His academic profile, as an adviser at the US State Department and at USAID on religion and foreign policy, gives him a strong grasp of both scholarly debates and policy practice
Mandaville and Jon Hoffman lays the conceptual foundation in his first chapter, begin with a simple observation: for a long time, mainstream International Relations treated religion as something private or irrational, even though political leaders kept using religious language and working with religious actors. Against this background, they introduce “religious soft power” as a way to describe how states use religious institutions, symbols, and networks to attract and persuade rather than to coerce. Peter S. Henne and Gregorio Bettiza opens the empirical part with the United States and does so in a historical way. Their inquiry anchored with the Cold War scenario, when American leaders framed the struggle with the Soviet Union as a battle between belief in God and “godless Communism.” From there, they trace how religion has been used in US soft power across different moments: providential narratives about America’s mission, religious freedom campaigns, faith-based development aid, outreach to Muslim publics after 9/11, and so on.
