Learning Outcomes
• Comprehension of secularization process.
• Understanding of the hegemonic role of religion for the development of political culture.
• Gaining Knowledge of the basic historical facts on state and church relations in Europe.
• Learning of the central premises of the dominant political ideologies in relation to the religious phenomenon.
• Awareness of the relationship between religion and nationalism.
• Understanding religious fundamentalism.
• Comprehension of the importance of the religious factor in the articulation of governmental politics
Course Content (Syllabus)
The course is designed to study a range of key themes of modern politics that articulate the relationship between the political and religious spheres. To this end, the course will critically explore the various theoretical models of the institutional and of the political status of religion, as well as the diverse perspectives on the role of the hegemonic religious ideologies on the social function. Last but not least, the course focuses on the political theology of the major religious groups and their link to the current state of affairs in the domestic and international political arena.
Particularly, the course’s themes are the following:
- The diverse political theologies of the Church: Orthodoxy, Roman-Catholicism, Protestantism.
- Islam and the political.
- Religion and liberal democracy: theory, church and state relations.
- The Marxist critique of religion.
- Religion and Nationalism.
- Fundamentalism.
- The Secularization thesis.
- Religion in international politics.
Course Bibliography (Eudoxus)
Hervieu-Léger D. και Willaime J. P., Κοινωνικές θεωρίες και θρησκεία, Αθήνα, Κριτική, 2005.
Λίποβατς Θ., ∆εµερτζής Ν. και Γεωργιάδου Β. (επιµ.) Θρησκείες και πολιτική στη νεωτερικότητα, Αθήνα, Κριτική, 2002.
Additional bibliography for study
Berger P., Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory οf Religion, Νέα Υόρκη, Doubleday, 1967.
Eisenstadt S. N., Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolution: The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Haynes J., An Introduction to International Relations and Religion, Λονδίνο, Longman, 2007.
Locke J., Επιστολή για την ανεξιθρησκία: Epistola de Tolerantia,Θεσσαλονίκη, Ζήτρος, 1998.
McKown B. D., The Classical Marxist Critiques of Religion: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Χάγη, Martinus Nijhoff, 1975.