Claiming Society for God: Religious Movements and Social Welfare

Gold Medal Winner, 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards, Religion Category

Claiming Society for God focuses on common strategies employed by religiously orthodox (what some would call "fundamentalist") movements around the world. Rather than employing terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, the most prominent and successful religiously orthodox movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of infiltrating and subtly transforming civil society. Nancy J. Davis and Robert V. Robinson tell the stories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States. They show how these orthodox movements are building massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals and clinics, rotating credit societies, schools, charitable organizations, worship centers, and businesses. These networks are already being called states within states, surrogate states, or parallel societies, and in Egypt brought the Muslim Brotherhood to control of parliament and the presidency. This bottom-up, entrepreneurial strategy is aimed at making religion the cornerstone of society.