Charles Taylor's “radical redefinition of secularism” has a significant place in the post-9/11 research on secularism. He replaces secularism's “old” paradigm, separation between state and religious institutions, with a “new” one, responding to diversity. Taylor appeals to French laïcité in-itself as the old paradigm. With an analysis of the parliamentary debates at the institutional origins of the old paradigm in the Third French Republic, this article questions whether Taylor's redefinition of secularism is truly radical. This historical intervention in Taylor's “radical redefinition” reformulates his novelty as the reconfiguration of the relation between generality of laws and meaning worlds in the institutional response to diversity. The Third Republic pushed generality in laws against diverse meaning worlds. Taylor (with Jocelyn Maclure) demands that general laws reasonably accommodate “meaning-giving convictions.” I explore this reversal and argue that it's questionable Taylor offers a radical redefinition of secularism—or even that we need one.

Polarization in American politics has not produced unity among conservative Christians. Drawing from original survey and interview data on Republican pastors in North Carolina, this paper seeks to understand why these pastors are divided on the legitimacy of force defending the “traditional American way of life.” We find (1) that theological fundamentalism has a positive, though weak, influence; (2) Christian nationalism and White grievance are powerful in increasing support for the use of force; and (3) distrust of elections intensifies the effect of these attitudes.

Can racial primes influence support for public expressions of religion? While a growing body of research demonstrates correlations between racial attitudes and support for public religion among White Americans, experimental tests of subconscious connections between the two concepts have been lacking. We utilize a novel survey experiment to prime racial considerations, and we find that Black racial primes raise support for Christian nationalism and civil religion among White Americans, compared to White racial primes. Moreover, our analysis indicates that these effects are attributable to racial animus, namely the evaluation that Black Americans are not prototypical members of the national community. The findings suggest that the preference for a Christian/religious America and a White America are subconsciously interwoven for many White Americans, providing the first experimental evidence, to our knowledge, of this relationship.

During national emergencies, democratically elected leaders have sought to expand executive power in ways that violate democratic norms, ostensibly to guide their nation through crisis. Drawing from research on democratic backsliding, we anticipate support for such executive privileges may stem from different ideological and contextual factors, but primarily from inclinations toward ethno-nationalistic and authoritarian populism. We propose American Christian nationalism represent such inclinations. Analyses of nationally representative data reveal Christian nationalism is the strongest predictor Americans believe unspecified “national emergencies” might require leaders to suspend elections, suppress political opponents, and disregard checks and balances. However, political disinterest, stronger Democratic partisanship, and being Black (vs. White) are also positively associated with support for violating democratic norms, and these associations are amplified by Christian nationalism. Ancillary analyses suggest the interactions with race and party may be contextual, due to a Democratic President in office at the time of the survey. Findings suggest populist impulses characteristic of Christian nationalism may combine with political disinterest (perhaps reflecting disillusionment) and threats to in-group power to increase support for leaders suspending democratic norms during national crises.

This paper explores the following question: How does individual religiosity and attachment to a religious community relate to sectarian political loyalties or interpersonal prejudices in a post-conflict, institutionally sectarianized society? The paper explores this question through dialectic, participatory methods with youth involved in community-based youth associations with a religious component. The paper investigates how religiously devout youth in Lebanon conceptualize the personal and communal elements of their religiosity in relation to sectarian politics. In this way, the paper contributes to a study of social sectarianism, in which scholars are striving to understand what individuals mean when they speak about sect, and how discussions surrounding sect mask more complex underlying social realities. Overall, these accounts suggest that personal and social religiosity both positively influence anti-sectarian political outlook among participants, while other factors, such as the institutional sectarianization of public life and a history of violent conflict maintain participants' default attachment to co-sectarian networks in terms of routine, economic security, and communal belonging.

This paper explores the intersections of religion, heritage, and politics in divided societies by focusing on two events that occurred in Cyprus before the crossing points opened (2003). These are the Greek and Turkish Cypriot reciprocal pilgrimages to a Christian and Muslim site, respectively, and the two sites' restoration. I argue that in these events the Cyprus Issue effected the transformation of pilgrimage practices and sites into matters of political agreement, implicating them in processes of conflict management and resolution. In this context, pilgrimage facilitated inter-communal exchanges and intra-communal frictions and antagonisms that question binary oppositions through which questions of conflict and amity have been debated in pilgrimage studies.

The states of the Arabian Gulf present a novel case for the examination of relations between authoritarian governance and Christian organizations. The economic clout of the Gulf states has been central to political stability and legitimacy but they are increasingly seeking to expand and consolidate the soft power and resilience through political and diplomatic initiatives. This article examines how the Christian organizations established in recent decades by large migrant communities are incorporated into this strategy and how they are responding. It argues that religious tolerance has formed a central discourse in governmental policies and narratives that construct the Gulf states as modern progressive nations, despite their unique political systems based mainly on constitutional monarchies with limited political participation. This constructs local Christian communities as a source of soft power, despite their position as a religious minority.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the political and scholarly attention on conspiracy theories. Among other predictors, religious and spiritual influences on conspiracy beliefs have been widely discussed in the literature. We suggest analyzing the relationship between religion and spirituality on the one hand and conspiracy beliefs on the other hand from the perspective of religious information processing. Based on the Post-Critical Beliefs Scale (PCBS), we argue that literal interpretations of religious information are positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Furthermore, we assume that individual differences in analytic cognitive style account for the relationship between religious attitudes, spirituality, and conspiracism. Using a quota sample of German adults, we find that literal interpretations of religious content positively correlate with conspiracy beliefs for the literal affirmation of transcendence (e.g., orthodoxy) and the literal disaffirmation of transcendence (e.g., atheism). These findings suggest that religious information processing is related to conspiracy beliefs for religious and nonreligious individuals. Moreover, our results show a stable association between holistic spirituality and conspiracy beliefs. The relationships between different types of religious attitudes, spirituality, and conspiracy beliefs hold, even after accounting for analytic (versus intuitive) thinking. The implications for the study of religious attitudes and conspiracy beliefs are discussed.

This article deals with the transformation of Catholic politics in Italy between 1942 and 1945 and the emergence of Christian Democracy as the dominant political party in the postwar years. It analyzes how Catholic politicians turned from reactionary critics of democracy to its champion. The article foregrounds a dimension that has not been given sufficient attention in scholarly works on political Catholicism and Christian Democracy, namely the religious content of thought. In the experiences of politicians and thinkers living through Fascism and war, transcendence and spirituality emerged as new markers of certainty that came to re-direct and ground democracy. Our conceptual argument is that Christian Democracy can be understood as a distinct form of “political spirituality,” pace Foucault. The article further shows how this political spirituality became “applied” in a series of ways in the immediate postwar period.

Evangelicals arguably constitute an unexpected base of support for Donald Trump. One plausible account holds that evangelicals supported Trump reluctantly, backing him not because they strongly favored him, but rather because they viewed him as the least objectionable candidate. This perspective suggests a possible enthusiasm gap: among Donald Trump's supporters, nonevangelicals were more zealous while evangelicals were more tepid. We examine this account using data from March 2019, just past the midpoint of Trump's presidency, a period when any lack of enthusiasm with Trump among portions of his base should have been discernible. Our expansive analytical strategy, using OLS and matching, explores whether evangelicals offered Donald Trump more lukewarm support than did nonevangelicals, with support operationalized in six ways. Across 36 tests, no evidence of an enthusiasm gap between evangelicals and nonevangelicals is detected. Seen both in absolute terms and relative to nonevangelicals, evangelicals offered Donald Trump fervent support.

A long line of research has established that Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalism have a preference for those inside their group and animosity toward those outside their group. These beliefs may impede the equal application of the rule of law, a link that has been suggested but not formally tested. Utilizing experimental data from a survey conducted in fall 2021, we assess the equal application of the rule of law for in and outgroup members conditional on Christian nationalism and belief in Christian persecution. We suggest that ingroup love may move distinctly from outgroup hate. Our results suggest that Christian nationalists have a preference for the ingroup, but do not automatically denigrate outgroups. However, belief in Christian persecution drives animosity toward outgroups, while not elevating the ingroup. Christian nationalist outgroup hatred must be triggered by threat, which has been the project of movement and party elites.

Although most people in sub-Saharan Africa are very religious, state support for religion (such as through policies legislating religious values and supporting religious institutions) is very low in the region. Why is this? This paper explores this phenomenon using data from Pew Research Centre and Religion and State Project. While population religiosity is ordinarily correlated with state support for religion elsewhere in the world, sub-Saharan Africa is indeed anomalous. Yet contrary to popular explanations, this is not explained by limited state capacity, weak democracies, religious and ethnic pluralism, or majority religion. Using case studies of Rwanda and Mozambique, the paper considers whether challenges to the moral authority of religious actors as leaders of “the nation” may help explain why state support for religion is so low in sub-Saharan Africa. Taken together, these findings challenge assumptions that high religiosity in sub-Saharan Africa is a threat to secular governance.

Pope Francis has been very active in the public debate on several key social and political issues, gaining a role that foregoes the sphere of religiosity and morality. Overall, he has been perceived by the media and the general public as a leftist figure and even a modernizer. Nonetheless, little is known about the influence of Pope Francis' positions on public opinion, especially beyond the climate change issue and outside the US context. In this regard, this paper contributes to the analysis of the Francis effect on public support for poverty alleviation measures. By employing a survey experiment carried out in Italy, we therefore tested whether the papal endorsement of an anti-poverty measure during the COVID-19 pandemic affected people's support for it. The results highlighted a generalized Francis effect among the Italian public. In addition, trust in the Pope and leftist political orientation substantially enhanced this effect, while the same only partially applies to individual religiosity.

QAnon is beginning to gain attention in scholarly circles, but these sources often disagree about how to categorize the movement. This amounts to the meta-dispute between those who view QAnon primarily as a religious “cult,” and those who grant it greater credibility as a political populist movement. Using quantitative and qualitative methods we test the proposition that QAnon could be a mix of both. Results from both analyses suggest that QAnon is best understood primarily as a political populist movement, but one that utilizes religious rhetoric. The findings thus highlight the asymmetric nature of the conflation of religion and politics in the contemporary American civil sphere.

Polls for the past several decades indicate high regard for Jews in democracies in Western Europe and North American. We however have a limited understanding of the properties underlying those poll responses, for instance whether response bias or nonattitudes account for those results. The nonattitudes perspective suggests that respondents’ survey answers to questions about Jews are not true attitudes. Nonattitudes are weakly held responses to survey questions, and tend to be unstable over time, reflecting random as opposed to systematic change. This paper uses panel data from Voter Study Group surveys to test for individual-level stability in attitudes toward Jews by non-Jews in the United States in the 2010s to assess whether such attitudes are true or nonattitudes. Results suggest considerable instability especially when compared to attitudes toward Muslims, Democrats, and Republicans, suggesting a high degree of nonattitudes in non-Jews attitudes toward Jews. The conclusion offers reasons that might account for this instability in attitudes toward Jews and implications for the continuation of positive regard for Jews in western democracies.

Are centralized leaders of religious organizations responsive to their followers' political preferences over time even when formal accountability mechanisms, such as elections, are weak or absent? I argue that such leaders have incentives to be responsive because they rely on dedicated members for legitimacy and support. I test this theory by examining the Catholic Church and its centralized leader, the Pope. First, I analyze over 10,000 papal statements to confirm that the papacy is responsive to Catholics' overall political concerns. Second, I conduct survey experiments in Brazil and Mexico to investigate how Catholics react to responsiveness. Catholics increase their organizational trust and participation when they receive papal messages that reflect their concerns, conditional on their existing commitment to the Church and their agreement with the Church on political issues. The evidence suggests that in centralized religious organizations, the leader reaffirms members' political interests because followers support religious organizations that are politically responsive.

Atheists can expect discrimination when running for office. We know less about political appraisal of other types of nonreligious candidates or how the influence of nonreligion compares to other factors. Using a conjoint experiment, I examine how the impact of nonreligion on vote choice depends on (1) the label describing nonreligion; (2) the electoral scenario in which voters face the candidate; and (3) voters' partisanship and religiosity. I find that atheists and nonbelievers are at a substantial disadvantage but secular candidates suffer a smaller penalty. While nonreligion reduces political support, it is not the most important influence, plays a smaller role in lower than in higher level elections, and is generally not a factor for Democratic and nonreligious voters. In contrast, it is a major liability for Republican, Independent, and religious voters, especially when Republicans vote in nominating contests and when they face atheists or nonbelievers as opposed to secular candidates.

How does a religious group's demographic status influence its members' attitudes toward economic and political liberalization? This study adopts a contextual approach and compares Azeri Muslims' political and economic attitudes in two illiberal states, Azerbaijan and Georgia. We argue that attitudes toward liberalization are shaped by the strength of association with one’s religious community and its relative position vis-à-vis the state and society. Drawing on a series of Caucasus Barometer surveys, we find that context and position in society matter. In religiously restrictive Muslim-majority Azerbaijan, Muslims’ religiosity is associated with greater support for political liberalization but lower support for economic liberalization. In religiously restrictive non-Muslim-majority Georgia, however, Muslims’ religiosity reflects the converse: opposition to political liberalization but support for economic liberalization. Thus, instead of theologies, the political and economic opportunity structures facing religious groups may play a critical role in determining their attitudes toward various forms of liberalization.

How do Americans perceive the orientation of political entities toward religion? Building on group identity theories and burgeoning Christian nationalism research, I theorize Americans' perceptions of friendliness, neutrality, or unfriendliness toward religion will be contingent on the interplay between the specific entity, “identity congruence” (how partisan and ideological identities correspond to the partisan character of the entity), and Christian nationalism. Analyses of data from a large, nationally representative sample of Americans support my expectations. Both Christian nationalism and congruence on political identities predict how Americans perceive the posture of the Democratic Party, Republican Party, and Supreme Court toward religion. Yet associations differ depending on whether friendliness to religion challenges the entity's legitimacy (e.g., the Supreme Court). Interactions also show the influence of Christian nationalism and political identities on perceptions of friendliness are contingent on one another and the entity. Findings reveal how religious evaluations reflect group interests in complex ways.

The study of religion and international relations has achieved renewed attention in the last two decades. This study investigates a specific aspect of this field: religious soft power. It focuses on individuals who were affected by religious soft power and develop a typology of courses of action these individuals can take vis-à-vis their home state. I argue that individuals can take three different types of actions: disruptive, reformative, and transnational. Using the cases of the Catholic Church and its followers, ISIS and Sunni believers, and the relations between Israel and the Evangelicals, I assess how these alternative actions are being manifested by different groups of individuals. Lastly, I offer an answer to the question of when individuals would use disruptive action and when will they use reformative one.