Mehr Hydra als Janus: Religion und Gewalt in Politikwissenschaft und Internationalen Beziehungen

Abstract

This article argues that religion, as it represents itself in political conflicts, has as many occurrences as individuals confess to it and how those individuals interpret “their” religion in different contexts. A simple substantial or functional conceptualization of religion therefore has grave analytical shortcomings. This is also because the origins of religion, seen from the perspectives of anthropology and theology, are of violent nature. Moreover, there is only a gradual, no principal difference between religious and secular identity markers. All of this leads to the necessity of alternative approaches for theoretically capturing religion in the context of politics and international relations: interpretative approaches; the possibilities mimetic theory brings with it to the social sciences; as well as the circumstance that political theology should not be understood as a supplement of political sciences analysis.