In this concluding chapter, I summarize my arguments for the study of the global politics of religion, international political theory, and the study of colonial, postcolonial, and de-colonial politics. In the field of religion and politics, I illustrated the productive power of the exclusion narrative and reconstructed the concept of ‘religion’ at work in the rehabilitating narrative of recognition. In the field of IR theory, I emphasize the need to study the costs of recognition and argue for a greater attentiveness to its conditions of possibility, that is to say, the processes through which the subjects and objects of global politics become intelligible, or recognizable, as such. In the field of colonial history, I show how the entwined histories of Pakistan and Israel both structured the possibilities of and were structured by the capacious concepts of ‘religion’, the ‘Muslim’, and the ‘Jew’.

The third chapter is the theoretical centrepiece of the book and argues that efforts to ‘recognize religion’ in global politics remain ignorant of the costs involved. Building on this argument, it asks if the troubles with recognizing religion reflect more basic qualities of the grammar of recognition. Following the work by Jacques Rancière, Patchen Markell, Elizabeth Povinelli, James Tully, and Jens Bartelson it shows that recognition has two faces and that along with its frequently acknowledged empowering aspect, it also comes with costs. This is significant because it shows that the problems accompanying the ‘engagement’, ‘inclusion’, or ‘recognition’ of religion do not stem from academic ignorance, ideological bias, or conservative politics but rather are part of the conditions of possibility of recognition. The chapter thereby argues for the importance of understanding the conditions of possibility for recognition, that is, the epistemological politics of recognizability. To understand the costs of recognizing religion in global politics, therefore, one must study in detail the processes by which religion became intelligible as such. This is addressed in Chapters 4 and 5. Finally, I argue that being attentive to costs of recognition enables us to better understand choices of unintelligibility and the privileges of invisibility.

There are differences between the opening of Philemon and Paul’s other letters. As was customary, Paul provides his own name as the sender (on Paulos, see Col 1:1), but in his other, more formal letters he describes himself authoritatively as Paul an apostle. The absence of his usual title here perhaps signals the informality or intimacy that he is using, since he is writing to an old acquaintance. Paul is not writing to Philemon leveraging his apostolic influence, at least not overtly; he is sharing with him a concern, about which Paul is offering a solution.

This chapter is about the global epistemological politics of religion illustrated through a study of the transnational history of Pakistan and Israel. It argues that the entangled nature of these state-building ventures contributed to the circulation of particular understandings of ‘religion’ and its relation to the state, that this structured the minority politics of the British Indian Muslims and the Palestinian Jews, and that it both limited and enabled the claims to the nations and states that came to replace them. The case study focuses on two key individuals in the history of the Indian and Palestine partition and the Pakistani and Israeli independence that followed: Reginald Coupland and Muhammad Zafarullah Khan. It asks how they, the institutions they represented, and the ideas they carried, circulated, and influenced changed over the final decade before independence. It shows how claims for the recognition of religion in international relations are not separate from these forms of colonial epistemological politics but are intimately connected to them.

The city of Colossae (Kolossai) belonged to the region of ancient Phrygia and could be found in the Lycus Valley. Located in western Anatolia (modern Türkiye/Turkey), Phrygia was an old and distinct territory with its own culture, language, and religion centuries before the arrival of Rome. Phrygia’s home was originally along the Sakara (Saggarios; Latin Saggarius) River in northwest Anatolia, and its civilization peaked in the eighth century BCE, extending far south beyond Colossae. Major empires conquered it, from the Persians to Alexander the Great to even the Celtic tribal warlords who had migrated from the north. Each conqueror desired to control the trade routes running east to west. Centuries before Paul, the Persian Xerxes the Great camped near Colossae on his way to Greece, as did the Persian Cyrus. Herodotus says that Xerxes arrived at Colossae and described it as a “considerable city of Phrygia” (Herodotus 7:30). Both saw the Lycus Valley as a strategic gateway to the west (see Map 1).

To modern readers this opening may sound abrupt, but it was a formula in ancient Roman letter writing. Acts 23:26 begins another letter that traveled with Paul from Jerusalem to Caesarea following his arrest: “Claudius Lysias to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings.” This is simply efficient: It identifies the author and, in some cases, includes the destination. Keep in mind that this letter did not travel with a modern envelope. It was likely rolled and then sealed for privacy. Only the courier knew its destination. 1Thess 1:1 shows a similar introduction: “Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.” By comparison 1 John has no greeting, and this suggests it is an essay; 2 John and 3 John are classic short letters written as custom expected.

Philemon is the shortest and most personal letter we possess from Paul. The only NT comparison is 3 John, which is similarly addressed – both are personal, private, and short. At 335 words, Philemon is longer than most personal letters from antiquity but is the shortest letter in the NT. When we remember that Paul commonly wrote long public letters we should not be surprised at its length. The Pastoral Epistles are also brief as well as personal. Yet they are discussing matters of church-wide interest that make it certain that they were intended not just for Timothy and Titus but for a public audience.

This chapter is about the dominant intellectual framework of International Relations (IR) scholarship on religion, as illustrated by the tensions between multiculturalism and genealogy within the secularism debate. It shows how the critique of liberal secularism fundamentally restructured the knowledge basis for religion in IR and opened up space to engage with religion in new ways. The chapter continues to show how that space became filled with a particular kind of scholarship seeking to rehabilitate the concept and argues that, despite claims to the contrary, this scholarship has narrowed rather than broadened the scope of available perspectives, epistemes, and ontologies of religion. It is necessary to explore this legacy in order to understand the foundational problems currently embedded within IR scholarship on religion as well as enable an assessment of the damage done to IR theorizing and the lost potential of current scholarship on religion in other disciplines. This connects to the main argument as it forecasts the inherent issues and costs entailed in efforts to recognize and engage with religion in IR more broadly.