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Making Sense of Religion in Political Life
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ABSTRACT
After a long period of post-war neglect by most mainstream scholars, religion assumed a new prominence in political science during the late 1970s. Despite the latter-day significanceaccorded religion by the discipline, the product of several unexpected real-world events, much of the recent research has focused on specific episodes or groups without drawing on or developing general theories. This paper suggests that Social Movement Theory (SMT), particularly in its most recent incarnation, offers a way to address the three critical questions about religiously engaged political movements: What are the motives for political activity by religious groups? What means do they possess that facilitate political action? What features and conditions of the political system provide them opportunity to undertake effective political action? The bulk of the paper explores various expressions of religiously based political action from the vantage point of SMT. We conclude that the translation of religious grievances into political action is contingent on a string of conditions involving the interplay of motive, means and opportunity. The implicit message is that scholars should approach religiously engaged social movements with the sametheoretical frameworks used to understand secular political forces and that focusing these interpretive lenses on religion will illuminate issues of general interest to the discipline.
Acknowledgements: Without in any way implicating them, we want to thank our colleague Philip J. Williams and Jennifer Hochschild for helping us sharpen our focus.
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ABSTRACT
After a long period of post-war neglect by most mainstream scholars, religion assumed a new
prominence in political science during the late 1970s. Despite the latter-day significance
accorded religion by the discipline, the product of several unexpected real-world events, much of
the recent research has focused on specific episodes or groups without drawing on or developing
general theories. This paper suggests that Social Movement Theory (SMT), particularly in its
most recent incarnation, offers a way to address the three critical questions about religiously
engaged political movements: What are the motives for political activity by religious groups?
What means do they possess that facilitate political action? What features and conditions of the
political system provide them opportunity to undertake effective political action? The bulk of the
paper explores various expressions of religiously based political action from the vantage point of
SMT. We conclude that the translation of religious grievances into political action is contingent
on a string of conditions involving the interplay of motive, means and opportunity. The implicit
message is that scholars should approach religiously engaged social movements with the same
theoretical frameworks used to understand secular political forces and that focusing these
interpretive lenses on religion will illuminate issues of general interest to the discipline.
Acknowledgements: Without in any way implicating them, we want to thank our colleague Philip
J. Williams and Jennifer Hochschild for helping us sharpen our focus.
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