Global Religious Forces and Conflict Resolution

Year 2014, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 67 - 80, 29.08.2014

Rana M. Nelson

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.167328

Abstract

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

Keywords

Big Gods, God’s Century, cooperation, religious resurgence, conflict resolution

Global Religious Forces and Conflict Resolution

Abstract

Keywords

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