Religion, Media and Security

In 2004 Robert A. Seiple and Dennis R. Hoover’s edited volume Religion & Security: The New Nexus in International Relations accurately identified the key issue facing international relations scholars in the early twenty-first century. Throughout much of the twentieth century political scientists and international relations scholars treated religion as irrelevant to understanding the discipline. Along with other social scientists, international relations scholars bought into the secularization thesis, which placed religion firmly in the private sphere and stated that religion would diminish in importance as higher levels of education and prosperity undermined dependency on the transcendent.