Globalizing Family Values

The Christian Right in International Politics

2003
Authors:

Doris Buss and Didi Herman

A timely exposé of the efforts of the religious right to influence global policy

Globalizing Family Values is the first comprehensive study of the Christian Right’s global reach and its impact on international law and politics. Doris Buss and Didi Herman explore tensions, contradictions, victories, and defeats for the Christian Right’s global project, particularly in the United Nations; the result is a detailed look at a new global player.

Buss and Herman demonstrate that the activities of the Christian Right in the international arena are complicated and fascinating, especially as the movement becomes more involved in attempts to build coalitions among religious conservatives, including Muslims.

Clyde Wilcox, author of Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American Politics

With little fanfare and profound effect, “family values” have gone global, and the influence of the Christian Right is increasingly felt internationally. This is the first comprehensive study of the Christian Right’s global reach and its impact on international law and politics.

Doris Buss and Didi Herman explore tensions, contradictions, victories, and defeats for the Christian Right’s global project, particularly in the United Nations. The authors consult Christian Right materials, from pamphlets to novels; conduct interviews with people in the movement; and provide a firsthand account of the World Congress of Families II in 1999, a key event in formulating Christian Right global policy and strategy.

The result is a detailed look at a new global player—its campaigns against women’s rights, population policy, and gay and lesbian rights; its efforts to build an alliance of orthodox faiths with non-Christians; and the tensions and strains as it seeks to negotiate a role for conservative Christianity in a changing global order.

Doris Buss is assistant professor of law at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Didi Herman is professor of law at Keele University in the United Kingdom.

Buss and Herman demonstrate that the activities of the Christian Right in the international arena are complicated and fascinating, especially as the movement becomes more involved in attempts to build coalitions among religious conservatives, including Muslims.

Clyde Wilcox, author of Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American Politics

Revealing descriptions of these new forms of religious activism and coalition building. They also devote welcome attention to the fertile political spaces that are separate from or reconstitutive of the nation-state.

Religious Studies Review

An illuminating scholarly study.

Future Survey

This book is a valuable guide. Buss and Herman trace seven years of the thrusts and counter thrusts by the Christian Right UN and its international opponents. A measure of how well the authors tell their story is that many readers upon finishing the work will no doubt hasten to the Internet sites of the key organizations discussed by them to monitor their evolving strategy.

Population and Development Review

Doris Buss and Didi Herman offer a welcome intervention in a literature on the U.S. Christian Right. The authors fluently engage the critical debates current in the study of the Christian Right. A wonderfully researched and executed book.

American Journal of Sociology

This book is not only a valuable addition to the burgeoning literature on the cultural and ideational dimension of globalization, but also represents a significant and substantial contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the global political activism of the Christian Right. Written in a clear, accessible and lively style, the book will appeal to both academics and students. It is a ‘must’ for all those whose teaching and research interests cover the cultural dimension of globalization, religion, and identity in world politics, (women’s) human rights and the role of NGOs in the UN system.

International Feminist Journal of Politics

Attempt to bring conservative Christian, Islamic and Jewish organizations together in a ‘permanent, global, interfaith’ alliance of orthodox faiths committed to a ‘natural family’ agenda, beginning with the World Congress of Families II (WCFII) conference.

Journal of American Studies

Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction

1.Divinity, Data, Destruction: Theological Foundations to Christian Right International Activism
2.Constructing the Global: The United Nations in Protestant Thought and Prophecy
3.Nation, Church, Family: The Christian Right Global Mission
4.The Death Culture Goes Global: International Population Policy and Christian Right Politics in Action
5.In Defense of the Natural Family: Doctrine, Disputes, and Devotion at the World Congress of Families II Conference
6.The Gender Agenda: Women’s Rights, Radical Feminism, and Homosexuality

Conclusion

Notes
References

Index