Religious Appeals in Power Politics

Religion and Conflict

By: Peter S. Henne

Narrated by: Gary Roelofs

Religious Appeals in Power Politics examines how states use, or attempt to use, confessional appeals to religious belief and conscience to advance political strategies and objectives. Through case studies of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, Peter S. Henne demonstrates that religion, although not as high profile or well-funded a tool as economic sanctions or threats of military force, remains a potent weapon in international relations.

Public policy analysis often minimizes the role of religion, favoring military or economic matters as the "important" arenas of policy debate. As Henne shows, however, at transformative moments in political history, states turn to faith-based appeals to integrate or fragment international coalitions. Henne highlights Saudi Arabia's 1960s rivalry with Egypt, the United States's post-9/11 leadership in the global war on terrorism, and the Russian Federation's contemporary expansionism both to reveal the presence and power of calls for religious unity and to emphasize the uncertainty and anxiety such appeals can create. Religious Appeals in Power Politics offers a bold corrective to those who consider religion as tangential to military or economic might.

The book is published by Cornell University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2023 Cornell University (P)2023 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"A must-read for scholars, students, and policymakers alike." (Gregorio Bettiza, author of Finding Faith in Foreign Policy)

"Likely to become a standard reference on religion in international relations." (Stacie E. Goddard, author of When Right Makes Might)

Interesting listen

I was given this book for free,

This was an interesting listen, and I went through it in one go.

Narration was fine as well.

An Interesting Look at the Use of Religious Appeal

This is primarily an academic exercise that looks at the use of religious appeals in three (3) specific instances and draws a few inferences from that. As such, the material is fairly dry, but interesting if you actually enjoy political analysis in any form. Generally we are first given some context of the situation from which the religious appeal is used, followed by how the religious appeal was constructed and finally an analysis of how effective the religious appeal was. In some respects, the targeted view here makes it difficult to make any over arching generalization outside of sometimes it works as expected and sometimes it doesn’t, but such appeals can’t be ignored within the political process. There primary explanation for this is a combination of source credibility and target material gain … which seems somewhat intuitive to me where such things a proof texting is used to justify already existing inclinations … in other words, religious appeals are primarily used to allow people to do what they already wanted to do without any guilt or moral condemnation. As such it seems that such appeals are purely machiavellian.

Preface (4:06)
Introduction (42:40)
Chapter 1 - Why, How, and When Religious Appeals Matter in Power Politics (1:09:15)
Chapter 2 - Religious Appeals in a Middle East Rivalry: Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Pact (1:33:37)
Chapter 3 - US Engagement in the Global War on Terrorism (1:29:27)
Chapter 4 - Russia: Undermining Western Opposition to the Russky Mir(1:19:10)
Chapter 5 - Expanding the Analysis (45:32)
Conclusion (1:11:09)

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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