1 Introduction
Gregory Millard
The Iranian Revolution of 1979. The spectacular terrorist attacks of 9/11. The spread of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and the ongoing violence between Israel and Hamas. The roughly 48,000 attacks and 210,000 deaths attributed to extreme Islamism globally since 1979. Repeated assaults upon abortion providers, motivated by hardline Christian anti-abortion sentiment. 2000 deaths resulting from sectarian violence following the demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindu extremists in 1992. The bombing of Air India Flight 182 from Vancouver. The fervent evangelical mobilization behind the presidencies of George W. Bush, the architect of the ‘War on Terror,’ and Donald Trump. Examples could be multiplied. Clearly, the belief that religion must shape politics is associated with some of the most important events, and insoluble conflicts, of our age.
At the same time, religious politics are tricky to make generalizations about. If different groups of religious believers assert wildly different belief systems – Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. – then on what basis can we lump them all together under the same category, as a single phenomenon?
Our answer must distinguish run-of-the-mill religious leaders and followers, who may not be especially ‘political,’ from religious fundamentalism as a political ideology. And while the specific theologies that fundamentalists defend are very different indeed, they exhibit ‘family resemblances’ in their underlying assumptions about the connection between religious belief systems and political and social life (e.g., Ruthven, 2004).
