第4页 Introduction

The nation or empire with only one faith, especially if its church is established, can afford to practice power politics because whatever serves the state serves its faith, and in any case dissent is repressed. A democracy of many religious and secular faiths, by contrast, is constantly at war with itself over matters of right and wrong, prudence and folly.In domestic policy its battleground is the law; in foreign policy it is the hallowed traditions – the holy writ – that ought to guide its diplomacy.