For Western Christians, Holy Week—the most important time of the church calendar—just finished. Like many other Christians, it is a powerful and challenging time of the year. We are meant to reflect on how we are self-assured in our devotion to Jesus’ teachings one...
On November 1, 2025, President Donald Trump threatened to end all U.S. assistance to Nigeria and — if he deemed it necessary — launch a military attack against insurgents in the country. As National...
I was born a proud Protestant. A Lutheran in a town still marked by Catholic-Protestant tensions, with Catholic friends who told me I don't worship right, neighbors who claimed Catholics were...
US President Jimmy Carter's funeral is being held today in Washington, DC at the National Cathedral. Since he passed away shortly after Christmas, tributes have abounded about a man once derided as...
WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE BOOK AND WHAT ARE ITS COORDINATES? Peter S. Henne, Religious Appeals in Power Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023 WHAT'S THE ARGUMENT? Religious appeals—references to religious standards and symbols by states used to justify policies or critique rivals—are a potent but unwieldy tool in international power politics. States will often turn to religious appeals when forming international coalitions or trying to break apart rival coalitions. Unfortunately, they tend to be an unpredictable tool, often backfiring on the states using them and causing more...
As a Turkey follower (I studied the country in grad school and wrote on it for my dissertation and first book) I've got thoughts on Turkey's elections. But as someone not interested in hot takes, I'm going to wait until the election is over to provide some analysis. Instead, I want to talk about Pope Francis' "peace talks" between Russia and Ukraine. The Pope recently announced "secret" peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, although neither side seemed to be aware of this. His efforts have progressed, however, with Ukraine President Zelensky's recent visit to Italy. I should be a fan of...
One year ago, Russia launched an illegal war on Ukraine, committing horrific war crimes against the people of Ukraine. Analyses and memorials abound, and I'm probably not the only person writing about this on the Duck today. I wanted to address a specific aspect of this war, though: why Russia's carefully cultivated ties with far-right forces in Western Europe and the United States failed to undermine Western opposition to the war. Undermining opposition to the Russky Mir? Last year, as Russia was about to launch its invasion of Ukraine, I was finishing a chapter on Russia in my new book....
I excitedly read this recent tweet by Evan Perkoski of UConn, about a new article he co-authored that has been accepted in International Organization. Beyond being glad for a colleague's success, I was excited by the substance of the publication. They produced a new dataset on violent non-state actors and analyzed the conditions under which they cooperated, finding a major role for both group ideology and religious identity. That is huge! Well-crafted data published in one of the top journals in the sub-field that found that religion drives a crucially important security issue. This should...
WHAT’S THE NAME OF THE BOOK? Gregorio Bettiza. 2019. Finding Faith in Foreign Policy: Religion and American Diplomacy in a Postsecular World (New York, Oxford University Press) WHAT’S THE ARGUMENT? Since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has increasingly “desecularized,” such that it is now deeply intertwined with religious agendas, interests, and organizations. We see this trend in efforts to advance international religious freedom, mobilize faith-based actors for humanitarian and development purposes, fight global terrorism by promoting ‘moderate Islam,' and solve...
A (very small) corner of the policy world got excited Monday afternoon: the Biden Administration announced its picks for top international religious freedom positions. This is an area I've worked in for over ten years alongside my academic work, but it's one that few policy experts pay much attention to. The reason for our excitement is the the same reason everyone should be excited about Biden's picks. International religious freedom policy: The forgotten floor of Foggy Bottom US international religious freedom (IRF) policy officially started with the IRF Act of 1998. This law created an...
Did the study of state formation ever lose its religion? There’s a new wave of interest in the Catholic Church as an institutional formation.
The US Congress recently introduced bills that would call on the Trump Administration to press China over its treatment of the Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group. This would seem to be a good fit, as Trump has been critical of China throughout his time in office. And religious freedom--under which this would initiative would fall--seems to be the one area of human rights his Administration cares about. But any US pressure on China will be undermined by the similarity between some of China's Uighur policies and the Trump Administration's Muslim travel ban. This relates to a broader...