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How the entanglements of states, religions, and power are reshaping global politics and order in the twenty-first century

Can religion become a source of power for states in global politics? In Sacred Capital Gregorio Bettiza argues that just as certain states can be considered military great powers, some states can be thought of as religious great powers. Existing scholarship largely ignores the mutually reinforcing entanglements between states and religions, failing to take into account the ways that state power and influence can be fueled by religious forces and dynamics. Bettiza presents a novel theoretical framework that fills this gap, exploring why and how states can gain and exercise influence globally through faith. He shows that religious great powers are endowed with considerable forms of sacred capital by hosting geographical, cultural, and organizational centers of faith traditions and networks with transnational reach and appeal.

Bettiza identifies three kinds of sacred capital-symbolic, cultural, and social. He demonstrates how contemporary religious great powers indirectly benefit from or explicitly mobilize these different forms of sacred capital in pursuit of their international objectives. Using the cases of India, Iran, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States-among the most prominent religious great powers today-to develop his theory, Bettiza's account reveals how world affairs are shaped not just by secularly-oriented power politics or ideologies such as liberalism, but by religious faith as well.