Religion pervades today's headlines, yet not always in a positive way. Is there a positive role for religion in the future? Focusing on the global picture and on all religions, not the least Christianity, in this book author Konrad Raiser closely probes the relationship between religion and politics in all its rich, promising, and sometimes deadly combinations. As a Christian theologian with decades of international and inter-religious experience, Raiser's enlightening book wrestles with: the most contentious questions posed by the ambiguous status of religion in a post-secular world; the advent of a global economic order that leaves whole regions behind; the rise of fundamentalism in religious traditions; religion and violence; religiously-motivated terrorism. Anchored in fundamental considerations about how religion and politics relate to each other in both practice and in theory, Raiser searches for a positive cultural role for religion in today's emerging global culture and in the path to peace and justice.