State Department Finds Religion, But Whose?
At Religion Dispatches, Melani McAlister discusses who is best equipped to engage religious communities around the world in the name of American foreign policy. She writes, “[H]aving found religion, the State department needs to watch out who they give it to: if it is taken to be true that the US government needs to turn (first or primarily) to religious people to do the work of engaging religious groups abroad, then religion, and inevitably specific religious groups, will be part of US foreign policy in ways that raise serious questions about our commitment to disestablishment.”