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Religion and Public Policy
- PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Religion and culture absolutely affect our domestic and foreign public policies—but how and how much? How does religion affect our national voting patterns? What is the appropriate role for religion in politics? How can “faith-based” organizations assist in providing social services to the disadvantaged and disenfranchised? How is religious fundamentalism affecting the Middle East peace negotiations? These are but a few of the controversial questions that the Baker Institute Program on Religion and Public Policy has attempted to answer. Building upon previous research, engaging a myriad of diverse views, and through rigorous and open debate, the Baker Institute Program on Religion and Public Policy aims to explore how religion and cultural factors interact with public policy issues including education, socioeconomics, politics, conflict resolution, and globalization.
Topics of particular current interest and research are: 1) the appropriate relationship between religion and politics in the United States; 2) the movement known as Dominionism, which asserts that Christians have a God-ordained mandate to replace democracy with a theocratic regime that would “take dominion” by imposing their interpretation of Biblical law upon the nation; and 3) the influence of a particular theological doctrine known as Dispensationalist Premillennialism—the set of beliefs that are articulated in the enormously popular Left Behind series of novels—on the Middle East peace process, given that this doctrine contends that Scripture requires that Israel occupy “all the land of Judea and Samaria” (also known as the West Bank) and therefore precludes a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
- PUBLICATIONS
- 2006
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Three Paths to Eden: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Fundamentalism
May 01 2006William Martin
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Secular State, Religious People - The American Model
Mar 01 2006William Martin
