ABSTRACT
It is almost a truism that “religion is back” in international relations. Those of us concerned with religion and international ethics, however, have worked to expose and interrogate the barely hidden anxieties and ethical assumptions that continue to underpin this return and shape scholarship. In international relations, these anxieties revolve around two main issues, which demonstrate built-in ethical assumptions: 1) that religion is anachronistic and dangerous in the modern world, and therefore religious identities inevitably promote exclusivist views of belonging, resulting in violence towards non-religious or differently religious “others,” and 2) that religion is incompatible with the form of government that should rule the world, that is, democracy. As a result, numerous studies have examined the connection between religion and violence, with some moving towards opposite (but potentially problematic) assertions that religion a priori promotes peace instead. Still others examine the possibility of combining different levels of religious acknowledgment with forms of democratic governance. Increasingly, however, groups of scholars are moving beyond these debates to explore interesting questions and issues about religion, ethics and ontology/methodology, religion, ethics and race, different kinds of “religious worlds,” indigenous and post-colonial practices, and new ways of conceptualizing and understanding the ethical implications of religious experience. This section of the Ethics and International Relations Handbook sets out parameters for important components of this innovative work, while also recalling aspects of ongoing debates that require continued or further excavation and examination.
