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Since World War II, the promotion of American-friendly “free” religion abroad has been understood to benefit the rest of the world by saving it from religious and political tyranny. For decades, the United States has designed and sponsored religious reform projects to instruct religious individuals and groups abroad on how to be free, or at least freer, versions of themselves. This chapter explores the politics of US foreign religious engagement. It argues that while religious engagement does involve an attempt to strengthen US-friendly religious authorities and communities abroad, it is, at the same time, and more fundamentally, a project of religious reform, of transforming religions into what is understood to be better versions of themselves. It discusses three empirical focal points in the history of US foreign relations that illustrate this argument, beginning with American efforts to promote “global spiritual health” during the early Cold War.

The chapter shows how two epistemic communities embedded in postsecular modes of thinking provided the intellectual impetus since the 1990s that led to the creation of the Religious Engagement regime in 2013. It identifies how both epistemic communities shaped the regime during the Obama presidency. The chapter then assesses the multiple processes of foreign policy desecularization that the regime is both a product of and contributes to. In terms of global effects, it argues that the regime has potentially shaped religious landscapes internationally by empowering what it views as “good” religion; that it has tended to religionize world politics through mechanisms of elevation; and that it has contributed to the diffusion and consolidation of similar policies across Western governments and international institutions. The conclusion summarizes the chapter’s findings and compares the Religious Engagement regime to the previous three regimes. It then considers developments taking place under the Trump administration.

The view that late adulthood is a time of crisis promoted the idea that religion plays a central role in the process of successful aging. If indeed late adulthood is a time of increased social isolation and existential threat, then it may well be that religious engagement would provide an important source of personal meaning and social support for older individuals. This chapter discusses the different roles religion plays in the late adulthood of an American. Analyzing the role religion plays in the concept of the health of a person, it indicates that religion does foster good habits conducive to good health. It indicates a negative relation between religiousness and alcohol use. In late adulthood, highly religious men and women reported drinking less alcohol than the non-religious study participants. And among those who were religious, it was the older participants, and Protestants rather than Catholics, who were least likely to drink alcohol.

This chapter examines the religious renaissance of Buddhism and Daoism in Taiwan. It shows that the Daoist and Buddhist beliefs which provide the formal identity of the Buddhist organizations are fully intertwined with Confucian moral ideals. The chapter then explains the research process used to study the four religious organizations that are widely considered as relevant and influential examples of popular middle-class religious engagements. The organizations each have different segments, correspond to different fractions of Taiwan's middle class, and three of them are Buddhist. The chapter also takes a look at the practices and values that Taiwan has derived from western countries.

Since the end of the Cold War religion has increasingly become an organized subject and object of American foreign policy. This has been notable with the emergence of four religious foreign policy regimes—International Religious Freedom, Faith-Based Foreign Aid, Muslim and Islamic Interventions, and Religious Engagement—which together constitute an American foreign policy regime complex on religion. The introduction poses the book’s three guiding questions. First, why and how did these different, yet closely related, religious foreign policy regimes emerge? Second, have the boundaries between religion and state been redefined by these regimes, and if so, how? Third, what are the global effects of the growing entanglement between faith and American foreign policy? The chapter introduces the concepts and arguments that are central to answering these questions. It also highlights the contributions made to the existing literature, discusses some definitional and methodological issues, and presents the plan of the book.

To what extent can someone who treats religious discourse as fictional discourse live a religious life, that is, one that is informed by that discourse? To what extent can they be integrated into a religious community in which the realist approach is dominant, or at least significantly represented? This chapter explores both the possibilities and limitations of religious fictionalism, and compares it with other non-realist approaches. Finally, a certain kind of agnostic position is presented, one which has something in common with fictionalism, and it is suggested that this agnosticism may offer the best way of combining religious engagement with a retreat from traditional realism.