Introduction In any nation state, internal and external policies are closely related to the country’s own traditional social culture and reflect the country’s own cultural values. The United States is a society of religions, a vast field of religious identities and conceptions, a sea of swirling religious currents. Religions legitimate the existing social system, institutions and values to a certain extent. They also provide a means to contend with and change the system; they are at once conservative and liberal. They motivate people to do things, to change the world in many ways. It might be said that the ultimate purpose and effect of religion is to take humans and their cultures to the “Ultimate”. (Eller, p 330) Owing to the importance of religion in America’s national identity, which is largely shaped by American core cultural values and "mainstream religions", these attitudes and traditions have played an important role in American social life, thus religious power naturally has penetrated into politics and foreign policy decisions more regularly in America than in other countries. Religious values are the sources of American “exceptionalism” and “messianism”. (Xie, p 39) After the Cold War¹, it became evident that religion was a key factor in many conflicts, including Bosnia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. However, the ¹ “Cold War”: the state of hostility that existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the Western powers from 1945 to 1990. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford University Press. 16 December 2012. <http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/cold war?q=the cold war>.
U.S. failed to predict the fall of the Iranian theocrats in 1979. (Patterson, p 3) Today, most security and foreign relation challenges faced by the U.S. are infused with religious factors―from its relations with Iran, to the Iraq