This Week In Religion and Politics

Where pulpits, courts, parties, and movements collide, this show follows the research behind the headlines on faith, power, identity, and democracy.

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Practice, Symbols, and Political Faith

This week’s studies push past affiliation labels: practice, symbols, and moral vocabularies are doing political work. From Taiwan to Washington, Germany, Turkey, Brazil, and Mali, religion can appear less as a fixed bloc than as a repertoire people organize with, recoil from, or mobilize in identity politics.

Showing up to worship can matter politically even where Protestant-style congregations are not the model.
Religious symbols in partisan violence can trigger backlash against both religiosity and the politicians associated with it.
Old church-party alliances are fraying when moral claims collide with electoral pressure, especially over migration.

Practice over labels

It’s the practice, not the pew: religious attendance, denominational differences, and political participation in Taiwan

It tests a classic Western claim in Taiwan and finds attendance, not affiliation, predicts political participation across denominations.

New Politico-Religious Actors: Social Theologies and a Typology of Evangelical University Youth Networks

It treats Brazilian evangelical university youth networks as emerging political actors shaped by distinct social theologies and organizational styles.

Backlash and rupture

Backlash to Christian nationalism: The impact of the January 6 th insurrection on Americans’ religiosity and political partisanship

It links recalled Christian nationalist imagery on January 6 to declines in religiosity among some Republicans and Independents, plus partisan backlash.

The growing gap between churches and Christian democratic parties: evidence from Germany

It shows a widening split in Germany as churches favor more liberal asylum policies while Christian democratic parties move restrictively under radical-right pressure.

Moral language and identity politics

Conscience as a Heterodox Political Technology: Depolarization and the Reconfiguration of Religion–Politics in Turkey Through Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s Discourse

It examines how Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu used conscience as a political vocabulary to unsettle the divide between religious authority and secular reason in Turkey.

Social Fragmentation and Identity Instrumentalization: Analysis of the Political Dynamics in the Fulani-Dogon Crisis in Central Mali

It shows how elites and armed factions in central Mali politicized ethnic and religious identities, weakening customary norms of coexistence.

Summary written from this week's papers and fact-checked against their abstracts.