particularways of knowing, which can result in some resistance to theories and methods that could
contradict one’s own preferred approaches. And a plurality of approaches leads to a broader swath
of understanding, too. Even a quick perusal of the aforementioned handbooks reveals exemplary
traditions of scholarship about how various aspects of religion affect the political world. After
all, “religion” and “politics” are hardly unitary concepts. In thinking about religious interests, we
might mean broad religious institutions and traditions, people who share a particular religious
characteristic, or something else entirely (e.g., Djupe and Olson 2007). Separately, “politics”
covers everything from institutions to mass behavior, and that is just on the empirical side of
scholarship. Perhaps we should simply say vive la difference! and not worry about positing a
grand theory of religion and politics.
On the other hand, religion and politics scholars might well benefit from finding ways of
asserting a more unified theoretical front, particularly because of our subfield’s “and-politics”
status. “And-politics” subfields (such as gender and politics, race and politics, etc.) often are
seen as tangential by the broader discipline of political science (Wald andWilcox 2006). Among
the critics’ charges: “What, if anything, might we learn about the nature and conduct of the
(very earthly) realm of politics from understanding religion?” and “Isn’t religion just another
demographic variable that one might include as a control?” The struggle for disciplinary relevance
is compounded by the fact that any “and-politics” subfield must, by definition, draw insights from
other disciplines (see Leege, Lieske, and Wald 1991). As a result, religion and politics scholars
sometimes face criticism—from both the broader discipline and one another (Djupe and Olson
2007; Wald and Wilcox 2006)—for not advancing political science theory per se.
From my perspective, if any social scientific concept has the potential to inform a broad
theory of religion and politics, it is culture. While I am well aware of the caution that must be
exercised when discussing culture (e.g., Eckstein 1988; Laitin 1988; Ross 1997)—and extremely
hesitant to imply that rational choice models have no merit in the study of religion and politics
(as some scholars would insist; see Eckstein 1988)—below I shall present my view of how the
concept of culture seems to unify disparate threads of the religion and politics literature and
propose ways in which scholars might make use of the concept in future research. Thus what
follows is partly a review of current scholarship on religion and politics (particularly in the United
States, as that is my own area of specialization) and partly an effort to employ the concept of
culture as a way of connecting seemingly disparate research programs.