Staff: Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and Timothy Samuel Shah, Former Adjunct Senior Fellow for Religion and Foreign Policy December 1, 2006 - June 11, 2008
Made possible by the generosity of the Henry Luce Foundation, the symposia series will not focus on just one religion or one set of issues. Topics to be addressed include: new trends in political Islam among Sunnis; the impact of religion on politics and society in Nigeria; the role that religious ideas and identity play in the ways that the worlds of Islam and the West understand (and misunderstand) one another; the impact of evangelical Christianity on American foreign policy; religion and politics in China; the rise of Christianity in the global South; and politics and religion in South Asia.
Staff: Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and Timothy Samuel Shah, Former Adjunct Senior Fellow for Religion and Foreign Policy
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.
Staff: Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and Timothy Samuel Shah, Former Adjunct Senior Fellow for Religion and Foreign Policy
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.
Staff: Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and Timothy Samuel Shah, Former Adjunct Senior Fellow for Religion and Foreign Policy
A three-part symposium on the history of evangelicals, and their role in influencing U.S. foreign policy.
Staff: Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and Timothy Samuel Shah, Former Adjunct Senior Fellow for Religion and Foreign Policy
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.
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The Council on Foreign Relations' David Rockefeller Studies Program—CFR's "think tank"—is home to more than seventy full-time, adjunct, and visiting scholars and practitioners (called "fellows"). Their expertise covers the world's major regions as well as the critical issues shaping today's global agenda. Download the printable CFR Experts Guide.