Description
Over the past 30 years, US foreign policy has relied increasingly on the presence of evangelical Christians in policy-making, administration, funding, and work in the field. It is a presence that is little advertised, and systematically obscured from public view. But it is a crucial and extremely influential presence – politically, militarily, culturally and economically. And it is a presence which has had far-reaching (and often disastrous) effect on the relationship between the Christian West and non-Christian cultures, religious communities and nations. This book looks at the ways that Western politics incorporate, and exploit, religion. In particular, it examines the rise of US evangelicalism as a force in world affairs. It looks in detail at some of the most powerful of the agencies involved, and at the way they operate – often as US government proxies – in such countries as Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand and India.
Religion is always a delicate subject, and in recent years, religious extremism has had a busy press. Armies of God is a plea for us to realize just how pervasive (and unspoken) is the role of religion in power politics – and how destructive we have allowed it to become.
