Religion and Global Politics across Disciplines and Publics: Op Eds
The Catholic Church and American Empire: Longtime Frenemies
Jethro A. E. A. Calacday, University of Cambridge
In the Chicago native and Peruvian citizen Pope Leo XIV, Donald Trump has finally met his match. The US war in Iran, which the self-styled US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth imagined as a “crusade” against Islam, threw the mild-mannered Papa Prevost into his own war of words with the impulsive President Trump. Through well-calibrated statements made to the press and in his own official addresses, the Pope criticised the ongoing US aggression against Iran, which struck a nerve in Trump, who called the leader of more than a billion Catholics “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” (sic). With perplexing bravado, Trump claimed that “Leo should be thankful” since he was allegedly only elected Pope “because he was an American, and they [the Church] thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”
The relationship between Rome and Washington has travailed a series of conflicts and collaborations. In recent decades, popes have taken US Presidents to task over issues such as abortion, the death penalty, immigration, and even stem cell research. At the same time, popes have participated in the American agenda— for example, in the collaboration between John Paul II and Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, which paved the way for the establishment of formal diplomatic ties between the Holy See and Washington in 1984. Trump’s strange theory about Leo’s election only proves that both institutions on either side of the Atlantic recognise the authority and influence that they each exercise on the world stage.
There is a long and complex history to these relations. My book, Catholic Empire: The American Colonial State and the Roman Catholic Church in the Transimperial Philippines, explores the early stages of that relationship at the turn of the 20th century, just as the US was emerging as an empire following its triumph in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Contrary to its characterisation as “Protestant” or “secular” given the anti-Catholicism of US society at that time, I argue that the US created a Catholic empire in the Philippines, which it annexed in 1898. Drawing on archival material from the Vatican, the US, the Philippines, Spain, and other parts of Europe, I show that the American colonial state used the structures of the Catholic Church in the islands to project its power.
The US’s Catholic empire is a peculiar one that demonstrates how religion functions in an imperial context. As I show in the book, religion is not just an external influence that permeates institutions osmotically: religion is also an institution that interacts with other institutions, including the state. In the first decades of the 20th century, the US government, like Spain, negotiated heavily with the Catholic Church, intervening in the deliberations of the Church—from the Holy See down to the individual dioceses—not simply out of pragmatism, but in order to facilitate the governance of a colony. This was particularly true in the Taft Mission to the Vatican in 1902, in which the US government and the Holy See debated and negotiated the place of the Church in the American colony in the Philippines.
The Spanish empire, with the agreement of the Holy See, maintained a system of church-state union called the Patronato Real or Royal Patronage. This patronage enabled the Spanish Crown and government to support the church financially in exchange for a concession to the monarch to appoint bishops, parish priests, and missionaries; as well as to have oversight over church properties and finances. In short, the Patronato was a system that enabled the state to shape ecclesiastical policies. In the process, the Roman Catholic Church was established as the official state religion, making it a formidably influential institution.
Although not formally instituting the Patronato and disestablishing the Catholic Church, the US heavily interfered in the nomination of ecclesiastics and the management of church properties. Animated by its overall concern of pacifying a native population hostile to the presence of Spanish clergy who had been the main agents of Spanish colonial rule, the US pressured the Vatican to appoint American bishops. To meet the demands of Filipinos, the US government blocked attempts of the Spanish clergy to return to the parishes and institutions from which they were expelled. Furthermore, the US and the Vatican united in crushing separatist attempts from a nationalist church that had broken away from Rome, in the process discrediting said church, bolstering the status of the Roman Catholic Church, and meeting the policy goals of an impatient colonial state. This alliance manifested in the partial Filipinisation of the Philippine hierarchy, with the consecration of the first Filipino bishop in 1906 that was strategically planned to curtail the influence of the schismatics.
Like Spain, the US also exerted its power over church property to make it align with its goals. In 1903, the US expropriated 450,000 acres of agricultural estates owned by three Spanish religious orders of friars. The ownership of the estates was a source of resentment for Filipinos and the US government attempted to remove that resentment by buying out the Spanish friars. But it was not an easy transaction. The friars resolutely and even violently refused to sell, pushing the US government to enlist the Vatican’s assistance. The Holy See, in turn, lent its religious power to the US by invoking the friars’ vow of obedience (and not poverty) to sell their estates to the government. After the sale, the US government again accosted the Vatican to command the friars to surrender their proceeds to the pope, whom they understood would use the money to finance the church in the Philippines now bereft of funds at the end of the Patronato. The friars refused, but US influence was stronger: invoking its authority over the friars, the Vatican was able to create what it called the Fondo Filippine—a fund whose principal was invested and the interest used to aid the church in the Philippines.
US-Vatican relations in the Philippines were further strained by disputes over ecclesiastical properties, as schismatics, often backed by local Filipino officials, seized parish churches and rectories. A key legal issue emerged over whether these properties belonged to municipalities under the Spanish Patronato or to the local bishops. The question was settled in the 1906 Philippine Supreme Court case Barlín vs. Ramírez, where the court ruled in favour of the first Filipino bishop against a rebellious priest, affirming episcopal ownership of church properties and influencing a later 1908 US Supreme Court decision on church property in Puerto Rico. However, the case was carefully orchestrated by US colonial authorities as a test case to suppress the schism. A similar conflict arose over the Colegio de San José, a major ecclesiastical trust administered by the Dominicans. Nationalist Filipinos challenged its ownership in a case filed in 1900 and resolved only in 1910. To settle the dispute, Secretary of War William Howard Taft and American Archbishop of Manila Jeremiah Harty negotiated the 1907 Taft-Harty Agreement that resolved several church trust issues, though the Dominicans initially resisted surrendering San José until Vatican intervention, with US pressure, compelled them to comply in 1910.
Donald Trump’s claim that the College of Cardinals chose an American Pope as a check against him is outlandish but not totally unthinkable, since Vatican diplomacy has always adapted to the signs of the times. If the history of the Catholic empire in the Philippines has proven anything, it is that empires are built not only through military might and cultural change, but also through the appropriation of institutional structures, in this case, ecclesiastical. Today, Pope Leo XIV’s diplomacy puts a moral and institutional obstacle in the way of attempts by the current US government to enlist the Church’s support for a war of aggression and expansion that is purportedly being waged in the name of God. Indeed, the Church has the power to both create empires and set limits to imperial ambitions.
Bend it Like Burnham? Translating Religion in British Politics and Policy
Andrew Dickson, University of Sussex
Can Andy Burnham save the Labour Party and smash the far right? This question has seized British political commentators as Manchester’s mayor contests a parliamentary seat, weeks after a 60,000-strong far-right march in London. Support has ebbed away from Prime Minister Keir Starmer after disastrous local elections saw the nativist Reform Party gain 1,450 seats. Many Labour MPs see Burnham as Starmer’s heir apparent, and Labour’s only hope of beating Reform. He is the only British politician with positive approval ratings: the “King of the North” with a down-to-earth persona. But it’s unclear whether Burnham’s strategy for defeating Reform will differ from Starmer’s. He has now endorsed the government’s draconian immigration reforms, which have alienated Labour’s voters and failed to win many from Reform.
In this contest for power, cultural Christianity has come to the fore. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has stressed Britain’s Christian foundations and suggested that Muslim public prayer is incompatible with British culture. Reform has put proponents of Christian civilizational discourses in charge of policy. Far-right agitator Tommy Robinson has demanded a ‘masculine Christianity’ to save Britain’s Christian culture from Islam, invited sympathetic clergy to address rallies, and warned of genocide against Christians in Nigeria.
Burnham holds decidedly different views on religion’s public role, which is influenced by Catholic social teaching. In a recent public lecture, he echoed Pope Francis’s call for a culture of encounter, warned of declining public services and the disconnect between people and politics, and insisted that the state should reconnect with community and faith. Burnham’s solution, however, was not to prioritize one religious tradition, or even religion in general, but to fund various community initiatives which were locally rooted. Here, Burnham noted religion’s important contribution to the public good, highlighting that COVID-19 vaccination rates improved once government began collaborating with faith communities. Ultimately, “if you deliver through places and people that are trusted, you’ve then got a chance to make a difference.”
Similar rationales have circulated in foreign policy circles across the globe. Across Europe and North America, advocates for religious engagement argue that, given religion’s global sociopolitical importance, secular diplomats should work with religious leaders, organizations and communities across policy domains. In this sphere, “religious actors” are locally rooted, politically influential and crucial providers of public services. My forthcoming book studies how these ideas have spread within British foreign policy. Across three case studies – the War on Terror, the UK-Holy See relationship, and Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) advocacy – I analyze how practices of religious engagement modify and mirror longstanding British approaches to religion in ways that cross the international-domestic divide.
I argue that religious engagement relies on a policy practice that I conceptualise as “translation,” which I define as the movement and creation of meaning across discursive boundaries. To engage religion, foreign policymakers must translate religious social action into the secular categories and norms of British foreign policy. They produce policy-relevant knowledge of how religion matters socio-politically and how a secular British state can legitimately engage religion. They then pursue religious engagement on this basis.
Like Andy Burnham, British diplomats typically translate religion into a network of influential sociopolitical actors. This enables diplomats to skirt around doctrines, identities or devotional practices, and use standard techniques of outreach to work with schools, clinics and community leaders; “religion” barely requires mentioning. In contrast, translations echoing cultural Christianity – highlighting Christianity’s historic influence on Britain’s political system – emerge only occasionally within religious freedom advocacy and fit awkwardly with the FCDO’s (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) universalist approach to human rights.It also remains divisive amongst FoRB advocates.
What matters for my analysis is what different translations enable, especially for religious communities. And as British norms surrounding religion and secularism change, so will the translations, and therefore religious actors’, place within policymaking. Diplomats’ prevailing translations offer space to work together where agendas overlap, but for critics, only in service of governments’ existing agendas. Nativist Christian nationalism offers domination and exclusion. But for religious groups who are well-versed in dialogical exchange and collaboration across boundaries, translating offers space for different traditions to come together in solidarity, to build communities, and create shared political visions.
Recent weeks have seen several potential examples of such translations in the UK. Religious leaders signed a joint letter warning that rising antisemitic hate crime was a “problem for all of us to fix”. Catholic charities launched a campaign to defend asylum seekers. The Oxford Union postponed an invitation to Tommy Robinson after a local imam and Anglican bishop condemned his invitation as “untimely and divisive” in “a city which has a long tradition of hospitality.” If Andy Burnham can’t beat Reform, maybe religious communities can.
How to (Not) Think of the Excesses of Religious Movements
Jacob Katumusiime, University of Johannesburg
How do we make sense of the excesses of religious movements in postcolonial Africa? The Men of God, as African clerics are popularly referred to, continue to inspire their followers to participate in outrageous acts of faith. As recently as 2023, a group of over 100 members of a religious organization in Kenya committed suicide by fasting themselves to death in what is memorized as the Shakahola Massacre. In Uganda, over 100 believers of Christ Disciples’ Church (CDC) also disappeared. The search revealed that they had journeyed to Ethiopia, apparently, to escape the imminent destruction of the Universe. How thinkable are continued predictions of the violent end of the world and the commitment to death within these religious movements?
Modern states respond to the spiral of alarming revelations emerging from religious movements by slapping criminal charges against the leaders of the religious movements and drafting regulatory programs. The regulation of religion is often presented as a defense of the modern secular state against the wildness of religious believers. The persistent state discourse is that religious and faith organizations are products not only of violence but also underdevelopment. The modern state imagines itself as an antidote to the “poison” of religion. Their advocacy against the operations of religious movements has produced a number of by-laws and restrictive policies, regulating the freedom of worship in Postcolonial Africa. The “cult” concept, which is mostly used in reference to non-institutionalized religious movements, continues to be of popular currency in the discourses on religion, with scholars, theologians and the public debating how to identify the so-called cults. The cult is often framed as a bastardized form of religion, embodying an essence of “false,” “bad” and or “criminal” religion, and meriting relegation from society.
Yet, the question we ought to ask is: Within what social-political context are the excesses of religious movements possible? The answer is simple: the modern state has failed to guarantee survival for the masses. It should be remembered, for example, that those who committed suicide in the Shakahola Massacre were not just Kenya’s poorest laypersons, but also Kenya’s promising lights. What were Kenya’s elite looking for in that alleged death camp of a religious movement? Postcolonial subjects, including elites, often feel marginalized and hopeless. And if they are not going to find honor in living, they find it in dying. Paul Mackenzie, the leader of the death-fasters in Kenya, had just had his Church and Television station closed down. Here was a man who, after struggling to make it in life, and learning a few skills from a driving school, failed to find a job; a man who then settled for hawking flour and pushing a cart, before finally getting to drive a taxi; a man who after reflecting on his miraculous transformation, found his luck unexplainable except through the redeeming power of Christ; and thus began leading those who find themselves in a similar wretched life to the same God that transformed him. At this point the modern nation-state enters the scene and things begin to fall apart. Religious movements often tend to take radical decisions when faced with the threat of state power. The paradox of the continued failure to contextualize and historicize catastrophic religious events is that doing so reproduces the modern state as a watchdog of crime and punishment. This policing produces a public amnesia over the enabling role of the modern state in the perpetuation of social wrongs.
My forthcoming book engages the debates on the emergence of independent religious movements in postcolonial Africa and their relationship with violence. It reveals that the unreformed state is the context within which the excesses of religious movements are thinkable. To give people hope, we need to reform the state within which they exist. The modern colonial state’s manufacturing of permanent distinctions between those who belong and those who do not belong to the political community, often force the marginalized to separate from their fellow countrymen. This separation is exemplified not only in the idea of independent religious movements but also in the occasional manifestation of either homicidal or suicidal violence – a radical technology of permanent separation. The book focuses on the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTCG) and the violence it orchestrated in Uganda towards the end of the 20th century, in which over 1000 people perished. These are souls that could have been saved if the Catholic Church in Africa had existed outside the conscripts of modernity.
From Caliphate to Nation-State: Formations of Muslim Minority in India
Thahir Jamal Kiliyamannil, SRM University- Andhra Pradesh
In 1393, the qadi of Calicut, a port city on the Malabar coast of southwestern India, wrote a letter to the Sultan of Yemen on behalf of a group of Muslim merchants and religious leaders. They asked permission to invoke the Sultan’s name during Friday sermons. The Sultan was not Calicut’s ruler. He collected no taxes from the inhabitants of Malabar and commanded no soldiers on its soil. Yet the letter addressed him as the great Caliph, liberator of Arabs and non-Arabs alike, and petitioned him for protection. The Sultan, in turn, sent stipends in gold and linen to the mosques of Malabar, where his name was invoked.
Scholars have often interpreted a connection like this one as either commercial or spiritual in nature. But it was political, too. It constituted the pledging of political allegiance from the Muslims in Malabar and reciprocal protection from the Caliph. These networks were organised not around territory, walls, or borders, but around the openness of the Indian Ocean. In the 15th century, when the Ottomans took over the title of Caliph, Muslims in Malabar recited the Ottomans’ names in their Friday sermons, though they were not Ottoman subjects in any territorial sense, nor did they pay taxes to the Ottomans.
In response to the invocation of his name, when Portuguese warships appeared on the Malabar coast in the early sixteenth century, the Ottoman Sultan dispatched naval forces to assist them. He did this because, as Sultan Suleiman I’s letter to the Portuguese ruler makes clear, Indian Muslim pilgrims and merchants were under Caliphal protection. Sovereignty here was exercised across the sea, without territorial connection, through networks of allegiance, obligation, and belonging.
My forthcoming book, Formations of Minority: Afterlives of Law, Governance, and Colonial Sovereignty in India, argues that these networks between Malabar and the centres of the Caliphate disclose a form of political belonging that sits uneasily within the territorial assumptions that have shaped much of modern political thought. Classical theorists of sovereignty view sovereign authority primarily as dominion over land. But Muslims in pre-colonial Malabar were living in territory ruled by local Hindu kings. So they maintained their relationships with and allegiances to the Caliphate.
This ‘deterritorial political imagination’ was interrupted by the entry of colonialism in India. British sovereignty depended on fixing authority within territory. As such, the older networks that connected Muslim subjects to the Caliphate became problems of governance. After the British conquest of Malabar in 1792, the defeat of the Mughals in 1857, and the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, Muslim political thought in India underwent a crucial reorientation. Thinkers like Maulana Azad, Muhammad Iqbal, Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Abul A’la Maududi, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah – however radically they differed – were all compelled to think within the grammar of the nation-state, through political concepts centered on minority rights, separate electorates, composite nationalism, or a Muslim homeland. Even Maududi’s concept of hukumat-e-ilahi (divine sovereignty), which offered a scathing critique of nationalism and democracy, remained entangled within the techniques of the modern state.
The transformation became visible in India’s Constituent Assembly. Muslim leaders tried to protect Muslim personal law as a fundamental right. In effect, it was an attempt to preserve the last vestiges of a once-comprehensive jurisprudential order based on shariah. What survived of earlier Muslim legal autonomy was increasingly confined to personal law. The state held sovereignty to define, regulate, and organize religion. In this moment of secularisation of religion, a new Muslim subject was being constituted, who is self-governing, disciplined, and more importantly, depoliticised. This new Muslim subject could talk only in terms of “cultural” and “religious” rights of minorities, which the majority could always redefine or revoke.
Yet what is important to note is that the Muslim subject is never simply the product of power that acts upon it. As my book argues, the new Muslim movements that emerged after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, the anti-CAA-NRC movements, and the protests against the hijab ban in Karnataka reflect what I call the resurrection of the theological within the political. They conform to the constitutional order while producing meanings that exceed it.
Six centuries ago, the qadi of Calicut wrote across the Indian Ocean seeking recognition from a ruler who governed no territory in Malabar. In an age when borders appear increasingly rigid, the history of Malabar Muslims’ relationship with the Caliphate reminds us that people have not always imagined authority, belonging, and political life through the grammar of the nation-state. The nation-state may have enclosed older political worlds, but it has not entirely erased them.
A New Battleground: God, Family and Religious Freedom at the Organization of American States (OAS)
Ely Orrego-Torres, Lund University
On the second day of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Lima, Peru, in 2022, I found myself at a massive rally for “life and family” organized by the Ibero-American Congress for Life and Family. What stayed with me wasn’t the size of the crowd, but a single sign: “The OAS is atheist,” it read. “It wants you without God and without family.” That message captured something deeper than protest. It revealed how international organizations are being reimagined—and contested—through religious language. Founded in 1948, the OAS is the world’s oldest regional organization, bringing together 35 states in the Americas to advance democracy, human rights, and regional cooperation. It was never meant to be a battleground for religion. Yet increasingly, it is.
Why and how does religion—and especially religious freedom—carry such political weight in the Americas? Growing up in Latin America, even within an Evangelical family, “religious freedom” was not a political cause or public debate. It simply wasn’t central. My research at the OAS points to a clear answer: religious freedom is no longer just a right. It is a contested concept, a diplomatic tool, and, increasingly, a political battleground.
In recent years, Transnational Religio-Spiritual Networks (TRSNs), many rooted in Protestant-Evangelical Christianism, have become influential players in international human rights arenas—especially within the Organization of American States, where they shape debates on religious freedom, secularism, and gender rights. They are often portrayed as a unified conservative force, reinforced by the rise of figures like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Javier Milei. But that narrative could be too simple.
Yet, something that I demonstrate in my book is that even the politics of religious freedom –which is fairly widespread across the region– is understood and mobilized in very different ways by different actors. These networks do not speak with one voice. They mobilize differently, deploy human rights language strategically, and advance competing visions of what “religious freedom” actually means for them. The result is a striking paradox: the language of human rights is now used both to expand rights—and to restrict them. This struggle reveals something deeper. Religious freedom is no longer a shared principle; it is a site of struggle. My book focuses on two understudied TRSNs that are part of this new game: the “Ibero-American Congress for Life and Family” and the “Coalition for Religion, Beliefs, and Spiritualities” lack global name recognition, yet they exert real influence in regional diplomacy in the name of religious freedom.
So, what actually determines influence in these spaces and why is important to turn attention to these TRSNs? Religious freedom matters less for what it means than for what it does. My research shows that religious freedom functions as a performative and strategic language—one that enables actors to mobilize across borders and reframe debates on gender, sexuality, and democracy. In that sense, religious freedom as a right it is often assumed to be universal, neutral, and inherently democratic. But in practice, it is a contested and politically charged vocabulary through which competing claims are made intelligible and persuasive.
Secondly, and relatedly, religious freedom is not just a right—it operates as a strategic political tool. TRSNs deliberately deploy it to gain influence. Between 2017 and 2023, TRSNs at the OAS have turned “religious freedom” into a strategic language of politics. They use it to build alliances, gain access to decision-makers, and reshape debates on issues ranging from abortion to LGBT rights and secular education policy. Their effectiveness lies not simply in belief, but in how they use the language as a strategy. They translate claims grounded in their theology and Christian faith into the language of law, science, and human rights; while framing international institutions themselves as both targets and tools. For instance, by framing “strategic/pragmatic secularism” to access secular spaces and gain legitimacy and participation in such spaces.
Third, the liberal human rights framework is being contested from within. TRSNs are not outside the Inter-American System. They access the institution and they operate inside it, using its language to both advance and resist rights. This marks a shift: human rights discourse is no longer monopolized by progressive agendas. “Conservative” and “progressive” actors often rely on similar strategies, funding and sponsors, and institutional pathways, even as they advance opposing visions of society.
Finally, my research demonstrates the changing dynamics of the Americas. While religious freedom remains tied to U.S. influence and global power asymmetries, TRSNs in the Americas actively reinterpret and translate these norms, adapting them to local histories, identities, and struggles. What exists instead are competing, politically charged interpretations—each tied to different visions of society, authority, and rights. The result is not a one-sided transformation, but an increasingly crowded and polarized field in which competing actors use the same institutional spaces—and the same language of rights—to advance fundamentally different visions of society.
When everyone speaks in the name of religious freedom, it becomes a political weapon for causes such as “life and family.” What matters is not its definition, but how it is mobilized, to what political ends and who is left out in the process.
The Hidden Trap in the Alliance Between Emerging Autocrats and Religious Institutions
Dina Osama Lotfy, Cairo University
The role of religion in democratic backsliding is not simply a tool of authoritarian control. It is a site for strategic interaction. When Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expanded religious education and strengthened the role of the Diyanet during Turkey’s democratic decline, many observers saw it as proof of ideological Islamization. Similar interpretations emerged in India under Narendra Modi and in Hungary under Viktor Orbán, where appeals to religion and ‘traditional values’ became increasingly central to political discourse. But authoritarian leaders do not embrace religion simply because they are personally devout or ideologically conservative. They do so because religion offers something every would-be autocrat desperately needs in the early stages of democratic erosion, which is legitimacy.
As democracies weaken, elections become contested, institutions lose credibility, and polarization intensifies, emerging autocrats frequently lack the coercive power necessary to fully consolidate control. Religious institutions can help fill this gap as they possess moral authority, social influence, and organizational networks capable of legitimizing fragile political projects.
Yet the relationship between autocracy and religion is far more complicated than simple co-optation. Religious institutions are not passive tools waiting to be used by governments. They are strategic actors with their own interests, histories, and sources of power. Those characteristics often shape how far would-be autocratic leaders are willing, or able, to go. This helps explain why governments can appear both pro-religion and anti-religion even at the same time.
In the Philippines, former President Rodrigo Duterte cultivated alliances with some influential religious actors while simultaneously attacking and threatening Catholic clergy who criticized his violent anti-drug campaign. In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega initially maintained cooperative relations with religious institutions but later intensified repression against segments of the Catholic Church as it became one of the main centers of public opposition. The key point is that authoritarian approaches to religion are rarely fixed. They evolve as political conditions change.
In the early stages of democratic backsliding, leaders often adopt symbolic gestures of religious friendliness, such as defending traditional values, funding religious institutions, or expanding religious education. These policies help build social coalitions and soften resistance. But as authoritarian power deepens and coercive capacity grows, the relationship frequently shifts. Religious institutions that remain politically useful may continue receiving privileges, while independent-thinking religious actors increasingly face surveillance, legal restrictions, or outright repression.
This is why the same leader can appear deeply supportive of religion at one moment and hostile toward religious actors at another. The difference is often not ideology, but timing.
Not all religious institutions respond similarly to these pressures. Some become loyal partners of would-be autocratic regimes. Others resist. What often determines the outcome is not just theology, but institutional structure. Centralized religious hierarchies dominating the religious landscape are generally easier for governments to negotiate with because they provide a single point of influence. Fragmented networks are more difficult to manage. Transnational religious institutions, such as the Catholic Church, can be especially challenging for authoritarian governments because they possess external visibility, international allies, and independent financial resources that raise the costs of repression.
History matters too. Religious institutions that previously supported democratic movements often retain organizational cultures and moral identities that make collaboration with authoritarianism more difficult. Their past positions shape both their own choices and the calculations of the regimes confronting them.
This is why democratic backsliding cannot be understood simply as a story of powerful leaders manipulating religion and imposing control from above. It is also a story of bargaining, adaptation, and strategic interaction between political rulers and religious institutions. Time often favors autocrats. The longer they stay in power, the more capable they become of neutralizing the religious institutional strengths that once constrained them.
As democratic erosion accelerates across diverse political systems, this relationship is becoming increasingly important. Religious institutions can help normalize transitions toward autocracy in the name of stability, morality, or national identity. But they can also become spaces of resistance when their institutional characteristics enable them to do so.
The future of democracy may therefore depend not only on political parties, courts, or civil society organizations, but also on whether religious institutions choose to become instruments of authoritarian legitimacy or defenders of democracy. The broader lesson for policymakers, religious actors, and democracy advocates is that the religion-friendly policies adopted by emerging autocrats at the beginning of their tenure are not a genuine commitment to religious freedom. Rather, they indicate incomplete consolidation of power and a strategic move by an emerging autocratic leader.
These arguments are drawn from my book project, Religious-Friendly Autocratization: Strategies and Responses, which statistically examines 133 autocratization episodes during the post-third wave period (1990–2024). The analysis relies on the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) Dataset for identifying autocratization cases and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Dataset for religious variables. Data on the positions of religious institutions were compiled from media coverage, publicly available institutional statements, and local and international reports. The book also includes comparative case studies of Nicaragua, the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and Belarus.