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Does religious toleration increase under the impact of democracy? This formidable question is examined historically and in contemporary terms in this course. This question is as relevant as the Arab Spring or as Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. As democracy has spread in the late 20th century, has religious toleration within and among democracies increased as well? What is the explanation for the growth of toleration? Is there slippage? Can institutionalized intolerance such as that in the Nazi interval return? How does the emergence of greater religious toleration among the democracies compare to the political experience with religious toleration and intolerance among the non-democracies? Are the three concepts of toleration, democracy and modernity automatically associated in any process of political development? Or is it possible to have democratic institutions without religious toleration as the recent political developments in India show? The course will identify major variations in the interplay between democracy and toleration with implications for US foreign policy and national strategy. It aims to provide theoretical tools to address the role of religion in politics across regional and thematic approaches. <a href="http://bit.ly/1bebp5s" target="_blank">Click here to see evaluations, syllabi, and faculty bios</a>