The Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding

invites you to a book event:

God's Century:
Resurgent Religion and Global Politics
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featuring co-authors:

Monica Duffy Toft

Timothy Samuel Shah
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Book Description:
Is religion a force for good or evil in world politics? How much influence does it have? Despite predictions of its decline, religion has resurged in political influence across the globe, helped by the very forces that were supposed to bury it: democracy, globalization, and technology. And despite recent claims that religion is exclusively irrational and violent, its political influence is in fact diverse, sometimes promoting civil war and terrorism but at other times fostering democracy, reconciliation, and peace. Looking across the globe, the authors explain what generates these radically divergent behaviors. In a time when the public discussion of religion is overheated, these dynamic young scholars use deeply original analysis and sharp case studies to show us both how and why religion’s influence on global politics is surging. Finally they offer concrete suggestions on how to both confront the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities posed by globally resurgent religion.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

2:00pm - 7th Floor ICC Building (Executive Conference Room)


Monica Duffy Toft is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Science and Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Toft was a research intern at the RAND Corporation and served in the U.S. Army in southern Germany as a Russian linguist for four years. She was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies from 1999-2006. Her research interests include international relations, religion, nationalism and ethnic conflict, civil and interstate wars, the relationship between demography and national security, and military and strategic planning. Professor Toft is the author of The Geography of Ethnic Conflict: Identity, Interests, and Territory (Princeton, 2003) and Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, 2010) and God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (with Daniel Philpott and Timothy Shah, Norton, 2011) and co-editor of three volumes The Fog of Peace: Strategic and Military Planning under Uncertainty (Routledge, 2006), Demography and Political Institutions (Paradigm, forthcoming 2011), and Religion and Global Politics (Cambridge, forthcoming 2011). She is currently researching a monograph on the relationship of religion to large-scale violence, tentatively titled Faith as Reason: The Role of Religion in Political Violence. Toft is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Social Science Research Council’s Religion and International Affairs Advisory team, and the Minorities at Risk Advisory Board, and in 2008 the Carnegie Foundation of New York named her a Carnegie Scholar for her research on religion, Islam and civil war.

Timothy Samuel Shah is Associate Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center For Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Government Department, Georgetown University. He is also Adjunct Research Professor with Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Editor of the Contending Modernities Blog. He is a political scientist specializing in the relationship between religion and political freedom in theory, history, and contemporary practice. Shah is author of God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (W.W. Norton, 2011), with Monica Duffy Toft and Daniel Philpott, and is editor of an Oxford University Press series on “Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in the Global South” that has so far generated three volumes.

Please RSVP here:
https://www12.georgetown.edu/sfs/rsvp/index.cfm?Action=View&EventID=3456

Seating is extremely limited.
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For a map showing the location of ICC, please visit: http://maps.georgetown.edu/interculturalcenter/

For information on parking, please visit: http://otm.georgetown.edu/index.cfm?fuse=parking