Global Religious Forces and Conflict Resolution: A Book Review

All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace

All Azimuth, journal of the İhsan Doğramacı Peace Foundation’s Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. It provides a forum for academic studies on foreign policy analysis and peace research as well as theoretically-oriented policy pieces on international issues.

It particularly welcomes research on the nexus of peace, security and development. It aims to publish pieces bridging the theory-practice gap; dealing with under-represented conceptual approaches in the field; and making scholarly engagements for the dialogue between the 'centre' and the 'periphery'. We strongly encourage, therefore, publications with homegrown theoretical and philosophical approaches. In this sense, All Azimuth aims to transcend the conventional theoretical, methodological, geographical, academic and cultural boundaries. All Azimuth is published two times a year by the Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research.In Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict, author Ara Norenzayan tracks the rise of religion in human communities, from the small deities of hunter-gatherer tribes to the big gods of more-modern societies. He argues that while the development of moral supernatural agents was a large contributor to our cooperative, mainly anonymous way of living, their influence is now waning in the face of secular institutions. In God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics, authors Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah maintain that religion is alive and well, especially in politics, where it has enjoyed a resurgence in the last 40 years. This review compares and contrasts these two books, presenting a discussion of their main points as well as what we should know about religion when formulating conflict resolution strategies and developing international policy.

• Primary Source

All Azimuth: Past Issues http://www.foreignpolicyandpeace.org/index.php/en/past-issues/

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