The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 

Book Review 

Vol. 7, No. 2, 1990 261 

Religion and Political Power 

By Gustavo Benavides and MU? Daly (eds). NE State University of 
New York Press, 1989, 2 4 0 p p .  

The upheaval in contemporary world politics reveals a renewed interest 
in religion; similarly, the current anarchy in rehgious thought and institutions 
often demonstrates a not-so-subtle interest in politics. Hence, for political 
scientists, among others, new studies of religion and politics are always 
welcome. Except for two essays in this volume, all were presented in 1986 
at a seminar on “Religion and Nationalism: held under the auspices of the 
National Endowment for the Humanities at the University of California, Santa 
Barbara. The two essays mentioned, those of Alexandre Benningsen and 
Stephen Feuchtwang (who did not attend the seminar) were commissioned 
separately. 

The editors of this collection are Gustavo Benavides, a lecturer in the 
Department of Religious Studies at Villanova University; and M. W. Daly, 
an assistant professor in the Department of History at Memphis State 
University. 

The broad-ranging seminar explored the role played by religion in the 
emergence of the political life of modem states. From India and Sri Lanka 
to the Islamic Republic of Iran, to the resurgence of religious fundamentaism 
in the United States and its persistence in Israel, the participants discussed 
the many forms that the tension between religion and the modem state assumes. 
However, the thematic thread running through most of the discussions proved 
to be something more general than the state itself, although it is the state 
in which it is now manifested. That theme is the exercise of political power; 
more precisely, the exercise of political power in a context that mobilizes 
religious representations. 

This volume, then, examines the interaction between two of the most 
charged topics in the modem world: religion and politics. It shows the 
inextricable connection between religious attitudes and responsibilities and 
political activities. 

Following an introductory chapter which explores the religious 
articuiations of politid power, the authors examine the role played by religion 
in the current political situation in several countries. Approaching these cases 
as anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists, the authors 
make visible the dialectical relationship between religion and the pursuit of 
political power. On the one hand, they demonstrate the political significance 



262 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 7, No. 2, 1990 

of religious choices and, on the other, the almost unavoidable need to articulate 
in religious terms a group’s attempt to acquire, maintain, or expand political 
power. 

The eleven subsequent essays look into the issue of religion and politics 
in India, Sri Lanka, .China, the Soviet Union, the Sudan, Iran, Israel, the 
United States, Mexico, and Peru. These are indeed diverse countries when 
it comes to religion and politics. In terms of religions, the book covers 
Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The underlying 
similarity in all these essays is the use of the method of sociology of religion 
to elucidate the relevance of the past to the present and to explain the 
traditionalization of modernity in an age of ideology. 

In addition to the essays, the book contains pertinent notes and an index. 
All in all, the work may be seen as a religioF articulation of power. Hans 
Morgenthau, the cdqbrated author of Politics Among Nations, first wrote 
in 1948 that politics “is a struggle for power.” Probably unwittingly, one of 
the editors of the present study pushed the Morgenthau concept of power 
fuqher when he said, in the first essay: “Power is a tension between interests, 
ideologies, classes, or individuals, and is always defended and contested, 
using all the weapons-physical and ideological at the group’s disposal” @. 
1). The book, however, essentially ignores the present religious controversies 
surrounding the concept of power. It may be that the complexities arising 
from an analysis of the doctrinalhion of religion made it difficult to tell 
the complete story about religions so numemus and so diverse in a compressed 
format. Nevertheless, the present work will stimulate both discussion and 
debate about the place of religion in our society. 

Sheikh R. Ali 
Professor, Dept. of Political Science 
North Carolina Central University 
Durham, IUC