ABSTRACT
There are passages in Waltz’s writing that are devoted to the role of religion at the individual, national, and international levels. Despite the fact that the religionists are wrong that Waltz is blind to religion, I have to agree with them that religion is de facto absent in his theory. When it comes to the domain-specific domain, it appears that the religionists are only partly right about the influence of the Westphalian system on Waltz. His interpretation largely agrees with how the religionists see it, but they appreciate it differently. The religionists are correct that Waltz’s neorealism is influenced by the Enlightenment and that it does not incorporate religion as a result of it. On the issues of positivism and materialism, the religionists are partially correct, because the issue is much more nuanced than the religionists portray it. The supposed reductionism of Waltz in approaching religion is hard to prove or disprove since he only has written a little bit on religion. The religionists are right that Waltz is holistic and therefore does not incorporate religion. Waltz chooses not to make the individual and national level part of his theory. He did, however, acknowledge that at those levels religion plays a role, but did not know how to incorporate these three levels into a good explanatory theory.
