Populism and religion: an intricate and varying relationship

Abstract

About a decade ago, the relationship between populism and religion was still an under-researched area (Mudde, 2015). Since then, pioneering studies have started to assess this complex relationship, mostly concentrating on Western countries with a Christian imprint. Marzouki et al. (2016) focus on the role of religion in right-wing populist movements, arguing that these movements instrumentalize religious narratives. In the volume, Roy (2016, 79–80) reasons that religion takes more the role of an identity marker than an actual belief. Similarly, Brubaker (2017, 1193) has coined the term “identitarian Christianism,” which is, first and foremost, characterized by “a secularist posture” as a means of taking up battle lines against Islam. The edited volume by DeHanas and Shterin (2018) on “Religion and the rise of populism” widens the Western-oriented focus by bringing together case studies of populist parties not only from Europe and the United States but also from predominantly Muslim societies in Central Asia as well as from Turkey. While the broadening of case studies is innovative, the volume ultimately refrains from drawing conclusions that go beyond the observations of Roy (2016) and Brubaker (2017). Hence, populists perceive religion in an identitarian way, framing a specific religion (i.e., Islam) as a threat to their own culture (i.e., the [Christian] secular civilization) (DeHanas and Shterin, 2018, 178). This is where our symposium wants to tie in. By building on previous research, its objective is threefold. First, we attempt to show that populist actors refer to religion in various ways, with religion as a boundary marker, differentiating the in-group from the outgroup. In some instances, populists refer to religion to identify the out-group, often Islam, that is deemed incompatible with their own culture. Religion in this scenario is seen as a threat to the domestic society, and populists then primarily focus on the “evil other.” The religious threat to these secular societies can be both internal, harming one’s norms and values from within, as well as external, looming at the country’s border and waiting to take