From the President: Moving from Ideology to Identity

By Dr. Chris Seiple on 31 October 2007

Religion is now a hot topic and a growing focus of research, conferences, and commentary amongst the foreign policy establishment. There remains, however, a widespread tendency to try to understand and manage the “new” issue of religion using old concepts and methodologies that may be too narrow. In particular, the analytical category of “ideology” has been applied to religious phenomena that may have certain characteristics in common with ideology yet extend beyond that to fundamental issues of identity.

To be sure, I do not pretend to have sorted out all the multiple levels at which faith identities influence and are influenced by international affairs. Here I offer not a set of theoretical maxims but rather a mid-stream reflection of my own journey from ideology to identity in international relations—specifically, how my own thinking has progressed from theory to reality, from religion to faith, and from tolerance to respect.

Theory to Reality

As someone who took all of his international relations courses during the mid- to late-1980s and mid- to late1990s—that is, before 9/11—it is rather easy to prove that religion did not come up that often in class. In fact, in all of my undergraduate and 36 graduate courses, I can think of but one class where religion was regularly discussed. There just wasn’t all that much room for religion in the parsimonious paradigms of political science.

I recently had the chance to interview Madeleine Albright at our annual Global Leadership Forum (which focuses on Christians and international affairs). She reflected that in her own academic training and practice during the Cold War, God did not come up. If it did, it was only in the context of “godless communism;” and that was about it.¹

If international relations theory was allegedly so good for so long (at least before 9/11), why did it fail so dramatically—and why are we playing so much catch-up, still, six years after 9/11?

"The sweet dream of American political thought—reborn in each generation, it seems—is that cultural factors like religion will shrink into insignificance as blessed pragmatism finally comes into its own…²"

Taught not to speak of religion and politics in polite company, American foreign policy elites are now forced to understand a world where religion is politics in many regions. This process has not been easy or fun. And it certainly has not been successful.

To take one brief example, consider Uzbekistan, where “to be Uzbek is to be Muslim.” Islam permeates the culture according to the rich and historic roots of tolerance and respect. It is readily apparent upon entering any Uzbek home. Common sense demands that American engagement begin with an awareness of the relationship between Islam and the culture. In general, however, U.S. policy-makers—formed and informed by international relations theory—have consistently ignored religion as a factor in understanding Uzbekistan’s civil society, let alone foreign policy.

Why?

Since the Enlightenment the West has separated church and state, and the results have generally been good for religious and political liberty. The casualty, however, has been the West’s theories of global politics, which have not provided a role for religion in their analysis. “To the extent that religion is included as a factor of analysis, it is often framed as a simplistic ideology…and catalyst to conflict, rather than a complex worldview that forms and informs culture and action, and therefore deserves more subtle discussion.”³

Indeed, traditional international relations theory generally fails to provide for the “irrational choice” and/or influence of a moral imperative. E.H. Carr’s critique of realism serves equally well for conventional international relations theory.

"Realism breaks down because it fails to provide any ground for purposive or meaningful action…realism can offer nothing but a naked struggle for power which makes any kind of international society impossible.”⁴

In other words, the theory of international relations, at least in my experience, has made little allowance for a greater good or higher meaning as a reality that impacts international relations. That this religious reality might also be catalytic, even an explanatory variable, has traditionally been too much for the academician studying international relations in the of post-Enlightenment-empiricism world of scientific-secularism.

Indeed, what place could there be for an Absolute in a field where absolutely nothing was for sure, except the great power of the period (which, ironically enough, has always fallen)?

Religion to Faith

In an era of globalization—where ideas, images, and information lay siege to our identity—religion is a reliable redoubt on two fronts.⁵ First, it provides a meta-narrative, an explanatory framework that, anchored in an Absolute, provides understanding of the complex dynamics in our world today. Compared to the non-narrative of secularism—where truth is relative—the Absolute of religion is comforting indeed.

Second, especially for those children of Abraham, religion was global before globalization. To believe in a deity who created the globe in the first place is to believe in a God who is sovereign over globalization. Christ, for example, created the first international NGO when He established His Church through Peter. Christ and Mohammed both asked their followers to spread their faith to the ends of the earth. In other words, Christianity and Islam invented globalization long before Thomas Friedman’s insight-in-India that the world was flat.

The “down-side” to belief, of course, is the notion that one’s fervor might result in the erroneous conclusion that it is possible to know the Absolute absolutely. Once one feels confident enough to speak for the Absolute, it is not long before ideology sets in; that is, a checklist for living life, where everything is reduced to simple black-and-white issues that the religious adherent is either for or against.

In my own case, I grew up in a strong faith community. These were and are good people with whom I went to church. Nonetheless, my faith communities growing up were essentially all white, and it was assumed that you were Republican and supportive of Republican issues. We were also fairly certain, or so it seemed, about the meaning of Scripture and who was going to Heaven and who was not. Religion was my world. I did not think all that much about religion’s role in international affairs but it was inconceivable that faith and flag could be two separate things.

In 1986 I went to college amidst a spate of televangelist scandals. With a fairly good impression of myself after living in my suburban cocoon, I was not prepared for my encounter with other “worldviews.” I was certainly not prepared to have others condemn my evangelical worldview with pejorative pleasure. And so I was forced to begin thinking through what about my religion was real.

Today I understand every major issue we face to be in part a faith issue, one over which a global God has sovereignty, and about which a loving Jesus seeks to have compassion… sometimes through me as His disciple. I read Matthew 23—where Jesus condemns the religious ideologues for forgetting the larger picture of “faith, mercy, and justice”—and I begin to grasp the perverse and ironic danger of an ideological checklist. While I am absolutely certain of an Absolute, I also recognize that I cannot know the Absolute absolutely. Therefore there is all the more reason to proceed with humble and prayerful caution regarding the majesty and mystery that is God.

Tolerance to Respect

The Institute for Global Engagement works for sustainable religious freedom around the world. A few years back, I was forced to meet an experienced Asian diplomat from an authoritarian country. (He had been assigned to me as my “handler.”) After spending some time with us and talking about some of these issues, he simply said this about the Institute for Global Engagement: “I appreciate very much that you first seek to understand, then engage. You are the first Americans not to give me a list and tell me what to do.”

I apologized. I made clear that while there was no excuse for the way his government had violated human rights, those violations were no excuse for the way he had been treated as a person.

I was speaking recently on Capitol Hill and told this story. One senior staffer came up to me afterwards and reacted specifically to the idea that Americans give lists and tell people what to do. She said: “That’s all we ever do.” It was a quiet confession; like many elites of the foreign affairs establishment, she had the best of intentions to be intolerant of intolerance, but by operating exclusively out of an ideology of tolerance she had neglected a broader and deeper imperative, namely respect.

“Tolerance” is the legal term of international covenants that expects people and states worldwide to live with one another. Unfortunately, it took 9/11 to make clear what the identity wars of the 1990s should have already taught us: tolerance is not enough. What we need is respect. Respect is the moral obligation to take the time to understand our neighbor’s identity, acknowledge deep differences, and, as a result, build a common space of mutually-accommodated identity—identity that is, by definition, rooted in the other.

In short, what I’ve come to understand is that you can’t legislate respect, but you can live it in your personal life and you can work in practical ways through governmental and civil society channels to promote it. I believe that this is the key to a more peaceful future in which religion realizes its vast potential for positive contributions to international affairs.

Last updated 15 September 2008