Religion and Public Diplomacy.

• Author: Kovacs, Peter
• Position: Book review

Religion and Public Diplomacy by Philip Seib, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN-13: 978-1-137-29111-0, 2013, 236pp., $90.00 (Hardcover List)

This volume adds depth to the U.S. Department of State's earnest, if naive, attempts to more intelligently and effectively integrate religious variables into the overall American diplomatic effort. All ten essays amplify various aspects of engaging religious players and sentiments to further diplomatic goals. Readers interested in the intersection of religious values, leaders, and communities in the general endeavor of communicating or implementing public policy should read this collection. The implications of these essays apply in many cross-cultural settings, both national and transnational, with international communications or public diplomacy.

Editor Seib's Introduction and Brie Loskota and Richard Flory in their essay "Why Religion Still Matters in the World" lay out a strong case for public diplomats (and this reviewer would argue more generally, public officials) to overcome the rational biases of their bureaucracies in order to understand the potential inherent in engaging religious communities as partners in forwarding secular policy goals; and to understand when they are the best partners and when not.

The idea of creating "religion attaches" that Seib attributes to Secretary Madeline Albright, however, would be a serious error except in perhaps a few places like Pakistan, Indonesia, Honduras or Chad, to take examples where religious players, identities and issues are key fulcrums of analysis and action. Every diplomat needs to be trained to seek a personal comfort level in dealing with religious actors by first understanding their own biases and then understanding what an unusually clear and enabling body of federal regulation in this regard allows. All area studies courses at the Foreign Service Institute should include some background in the history and anthropology of religion in an officer's country of assignment as some have for decades.

Two of the most readable essays in the book focus on case studies of successful international strategic communication schemes.

Juyan Zhang's essay "China's Faith Diplomacy" describes the faith-based components of China's "soft power" projection. In a brilliant and nuanced manner, the PRC uses China's diverse and syncretic religious heritage to positively brand China and exert favorable influence abroad. What is remarkable is that the Chinese achieve this despite at-times oppressive structures designed to exert state control over all domestic religious activity. One size does...