Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion & International Affairs Program

Religion & International Affairs

The Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs, announced in June 2005, seeks to deepen understanding of religion as a critical but often neglected dimension of national and international policies and politics.

Religion is an increasingly visible cultural, political, and economic force in societies around the globe. Yet our resources are inadequate for understanding the potency of religion in recent decades, its new forms and expressions, and its complex roles in public life and policy. In the academy, for example, knowledge about religion is unevenly distributed across disciplines. Scholarly expertise is rarely linked to communities of policy-makers and practitioners, or to media that inform discussion and debate in the public square.

One part of the Henry R. Luce Initiative provides support for programs at professional schools of international affairs in the United States. The aim is to prepare the next generation of policy specialists who will assume positions in fields such as diplomacy, development, relief work, human rights, and journalism, with a better understanding of the role of religion. Efforts supported by these grants typically create links across disciplines and programs, through a variety of activities that bring together faculty and students in fields such as international relations, anthropology, religion, and area studies. Many of these projects also develop innovative approaches to engaging with particular policy communities.

Other grants build on existing or emerging efforts at U.S. universities, public policy institutions, and the media, to strengthen or create new programs, to focus on particular issues, or to amplify synergies among those working at the intersection of religion and international affairs.

The initiative invites proposals from academic as well as policy or media institutions that work to deepen interdisciplinary understanding of the role of religion in world affairs, and to link this knowledge to a range of policy issues, communities, and wider publics. Grant-making will continue to focus on institutions in the United States, but the initiative encourages proposals that seek to develop sustainable conversations and relationships with colleagues and institutional partners in many parts of the world.