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The first time I went to the American Academy of Religion<\/a> conference it really got my hopes up. This was the fall of 2006 and, with only a summer in between, I\u2019d just finished college and begun my first year of a PhD program in religious studies. The AAR was at the enormous new Washington, DC convention center. Fittingly, one of the plenary speakers was Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state who had just written a book about why religion is so important.<\/div>\n

What I remember her saying, which stuck with me and probably a lot of the other graduate students in the hall, were things like this: \u201cOur diplomats need to be trained to know the religions of the countries where they\u2019re going.\u201d And: \u201cI think the Secretary of State needs to have religion advisors.\u201d I hadn\u2019t really thought of it that way before, but it made great sense, especially with someone like Albright saying it. Religion is everywhere. It does<\/em> matter. The ongoing sectarian violence in occupied Iraq had turned the headlines into daily reminders about the consequences of not taking religion seriously\u2014to say nothing of politics in DC back then. Yes\u2014sounds like a job for a religion scholar.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here <\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"