23. A Great Academic Re-awakening: The Return to a Political Economy of Religion

Ever since the dawn of civilization, human beings have been mixing religion and politics. And irrespective of various attempts to “separate church and state” or “secularize” society by confining matters of spiritual belief to the private sphere, the realms of religion and politics have remained intertwined and will, in all likelihood, continue to be. Indeed, speaking of “separate realms” may be misleading given that people with religious convictions take their beliefs and values into the political arena as a way of informing their choices and behavior. Political authorities, irrespective of their own faith, must factor the existence of people with religious beliefs. Even self-proclaimed atheistic rulers such as Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin had to devise policies of how to deal with the remnants of the Orthodox Church that they could not extinguish. Even in North Korea, history’s most-recent paragon of secular totalitarianism, President Kim Jong-Un must repeatedly enforce restrictions on Christians who refuse to vanish. Religion and politics will continue to mix and it behooves social scientists to understand why and how.