Religion and American Foreign Policy: Prophetic, Perilous, Inevitable

No one can now doubt the power of religion in international affairs. Can religious convictions guide a moral foreign policy? Do they lead to fanaticism? Do they promote an unrealistic view of the world? Yet religious motivations are also behind movements on behalf of human rights, democratization, debt relief, and assistance to poor countries. The theory of just war also owes a great debt to theology.

How do religious or moral traditions help us define what sort of intervention—military and non-military (e.g., foreign aid, economic sanctions)—is required, and to what purpose? What are the moral traditions from which we should draw in order to understand America’s obligations? How do groups with different moral traditions influence the formation of U.S. foreign policy?

Join us for a discussion of the role of religion and ethics in American foreign policy.

Moderator:

E.J. DIONNE JR.

Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution;
Columnist, Washington Post;
Co-chair, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Presenters:

FR. BRYAN HEHIR

President, Catholic Charities, USA;
Distinguished Professor of Ethics and
International Affairs, School of Foreign Service,
Georgetown University

MICHAEL WALZER

Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ;
Author, Just and Unjust Wars
and Spheres of Justice:
A Defense of Pluralism and Equality

Respondents:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Columnist, Washington Post

JAMES M. LINDSAY

Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies,
The Brookings Institution;
Co-author, Defending America: The Case for
Limited National Missile Defense

LOUISE RICHARDSON

Executive Dean, Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Study, Harvard University;
Author, When Allies Differ: Anglo-American
Relations in the Suez and Falkland Crises