Revisiting Religion and Politics Research: Achievements, Critique, Future Questions

Despite an established research tradition on religion and politics that cuts across several sub-disciplines of political science as well as neighbouring disciplines (or even constitutes a genuine sub-discipline), there is very little reflection today about the state of the art of this research. As religion regained prominence in the public and political spheres since the 1970s and 1980s, a major concern among scholars was to question the prevailing secularization paradigm. The empirical study of religious actors, and their interaction with political forces, brought evidence to the fact that neither religion and politics are totally separated nor is religiosity fading away as modernization and secularization theories had assumed. A vibrant academic debate joining comparative politics and political theory emerged. In recent years, the debate in Europe and the US gained in relevance through the salience of public debates brought by the rise in immigration from religious diverse backgrounds, and by new developments in relation to family patterns, reproduction techniques, genetic engineering and euthanasia. Editorial projects abound. Several new handbooks on religion and politics (e.g. Jeff Haynes (2009/2016) or the Oxford Dictionary of Religion and Politics in the United States (2009), books and edited volumes have been published and new journals (e.g. APSA "Religion and Politics") have been created. The disciplinary fragmentation and, thus, the sometimes isolated analysis of similar phenomena, however, leads to some conceptual confusion, and debate on the challenging questions in empirical and theoretical terms could be of use. Against this background the Section revisits religion and politics research by reflecting on perspectives, methods, pre-assumptions, general achievements and future questions. It is envisioned to publish a collection of Papers selected from this Section as a handbook.