Robert A. Dowd’s book offers an interesting analysis of the interplay of Christianity, Islam, and liberal democracy within the context of sub-Saharan Africa. The book’s major strength is the skillful integration of both qualitative and quantitative data to analyze the theme of religion and politics in selected sub-Saharan African countries. The main argument is that religious diversity is not always an obstacle to a liberal democratic culture as widely held. On the basis of the variant forms of data, Dowd presents that religious diversity is that “something” which influences how religious leaders and ordinary believers appropriate their respective religious traditions to politics. While many analysts of religion and politics have always thought that religious diversity, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is a hindrance to liberal democracy, this book argues just the opposite.
Drawing evidence from Christian and Islamic religious communities, the author introduces a theory positing that members of these religious traditions have a propensity to contribute efficiently to the construction of a liberal democratic political culture in settings that are religiously diverse than in those that have been religiously homogeneous. The theory that Dowd develops explains why Christian and Muslim religious communities are inclined to be more conducive to a liberal democratic political culture in religiously diverse and integrated settings. The explanation focuses on how religious diversity and integration affect the approaches that Christian and Muslim leaders employ to develop their religious institutions and exploit their influence in the wider society.
The findings in this book critique efforts that attempt to increase the prospects for political stability and liberal democracy by establishing religiously homogeneous communities. The results indicate that such endeavors could decrease the possibility that Christian and Muslim communities promote actions and attitudes favorable to liberal democracy, and discourage activities by religious groups to contribute to political stability. Thus, the possibility for liberal democracy could be better served by encouraging religious diversity and integration. Moreover, Dowd’s book endeavors to demonstrate that the political theologies promoted by religious communities are likely to change across time and place. With ample illustrations, the author maintains that religious diversity has a major effect on how religious leaders prefer to apply their religious belief and doctrines to politics, thereby explaining the fluidity in political theologies evident throughout history and across the contemporary world. Much of the evidence presented points to the fact that something about time and place affects how religious leaders decide to appropriate their religious traditions to politics and the impact that religious observance has on political behaviors and attitudes.
With evidence drawn from various parts of the world, the author explores the genesis of religious diversity in Chapter One. The central argument in this chapter is that Christian and Muslim religious leaders are likely to be encouraging of actions and attitudes that are more valuable to liberal democracy in religiously diverse and integrated settings than in religiously homogeneous environment or in religious diverse background where people are segregated along religious lines. In other words, religious leaders in religiously homogeneous societies are typically reluctant in advancing actions and attitudes that are beneficial to liberal democracy. While in religiously diverse settings that are religiously segregated or where ethnic and religious divergences overlap and strengthen each other, religious leaders are predisposed to support political activism, but not as likely to encourage religious tolerance as religious leaders in religiously diverse and integrated settings.
The variations in how leaders of the same religious faith tradition, whether Christians or Muslims, have applied their religious traditions to politics at a particular point in time is articulated in Chapter Two. Dowd shows that the conventional wisdom, that religion itself, rather than time or place, is determinative, is an argument that cannot be verified empirically (pp. 24–33). Instead, he proposes the existence of conditions that vary across time and place as the ones that affect whether Christian and Muslim religious leaders decide to overtly promote, oppose, or neither openly promote nor oppose pro-democracy movements. Chapter Three discusses evidence from sub-Saharan Africa that reveals a correlation between two factors: (1) religious diversity and educational attainment and (2) the extent to which Christian and Muslim religious leaders promoted pro-freedom political activism during the 1980s and 1990s. Through the measure of quantitative data, the exploration in this chapter confirms that Christian and Muslim religious leaders have tended to be more supportive of pro-freedom political theologies in religiously diverse settings than in religiously homogeneous settings.
The other connection that the book attempts to determine is whether there is any relationship between involvement in religious communities and components of a liberal democratic culture, such as political engagement, support for democracy, and respect for basic freedoms, such as freedom of speech and association. The evidence outlined in Chapter Four suggests that religious-based support for some key indicators of liberal democratic political culture is stronger in religiously diverse countries of sub-Saharan Africa than in religiously homogeneous countries of the region. Though it is clear that religious group activity and frequency of contact with religious leaders had a positive effect on voting and support for democracy in religiously diverse countries in sub-Saharan Africa, there is no evidence that the same setting had similar results on support for freedom of speech.
Chapter Five provides a comparison of the political impact of Christian and Islamic communities in three countries: religiously diverse Nigeria, predominantly Muslim Senegal, and predominantly Christian Uganda. These three countries assist the author in advancing the focal argument of the book. Consequently, the chapter discusses each of the country’s religious demography and considers how it could have affected the type of political theologies promoted by religious leaders and the impact that Christian and Islamic religious communities have had on the prospects for liberal democracy. The analysis in this chapter indicates that there is modest evidence to support the assertion that Christianity and Islam are less supportive of a liberal democratic political culture in Nigeria than in Senegal and Uganda. (The discussion on Nigeria is taken further in the subsequent Chapter Six.) With sufficient data from Nigeria, the author concludes in this chapter that religious diversity is not necessarily destabilizing or an impediment to liberal democracy.
Chapter Seven, which appears as a conclusion meant to sum up ideas discussed in the previous chapters, is the major weakness of the book. I do not see the interest and the point of this chapter because it does not seem to provide new information. In this chapter there is unnecessary repetition of ideas and concepts that the reader is already familiar with as presented in the earlier chapters. Conspicuously, repetition is strongly evident in pages 160–164 of the book. Repetition of arguments is also to be found in pages 114 and 131 where measures of religious observance that combines indicators of communal religious engagement and personal religious devotion have been repeated almost word to word.
Over all, Christianity, Islam and Liberal Democracy, is a major step in the study of religion and politics in Africa, and the book will have a significant impact and make an important contribution to this wide field.
