12:17PM
Wikistrat's "The World According to Tom Barnett" 2011 brief, Part 7 (Q&A on religion)
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 12:17PM Continuing the segments from my Sept 2011 presentation of the brief to an international military audience in the Washington DC area, first cluster of questions focused on religion, and since I deleted that slide sequence for time reasons in the main presenation, I had it teed up at the end to cover this contingency.
Reader Comments (3)
Just a few points from my experience.
1. Egypt and Nigeria in the 1970s were much less religious places than they are today.
2. The appeal of religion in both nations has a lot to do with economics, a feeling of uncertainty and state failure. (I.e. religion provides social services to the disempowered, a sense of of belonging and pastors and imams act as shrinks - we have MASSIVE mental health issues to deal with down here!).
3. Evangelicalism seems to be better suited for the US driven globalisation model. Islam is yet to articulate a response to globalisation - this is why Turkey is so important.
4. The clash between Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa could lead to the rise of "political Christianity".
5. Policy makers should start thinking about the impact of "political Christianity" in the Global South. This may seem far-fetched but may have real consequences in the near term. If anything could tie Latin America to Sub-Saharan Africa, it is the presence of a common evangelical mindset.
Great historical insights & perspective. Would love to see this written out. Hopefully it will be in your next book.
Bit of Malthus trivia I picked up at Matt Ridley's blog recently: "Everybody calls him Thomas these days, whereas his contemporaries all called him Robert, which was his second name. Calling him Thomas is like calling the first director of the FBI John Hoover."