Wuthnow - Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion

New York: Routledge, 1998

ISBN 0-415-187-400 (set)

ISBN 0-415-19080-0 (Volume 1)

ISBN 0-415-19081-9 (Volume 2)

 

The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion examines the interconnections of politics and religion, considering how these two elemental institutions of society have combined to shape public discourse, affect social attitudes, spark and sustain collective action, and influence policy, especially over the past two centuries.

 

The principle of the separation of church and state, and the related idea that politics and religion are and ought to be distinct, has been one of the most crucial factors in the rise of national secular states. But even though it is the bedrock of modern political institutions and international relations, this principle has been challenged in recent years until it has become the fault line in societies and religious movements around the world. Religion has played an important secular role in much of the political turmoil of our era. Any effective analysis of or long-lasting solution to such turmoil requires attention to religion in its political matrix. The encyclopedia’s aim is to describe the historical roots of the relations between politics and religion in the modern world and to explain the web of their global interconnections. This work, the first of its kind to be published, is intended to serve as a sorely needed guide to understanding, scholarship, and communication.

 

The encyclopedia includes 256 signed articles by prominent scholars from many nations. As well as essays on broad themes, such as millennialism and pluralism, it includes articles on specific religions, individuals, geographical regions, institutions, and events. In preparing this work, the editors and contributors have aimed to represent the vast diversity of ways in which religions and political systems are influencing each other throughout the contemporary world.

 

The articles, ranging from a few hundred to eight thousand words, are written to be accessible to students and interested adults as well as to scholars. Most articles include references to related articles and brief bibliographies to assist in further reading. Each volume of the work contains a detailed index.

 

In addition to the articles, the encyclopedia includes an introduction by Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University, who served as editor in chief. An appendix contains the excerpts from or the complete texts of twenty-one source documents that relate to articles in the volume. The appendix also includes excerpts from twenty-seven world constitutions with provisions on religion, a glossary of terms, and a compilation of Internet sites, as of mid-1998, that may be of use to readers who wish to explore certain subjects through that medium.

 

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James, William

 

American philosopher and psychologist. James (1842— 1910), the son of an iconoclastic religious thinker and brother of the novelist Henry James, was educated in Europe. After receiving a medical degree in 1869, he taught at Harvard University.

 

Broadly conceived, both politics and religion played a lifelong role in his writings and thought. His father, Henry James Sr. , combined a deep interest in the religious impulses of human beings apart from formal, organized religion with a profound respect for communal life apart from political institutions. James absorbed from him a suspicion of institutions, a refusal to accept authoritarian boundaries in intellectual matters, and a sympathy for the human urge toward religious belief.

 

Perhaps James’s most important contribution to American philosophy was his development of the doctrine of pragmatism, which in essence was a call for philosophical contemplation to culminate in action. In attempting to resolve a metaphysical or moral problem, the pragmatist tries to trace the respective practical consequences of a question. If no practical differences can be traced, the question is rejected as an idle one. Pragmatism thus offers a model for meaningful and courageous action in the world.

 

James’s interest in the possibilities of human heroism was developed in his essays in popular philosophy. Like many thinkers in the post-Civil War era, he reacted strongly to the glorification of military heroism prevalent at the time. On the one hand, he believed in the value of heroic action; on the other, he considered it distasteful to conquer those weaker than himself. For James, heroism lay in the struggle rather than in the triumph. He devoted himself to developing a portrait of heroism apart from the horrors of modern technological warfare, one that would emphasize the best of the human spirit free of the worst excesses of human evil. In "The Moral Equivalent of War, "one of his most famous essays, James acknowledged that the urge to do battle is an important part of the human psyche and argued that the heroic impulses and virtues that are brought out in times of war must somehow be preserved in a different context; in other words, a "moral equivalent of war" must be found. For James, religion arguably was one important such moral equivalent.

 

James believed that all people have the capacity to reach heroic levels of experience because all possess a subliminal consciousness that operates according to laws unknown by the waking consciousness. To face the profound challenges of the subliminal realm squarely, to grapple with what can never be fully understood, was the ultimate act of heroism. His Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902) was a testimony to the most extraordinary levels of human experience. This popular work was James’s ultimate expression of his father’s distrust of institutional religion and his own desire to preserve the possibility of deep experience and meaningful action in the world.

 

Heather L. Nadelman

 

Bibliography