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How the Domestic Relationship Between Religion and State Conditions the Salience of Religion in Foreign Policy

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ABSTRACT From Separationism to Theocracy: How the Domestic Relationship between Religion and State Conditions the Salience of Religion in Foreign Policy Jennifer Murray Kent, Ph.D. Mentor: Jerold L. Waltman, Ph.D. The study of international politics has undergone a profound re-consideration of disciplinary assumptions about religion since the end of the Cold War. From Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations to Peter Berger’s Desecularization of the World, scholars are attempting to identify and explain the re-emergence of religion globally and decipher its meaning and ramifications for the conduct of international politics. Unlike power and economics, which are constant pressures in the international system, religion is not present everywhere at all times but in some circumstances and often erratically. This dissertation asks how it becomes possible—under what situations or circumstances—for religion to be a salient feature of a nation’s foreign policy. It hypothesizes that the domestic religion-state relationship affects the salience of religion in a state’s foreign policies and the ways in which religion is salient in a state’s foreign policies. This dissertation takes a comparative approach, selecting three cases that differ in their domestic religion-state relationships: the United States, Russia and Iran. A historical account of the domestic religion-state relationship in each case is provided as well as the ways in which religion has functioned as a salient feature in each state’s foreign policies historically. The comparative analysis focuses on the two-decade period immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The comparative analysis reveals that religion performs at least one function (legitimation, mobilization, or identity creation/delineation) at the foreign policy level in all three case studies. Religion is a more salient feature of Iranian foreign policy than of the foreign policies of either Russia or the United States. With some caveats, the ways in which religion functions in each state’s foreign policy is conditioned by the domestic religion-state relationship, such that American separationism limits the functionality of religion at the foreign policy level, the Russian symphonic relationship with religion at the domestic level enables a partnership model at the foreign policy level, and the Iranian theocratic model is consistent across the domestic policy-foreign policy divide. Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Murray Kent All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Dedication ix Chapter One: Introduction and Methodology 1 Level of Analysis and Theoretical Perspective 3 Research Design 9 Chapter Outline 14 Preview of Conclusions 15 Chapter Two: Literature Review 17 Assumptions of a Secular Modernity 18 The De-Secularization of the Social Sciences 28 Religion and Foreign Policy: Getting Beyond Morality 38 Chapter Three: Case Study One: Religion and State in the United States 42 Historical Framework: Religion and State in the U.S., 1620 to 1991 43 Religion and State in a Post-Cold War World 73 Initial Assessment 89 Chapter Four: Case Study Two: Religion and State in Russia 91 Historical Framework: Religion and State in Russia, 988 to 1990 92 Religion and State in Post-Soviet Russia 106 Initial Assessment 121 Chapter Five: Case Study Three: Religion and State in Iran 123 Historical Framework: Religion and State in Iran, Antiquity to 1989 124 Religion and State in Post-Cold War Iran 155 Initial Assessment 168 Chapter Six: Comparisons and Analysis 171 Categorizing the Religion-State Relationship Domestically 171 Evaluating the Salience of Religion in Foreign Policy 177 Accounting for Intervening Variables 186 v Investigating Cross-Country Trends 190 Research Outcomes 193 Chapter Seven: Conclusions and Prospects for Future Research 195 Bibliography 198 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to sincerely thank all the members of my dissertation committee for their time and careful consideration of my work. I am especially grateful to Dr. Jerold Waltman for accepting the responsibility of chairing my committee. His feedback, encouragement, and kindness have been invaluable. Thank you also to Dr. William Mitchell for his helpful comments on various stages of this paper, for forestalling personal plans to assist all of the students at the Dawson Institute, and especially for his constant encouragement to finish the task. I offer up a special prayer of thanksgiving for Rev. Dr. Dn. Daniel Payne, for whom I served as a graduate assistant for the entirety of our overlapping tenures at Baylor. He has seen me through from start to finish, providing no small amount of guidance and friendship along the way. I am indebted also to Dr. Christopher Marsh for his scholarship, his mentorship, his support of the students and the graduate program during his tenure as director, and his guidance in formulating my dissertation prospectus. Thank you to the J.M Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies for its generous funding of my degree and for valuing scholarship in religion and politics. Also to the Dawson Institute staff, particularly June Campbell and Suzanne Sellers for their assistance with the myriad and endless questions that graduate students need answering. Dr. John Garrard and Dr. Carol Garrard, for whom I interned at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, deserve special recognition for recommending me to vii the Dawson Institute, and to Dr. Marsh specifically, as an intellectual home, and for their continuing support of my studies from afar. I would like to mention specifically the compelling coursework of Dr. David Clinton, Dr. Charles McDaniel, and Dr. Wallace Daniel. It was a joy to be challenged by your reading lists and insightful instruction. You have indelibly framed my thinking on religion and politics. In a similar vein, I am profoundly indebted to my fellow students for their honesty, openness, and intellect as we hashed out the minefield-laden, but incredibly rewarding, intersection of religion, politics and society. Several students in particular enriched my learning with their participation—John Barrett, Rex Carr, and Amy Edmonds. I am blessed with an extensive support network to whom no amount of thanks is sufficient. Jon Mizuta, Stephanie Wheatley, Mandi Burton Mizuta, Brenda Norton, Jason Hines, Artyom Tonoyan, Brigid Duddy, Kellie Fagan, Kristin Tyre, and Carolyn Sosna, in particular, have provided support, diversion, affirmation, and sanity. Meredith Holladay provided me a home in its fullest meaning. Don and Cynthia Kent offered constant encouragement and generously enabled my many commutes from Dallas to Waco. Beverley Stevens prayed the rosary for me on nineteen consecutive days as I approached my writing deadline. Finally, a deep and heartfelt thank you to my sisters, Lisa, Katie and Sara, for being there without ever having to be asked; to my parents, Michael and Denise, for instilling in me a love of learning and an innate curiosity about the world; and to my husband, Jarad, for his unfailing support and love, and for his generous patience as I navigate my winding path. viii DEDICATION To my fellow students at the Dawson Institute For our shared experience And for your contribution to my interdisciplinary learning. ix CHAPTER ONE Introduction and Methodology On August 21, 2010, Russian diplomats and technicians joined their Iranian counterparts in a ceremony officially opening Iran’s first nuclear power plant. 1 The controversial plant had been a point of contention between Iran and many Western governments, which suspect the true goal of Iranian leaders to be the development of nuclear weapons. The issue was further complicated by the fact that the uranium to be used in the nuclear power plant would be managed by Russia’s state nuclear power corporation, Rosatom. The relationship between Russia and Iran poses both risks and opportunities for the Russian government, which is attempting to strengthen its geo- political influence by solidifying its position as a “power broker” in the region. Russian leaders must maintain a meticulous balance between developing Iranian trust and business, and maintaining its working relationship with Iranian foes, including much of the West, Israel and Saudi Arabia. In accordance with this balancing act, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev publicly questioned Iran’s motives leading up to the opening of the facility, which Russia was clearly facilitating. 2 In the midst of this high-level posturing over security-related international concerns, the Iranian Ambassador to the Russian Federation, H.E. Mahmoud-Reza 1 William Young and Andrew E. Kramer, “Iran Opens its First Nuclear Power Plant” August 21, 2010, New York Times Online, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/world/middleeast/22bushehr.html (accessed 12 May 2013). 2 Pavel Felgenhauer, “The ‘unraveling’ relationship between Russia and Iran,” July 24, 2010, BBC News Europe, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10684110 (accessed May 12, 2013). 1 Sajjadi, met with the “ambassador” of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. 3 The reasons for the meeting are unclear, though the work of the Joint Russian-Iranian Commission for Dialogue between Orthodoxy and Islam was discussed. In this meeting, the Iranian ambassador reportedly stated “Contacts between our religions are of fundamental importance since we can use other other’s [sic] great experience and oppose secularism together”. 4 The first scenario is an expected one and, indeed, illustrates the typical story of international relations: that of nation-states involved in power struggles to strategically advance their own security and economic interests vis-à-vis others. The second scenario, in which diplomats court and consult with domestic or regional religious leaders, is perhaps more unexpected and would have been unthinkable fifty years ago—especially regarding the two states involved. Yet far from being an anomaly, the religious priorities of Iranian leaders are an overt component of their foreign policy, and the involvement of the Russian Orthodox Church in the state’s foreign affairs has been an increasing occurrence, albeit at primarily lower, soft-power levels.
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