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Religious institutions are neither designed nor intended to mobilize people into political
action. Yet across the globe, they seem to have done precisely that. (see, e.g., Marty and Appleby
1992, Rudolph and Piscatori 1997, Hart 2001, Jelen and Wilcox 2002, Barkun 1994). Rather
than recede from the public square in blind obedience to the dictates of secularization theory and
the expectations of many social scientists, religion has instead increasingly engaged society and
politics (Casanova 1994, Hadden 1987). Some recent agenda-setting works in political science–
Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (1996), Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2001), Verba et al’s Voice
and Equality (1995)-- recognize the religious factor (in various guises) as a major political force.
1
The American National Election Studies, the mother lode of data for many behavioralists, has
repeatedly revised its interview schedule to help scholars get a better purchase on the electoral
significance of the religious factor (Kellstedt and Leege1993).
As much as we welcome the growth of disciplinary interest in the religious factor, the
increased attention highlights the need for a stronger infusion of social science theory in this
emerging subfield. For all the research generated by the relevant disciplines, neither political
science nor religious studies has offered a comprehensive explanation for the genesis of
religiously based political action. Case studies abound but there is relatively little in the way of
cumulative scholarly progress (Jelen 1998). Referring to an outburst of published studies about a
social movement during the 1970s, a scholar jokingly suggested renaming the outlet for this
research the British Journal of National Front Studies. In the same manner, considering much of
the published work in recent years, one could accurately refer to a subfield of Christian Right
Studies or fill the pages of a journal devoted solely to fundamentalist Islam. When scholarly
inquiry is walled off in specialized research outlets, its practitioners often cease drawing on
larger scholarly currents and aiming at the development of general theory. We intend to offer
Convention