Religion, Nationalism & Internationalism

Abstract: In the 1930s, Brazilian Protestant leaders faced the challenge of proving their patriotism, freedom from foreign control, and overall benefit to Brazilian society. The time was one of political turmoil, and Brazilian Protestants found themselves as a religious minority, with suspicions foreign connections, competing with a strong Brazilian Catholic Church to secure political recognition and benefits. To gain what they sought (such as an option for Protestant classes in public schools, redress for vandalism of Protestant churches, and a laicized state with
no Catholic privilege), Brazilian Protestants had to make a case that they truly represented their nation and were patriotic.

In this paper, I use the documents of the Confederação Evangélica do Brasil (CEB), from its inception in 1934 to the beginning of the military dictatorship of 1964 (when the CEB fragmented). In the 1930s and 40s, the CEB conspicuously supported Vargas, especially his campaigns for public health and literacy, while speaking out to him and to other governmental leaders to secure freedom of worship and to register complaints about attempts of the Catholic Church to secure symbolic or social dominance. As the CEB moved into the 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of leaders began to express dissatisfaction with the government, especially in agrarian reform. Throughout these changes of orientation toward government, the CEB leaders used their international links with the emerging Protestant ecumenical movement to prove their benefit, as Protestants, to their own nation

Abstract: Dana Robert’s upcoming book explores how and why global Protestant movements have been foundational for studies of internationalism. During the early twentieth century, hopes for the peaceful coexistence of nations animated emerging international Protestant cooperation. Despite national hostilities including world war, commitment to global Christian fellowship became an urgent public agenda. In this volume, essays by European, Asian, and North American scholars locate the essence of the “young ecumenical movement” in the dynamic tension between nationalism and internationalism during the early twentieth century. Political crises, crushing disappointments, and imperialist ambitions notwithstanding, transnational Protestant leaders, networks, and movements envisioned Christianity as a contemporary multi-cultural, worldwide community.

Abstract: Over Greek coffee in a downtown parish events hall one spring afternoon, an aging priest who oversaw one of the largest parish soup kitchens in the city spoke to me of his belief in Christians’ unparalleled “skill” as both givers and recipients of charitable aid. Railing against the influx of migrants into Greece and the ways the Church of Greece had changed to accommodate their care, he painted a picture of his alternative vision: a Church returned to its ethnoreligious roots through a recognition of “Christian superiority”. Though his words smacked to me of rising Christian nationalism seen in other parts of the world (and indeed Christian nationalism within Greek Orthodoxy is a well-studied phenomenon), they stood in contrast to claims I had heard from other priests and practitioners during the course of my long-term fieldwork in various Athenian charitable centers. These people spoke instead of ecumenism, solidarity, and the holiness of every human. Through their charitable actions, which I understand as part of the liturgical practices through which they “shouted themselves into existence” (Heron 2018) as a people, they forged relationships across lines of ethnicity, class, and religious belief.

For all their differences, however, what all of my interlocutors had in common was a deep-rooted theological justification for their beliefs and ensuing care practices. Both the exclusive ethnoreligious framing of a Greek (Orthodox) nation and the more inclusive framing of a nation built on solidarity amongst fellow men rely on arguments around love, sincerity, and theosis – a belief in humanity’s journey towards divinity. This ethnographic reality reveals a theological one. While Orthodox theologians, such as Thomas Hopko and Aristotle Papanikolaou, are keen to highlight the potentialities of Orthodoxy for shaping a more just world, many Orthodox theological principles are in fact capacious enough to house both inclusive and extraordinarily exclusive visions of community and national belonging. This paper attends to this capaciousness, outlining its inflections in my ethnographic fieldwork, considering the possibilities and limitations of Orthodox theology, and ultimately arguing that the tension between different Orthodox visions of the nation is at the heart of the Church of Greece’s (re)negotiation of its revised role in contemporary Athenian society

Abstract: Religious nationalism is a networked project. It moves across geographies, boundaries, and borders in variegated forms that are often linked by ideological convictions and the need to build alliances with disparate communities to advance political and social aims. As such it demands that we look at more than just the bureaucratic, state-level forms of nationalism; it demands that we take seriously the globalizing flows of nationalism, especially in digital spaces, through which political discontents exchange ideas, craft ideological partnerships, and mobilize local communities to (re)act. As a contribution to an interdisciplinary edited volume on the theoretical concept of Christian Nationalism, this book chapter considers the long history of Russian Nationalism(s), their varied engagement with Orthodox Christianity, and the networked geo-political links these projects have had to contemporary iterations of Christian Nationalism in the United States. Along the way, I pay close attention to how moral economies have long provided ideological, financial, and political couplings to advance religious nationalism in the U.S. and Russia in culturally different yet conversant ways. I argue that Christian Nationalism should not be thought of as uniquely American, but rather a legacy product of geo-imperialism and Christian colonization that are found in wide variety across the globe, including Russia. In this way, the chapter shifts the cartography of Christian Nationalism, resettling it in the larger framework of international religious nationalisms. In doing so, I gesture to the power of Western privilege that is attached to the creation and use of Christian Nationalism, both in academe and by far-right actors, and its deleterious effects on understanding the international dynamics of
Christian domination

Abstract: American religion and politics have always been intertwined, but a major restructuring of the religious field starting in the 1950s made them nearly inseparable. This restructuring, according to a classic book by the sociologist Robert Wuthnow, was driven by the rise of the Religious Right. The realignment of white conservative Protestants and Catholics into a political bloc led to a shift in many white Americans’ primary religious allegiance—from their denominational brethren to their political tribe. The religious field came to be defined by this deepening rift between religious liberals and religious conservatives. But starting in the 1990s, a new restructuring began, though few have yet recognized it as such. Where the post-1950s restructuring was driven by the rise of the Religious Right, I argue the post-1990s restructuring was driven by backlash to this same movement. An ensuing cycle of backlash and counter-backlash radically transformed the religious field, driving large swaths of Americans who came to associate “religion” with anti-pluralistic values to disaffiliate from organized religion or to resist the politicization of faith in other ways. Meanwhile, faced with this barrage of public backlash, conservative faith communities purged political moderates and deepened alliances with far-right groups based on a shared embrace of an anti-pluralistic ideology known as white Christian Nationalism. In the process, the right-left political divide that once ran through the religious field was replaced by a divide over the question of pluralism itself.

Abstract: Christian Nationalism (CN) has emerged as a significant force in contemporary American society, shaping public discourse, political agendas, and cultural conflicts. Existing measures of CN,such as the six-question Likertscale used by Whitehead & Perry and the Public Religion Research Institute/Brookingssurvey, often lack the nuance needed to fully capture its complexity and varied manifestations. As a scholar of religion and politics, I propose to develop a new measure of CN that addressesthese limitations and provides a more nuanced understanding of this phenomenon. Building on critiquesraised by Li & Froese (2023), Smith & Adler (2022), and Davis(2022), my research aimsto create the Multidimensional Measure of Christian Nationalism (MMCN), which capturesthe ideological, identity-based, and cultural framework aspects of CN while accounting for varying levels of commitment among differentsubgroups.

Abstract: In recent years, scholars and cultural commentators have noted how online wellness and fitness forums have served as an entry point for political radicalization, especially among young men. While many scholars of white Christian nationalism focus their attention on online communities or leaders of the Religious Right, this paper argues that white Christian nationalism is nurtured in seemingly benign spaces like the gym. Using the fitness brand CrossFit as a primary example, this paper shows how the company’s goal of “forging elite fitness” becomes enmeshed with the political project of “the nation.” CrossFit, a functional fitness regimen and global brand, is known for its hardcore workouts and its zealous consumer base. As a company and culture, it has also become known for its patriotism and militarism, offering fitness training for military personnel and honoring deceased combatants in “Hero Workouts.” These commitments have made CrossFit a popular fitness methodology and locus of community for many evangelical Christians who integrate their Christian faith and conservative values with their exercise routine. By examining how Christian nationalism circulates in CrossFit gyms, this paper joins theorists of the body who analyze the correlation between individual treatments of the body as a reflection of the broader body politic to learn about how Christian nationalism, as an ideology, becomes embodied.

Abstract: This paper examines some of the narrative repetitions and silences of several octogenarian and nonagenarian elders who live(d) in kibbutzim near Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon or southern borders with Palestine/Gaza, to consider what happens when war overlays aging and illness, (re)shaping the interpersonal dynamics of care as these collide with Israeli and Palestinian nationalist projects and geopolitical conflagrations. At the micro level, I describe, first, how elders in varying states of fragile health sought to establish ritualized daily routines that reinvoke a (lost) religiosity or reaffirm their internationalist, communist-inspired secularism, as part of enacting wellbeing while anticipating, at times with dread, at others with equanimity, the oncoming but temporally uncertain end of their life. Drawing on long-term observations and interviews with key participants, and on media and kibbutz archival materials that have also sought to portray the changing lives of kibbutzim and their elders, I then reflect on how rhythms were shattered and remade in the wake of Israel’s latest war. Zooming out to a broader discursive level, I attune to the silences and gaps in these ethnographic and collective narratives, to attempt to explain a parallel nearing end, of the kibbutz itself and perhaps, as some might wish or fear, of Israel as a pluralist Jewish state. I conclude by highlighting the fraught nature of kibbutzim’s nationalist and internationalist (anti-)religious settlement project and then asking more questions regarding how different scales of “endings” and forms of anticipated finitude may shape care experiences at the end of lives.