Jonathan Fox is a prolific scholar and well-known student of religion and politics. His new book on state religion policies is as insightful as it is extensive. The sheer scope of his Religion and State (RAS) project, the data source at the heart of this book, leaves one grasping for superlatives. Begun in 2000, the second round of data collection has resulted in a database (RAS2) coding 111 government religion policies in 177 countries by year from 1990 to 2008 (367,410 observations). As the first major publication based on this expanded data set, Political Secularism, Religion, and the State essentially catalogs these policies, identifies major trends, and explores a possible general explanation for recent developments.
Much of the book—six of nine chapters—is devoted to “presenting and categorizing state religion policy” (p. 4). Fox claims boldly that the 111 types described here “constitute all types of identifiable religion policies that exist in today’s states” (p. 5). I am not inclined to disagree. The central chapters are both fascinating and tedious; the taxonomy of state religion policies uncovers striking oddities (who knew that Andorra pays the Catholic Church to maintain historical birth and marriage records, or that “witchdoctors” in Malawi face life in prison? [pp. 90, 141]), but the mind wanders while ploughing through descriptions of 30 forms of restriction on minority religions. Fox tries to vary the pace with illustrations from every part of the world and with descriptive tables summarizing variables described in the text, but despite these efforts, the central chapters are a slog—if ultimately rewarding.
A brief summary of these chapters is in order. Fox first identifies 14 categories of overall state religion policy divided into four types: states with official religions, preferred religion(s), neutral stances toward religion, and hostility toward religion. He then examines more specific laws and policies—categorized into 51 “types”—that indicate levels of state support for religion. The topics here are often politically controversial, ranging from laws covering marriage and reproduction, homosexual sex, restrictions on women, dietary laws, holiday business openings, blasphemy, and religious censorship to those providing financial support for clergy, religious schools, building repair, and pilgrimages. Fox turns next to the myriad ways governments regulate, restrict, and control all religions and the ways they discriminate against minority religions, often by restrictions on conversion and proselytizing. He finishes his empirical classification by looking more deeply at policies governing education, abortion, and proselytizing, and then examining religion in national constitutions.
Throughout these central chapters, Fox cross-tabulates countries identified as having adopted a policy or law by “majority religion,” specifically Catholic, Orthodox, Other Christian, Muslim, and Other Religions. Some results are not surprising; for instance, only Muslim-majority countries officially give female testimony less weight than male testimony in government courts (p. 73). But other findings are less intuitive: Orthodox countries are more likely than Muslim countries to restrict public observance of minority religious practices (p. 141).
Fox also identifies some important trends. Official state religion policy remained rather stable between 1990 and 2008, although of the countries that made changes, two-thirds increased support for (or became less hostile to) religion. Still, official policy on religion is less predictive of actual state support for religion than is often assumed. Many more countries changed individual policies regarding support for religion than changed official state policy: Most policy categories showed strong, steady increases in support regardless of religious tradition (although the trend is most dramatic in Muslim countries). In other words, governments worldwide are demonstrating greater willingness to offer tangible support to religion no matter what their “official” relationship. By 2008, every state in the study except South Africa was supporting religion in at least one small way.
State support for religion generally comes with some controls. Thus, most countries exert a level of control over the majority religion or all religions, with most actually increasing restrictions during the study period. All categories of regulation saw steady increases except that covering religious practices (i.e., public observances and religious gatherings). More disturbing from the perspective of religious freedom is the rapid increase in policies discriminating against minority faiths. Of the 30 specific types of discrimination coded, 28 saw increases and none saw declines. And while Muslim countries restrict minority religions the most, all three types of Christian countries have narrowed the gap since 1990.
So what is the big take-away? Fox’s main point is simple: Government involvement with religion is increasing worldwide: “[T]he majority of countries were more involved in religion in 2008 than they were in 1990. Also, the overwhelming majority of the 111 types of state religion policy were more common in 2008 than they were in 1990” (p. 2). Moreover, this empirical finding leads to his big theoretical point: secularization theory is wrong in predicting that religion will disappear or become irrelevant. Fox argues that religion is not going away, even in the most “developed” countries. He agrees that modernization weakens religion, but replaces secularization theory’s end-of-religion prediction with a different projection. In his view, modernization gives rise to an ideology of secularism [a “set of beliefs that advocates the marginalization of religion from other spheres of life” (p. 27)] that “competes with religion in the political and social arenas” (p. 26). He calls this the “secular-religious competition perspective,” positing a struggle between secular ideologies that seek to eliminate the role of religion in politics and society and religious ideologies that seek to enhance that role. In short, in most countries, a competition between secularism and religion is raging, and as Fox has shown, religion is winning—for now.
The competition perspective is more useful as an “approach” than as explanatory theory. Describing secular-religious competition does not explain religion policy outcomes as much as it identifies the competitors, the arena of combat, and the weapons used. It tells you little about why religious forces have gained the upper hand, nor does it help you sort through other factors that—as Fox notes in his conclusion—influence state religion policy. But the book offers hints of things to come. Fox uses multivariate analysis to explain the impact of religion on abortion policy and explores the influence of constitutional clauses on specific religion policies. These are tempting morsels that may well lead to a larger feast as he and others continue to analyze this data.
Fox’s major contribution here is to catalog and code government religion policies in a comprehensive database open to scholars (at http://www.religionandstate.org). He has done the grunt work—and deserves much praise. But now it is time for students of religion and politics to focus on solving the many puzzles to be found in the data.
