In Search of the Twin Tolerations
Daniel Philpott Sunday, 1 June 2008
The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) not only has brought the U.S. government to address one of the largest classes of human rights violations in the world today, but has directed U.S. foreign policymakers to take religion seriously. As late as the 1990s, religion was still "the missing dimension of statecraft," as Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson subtitled their path breaking 1994 book. It was missing because American foreign policy cadres broadly subscribed to the secularization thesis, which viewed religion either as irrelevant or as an irrational, violent remnant. But the past generation has proven the secularization thesis wrong, at least insofar as religion has risen in its social influence in virtually every region of the world.
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