Does the robust Western finding that religious attendance predicts political participation hold in non-Christian democracies? We test this using pooled data from three waves of the Taiwan Election and Democratization Study. In Taiwan, the dominant religions—Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religion—lack the Protestant congregational structures that theoretically drive civic skill-building. We find that religious attendance robustly predicts political participation, surviving strict controls for partisanship and national identity. Crucially, religious affiliation has no independent effect, and the attendance–participation slope is denomination-invariant. Decomposing participation reveals that attendance predicts campaign activities more strongly than voting, consistent with a network-based mechanism. Religious belief intensity shows no independent association with participation beyond attendance. These findings—attendance matters, affiliation does not, and the effect is uniform across diverse traditions—strongly support a generalized social capital mechanism over civic skills, mobilization, or psychological belief-oriented alternatives. By replicating the attendance–participation link in a religiously pluralistic, East Asian democracy, this study demonstrates that religious civic engagement relies on communal social ties rather than denomination-specific lay governance, political recruitment, or internalized belief.

While collective identity scholarship has generated insights into how social movements construct and mobilize identities to distinguish themsleves from others, it has paid comparatively less attention to why some groups reject divisive identities and instead align with broader collective identities. Using the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their rejection of sectarianism as a representative case study, the article examines why social movements choose to adhere to larger collective identities, even when their environment encourages the adoption of divisive ones. Tracing the Brotherhood’s collective identity, the article advances an ideational explanation that shows how two enduring identity elements—the constitutive norm of Islamic inclusivity and the social purpose of resisting imperialism and authoritarianism—generated master frames that consistently led the group to reject sectarian divides during periods of heightened secterianization in the Middle East. This identity construction both enabled and constrained the movement’s political choices, shaping its responses to regional sectarian tensions. This article demonstrates how collective identity framing structures the repertoire of political options available to social movements and offers a theoretical and empirical vantage point for understanding their behaviour.

This article examines reactions to the Christian nationalist imagery and rhetoric employed during the January 6th, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. We find evidence of both religious and partisan backlash among people who recalled evidence of Christian nationalism displayed by the January 6th rioters. Among Independents and Republicans who recalled religious symbols on January 6th, their overall religiosity declined. We also find that January 6th led not only to religious backlash but also partisan backlash—generally lessening favorability toward Donald Trump and Republicans and even leading Republicans to change their party identification.

In Burundi, weekly services are the primary point of contact between churches and their followers, with most of the population attending. These gatherings provide churches with a strategic platform to attract and retain members. Over six months, we collected data from five churches in the rural town of Muramvya—Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, FECABU (Evangelical), and Adventist—analyzing 125 transcripts for structure, themes, scope, tone, and key words. We find that emerging denominations—Pentecostal, FECABU, and Adventist—pursue different strategies than traditional ones. Pentecostal and FECABU churches place greater emphasis on rituals than on scripture readings, adopt a more positive tone, and focus on the immediate concerns of their congregants rather than abstract topics. The Adventist Church, while also emphasizing rituals and using a positive tone, distinguishes itself with a stronger commitment to scripture. The Pentecostal church uniquely combines a focus on morality with references to supernatural punishment. We argue that this blend of approaches among emerging denominations strengthens group cohesion and enriches individual faith experiences, helping them attract followers. Our findings shed light on the growth of these denominations in Burundi and may help explain broader religious trends across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Studies testing the relationship between preferences for Islamism and preferences for democracy in the Muslim world are inconclusive—and likely the result of measurement issues. Previously, we introduced a four-question battery measuring conceptions of Islamism and found that responses vary predictably across two components: whether respondents consider a shari‘a-based government to be one that provides services or one that imposes restrictive Islamic norms. Here, we demonstrate the consistency, generalizability, and utility of the battery through an analysis of 11,849 respondents in 11 Muslim countries. Defining a shari‘a-based government as one that provides is significantly and positively correlated with support for democracy, while defining it as a government that imposes is negatively correlated with these preferences across the entire sample.

This study analyses the role of selected Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic faith-based organizations (FBOs) as political actors in the context of local refugee politics in Germany. We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with leaders from local FBOs and examined the data via structured content analysis. The empirical material provided information on three aspects: the self-perceived role as political actors, contacts with political decision-makers, and the perception of the FBO’s means in and influence on (local) political decision-making. Most religious leaders do ascribe a political role to their activities in refugee aid. However, the goals and strategies of this role vary markedly, revealing patterns across the three religious groups. We argue that these differences can be interpreted against the background of the historically evolved role of different faiths in Germany. The study offers new insights into how FBOs engage in politics, advocating for their positions in local refugee and integration policies.

This study evaluates the extent of separation of religion and state (SRAS) in 28 countries which were European Union members in 2014 using data from the Religion and State (RAS) dataset. It applies three different standards of SRAS: absolute separationism, neutralism, and laicite. The results show that none of these countries meet a “zero-tolerance” application of any of these standards, and only five meet even very loose interpretations of any of these standards. In addition, no EU state provides full religious freedom to their religious minorities. Finally, EU states have less SRAS when compared to non-EU democracies. This calls into question either the assumption that SRAS and religious freedom are essential elements of liberal democracy or the assumption that the European Union’s member states are, in fact, liberal democracies. It also calls into question the extent of the West’s secularity.