This paper explores German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen's challenge to materialist theories that anticipate capitalism's collapse and assert socialism's dependence upon self-interest. It places Cohen's religious socialism in conversation with a cohort of Jews who led and sacrificed their lives for the German revolution of 1918–1919. I argue that although self-interest and an insistence upon socialism's inevitability may motivate revolutionary action, it can also result in quietism. Through Cohen's Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, I show how Jewish prayer functions as a ritual practice of ethical recommitment to a cause that appears unrealizable. Cohen's notion of prayer as dialogical monologue—wherein the petitioner addresses a unique and, according to Cohen, silent God—allowed him to overcome doubt and self-interest. Beyond what Kant understood as prayer's socializing power, this paper uncovers the capacity of dialogical monologue to re-tether individuals to movements that cannot guarantee victory, yet which make ethical demands of us anyway.

The article investigates the transformation within a specific branch of German Salafism from a publicly-assertive da'wa (proselytizing) to a politically accommodating and legal advocacy movement. In doing so, a process analysis that focuses on internal and reflexive narrations among Salafi leaders and lay members, through a three year-long mosque-based ethnography (2018–2021) and textual analysis (2008–2022), is employed. Previous studies focused predominately on the “Salafi growth phase” (2005–2015) in Germany that is associated with the attraction of exclusive group boundaries, flat hierarchies and informal networks. Less research exists on the current “decline phase”, which has commenced a re-orientation and critical reflection on past strategies and new ways of civic engagement and legal pragmatism. By exploring this new phase, the article integrates a longitudinal dimension into conventional research protocols on contemporary Salafism. The paper concludes with a discussion on the converging struggles for recognition among Muslim and other religious minorities in Europe, while linking these transformations to domestic opportunity structures rather than transnational reconfigurations of so-called “global Salafism”.

Existing research proves the connection between religion and social attitudes toward biopolitical topics. The purpose of our analyses was to deepen reflection on these connections. We explored the internal pluralization of religiosity and ideological self-placement and their significance for orientations toward abortion, in vitro fertilization, and homosexuality, subjects of intensive political debate engaging the Catholic Church. Our analysis, based on a nationally representative sample of Catholics in Poland, leads to the conclusion that, despite high indicators of religiosity, the capacity of the Roman Catholic Church to form a consistent cognitive perspective among its followers is limited. Even among Catholics who present fully institutionalized religiosity (~25%), only half agree with the Church's teaching on biopolitical themes. These findings are discussed in the context of the importance of intra-religious pluralism for understanding the ideological role of religion in countries with high levels of belonging to one, dominant form of it.

Government laws and regulations discriminating against religious minorities are on the rise worldwide. Scholars have debated whether or not society-based discrimination is a pre-condition for government-based discrimination. Examining an original dataset of regulations discriminating against the Ahmadiyah community in Indonesia, this article argues that calls from within society to restrict the freedom of religious minorities are neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the rise of discriminatory government regulations. Instead, governments may emulate other governments and adopt laws and regulations discriminating against religious minorities without any immediate societal pressure preceding it. Hence, future research needs to consider the interdependence between jurisdictions as an important driver of laws and regulations discriminating against religious minorities.

Over the past few decades, interest in and conversion to Islam among non-Muslims in the West has been on the rise. There is a view in the scholarly literature that Western converts to Islam are overrepresented in regard to politicized interpretations of the religion, commonly referred to as political Islam or Islamism, and even militancy or jihadism. This article presents the findings of a national survey of Muslim Australians. It focuses on views amongst Australian converts to Islam concerning political Islam, including views and understandings of such concepts as the caliphate, shariah, and jihad, and the relationship between Islam and politics, democracy, and conflict. The findings suggest that in the Australian context, converts to Islam are not more likely, and in some cases less likely, than the broader born-Muslim population, to understand and interpret Islam in accordance with political Islamist ideology.

Asking about people's views of the Bible in a single survey question has become the prevailing way to understand the mass public's religious beliefs. Nevertheless, the standard survey items raise questions about what is being measured. The questions used to measure one's views of the Bible are often double-barreled and leave considerable room for interpretation. In this paper, we assess the measurement error in the standard three-category question from the American National Election Study (ANES) by developing new items to gauge what it might mean to a respondent to select one of the three options in the standard Bible question. Using original data from two online surveys, we demonstrate that there is substantial measurement error in the standard ANES item. Analyses also show that our new items predict responses to the standard ANES item and are potent predictors of political attitudes—often performing better than the widely used three-category question.

We use data from the new and nationally representative National Survey of Religious Leaders, supplemented with the 2018 General Social Survey, to examine the extent to which clergy are politically aligned with people in their congregations. Two assessments of alignment—clergy reports of how their political views compare to the political views held by most people in their congregations, and comparisons between clergy and lay voting preferences in the 2016 election—yield the same findings. Clergy in Black Protestant and predominantly white evangelical churches are much more likely to be politically aligned with their people than are Catholic or, especially, white mainline Protestant clergy, who often are more liberal than their people. Contrary to media reports suggesting that evangelical clergy are now likely to be less conservative than their people, the vast majority are either politically aligned with, or more conservative than, their members.

Despite the growing flight of Americans from religious institutions, these are still the largest voluntary organizations in the United States and they remain significant forces in American politics. As leaders of these organizations, clergy are often visible and influential political figures. In just the past few years, conservative Protestant pastors were frequent visitors to the Trump White House and played a crucial role in mobilizing a large Republican religious constituency. Black Protestant ministers have long been a vital force in Democratic circles and are joined at times by white liberal colleagues, as evidenced by the recent mobilization to preserve abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.