This symposium, directed by Walter Russell Mead and Timothy Shah, explored how China’s various major religious traditions (village-based folk religion, Buddhism, neo-Confucianism, Roman Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, Islam, and new religious groups such as the Falun Gong) are contributing to its economic, social, and political development – and stirring up controversy. It also addressed the ways in which religion is playing a stabilizing and destabilizing role in China at the moment, how Chinese government policy towards religion may be changing, and what the long-term consequences are likely to be for country’s social, economic, and political future.

This event was the fourth in the Religion and Foreign Policy Symposium Series at CFR and was funded through the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

Summary Report of Symposium: Downloadable PDF

This symposium addressed how different forms of Christianity and Islam may have helped (and sometimes hindered) the development of free and open societies – not just in the narrow sense of democratic government but in the broader sense of openness to progress, innovation, an entrepreneurial spirit in economics, and a competitive marketplace of ideas. Directed by Walter Russell Mead and Timothy Shah, this symposium explored how both Christianity and Islam may foster freedom-friendly dynamism, but also considered powerful arguments that religion is essentially antithetical to freedom and the open society.

This is the third symposium in the Religion and Foreign Policy Symposia Series made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

Summary Report of Symposium: Downloadable PDF

A three-part symposium on the history of evangelicals, and their role in influencing U.S. foreign policy.

This is the second symposium in the Religion and Foreign Policy Symposia Series, which is made possible by the generosity of the Henry Luce Foundation.

Summary Report of Symposium: Downloadable PDF

Nigeria is the largest country in the world with an evenly split population of Christians and Muslims. According to research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, this population is perhaps the most intensely religious in the world. In a recent symposium hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, "Religious Conflict in Nigeria," Nigeria experts and religious scholars examined the political compromises that maintain relative stability in Africa's most populous country. "To understand where Nigeria is headed, we need to understand the religious dynamics in Nigeria," said Timothy S. Shah, adjunct senior fellow for religion and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Organized by Shah and Walter Russell Mead, the Council's Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, this event was the first in the Religion and Foreign Policy Symposia Series at CFR. The series aims to integrate the study of religion and foreign policy and is supported by a generous contribution from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Summary Report of Symposium: Downloadable PDF

Further Readings

Council Special Report: Nigeria: Elections and Continuing Challenges

Podcast: "A Blow for Nigerian Democracy" with Michelle Gavin

Q&A: Nigeria's Creaky Political System

Joint Statement on Nigeria's Recent Elections by scholars Richard Anthony Joseph, Darren Kew, Peter M. Lewis, Princeton N. Lyman, J. Stephen Morrison, John N. Paden

More resources on Nigeria, religion