We would like to cordially invite interested scholars to contribute to a volume entitled The Kingdom’s God: The Use and Abuse of Religion in Foreign Policy. We are happy to announce that we have reached a preliminary agreement with Bloomsbury on the publication of the volume. 

Argument

God is not dead, at least not in international relations. Religion continues to influence the ideational and axiological structures of global affairs, leading some scholars to refer to a post-secular IR. Religious convictions play causal and constitutive roles in the discourse and practice of a myriad of actors in international relations, not least the states. States invest in, capitalise on, and profit from the symbolic capital of faith as a strategic asset in their foreign policies. To that end, state strategies range from employing religious narratives in foreign policy discourse to engaging transnational religious actors in foreign policy practice. In the resultant geopolitics of faith, state objectives are likewise manifold, from addressing the legitimacy deficits, either in domestic politics, in foreign policy, or both, to imbuing their policies with moral authority. On the other hand, the use of and abuse of religion by states in foreign policy has elicited a good deal of contestation from audiences both inside and outside the states. Several actors, both religious and secular, have challenged the instrumental sacralisation of foreign policy by states for various reasons.

We call for papers for an edited volume, to be published by Bloomsbury, on the use and abuse religion in foreign policy around three main themes:

• Conceptual, theoretical, and methodological investigations on the use and abuse of religion in foreign policy
• Historical and contemporary case studies on different dimensions of the use and abuse of religion in foreign policy
• Contestations, national and international, over the use and abuse of religion in foreign policy

Submission guidelines

Please send your abstracts (400 words with a short bio) to Dr Eyüp Ersoy at eyup.1.ersoy@kcl.ac.uk,

before 20 December 2025.

Chapter draft: 8000-9000 words.

Important deadlines

Abstract submission: 20 December 2025 

Abstract notification: 1 January 2026

Chapter submission: 31 May 2026

Coordinators

• Dr. Eyüp Ersoy, Defense Studies Department, King’s College London. E-mail: eyup.1.ersoy@kcl.ac.uk / eyupersoy@hotmail.com
• Dr. Çağlar Ezikoğlu, Department of History, Politics and War Studies, University of Wolverhampton. E-mail: c.ezikoglu@wlv.ac.uk / caglarezikoglu@gmail.com