"Really Existing" Scriptures: On the Use of Sacred Text in International Affairs
John Rees Monday, 1 March 2004
As is often quoted, Andre Malraux (may have) once said, "The twenty-first century will be religious or it will not be at all." If this sentiment is even partly true, then the reading of scriptures will once again become as important for diplomacy as it is for devotion. Yet as anyone with a sense of history knows, political claims of biblical proportion have almost always failed to satisfy temporal aspirations, let alone eternal ones. So how do we avoid manipulating scripture for opportunistic political ends and still allow the voices of sacred text to have a constructive role in political discussion? This, I believe, is one of the central questions to address if Malraux's new postsecular century is to turn out better rather than worse.
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