Chapter 13 analyses how profound socio-demographic changes in America have contributed to a shift from the faith-driven culture wars of the twentieth century to a more secular identity politics between liberal cosmopolitans and populist communitarians in the twenty-first century. This trend appears closely linked to the rapid decline of American Christianity, which along with globalisation, individualisation and rapid ethnic change has led to an identity crisis in parts of the white working class. Given the relative unresponsiveness of the traditional party system to this development, Donald Trump succeeded in capitalising on this crisis of identity through a ‘hostile takeover’ of the GOP by the alt-right, and a gradual ‘Europeanisation’ of the American right, which shifted from a faith-based social conservativism to a more identitarian and populist white identity politics.

Chapter 17 ends with an exploration of the generalisability of this book’s findings, their limitations and potential for new research. It also returns to a fundamental challenge that right-wing populists’ religiously laden identity politics poses for Western societies. Namely, that instead of being just the latest iteration of religious opposition to secularisation, these developments point to a question of post-religious politics itself: what can still unite us in a society in which sources of social connectedness such as class, shared understandings of history, national culture and religion have lost most of their universal appeal and in which parts of the population are left in a profound crisis of identity? Who are ‘we’? Who is the ‘other’? As these questions drive a split between cosmopolitans and communitarians, right-wing populists have recognised a gap of representation and offered their own remedy: an ethno-cultural identity politics based on sweeping ideas of Western civilisation, in the context of which Christianity has become a secularised idea of ‘Christendom’ dissociated from Christian values, beliefs and institutions. Yet, faith leaders and mainstream parties also still have a tremendous influence over which role religion will play in liberal democracies. While the godless crusade may be well under way, its destination and success are yet to be determined.

Chapter 9 explores the recent re-politicisation of religion in France in more detail and finds that it was less linked to a revival of Catholicism than to the emergence of a new identity cleavage in French society, which itself is partly rooted in France’s rapid secularisation and Catholicism’s demise. Under the pressure of this new identity divide between cosmopolitans and communitarians, France’s political system has undergone a fundamental transformation, leading to a new bipolarity between the liberal-cosmopolitan camp of Macron’s La République en Marche and the populist-communitarian camp around the Rassemblement National and Éric Zemmour.

Chapter 2 lays out the book’s intellectual, theoretical and methodological foundations. It outlines in more detail the working definitions of contested concepts such as ‘right-wing populism’ and ‘religion’ used in this study and frames them within the existing academic literature. It briefly explains the book’s demand- and supply-side analytical framework, the sources this research is based on, the methods employed to analyse these sources, and the rationale of selecting Germany, France and the United States as the case studies for this book. Overall, Chapter 2 contains essential details about the mechanics underlying this research.

Having taken the reader through the rapidly evolving political and religious landscape of three major Western democracies, in its two concluding chapters this book returns to the key questions raised in the Introduction. Thus, Chapter 16 moves from the specifics to the general and seeks to assess the insights from each case study from a comparative perspective, discussing common and distinct patterns. As it goes through each of the research questions it distils four conclusions that can serve as cornerstones for a more general theory of the dynamics between religion, populism and right-wing identity politics. The first is that right-wing populists’ success has often been a response to a democratic lack of representation of the new identity cleavage in the cases studied. The second is that right-wing populists’ references to Christianity is part of a new white identity politics, in which Christianity serves as a civilisational marker of belonging, rather than a source of religious believing. The third is that there is often a potential for religious immunity against right-wing populist appeals. The fourth is that the existence or strength of this immunity is shaped by the behaviour of mainstream parties and faith leaders who can play an immense role in shaping national populists’ ability to redefine and re-politicise religion in German, French and US politics.

Chapter 14 analyses the Trump campaign’s relationship with religion in more detail. Based on the material gathered in several dozen elite interviews with political and religious leaders it shows how in the context of an identitarian turn in American politics, the Trump campaign appealed to America’s tradition of white Christian nationalism and forged an alliance with a subset of Christian leaders. However, it also shows how, while doing so, the Trump campaign and administration increasingly departed from America’s civil religious tradition, clashed with Christian doctrine on identitarian issues, and embraced a more identitarian and transactional approach to Christian institutions, indicating less the resurgence of the Christian right in American politics than its erosion and gradual replacement by a more secular but no less radical populist and identitarian right.

Based on the theoretical foundations established in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 presents the book’s overall argument. In response to the research questions formulated in the Introduction it makes four key claims. First, that far from being the result of reignited religious culture wars, the surge of right-wing populism in the West has been driven by the emergence of a new identity cleavage between cosmopolitans and communitarians. Second, that to capitalise on this new divide, right-wing populists employ references to Christianity in the context of a new brand of white identity politics as a secularised cultural identity marker, but often remain distanced from Christian values, beliefs and institutions. Third, that this strategy tends to be most successful amongst irreligious voters or non-practising ‘cultural Christians’ whereas practising Christians often remain comparatively ‘immune’ to right-wing populist appeals. And fourth, that the existence and strength of this ‘religious immunity’ against the populist right critically depends on the availability of a ‘Christian alternative’ in the political landscape and on churches’ and faith leaders’ willingness and ability to create a social taboo around the populist right. These four claims constitute the theoretical cornerstones of this book’s overall argument and serve as an underlying structure for each empirical case study.

In Part IV (Chapters 12–15) the final case study of this book explores the relationship between right-wing populism and religion in the USA. It begins in Chapter 12 by discussing the historical background of the First Amendment, American civil religion, and the country’s history of white Christian nationalism and religious culture wars. Specifically, Chapter 12 shows how America’s civil religious tradition had historically been able to act as an important source of integration and prophetic criticism in American politics in spite of repeated challenges from white Christian nationalism on the one hand and secularist tendencies on the other. However, this chapter also explores how this integrative potential has been profoundly challenged by the rise of a new secular identity cleavage that increasingly superseded America’s old religious culture wars and prepared the grounds for the right-wing populist and identitarian politics of Donald Trump.

Chapter 11 explores France’s Catholics’ reactions to the religiously laden references of the Rassemblement National (RN) and Éric Zemmour. It finds that in spite of historical animosities and the abiding policy clashes between the far right and Catholic values, beliefs and institutions identified in Chapter 10, French Catholics’ traditional religious immunity to the far right has begun to erode since the mid-2010s. Whilst this development chronologically coincided with the emergence of the conservative Catholic movement around the Manif pour Tous, the analysed evidence suggests that Catholics’ electoral opening towards the populist right was primarily driven by political and religious supply-side factors. In particular, the narrowing of electoral alternatives for Catholics and the softening of the bishops’ language against the populist right, in the context of the church’s gradual shift from a politically engaged national church, towards a more inward-looking minority church, have contributed to the relative dédiabolisation of the RN and Zemmour amongst Catholics.

Chapter 6 analyses the Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) use of religious themes in more detail. Relying on several dozen elite AfD leaders, mainstream party politicians and religious authorities in Germany, it shows how the AfDs renewed reference to Christianity is not necessarily representative of a return of religiosity to society, but rather of the attempt of a comparatively secular party to employ Christianity as a secularised national identity marker against Islam. In particular, AfD policies and ideas of Christian identity are revealed to stand in strong conflict with traditional Christian doctrine as formulated by the German Protestant and Catholic churches, the AfD’s leadership and membership to be disproportionately irreligious, and its attitude towards religious institutions to be characterised by a strong anti-clerical sentiment and hostility towards the system of ‘benevolent neutrality’. All of this suggests that the self-proclaimed ‘defender of the Christian Occident’ might, in fact, be Germany’s most secular party.

The Introduction sets the scene, formulates the questions the book will seek to answer and provides a brief overview of the general argument. It begins by taking the reader through an exploration of the paradoxical expressions of the relationship between right-wing populism and religion within Western democracies in recent years, laying the foundation for the way in which the book will challenge several widespread assumptions about the role religion has to play in populist politics today. During this foundational stage, the four guiding questions that structure and drive the thesis of the book are thus established: What are the social and demographic roots behind the rise of right populist movements and their new brand of identity politics in Western democracies? How and why does religion feature in right-wing populist rhetoric and strategies? How do Christian communities react to national populists’ religiously laden rhetoric? And what is the role of mainstream parties and religious leaders in shaping the relationship between religion and right-wing populism? After establishing these question, the book proceeds to briefly outlining the books general argument and overall structure.

Chapter 8 moves on to the French case study. As the nation with the oldest major right-wing populist party in Europe, a well-established electoral constituency of political Catholicism, and one of the strictest models of church–state separation, the French case study provides a unique opportunity to trace the historical development of the relationship between religion and right-wing populism. To study these phenomena, Chapter 8 begins by exploring how the historical antagonism between la France Catholique and la Republique laïque still shapes the relationship between politics and religion today, and how the hard-fought compromise between the two has recently been challenged by a return of political tensions surrounding religion and laïcité, in the context of the French far right’s identitarian rhetoric.