Religious leaders and congregants alike report high levels of political discussions in their churches. Yet, direct observations of political topics in a wide set of religious settings are rare. We examine the nature of political speech by clergy with a novel dataset of over 110,000 sermons. Using a computational text analysis approach and multiple forms of validation, we find political content in more than a third of religious sermons and that seven of 10 pastors discuss political topics at some point. Common topics include the economy, war, homosexuality, welfare, and abortion. We then use a geographic data to link the sermons to demographic and political information around the church and to information about the church and pastor to evaluate the variation of political content in sermons. We find that most pastors—across location and denomination—engage around political topics, confirming the intertwined nature of religion and politics in the United States.

Attitudes about religion in Polish society have scarcely changed since 1989, in spite of radical political and economic transformation over the past 20 years, as survey data show. The question is why? In the following article, the author develops five alternative hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. Each of the hypotheses relates to some function of religion that is relevant in contemporary times. Among other things, historical circumstances, the role of Catholicism as a civil religion, security, and hidden privatization form the context in which one may explain the continuing vitality of religion in Poland.

Does Christianity re-emerge in politics even in the most secularized part of the world, Western Europe? In this article, the exemplary case of the Netherlands provides empirical evidence for two mechanisms of resurgent Christianity in party politics. In this way, the article also offers a more precise understanding under what conditions various dimensions of religion become (again) or remain politically significant. The first mechanism has been the incentive of secularization and secularism for remaining Christians to regroup in a so-called creative minority to convey an explicitly faith-based message to a broader public. Modernization has therefore not automatically meant less religion in politics. However, creative minorities remained a relatively minor affair in Dutch party politics, despite the large number of Christian migrants and their descendants. Second, Christian and culturally rightwing, secular parties have increasingly referred to a Judeo-Christian culture to mark the political identities of the European Union and its nations in response to Islam's growing visibility. The concept of Judeo-Christian culture foremost functioned as a sacred word to denote the liberal and secular order of the West, reflecting the re-emergence of Christianity as cultural phenomenon rather than faith in West European politics.

Moral traditionalism versus progressiveness and secular authoritarianism versus libertarianism are often understood as central to the same “new” cultural cleavage in politics. Despite the often-found sizable correlations between these two cultural value divides, the present paper theorizes that this relationship is not a cross-contextual constant, but rather a specific feature of secularized contexts where moral traditionalism is relatively marginal. We test this theory by means of a two-stage statistical analysis of the data from the four waves of the European Values Study (1981–2008) for 17 Western European countries. Our findings confirm that the two value divides are most strongly connected in the most secularized contexts because the latter are least morally traditionalist. While the two cultural divides hence tend to be distinct in more religious Western-European countries, they tend to coalesce into one single “new” cultural divide in more secular ones.

For centuries, Rome and Istanbul have been representing and epitomizing two empires and two entities with both significant spiritual and temporal power: the Papacy and the Caliphate. During the 19th and the 20th centuries, these institutions underwent significant changes in a context of state secularization: in the case of the Papacy, there was a loss of temporal power and its “reduction” to a mainly moral authority; the Caliphate, on the other hand, was abolished after World War I, succeeded by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a bureaucratic body under state control, founded in the era of Kemalist secularism. Despite these changes, today both institutions still play a significant role in the public life and public policies of the Italian and the Turkish republics. While the Vatican is able to influence the Italian public sphere and public discourse through both its influence on common people and its lobbying activities in relation to political decision-makers, in Turkey the Diyanet has become the main tool in the reshaping of Turkish society (both by the Kemalists and, later, by Erdoğan's AKP). This paper will analyze their influence on the two countries’ public policies in relation to religious pluralism and to family-related issues, to show how different ideas of secularism, institutional arrangements, and historical paths have led to a very different role of the two institutions in the Italian and Turkish political systems.

While it is well-known that religiosity measures inform modern political alignments and voting behavior, less is known about how people of various religious orthodoxies think about the role of religion in society. To learn more about this veritable “black box” with respect to whether and why people connect their spiritual life to the political world, we conducted several focus groups in randomly selected Christian congregations in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Our analysis offers confirmatory, amplifying, and challenging evidence with respect to the “Three Bs” (believing, behaving, and belonging) perspective on how religion affects politics. Specifically, we show that while contemporary measures of religious traditionalism accurately reflect individuals’ partisan, ideological, and issue preferences, attitudes regarding the broad intersection of faith and politics are perhaps best understood via the presence (or absence) of denominational guidance on questions of the role of religion in society. We conclude by offering suggestions for future survey research seeking to explain the relationship between religion and politics.

The sweep of the coronavirus pandemic across the world and the United States offers an almost unparalleled opportunity to study how social systems cope with the threat and opportunities for collective action. In this paper, we draw on survey data collected as the United States flailed in response and before a general consensus among executive officeholders developed in the following weeks. In particular, we assess how holding prosperity gospel views strongly shaped perceptions of the virus and reactions to state responses to the virus. Research on the prosperity gospel is slowly expanding and this paper helps to highlight some missing dimensions. At a time when concerted action for the social good could be uniting the country, prosperity gospel beliefs systematically undermine that possibility by augmenting threat, raising outgroup barriers, and decreasing social trust.

Prior work has shown party activists and religious divisions to be two of the leading causes of party polarization in American politics. Using the Convention Delegate Studies, we examine the interaction between these two culprits and their impact on party polarization. We leverage a novel measure of secularism in the latest wave of the Convention Delegate Studies to demonstrate that active secularism is distinct both conceptually and statistically from low religiosity. Furthermore, we show that both religiosity and secularism drive party activists to take more extreme policy positions, to identify themselves as more ideologically extreme, and to exhibit less support for compromise. As the Democratic and Republican Parties have become more secular and religious, respectively, these results suggest religious polarization may compound existing divisions between the two parties and exacerbate the partisan divide in American politics.

Studies of religious regulation tend to examine how states manage the domestic religious market. This article extends this research program by analyzing a state that regulates the religious markets of foreign countries. The Moroccan case demonstrates the circumstances under which a religious bureaucracy designed to manage domestic religion can be turned outward, and employed to achieve foreign policy goals. Unlike other cases of foreign religious regulation, however, Morocco's efforts have been welcomed at the same time that the policy advanced Morocco's interests. What explains the success of Morocco's religious foreign policy? Building on interviews with religious elites from a recipient country, this article argues that Moroccan religious foreign policy has been successful because it was perceived as having historical and cultural legitimacy, it built on pre-existing institutions, and it was paired with renewed economic collaboration, three factors that have broader theoretical relevance to the study of religious foreign policies.

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 is the impact of religious repression on forced migration? While current and historical cases highlight the significance of state-sponsored religions repression, existing quantitative studies on forced migration have not sufficiently addressed the role of religion as a determinant of flight. We argue that religious repression undermines the quality of life, quality of religious observance, and physical integrity of religious communities, and therefore increases incentives to leave. We test this through a quantitative analysis of forced migration data from 1990 to 2008 and several measures of religious repression, using a negative binomial regression. We find that state-driven religious repression, in particular religious bans, tends to increase forced migration. These findings contribute to the body of forced migration literature and the study of religion and politics by demonstrating the significant effects religious repression has on this aspect of world politics.

Informal institutions continue to govern political exchange in Africa, but the traditional, ethnic-based form of “big man rule” is now threatened by an alternative informal institution — charismatic Pentecostalism. This study evaluates the status of Pentecostalism empirically, in a micro-level experiment in Ghana. Using data from a variant of the dictator game, in which participants divide a resource endowment with randomly assigned partners as well as cultural leaders, the study provides evidence of Pentecostal exclusivity, excessive allegiance to leaders, and a shift away from ethnic-based patronage to Pentecostal patronage. As Pentecostalism continues to expand, these findings suggest a modification in the exchange of resources for loyalty in Africa, and grounds for viewing the movement as a new form of big man rule in the region.

This article analyses British prime ministers' use of religious language and their own religious beliefs in their political rhetoric. This is used to justify policy, support their ideological positions, present a public persona, and cultivate their personal ethical appeal and credibility as values-driven political leaders. The focus is on the use and the nature of the religious arguments of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. As political leaders, British prime ministers are aware of the need to modify and tailor their language in response to changing audiences and contexts. “Doing God” is a difficult and risky rhetorical strategy for British prime ministers but it increasingly has the potential to yield political benefits.

Legislators' responsiveness to constituency preferences is an accepted cornerstone of American representative democracy. Focusing on key domestic anti-terrorism votes during the 109th Congress, this study explores whether or not the presence of Muslim-Americans in a district influenced House members' roll-call behavior. We apply and test two competing theories of representation: the congruence theory and the minority backlash hypothesis. Using original data on Muslim-American constituency size, our analysis indicates little evidence of a representational backlash and some evidence that both Democratic and Republican members are positively responsive in their roll-call behavior to the presence of Muslim voters in their districts.

Social group conflict along regional, ethnic, linguistic, and religious cleavages is deeply embedded in the Canadian historical experience. Contemporary analyses, however, have deprecated the role of religion and religiosity in shaping Canadians' political attitudes. This analysis demonstrates that religion and religiosity are significant correlates of Canadian attitudes on moral issues, paralleling the pattern observed in the United States. It demonstrates that the religious cleavage has been a salient feature of Canadian politics for some time and considers whether the contemporary moral divide could serve as a portent of cultural-religious conflict in Canada if a “political entrepreneur” articulated an issue agenda linked to these religion-based differences.

This article offers a normative evaluation of the Christian Right's impact on American democracy. It argues that our response to the question of whether this movement enhances or diminishes democracy turns on our understanding of the ideal of democracy. When viewed as a participatory ideal, the Christian Right's mobilizing practices enhance democracy. When viewed as a deliberative ideal, the Christian Right's practices diminish the deliberative virtues of toleration and free and open debate. These conflicting assessments point to an important democratic paradox. They show that the very same practices that inspire the participatory virtues of active political engagement also incite the deliberative vices of intolerance and polarization. To address this paradox, I argue that we ought to strive for a balance between pure participation and pure deliberation. The primary problem with Christian Right organizations like Focus on the Family, I will argue, is that they tend to disrupt this balance. They inspire active participation at the expense of deliberation.

Recently, a number of influential clergy leaders have declared their support for liberal immigration reforms. Do the pronouncements of religious leaders influence public opinion on immigration? Using data from a survey experiment embedded in the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that exposure to the arguments from high profile religious leaders can compel some individuals to reconsider their views on the immigration. To be more precise, we find that Methodists, Southern Baptists, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America leaders successfully persuaded respondents who identify with these religious denominations to think differently about a path to citizenship and about the plight of undocumented immigrants. Interestingly, we also uncovered that religiosity matters in different ways for how parishioners from different religious faiths react to messages from their leaders. These findings force us to reconsider the impact that an increasingly strident clergy may be having on public opinion in general and on support for immigration reform in particular.

Interstate conflicts involving religion are commonly argued to be more severe and more protracted than other forms of conflict. Although various arguments have sought to explain religion's apparent contributions to global violence, few consider the foreign policy goals over which religious actors actually fight. This article does so by examining whether religiously-exclusive states tend to militarize interstate territorial disputes (MIDs) over issues of strategic material or identity salience. Insofar as religiously-exclusive states seek to “defend the faith” against internal and external challengers, identity-salient disputes should be a particularly attractive target for militarization. We however find the opposite. Although religiously-exclusive states do initiate territorial MIDs more frequently than their secular counterparts, they are significantly more likely to do so owing to disputed territories' strategic rather than symbolic value. These results challenge accepted wisdom regarding religion's influence on international conflict and suggest critical new avenues for research.

Despite trends towards greater LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights in industrialized democracies, the rights of sexual minorities have become increasingly politicized and restricted throughout Africa. Recognizing religion's central role in shaping attitudes toward gays and lesbians, we hypothesize that local religious diversity could expose individuals to alternative religious perspectives, engender tolerance toward marginalized communities, and therefore dislodge dogmatic beliefs about social issues. Employing cross-national Afrobarometer survey data from 33 countries with an index of district-level religious concentration, we find that respondents living in religiously pluralistic communities are 4–5 points more likely to express tolerance of homosexual neighbors (50% increase) compared to those in homogeneous locales. This effect is not driven by outlier countries, the existence of specific religious affiliations within diverse communities, respondents' religiosity, or other observable and latent factors at the country, sub-national, district, and individual level. Further robustness checks address potential threats to validity. We conclude that religious diversity can foster inclusion of sexual minorities in Africa.

Since the emergence of the Islamic State, considerable debate has arisen over the relationship (or lack of therein) between its ideological discourse and broader Islamic exegeses and learning. This paper aims to connect these wider discussions to its self-defined ideological standpoint as set out in its magazine, Dabiq. All 15 of these, published between June 2014 and July 2016, amounting to more than 900 pages, are examined to assess their authors’ (1) analysis of the Qur'an (2) use of classical scholarship, and (3) engagement with contemporary readings of Islam.