Christianity, Islam, and Liberalism’s Missionary Ventures

Jeremy Menchik, Boston University

How does liberalism travel? What are the tactics that have been used to spread the liberal tradition? What does liberalism do on arrival? At a time of rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, understanding the spread of liberalism is of pressing importance to scholars of democracy and comparative political theory alike. This chapter maps liberalism’s global itineraries by focusing on the agents of missionizing and their practices for spreading their respective traditions, including preaching, textual translation, indigenization, dialogue, church-planting, business, personal exegesis of texts, apologetics, military coercion, exogamous marriage, civilizing, cultural appropriation, and the provision of social welfare. Each practice is introduced with conceptual exemplars from missionary ventures in Christianity or Islam, followed by parallel applications by missionary liberals. By doing so, the chapter unearths shared histories and continued entanglements between three traditions that are typically considered distinct and independent. These entanglements raise hard questions about liberalism’s self-proclaimed neutrality in matters of faith. More abstractly, these entanglements raise concerns about scholarly efforts to decolonize political theory.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 224. Liberalism and Tolerance in a Comparative and Historical Perspective