POS5007 Religion and Politics
This course will examine the relationship between religion and politics from the perspective of the politics of mass movements. It will pay particular attention to the role played by religion in the formation of political culture, the formulation and direction of public policy, the pace and scope of modernization and the distribution of social and economic resources. The course will also seek to outline the essential aspects of the relationship between religion and politics itself. This theoretical component of the course will be informed by historical and philosophical analysis; it will focus on the paradigm offered by the Greek Tragedian Aeschylus in his work, the Orestia. We will also consider the philosophical tension that exists between competing ideals of the democratic state and perhaps ideology. More importantly, we will look at what this says about the role of religion in shaping political ideology.