Mark I. Pinsky is The Orlando Sentinel's religion writer. The Orlando Sentinel With the Cold War over and global capitalism triumphant, religion has become the engine that drives the world's political and military struggles.
Believers are on a diverse crusade to control their countries.
From Poland to the Philippines to the United States, and in dozens of countries between, religion is powering political opposition ranging from electoral activism to guerrilla warfare. So much so, in fact, that in the past 25 years religion's political dimension has begun to overshadow the spiritual. That's because faith, the essence of religious commitment, makes a formidable motivator. Other experts agree that religious faith has effectively replaced nationalism and Marxism, the driving forces for change that have dominated this century, as an organizing principle and unifying element. The rise of religion in politics is directly related to the end of the Cold War.