Fundamentalism Project" at the University of Chicago Press.)

While I stayed in the classroom and at conferences, Appleby traveled much and did up- close work on that scene, then still unfamiliar to the public as it was. He headed off with a quotation in mind, one which animated and inspired us to counter-action. A very high governmental official who was charged with knowing something, when asked why and how American intelligence had "missed," (not foreseen) the signs which led to a revolution in Iran, one which humbled the United States, answered in detail. He said that our agencies kept their eye on everything important in nations like that. We knew much, he said, about military potential, banking, universities, garb, customs, and more. "The only thing we paid no attention to at all is religion, because everyone knows that religion has no power in the modern world." He was implying that the State Department, on the spot, did not need to know or 'get' religion.

Six years later, Appleby, reporting on consultations in political, military, and strategic circles, said to me, "Six years ago I was teaching undergrad classes at a university in Chicago; this month I've met with . . . " and he listed high-level governmental officials. H added: "I'll tell you, today the State Department has got religion." It had learned that religion with its many faces, forms, and fronts, was at the heart of both murderous impulses and the quieter but promising instruments of peace.

Since many of us who kept learning in new ways of the power of religion were and are professionals in academic study of religion and were preparing new generations to teach and write on it. we could seem to be bidding for attention for our craft Yet it became ever more clear that religion did not need public relations. What it needed is informed attention, which our nation had been unprepared to give it, plus better knowledge and better use of that knowledge.

Would we, could we, have blundered into the Iraq War as we did had the Defense Department known more about the sectarian lines and tensions in Iraq?. Wags asked, not without warrant, whether officials knew even things as basic as reasons for conflicts between Shi'ite or Sunni Muslims? Would we, could we, tolerate so many blunderbuss calls on cable TV and even among some kinds of religious leaders to define the faiths of "the Other," the enemy, only negatively, and counsel aggression among them? Do we know what the functions and hold of religions are among those "others," not all of whom are suicide bombers and not all lines of their sacred texts are murderous? Do we know enough about Hinduism, Buddhism, and, yes, Christianity to understand why the faithful act as they do--and why they 'misinterpret' us, as they often do

Appleby followed our studies by heading the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and he is joined by Richard Cizik, President of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good in this report. They have, with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in action, studied and shown how religions either inspire or legitimate peace and war efforts (War will always draw the headlines, peace will always show the potential of quieter counter-action.)

What they and their Task Force Members in their report succeed in showing is that U. S. Foreign Policy leadership is more and more coming to understand that religion is already in the mix in conflict. Only now and then does one find tribes, groups, religious communions, or nations which are fighting over something not prompted or sustained by religion, however it is defined. They provide reasons for the nation(s) to recognize anew that religion is a waxing, not a waning force globally, and that not to understand this or to misunderstand its role, can be paralyzing and lethal.

By Martin Marty  |  February 24, 2010; 10:53 AM ET Save & Share:                 
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