Examining religion in the study of political behavior has produced varied results because of a lack of clarity on the conceptualization of religion and a methodology that cannot adequately untangle the multiple meanings of religion. Using the technique of propensity score matching, this work breaks apart the three B's in a number of analyses in order to properly understand how behavior, belief, and belonging impacts political tolerance. The results of this analysis indicate that a belief in biblical literalism decreases political tolerance, while church attendance often increases tolerance.

Using data from the 1999–2001 World Values and European Values Surveys, this article examines the impact of spiritual values and religious practices on democratic attitudes in twenty countries throughout Western Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Africa. I assume that a reciprocal interaction between national conditions and individual orientations shapes support for democracy. Religious commitment as theological orthodoxy and attendance at religious services does not strengthen democratic views. Instead, explicitly political and cultural variables explain approval for democratic principles, particularly among industrialized countries. Individuals who express a low fear of threatening groups also back democratic institutions, regardless of a nation's industrialization. Among religious affiliations, Protestants in developing countries advocate democratic values. So do Muslims in industrialized countries. Nonmembers of religious institutions, however, are less likely to uphold democratic attitudes.

Comparative research on authoritarianism has largely neglected religion. Yet, in order to understand the logic of authoritarian control over the civil society, it is necessary to study how the authoritarian regimes deal with religious groups. In this paper, lessons from the two rapidly expanding fields on regulation of religion and comparative authoritarianism are combined. In particular, a conceptualization of regulation of religion in the authoritarian context is proposed, according to which positive endorsement of religion can be understood as co-optation, whereas negative restrictions can be seen as repression. By employing data on positive endorsement and negative restrictions on religion from 2014 for ca. 70 countries, three different clusters of authoritarian countries regarding the regulation of religion are identified. Finally, it is argued that capacity and ambition of both the religious groups and the authoritarian regimes are the main determinants of regulation.

The Catholic Church often plays a policy and mobilization role in American politics. We assess the degree to which the Catholic Church hierarchy — including national and state conferences of bishops — can provide uniform information to parishioners about political participation. Using a textual analysis of information distributed to parishioners in Florida in the 2012 election, we evaluate how much political information is conveyed to parishioners, the sources of this information, and the factors associated with higher or lower levels of information. While we find that most parishes provided information related to the election, there is wide diversity in the types and sources of information. And, while the Catholic hierarchy attempted to provide messaging about the importance of political participation, not all parishes complied with these efforts. Our findings are consistent with the ideas that the local community and hierarchical structure combine to shape the behavior of the parishes.

What role does religion play in preventing civil war from recurring? Politicians have proposed that when warring groups share the same religion, achieving a durable peace will be easier. We test this hypothesis empirically using a large-n sample of all ethnic civil wars that began and ended between 1950 and 2006, and a measure of co-religiosity between the ethnic group in power and the main opposition group. The analysis shows that there is no positive relationship between co-religiosity and the duration of post-civil war peace, showing that sharing the same religion may not help to bring about peace following an ethnic civil war. To the contrary, the closer religious ties, the less likely it is that peace will last after the end of the conflict, and the higher the risk that conflict will recur.

The article examines the economic vision of the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda focusing on its supposed transformation from a party with socialist rhetoric to one embracing fully the tenets of neo-liberalism. The article argues that such a transformation has been quite easy to achieve because the party and its leaders were always more pragmatic than ideological when it comes to economic policy-making. In fact, the party is more at ease with neo-liberal economics because of the electoral constituency it serves and because of its internal structure and ways of operating, which reward those members who display the virtues that the neo-liberal economy also values.

This article explores the impact of Muslim organizations and Muslim political parties in Indonesia and Malaysia and their relationship to democracy. Questions addressed are as follows: How does the political system (broadly described) facilitate or constrain the goals of various Muslim organizations (both groups in society and political parties)? What roles do these Muslim organizations play in impacting politics and where (or in what areas of) in the political process are they most effective? Under what circumstances have Muslim associations and/or parties been a force for (or antagonistic to) democratization? Given the ethnic and regional diversity in Malaysia and Indonesia, the initial hypotheses for these questions are as follows: under authoritarian and semi-authoritarian rule Muslim organizations actually have greater opportunities to polarize rhetoric as they appeal to citizens based on claims of moral supremacy, fulfillment of social welfare needs, and some level of criticism of a restricted or corrupted political order. At different times the Pan-Malayan Islamic Association (PAS), the leading Muslim party in Malaysia (and a dominant opposition party) has had limited appeal to voters. Under more democratic conditions, Islamic groups or parties may need to moderate their appeals, and/or build coalitions with secular or non-Islamic groups in order to win power and influence in the larger political system. Muslim political parties exist in both Malaysia and Indonesia; their power and influence have varied over time. This project aims to explain why these parties have had more support at some times than others and under what conditions they may moderate their demands and policy choices to accommodate pluralist leanings.

What impact do cues from religious elites have on followers, particularly when religious communities are internally divided? Could religious elites promote internal consensus, or would their cues stoke further internal polarization? This article utilizes the release of Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si', to explore these questions. A unique survey experiment, conducted on a nationally representative sample of Catholic voters in the United States in late 2015, tests the impact of Francis' message relative to a similar message from unidentified environmental elites. In keeping with other studies of Laudato's impact in the United States, findings reveal real, but nuanced, effects from Francis' environmental cue. The Francis cue did impact conservatives and high religiosity Catholics, but these effects were not distinct from those on other Catholics in the sample, suggesting limitations in promoting consensus. Instead, responses to a Francis cue varied sharply depending on pre-existing views of Francis' leadership.

Republicans made major efforts to win a larger share of the Jewish vote in 2004 by emphasizing their strong support for Israel. They partially succeeded, but did not make a dent in the overall loyalty of American Jews to the Democratic party, since they lost approximately as many votes because of Jews' negative reactions to the party's evangelical base. We argue that both Israel and worries over evangelical influence in the country reflect concerns about Jewish identity, above and beyond disagreements on specific social issues. We compare American Jewish voting behavior and liberalism to the voting behavior of non-Jews in 2004 using a survey of Jews from the National Jewish Democratic Coalition and the American National Election Study. For non-Jews, attitudes toward evangelicals are closely linked to social issues, but for Jews this correlation is small. The Jewish reaction to evangelicals is more of an issue of identity and the close ties of evangelicals to the Republican Party keep many Jews Democratic. Attitudes toward evangelicals are far more important for Jewish voting behavior than for non-Jewish voters.

From 2005 to 2010, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation attempted to ban the defamation of religion internationally through a series of United Nations resolutions. Although many opposed the resolutions for their potential effects on political rights, numerous non-Muslim states supported them. What explains the dynamic of this support, especially the resolutions' religious nature and significant non-Muslim backing? I argue that non-democratic states that restrict religion have an incentive to take action on contentious international issues — such as the religious defamation resolutions — to gain support from religious groups and justify their restrictive policies, even though Muslim religious defamation concerns and developing country solidarity also contributed to support. I demonstrate this through a mixed-method study, with a quantitative analysis of states' votes on the resolutions and case studies of Belarus and Pakistan. The article contributes to the study of religion and politics, as well as studies on the dynamics of United Nations voting.

The article argues that the secular Indian state and the Hindu nationalist movement are invested in restricting changes in religious membership in ways that intensify religious and caste-based inequalities. The secular state and the Hindu nationalist movement attempt to enforce a shared model of religion that takes the form of a fixed territory. In this model, changes in religious membership through conversion are restricted. An analysis of state-civil society interactions in India must therefore move away from a presumed opposition between state secularism on the one hand and religious nationalism and conflict within civil society on the other. The article draws on three cases: (1) nationalist debates over caste and religious conversion, (2) Hindu nationalist mobilization against religious conversion, and (3) state caste-based affirmative action policies that restrict benefits based on religious conversion.

We argue that concerted efforts by Tea Party leaders, Republican politicians, and leading Christian Right figures to establish and promote a connection between Christian faith and the free-market system has helped shift the economic attitudes of white evangelical Protestants in a more conservative direction. Our analysis of Public Religion Research Institute survey data finds that white evangelical Protestants express greater skepticism about an active role of government in society and believe economic growth is more likely to be spurred by a reduction in taxes rather than in public investments. Moreover, we find that identifying with the Tea Party has a conservatizing influence on their economic issue positions. While we find that partisanship, class, and in some cases, age, serve to modify the views of some evangelicals, by and large, evangelicals have come to embrace the conservative fiscal message promoted by both the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement.

Religious affiliation and participation are thought to work as mobilizing structures through which religious participants accrue organizational and psychological resources, which augment political participation. Given the rejection of homosexuality by many denominations, do religious LGBT people actually accrue more positive psychological resources, and are the positive effects of religiosity on political participation mitigated when belief conflicts with identity? Informed by resource mobilization theory, the identity-threat model of stigmatization, and an intersectional approach, I conduct secondary analyses of two survey data sets of LGBT people. The results suggest that religiosity is associated with increased political participation among LGBT people; however, religious LGBT people exhibit weaker psychological association with the LGBT community and are “out” to fewer people. Furthermore, political participation is less likely among those who experience conflict between their religion and sexuality and among Evangelical Christians.

Christian nationalist ideology was among the strongest predictors of Americans voting for Trump in 2016 and remained a strong predictor of intent to vote for him prior to the 2020 election. This study uses national data to examine whether Christian nationalism could potentially convert the previously-unconverted to supporting Trump or, conversely, prevent apostatizing from Trump. Among Americans who did not vote for Trump in 2016, Christian nationalism increased the likelihood that they intended to vote for Trump in 2020, but only those who earlier did not vote at all or voted third party. Conversely, among Americans who did vote for Trump in 2016, Christian nationalism reduced the likelihood that they planned on voting for a Democratic or third party candidate. Christian nationalism thus potentially inclined Americans who previously did not vote for Trump in 2016 to vote his way in 2020 and inoculated previous Trump-voters from considering other candidates in 2020.

The years 1975 and 1977 witnessed a wave of de facto military regimes in Bangladesh and Pakistan, respectively. In Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq operationalized the country's preexisting Islamic identity from emblematic to substantive at both domestic and international levels. General Ziaur Rahman and General Ershad of Bangladesh revived the country's Islamic identity at the domestic and international levels and reopened the space for religious fractions that were banned from politics constitutionally in the previous regime. Focusing on military regimes in Bangladesh and Pakistan between 1975 and 1990, this paper aims to bridge that gap by specifically examining the use of Islam. This study argues that dictators in both countries used Islam to support their survival strategies of legitimacy, repression, and social control. Authoritarian rulers did not have to use Islam to maintain military coherence, because of the military's culture of subordination to superiors.

Confronted by a number of home-grown Islamic terrorist attacks, many Americans incorrectly assume that Muslim religiosity correlates with anti-American values and that the American mosque is the center of radical socialization efforts. This paper examines the nature of the relationship between mosque involvement and political engagement. It finds that mosque attendance is positively associated with political engagement only when the attendance engages congregants in ways beyond religious ritual. Attending mosque to pray does not significantly impact political identities or engagement like following politics, registering to vote, voting, or party membership, while participation in other social or religious activities at a mosque is associated with an increased probability of engagement. These results suggest that not all mosque involvement is equally beneficial for promoting political engagement and that religious participation must proactively engage with the social lives of the congregants to have a substantive political effect.

This article analyzes the role of religious actors at different stages in the long and gradual processes of democratization in Senegal. It examines the transformations in their political influence from pillars of the stable (but non-democratic) post-independence state, to a more ambiguous posture in the decade of democratic opening. A discussion of the interactive relationship between religious change and the transition to democracy over the course of the 1990s leads us to an analysis of the role of religious actors in debating the substantive content of Senegalese democracy in the decade that followed. The article concludes that while procedurally religious actors are playing an important role in the development of the democratic system in Senegal, substantively they are doing so in part by calling into question some understandings of what democracy entails. The ultimate evaluation of their contribution to the consolidation of democracy hinges at least in part on our conceptualization of democracy itself.

This study considers the sources of evangelical support for Israel, utilizing an original survey of 1,000 evangelical and born-again respondents. The results show that the three strongest predictors of evangelical and born-again Christian support for Israel are (1) age (older respondents are more supportive); (2) opinion of Jews; and (3) socialization (frequency of hearing other evangelicals talking about Israel). Our results also show that evangelical support for Israel is driven by respondents' beliefs rooted in evangelical Christian theology on eschatology and Biblical literalism. Thus, the most significant ideological statements that were found in the research were that the “State of Israel is proof of the fulfillment of prophesy regarding the nearing of Jesus' Second Coming” and that “Jews are God's chosen people.” Another important finding is that there is less support toward Israel among young evangelicals (ages 18–29).

Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative analysis, this article assesses discrimination and anxiety among Muslims in the post-September 11, 2001 United States. Substantial portions of Muslim-Americans are indeed anxious and report personal and group discrimination. However, this is guided by many factors including religious salience, age, education, political attentiveness, native born status, and years lived in the United States. Respondents who are more anxious and know victims of religious discrimination are also more active in politics. However, personal experiences with discrimination are unrelated to political participation. Overall, in spite of or perhaps because of anxiety over their present status, Muslim-Americans are highly functional in the political sphere. Many are now more active in politics than prior to September 11, 2001.

Using data from the American National Election Studies, Poole-Rosenthal DW-Nominate scores, and data on the religious affiliations of members of the United States House of Representatives, I show that religion has important independent effects on the evaluation of candidates' ideologies. The results suggest that candidates affiliated with evangelical Christianity will tend to be seen as more conservative than ideologically similar candidates from mainline Protestant denominations. Jewish candidates, in contrast, will tend to be seen as more liberal than ideologically similar mainline Protestants. Additionally, the use of religion-based stereotypes varies with frequency of church attendance. These findings attest to the external validity of recent experiment-based research on religion-based political stereotypes. The approach employed here also allows for the estimation of the magnitude of the effects of such stereotypes. The results shed light on both the importance of religion in election campaigns and the factors that influence perceptions of candidates' ideologies more generally.