Religious resurgence and politics in the contemporary world / edited by Emile Sahliyeh.

Includes bibliographic references (pages [311]-351) and index.

Pt. I. Explaining the Phenomenon of Religious Resurgence. 1. Religious Resurgence and Political Modernization / Emile Sahliyeh. 2. The Stubborn Persistence of Religion in the Global Arena / Anson Shupe. 3. The Incurably Religious Animal / Joe Barnhart. 4. The Limits of Religious Resurgence / Donald Eugene Smith -- Pt. II. Religious Resurgence of the Conservative Protestants in the United States, Central America, and South Africa. 5. The New Christian Right in American Politics: Mobilization Amid Modernization / Kenneth D. Wald. 6. Christian Fundamentalists and the Imperatives of American Politics / Allen D. Hertzke. 7. What Do the Evangelicals Want? / Ronald Nash. 8. Onward Christian Soldiers: The Case of Protestantism in Central America / Laura Nuzzi O'Shaughnessy. 9. Divided Evangelicals in South Africa / Lawrence Jones -- Pt. III. The Church: An Instrument for Political Protest and Modernization. 10. Liberalism in Search of a Political Agenda / Lonnie D. Kliever.

11. The Revival of Church and State in the Philippines: Churches and Religion in the People Power Revolution and After / C. Neal Tate. 12. The Sword and the Cross: Church-State Conflict in Latin America / Michael Dodson -- Pt. IV. Religious Resurgence: A Mechanism for Social Discontent and Political Change. 13. The Islamic Revival as Conservatism and as Progress in Contemporary Egypt / Louis J. Cantori. 14. Women and Religion in a Modern Islamic Society: The Case of Kuwait / Jamal Sanad and Mark Tessler. 15. Shi'i Islam: Bonyadgiri or Fundamentalism? / Gregory F. Rose. 16. Religious Resurgence and Political Mobilization of the Shi'a in Lebanon / Augustus Richard Norton. 17. The Politics of Religious Resurgence and Religious Terrorism: The Case of the Sikhs of India / Karandeep Singh. 18. Religion and Politics in the Jewish State of Israel / Mark Tessler -- Pt. V. Afterword -- 19. Concluding Remarks / Emile Sahliyeh.

This book examines the highly politicized religious groups and movements that have surfaced since the late 1970s in the United States, Central America, South Africa, the Philippines, India, and the Middle East. Sahliyeh and others analyze this trend toward the politicization of religious conservatism and question a number of assumptions central to concepts of modernization.

For example, it has been assumed by development theorists that the interrelated components of modernization would enhance the trend toward secularization of societies. This book shows that in many societies today religious revivalism and fundamentalism seem to be direct products of modernization. A global, comparative approach is utilized to formulate general explanations for religious revivalism and its implications for modernization, development, and politics.