For much of the late 20^th century, it seemed reasonable to assume that religion was gradually receding from the center of international politics. Modernization theory anticipated a process of secularization and the experience of Western Europe in particular appeared to confirm that trajectory. As levels of religious affiliation and participation declined in parts of the North Atlantic world, it became easier to imagine that economic development, urbanization, and liberal democratic governance would progressively relocate religion to the private sphere. After the Cold War, this assumption was reinforced by a broader narrative of convergence: ideological rivalry had ended, and liberal democracy appeared not only institutionally durable but normatively ascendant.

Three decades later, that confidence looks overstated. Religious language is now woven into political discourse across a wide range of contexts. Russian officials frame aspects of their foreign policy in explicitly civilizational terms linked to Orthodoxy. Indian political rhetoric increasingly invokes a civilizational understanding of the state. In the Middle East, religious authority remains intertwined with regional alignments. In multilateral forums, debates over gender, religious freedom, and cultural sovereignty routinely draw on explicitly moral and, at times, theological arguments. These developments are not confined to one region or one religious tradition. They cut across political systems and geographic boundaries.

It would be tempting to describe this shift simply as a “return of religion”. Yet such language obscures as much as it reveals. Religion never disappeared from international politics. Religious institutions, actors, and narratives have long shaped transnational activism, humanitarian engagement, conflict dynamics, and state legitimacy. What has changed is less the presence of religion than the status of the liberal normative framework within which it operated for several decades. [...]

Article Outline

• The End of the Secularization Illusion
• Rethinking Huntington: Civilizations and Moral Alignment
• Religion as Geopolitical Infrastructure
• Why Moralized Geopolitics Is More Volatile
• Implications for International Order

Peter Mandavillle is a Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University and Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He has served in senior positions at the U.S. Department of State as well as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Article published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 91, No. 2, 2026.