Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue

Over the last thirty years, governments across the globe have formalized new relationships with religious communities through their domestic and foreign policies and have variously sought to manage, support, marginalize, and co-opt religious forces through them. Many scholars view these policies as evidence of the "return of religion" to global politics although there is little consensus about the exact meaning, shape, or future of this political turn. In The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue, Michael D. Driessen examines the growth of state-sponsored interreligious dialogue initiatives in the Middle East and their use as a policy instrument for engaging with religious communities and ideas. Using a novel theoretical framework and drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Driessen explores both the history of interreligious dialogue and the evolution of theological approaches to religious pluralism in the traditions of Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam. He analyzes state-centric accounts of interreligious dialogue and conceptualizes new ideas and practices of citizenship, religious pluralism, and social solidarity that characterize dialogue initiatives in the region. To make his case, Driessen presents four studies of dialogue in the Middle East--the Focolare Community in Algeria, the Adyan Foundation in Lebanon, KAICIID of Saudi Arabia, and DICID of Qatar--and highlights key interreligious dialogue declarations produced in the broader Middle East over the last two decades. Compelling and nuanced, The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue illustrates how religion operates in contemporary global politics, offering important lessons about the development of alternative models of democracy, citizenship, and modernity.

Michael D. Driessen is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and the inaugural Director of the MA program in International Affairs at John Cabot University. He also directs the Rome Summer Seminars on Religion and Global Politics. Michael received his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame and has been a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar as well as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. He has taught at John Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna and holds a research affiliation with Cambridge University's Von Hügel Institute. He also serves as an advisor for the Adyan Foundation in Lebanon. Driessen's books include The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue (Oxford University Press, 2023), Human Fraternity and Inclusive Citizenship: Interreligious Engagement in the Mediterranean (ISPI, 2021; co-edited with Fabio Petito and Fadi Daou), and Religion and Democratization (Oxford University Press, 2014). He has published scholarly articles in Comparative Politics, Sociology of Religion, Politics and Religion, Constellations and Democratization and essays in America Magazine and Commonwealth.