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The COVID-19 pandemic did not eliminate existing social tensions; rather, it at times intensified them. Thus, it is unsurprising that the tension between the liberal state and illiberal religious communities likewise intensified, as those communities were late to comply with COVID-19 public health regulations issued by state authorities. This Article suggests that alongside the behavioral and psychological explanations for individual non-compliance, illiberal religious communities' late response to the COVID-19 threats stems out of these communities' unique characteristics and deeply held norms. It provides five explanations supporting this argument and argues that all result from the interventionist liberal-centric policies embraced by most Western states for dealing with illiberal religious communities. Since COVID-19 is not expected to be the last health-related crisis, and as other environmental, economic, or security emergencies may still require social adherence to government regulations, liberal states should rethink their policies toward illiberal religious communities. The ability to harness those communities to comply with life-saving regulations may not only save lives within these communities but also reduce threats to areas and neighborhoods adjacent to those communities. This Article suggests that the isolation and fortification processes that illiberal religious communities engage in may be mitigated if states embrace pluralistic-centric policies regarding illiberal religious communities., TABLE OF CONTENTS I. 872 II. THE TRAGEDY OF BEING LATE: ILLIBERAL RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES' LATE RESPONSE TO COVID-19'S THREATS 878 III. WHY DO ILLIBERAL RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES DISOBEY COVID-19 SAFETY REGULATIONS? [...]

Recently, I met a Wall Street trader. He was in his late thirties, perhaps his early forties. I was impressed by his active intelligence. We spoke of the current political [...]

What, exactly, do you want?' Liberal critics put the question to the post-fusionist American right in various ways. At times they ask it earnestly, at times with a sneer, and [...]

Whitefish Mountain, a ski resort in northwest Montana, is known for its spicy terrain, rime-clothed 'snow ghosts,' and postcard-perfect views of Glacier National Park. And, of course, for 'Big Mountain [...]

While Malaysia has often been portrayed in the popular media as a progressive and pluralist country, some scholars have argued that an upsurge in religious conservatism--manifesting itself in exclusivist Islamist narratives--has created the conditions from which extremist ideas associated with ISIS draw support and sympathy. Yet even as legitimate concern for the appeal of ISIS and the return of foreign fighters grows, the very existence of these conservative and exclusivist religiopolitical narratives articulated by Malaysian Islamists operating in and referenced to a distinctly Malaysian context in fact limits the appeal of ISIS in Malaysia. By focusing specifically on the nexus between religion and ethnicity in Malaysia, and the historical development of a modern yet traditionally rooted expression of Malay-Islamic identity in contradistinction to 'Westernization', this article reveals the underpinnings of Malay Muslim religiopolitical legitimacy and contrasts them to the narratives of ISIS, outlining that ISIS's failure to adequately contextualize its narratives has significantly blunted the terrorist organization's appeal. Keywords: Malaysia, terrorism, ISIS, bumiputera, caliphate, legitimacy., The emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the declaration of the formation of its 'Caliphate' in 2014, reverberated across the world. Thousands flocked to Syria [...]

Abstract In 1950, the left-leaning American journal of opinion Partisan Review invited an array of leading intellectuals to answer a set of questions about whether and, if so, why religion [...]

Abstract Addressing the anguished, or often openly hostile, discovery of a deep incoherence at the heart of the idea that a modern state can be both Jewish and democratic, this [...]

The problem is the relentless aggression of liberalism, driven by an internal mechanism that causes ever more radical demands for political conformism, particularly targeting the Church. The solution is an [...]

INTRODUCTION There was a time when theology was called the 'queen of the sciences.' From the beginnings of the university in the High Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, theology [...]

In August 1947, a few months after President Harry S. Truman pledged the United States to fight communism around the globe, Time magazine delivered a stern warning to its wide [...]

WE WERE ASKED IN THE FIRST PANEL OF THE CONFERENCE THAT gave birth to these essays to think about the role of religion in relation to the state's ideas about [...]

The democratic uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have been widely celebrated but in the West they have generated concern and apprehension. Most of this concern involves the future role of religion in the politics of the Arab world. In this essay, I make two broad observations. First, concern in the West about the rise of mainstream Islamist parties is partly based not on the illiberal orientation of these groups but the fact that they are politically independent actors who challenge Western geo-strategic interests in the region. Second, the role of religion in government has never been democratically negotiated en masse in the Arab world. To assume that this issue has been resolved and a broad consensus exists is to project a Western understanding of religion-state relations on the Arab-Islamic world. Doing so is both erroneous and analytically distorted. The battles over the role of religion in politics have yet to begin in the Arab world., The 2011 Arab revolutions are best described as uprisings for democracy and dignity. They are democratic in the sense that they are driven by a deep-rooted hunger for political empowerment [...]

While a graduate student in history in the 1990s, I once asked a German friend what she found most remarkable about the United States. She recalled the experience of an [...]

On November 5, 2010, the English once again observed Guy Fawkes Day. commemorating a failed Roman Catholic plot in the seventeenth century to blow up the Houses of Parliament during [...]

This article explores contemporary manifestations of the politicization of culture by the Christian clergy in the determination and resolution of political conflicts in Nigeria in general and Yorubaland in particular--against the backdrop of what has been called 'the civilizational hegemony of Christianity.' The article approaches religion and the practices it enables as part of a cultural system through which we can capture the specific ways in which religious authorities pursue political and ethnocultural interests to justify a particular social order. Cet article explore les manifestations contemporaines de l'infiltration de la politique dans la sphere culturelle a l'initiative du clerge Chretien dans l'identification et la resolution des conflits politiques au Niger et en particulier dans la region du Yorubaland. Le contexte est celui d'un phenomene appele 'l'hegemonie de la civilisation chretienne.' Cet article considere cette religion et les pratiques qu'elle encourage comme partie prenante d'un systeme cuhurel a travers lequel nous pouvons percevoir les moyens specifiques utilises par les autorites religieuses pour poursuivre des interets politiques et ethnocuhurels afin de justifier un ordre social donne.

The emerging role of Pentecostalism in Nigerian politics necessitates the need to study the operative dynamics that shape this Christian religious denomination. Nigeria's multiple religious heritages can foster a fertile ground for interreligious dialogue and living when the foundational framework for interaction is based on respect, tolerance, and appreciation of the other. Antagonistic proselytizing ought to be discouraged by religious leaders. Above all, as Pentecostalism gains prominence in the country, new strategies ought to be adopted that will help to foster accountability among public officials. Pentecostalism can become the new Christian prophetic and ethical voice., Introduction The recent survey on religious identity in America has shown a steady growth in the membership of Pentecostalism. While other Christian denominations are fast losing their members, Pentecostal affiliation [...]

ALTHOUGH THE CONFERENCE THAT LAUNCHED THIS SPECIAL issue posed "the religious" and "the secular" as a "divide"--even, as divided--one of the most striking points of agreement across the many presentations [...]

WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT "THE SECULAR STATE"? This question has more purchase than one might think. Consider Charles Taylor's paper published elsewhere in this issue. Taylor [...]

THE PREMISE OF MANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING RELIGION AND secularity has been that the secular and the religious are two separate and distinct, and indeed for some, opposing spheres. In earlier [...]

THE REVEREND JERRY FALWELL, HIS HAIR IN A POMPADOUR, HIS suit tight at the seams, his speech and visage astir with moral outrage, first arrived on the national public stage [...]

IN GEORGE WASHINGTON'S LAST POLITICAL TESTAMENT, THE Farewell Address, he proclaimed religion "the firmest foundation" and "indispensable support ... of popular government." Alexander Hamilton scratched out the paragraph on religion [...]

THE ARTICLES IN THIS SECTION CONTINUE THE DISCUSSION OF how changeable and unstable any supposed boundary between the religious and the secular has been, looking particularly at this dissolving binary [...]

AS THE OTHER ESSAYS IN THIS VOLUME ATTEST, WE ARE LIVING IN an interesting time, one that is seeing a reappraisal of the separation we had often thoughtlessly assumed necessary [...]

I SHALL BEGIN WITH A QUOTATION: My fellow Americans, last night when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the [...]

BEGINNING FROM WHERE I AM SITTING--NAMELY, ENGLAND--ONE of the main stories of the twentieth century had been that the future of Europe is America. Growing up and through my adult [...]

Revisionist accounts of political ideas in late eighteenth-century England have focused on the importance of religion as a leading source of radicalism. Some argue that heterodox religion explains both political disaffection itself and the ideological continuity between late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century radicalism up to the Reform Bill.

BY THE TIME he left office, President Bush's faith-based initiative had become a kind of stand-in for his entire presidency. Whenever something went wrong on Bush's watch it was tarred [...]

In this engaging APSA address, Jacques Maritain outlines the essential relationship between Christianity and democracy. In Maritain's view, it is the Gospel or the Christian leaven which has awakened the secular, temporal consciousness to supreme moral principles and the real content of democracy understood as the earthly pursuit of Gospel truths concerning the transcendent origins and destiny of man and society. Christianity teaches the inalienable dignity of every human being fashioned in the image of God, the inviolability of conscience, the unity of the human race, the natural equality of all men, children of the same God and redeemed by the same Christ, the dignity of labor and the dignity of the poor, the primacy of inner values and good will over external values, universal brotherhood, love, and justice. Maritain distinguishes between the procedural aspects and the substantive content of democracy, but anchors the Gospel vision in the free exercise of rational and moral faculties as key to democratic self-government. He cautions that without a superior moral law by virtue of which men are bound in conscience toward what is just add good, the rule of the majority runs the risk of being raised to the supreme rule of good and evil, and democracy is liable to turn to totalitarianism, that is, to self-destruction. Maritain concludes that what has been gained for the secular consciousness, if it does not veer to barbarism, is the sense of freedom consonant with the vocation of our nature.

Historically, modern democracy can be rightly regarded as an extension of some of the basic tenets of Christianity, with the latter's focus on individual dignity and inalienable rights of every person regardless of their ethnic or social origin. In some aspects, however, democracy remains a project directly rivaling Christianity. This essay traces the rivalry to the French Revolution which tried to replace Catholicism with the cults of Reason and Supreme Being, which shows that without recourse to traditional sources of authority, such as religion, democracy is incapable of constructing a legitimate social order. While democracy continues to be the form of government most compatible with Christian doctrine, the relationship between the two is not a necessary nor an equal one. It depends on whether democracy is viewed as a technique of government, when compromise and cooperation are possible, or as an ideology, when such coexistence is increasingly difficult.

The Judeo-Christian tradition has put its imprint on a fascinating and complex creation: Europe. Looking at the European stage today, one cannot help notice its struggles, challenges, and changes. The core of European unity cannot be stable and durable if the spiritual dimension is left aside, considered unimportant compared to the political and economic dimensions. In an era said to experience 'pathologies of reason' and 'pathologies of religion,' the interdependence of reason and religion in a democratic, liberal state becomes highly relevant. Understanding the complementarity between Christian values and the democratic ideal is the key to a genuine democracy that remains true to its goals. Maritain insisted that democracy needs virtue, and hence must not be separated from its moral dimension.

Eduardo Frei Montalva, co-founder of the Christian Democratic Party and President of Chile, represented for Jacques Maritain, French neo-Thomist philosopher, an example of prophetic leadership in contemporary times. According to Maritain, modern democracy could not survive without a profound spiritual revolution of political leadership--the 'prophetic factor' of democracy-which he observed in Frei as a public official, senator, and ultimately the President of the Republic of Chile (1964-1970). Under his famed 'Revolution in Liberty,' Frei endeavored to meld socio-economic reforms with an effort to build a more participatory democratic culture in his native land. Guided by Maritain's political philosophy, Frei's initiatives set into motion the possibility of a 'third way' of politics in the Southern hemisphere. In the end, this revolution ended in political disappointment due to economic stagnation, social disruption, political infighting, and the impractical idealism of Christian democracy itself.