Religion and Power
The political-religious fusions actively reshaping the world. Calmly described, with named cases, structural patterns, and serious disagreement laid out plainly.
(Pew Research; the unaffiliated share has grown but remains a minority globally)
(non-exhaustive; see the page for the named cases)
(Pew Research; the line between "favoured" and "established" is contested in many cases)
A note on framing. Treating religion as a private belief that is mostly separated from political power is a Western-modernity assumption that does not describe most of the world. The political-religious fusions covered here are not historical curiosities. They are some of the most consequential governance projects of the present moment, reshaping major democracies and authoritarian states alike. This page is calm and descriptive; it is not a critique of religion as such, and it is not a defence of any particular fusion. It is an attempt to describe what is actually happening clearly enough that a reader can think about it.
Iranian theocracy
The 1979 Islamic Revolution produced a constitutional system in which ultimate political authority rests with a religious figure (the Supreme Leader, currently Ali Khamenei) under the doctrine of velayat-e faqih ("guardianship of the jurist"). The Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts (itself composed of clerics) and serves for life. Below the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council vets candidates for elected office, ensuring that effective political competition is bounded by religious-revolutionary criteria.
Forty-six years on, the system has aged in characteristic ways. The original revolutionary generation is now elderly. The economic costs of sanctions and policy choices have produced sustained popular discontent, including the 2009 Green Movement, the 2017-18 protests, the 2019 fuel-price protests, and the 2022-23 Mahsa Amini protests. The state's response has been increasingly coercive. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls a substantial share of the economy and major regional foreign policy. Whether the system reproduces itself across another generation, gradually evolves into a more secular authoritarian state, or experiences sharper transition is a major open question.
What makes the Iranian case particularly important for the broader topic is that it is the most institutionally developed example of an explicit theocratic constitution in the modern world. The intellectual case for it (Khomeini's velayat-e faqih) is articulated in detail. The institutional architecture is extensive. The fact that the system has come under such sustained popular pressure is one of the most studied empirical points in the political-religion literature.
Russian Orthodox-state alignment
Post-Soviet Russia has rebuilt a relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state that has substantial pre-Soviet precedent (the Tsarist simfoniya, the symphony of throne and altar) but takes new forms. Patriarch Kirill's tenure has involved active alignment with Putin's political project. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was framed by the Patriarchate in spiritual terms, with explicit support for the war and its aims. The Church has supported what Russian officials call the "Russian World" (russkiy mir) concept, treating Russian-speaking and Orthodox communities outside Russia's current borders as part of a single civilisational space.
The institutional integration is substantial. Senior clergy have FSB or KGB backgrounds. The Church has substantial state-supported real-estate, broadcasting, and educational reach. Anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, and "traditional values" legislation have advanced with Church endorsement. The Church's Western-Europe-facing arm has been one of the channels of Russian soft power, including in support of nationalist and traditional-values movements in Western states.
What makes this case important is that it shows how a religious institution can reposition rapidly from Soviet repression to state alignment within a generation, and how the alignment shapes both domestic policy and foreign relations. The 2022 split between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (who broke from Moscow) and the broader rupture with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople have produced one of the most consequential schisms in Eastern Orthodox Christianity in centuries.
Hindu nationalism in India
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power at the national level in India since 2014, draws ideologically from Hindutva - the political theory developed by V. D. Savarkar and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since the 1920s, treating Hindu identity as the core of Indian nationhood. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, several substantial policy and institutional shifts have advanced this project: the abrogation of Article 370 ending Jammu and Kashmir's special status (2019); the Citizenship Amendment Act creating religion-based pathways to citizenship (2019); the Ayodhya temple consecration on the site of the previously demolished Babri Masjid (2024); and broader cultural-policy emphasis on Hindu civilisational identity.
India's complexity matters here. The country has 200 million Muslims, the third-largest Muslim population in the world. It has substantial Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and other communities. Its constitution remains officially secular. Election competition remains real - the BJP's vote share has varied; opposition parties have won state elections; the 2024 national election produced a reduced BJP majority that required coalition partners. Whether India is best understood as a Hindu-nationalist project gradually transforming a secular state, or as a complex democracy where the BJP's policies are one programme among several, is genuinely contested.
What makes the Indian case structurally important is the scale (1.4 billion people), the speed (a transition substantially completed within a generation), and the genuine democratic-electoral legitimacy of the project. Unlike theocratic models where religious authority is constitutionally privileged, the Indian case operates within a formally secular constitution that the ruling party has reinterpreted rather than rewritten.
The US Christian right and Christian Zionism
The relationship between conservative Christianity and US politics has been a defining feature of American political life since at least the 1970s, but the specific configuration has evolved substantially in the past decade. The mainstream evangelical movement remains a major force in the Republican Party. A more specific set of currents - Christian nationalism in its various forms, dominionist theology, and the broader project of Christian-foundational understandings of American identity - has gained visibility in ways that distinguish them from traditional religious-right politics.
The terminology matters. "Christian nationalism" as used by sociologists (Andrew Whitehead, Samuel Perry) describes a worldview that sees America as fundamentally a Christian nation whose laws and institutions should reflect that. Polling shows roughly a fifth of Americans hold this view strongly and another quarter hold it weakly, with the views correlating with specific political preferences across multiple election cycles. The Supreme Court's reshaping under conservative majorities, the post-Roe legal landscape on abortion, and the ongoing debates about religion in schools are downstream of this larger project.
Christian Zionism is a related but distinct theological position, particularly strong among American evangelicals, that supports a robust Israeli state on biblical-prophetic grounds. It is one of the largest sources of US political support for Israel and has shaped Republican Middle East policy across multiple administrations. The Christian Zionist movement is much larger than its Jewish-American counterpart and has produced specific policy outcomes (US embassy moved to Jerusalem in 2018, recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, others).
What makes the US case structurally important is that it shows political-religious fusion advancing within a constitutional system explicitly designed (in the First Amendment) to limit it. The mechanisms - electoral mobilisation, judicial appointments, state-level policy laboratories, parallel educational institutions - operate within ordinary democratic processes. Whether this is properly understood as a religious revival of long-standing American traditions or as something more specific to the present moment is part of the academic and political debate.
Political Islam in its multiple forms
Political Islam covers a wide range of distinct movements that share some commitments to Islamic law and identity in public life but differ substantially on goals, methods, and theological foundations. Treating them as one phenomenon obscures more than it explains.
Sunni mainstream political Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood and its intellectual lineage, with significant variants across countries: the AKP under Erdoğan in Turkey (substantially transformed since 2002), Hamas in Gaza (with armed-resistance components), Tunisia's Ennahda (which has accepted electoral defeat and constitutional limits), Morocco's Justice and Development Party. These movements have generally accepted electoral participation while pursuing Islamisation of law and social norms.
Saudi Wahhabism and exported Salafism. The Saudi state's interpretation of Islam, exported globally through religious institutions, education, and finance from the 1970s through roughly 2017, when Saudi religious-export policy began shifting under Mohammed bin Salman. The legacy is substantial: institutional infrastructure across Asia, Africa, and Western Muslim communities that operates partly autonomously from current Saudi policy.
Iranian-aligned Shia political Islam. Iran-supported movements across the region: Hezbollah in Lebanon (politically powerful, militarily significant), Iranian-aligned Iraqi Shia parties and militias, Yemen's Houthis (Zaydi Shia rather than Twelver, complex relationship with Iran). The "Axis of Resistance" framework has been substantially strained since 2023.
Jihadist movements. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and successors, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Boko Haram in West Africa, several others. These reject the state-system framework that mainstream political Islam works within. Their salience has decreased from the 2010s peak but they remain locally significant in several regions.
Quietist and reform movements. Major intellectual currents within Islam - reform-Islam approaches, Sufi-influenced quietism, secular-Muslim political thought - that explicitly resist political-Islam framings. These are often under-covered in Western media because they are less newsworthy, but they represent substantial portions of the global Muslim intellectual landscape.
What makes political Islam structurally important is that it is the most demographically large religious-political phenomenon globally, operating across more than a billion people and dozens of states with very different relationships between religious and political authority. The variation matters and is poorly captured by single-frame coverage.
Israeli religious Zionism
Israeli politics since the 2000s has involved a substantial growth in the political weight of religious-Zionist parties and ultra-Orthodox parties. The 2022 government formed by Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud with the Religious Zionism alliance and ultra-Orthodox parties was the most religious-coalition government in Israeli history. Ministers from Religious Zionism (Bezalel Smotrich at Finance, with West Bank settlement-related authorities, and Itamar Ben-Gvir at National Security until his resignation) advanced policies aligned with their movement's traditional commitments.
The structural picture is that the religious-Zionist movement has grown demographically (substantially higher birth rates than secular Israelis) while becoming increasingly mainstream politically. The historical compromise between secular Zionism and religious Judaism that defined the early Israeli state has shifted toward a more religious-influenced character. The 2023 judicial-reform proposals and the response to October 7, 2023 each accelerated debate about what kind of state Israel is becoming.
The variation within Israeli religious politics matters. The mainstream religious-Zionist movement (associated with the Mafdal and successors) is distinct from the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties (Shas and United Torah Judaism), which have different demographic bases, theological commitments, and policy priorities. The post-2022 government's coherence was shaped by the alignment of these distinct currents on specific issues.
What makes the Israeli case structurally important is that it shows the political-religious shift advancing in a country that founded itself with strong secular components, that has substantial religious diversity within Judaism itself, and that exists in a security environment where religious framings have direct policy implications.
Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar and Sri Lanka
The Western image of Buddhism as a peaceful, apolitical tradition does not describe the political-Buddhist movements that have shaped Myanmar and Sri Lanka over recent decades. Both countries have seen sustained political mobilisation around defending Buddhist identity, often with ethnic-majoritarian framing.
Myanmar. The "969 Movement" and the Ma Ba Tha (Association for the Protection of Race and Religion) advanced a political-Buddhist project in the 2010s, with figures like Ashin Wirathu providing ideological leadership. The movement has been associated with the systematic violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority that produced the 2017 displacement of around 700,000 people. The post-2021 military coup has used Buddhist nationalism instrumentally; many monks have opposed the junta, while others have aligned with it.
Sri Lanka. Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism has been a dominant force in Sri Lankan politics since independence, contributing to the long civil war (1983-2009) and to ongoing tensions with Tamil Hindu and Muslim minorities. The Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) and similar movements have organised periodic anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence. The Rajapaksa political family's leadership across multiple administrations has worked with these movements at various points.
What these cases show is that political-religious nationalism is not specific to particular religions; the structural pattern - majoritarian identity, perceived threat from minorities, mobilisation of religious authority for political purposes - reproduces across very different theological frameworks.
The paths from here
Continued advance of political-religious fusions
The general trajectory of religious nationalism continues across multiple major countries. Specific cases progress at different speeds; the structural pattern is durable. The post-Cold War assumption that secularisation would advance globally proves to have been Western-centric.
Generational shift moderates several cases
Younger generations in Iran, parts of the Arab world, parts of the US, parts of India, parts of Israel are measurably less religious or less politically religious than their parents. As these generations become voters, several specific political-religious projects encounter electoral resistance. The trajectory is uneven and slower than 1990s assumptions, but the demographic component is real.
Specific cases produce dramatic transitions
Iran's theocracy faces sustained challenge that produces eventual transition (peaceful or otherwise). Israeli coalition politics shifts the religious-political balance significantly in either direction. The US Christian right consolidates further or fragments. Predictions about specific cases have been wrong often enough that confident forecasting is unwarranted.
The information environment amplifies religious-political mobilisation
Algorithmic media environments, AI-generated content, and online religious communities accelerate and intensify identity-based political mobilisation across multiple religious traditions. The 1990s assumption that connectivity would produce moderation has not held; the 2020s evidence suggests connectivity often intensifies identity attachment.
Major religious institutions shift positions
The Catholic Church under Francis has positioned differently from earlier papacies on multiple political-religious questions. Major Sunni institutions (Al-Azhar, others) navigate between political pressures and theological commitments. The Orthodox Christian world's post-2022 fracture continues to play out. Each of these large institutional shifts can affect political-religious dynamics across multiple countries.
Religious revival in unexpected places
China's officially atheist state contains substantial religious activity (Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, folk religion); the relationship between this and the state is genuinely opaque. Russia's official Orthodox revival coexists with substantial popular religious indifference. Cultural-religious revival in some Western countries (post-secular interest in tradition) produces unexpected political effects. The picture is not a simple "secularisation versus revival" choice; both are happening, often in the same country.
Where serious analysts disagree
Religious nationalism is the rising structural force of our time
Multiple major countries are simultaneously experiencing political-religious mobilisation that reshapes domestic politics, foreign policy, and the international order. The post-1945 framework that treated religion as private and the state as secular is giving way to something different. Coverage that under-weights this misses the central political-cultural pattern of the moment.
Held by: Mark Juergensmeyer (UCSB, "Terror in the Mind of God"), Olivier Roy (European University Institute), parts of the Pew Research Forum analytical work. The case has empirical support across multiple regions.
"Religious nationalism" is mostly nationalism using religious vocabulary
The actual driver of these movements is identity, status, and political mobilisation; religion provides the symbolic vocabulary but is not the substantive content. Treating them as fundamentally religious obscures the underlying political-economic dynamics. Hindu nationalism is more about caste and class than about Hindu theology; Christian nationalism is more about white American identity than about specific theology; and so on.
Held by: parts of the political-sociology and comparative-politics literature. The case has empirical support on the political-mobilisation side and limits on the genuine theological commitments many participants hold.
Secularisation theory was wrong; religious resilience was the underweighted variable
The mid-twentieth-century assumption that modernisation would produce secularisation was a Western-projection error. The actual pattern globally has been religious resilience and adaptation, with secularisation specific to certain Western European contexts and parts of East Asia. The political-religious fusions are not anomalies; they are the expected pattern for societies undergoing modernisation while retaining religious commitments.
Held by: Peter Berger (whose "desecularisation" work in the 1990s reversed his earlier position), José Casanova (Georgetown), Jocelyne Cesari, and a strand of comparative-religion scholarship. The case is empirically well-supported.
Anti-religious-nationalism positions are themselves often a form of identity politics
Western liberal critique of religious nationalism is sometimes itself a form of secular-liberal identity assertion that does not engage the religious traditions on their own terms. Productive dialogue requires distinguishing between specific political projects (which can be criticised) and the religious traditions (which require more careful engagement than dismissal). The line is not always honoured by Western analysts.
Held by: parts of the comparative-political-theology field, the post-secular philosophical tradition, and several religious-studies scholars. The case is partly correct - some Western critique is reflexive - and partly contested.
The most consequential case is the one being least carefully covered
Different analysts pick different "most consequential" cases. Some argue Hindu nationalism in India will reshape more lives. Some argue Russian-Orthodox alignment will reshape Eastern Europe more than is acknowledged. Some argue Chinese state management of religion (suppression in some regions, controlled coexistence in others) is the most underweighted case. The honest position is that all of these are large and the relative ranking is contested.
Held by: various analysts in their respective specialisations. The disagreement reflects genuine difficulty in comparative weighting rather than fundamental disagreement about what is happening.
None of these readings is fully right or wrong. What can be said from the available evidence: political-religious fusions are a major structural feature of the present global landscape and are not adequately captured by either "religion in retreat" or "religion as the master variable" framings; the variation across cases is large and matters; the Western-secular assumption that this is a transitional anomaly is one of the most consistent analytical errors of the past several decades; and the political-religious dimension of major conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, India-Pakistan, the wider Middle East, US politics) is consistently under-weighted in coverage that defaults to secular-political framings.
What this means for you
If you read foreign policy coverage
The religious dimension of major conflicts is often the most consequential and least carefully covered layer. Reading specialised commentary alongside general coverage helps. Sources like the Pew Research Forum, the Berkley Center for Religion at Georgetown, the Religion News Service, and country-specific religion-and-politics scholarship provide depth that mainstream foreign-policy coverage usually does not.
If you live in a country with active political-religious mobilisation
The personal experience varies widely. For many people in many of the cases described, the political-religious project is largely benign or actively positive. For others, especially religious or ethnic minorities and people whose identity does not align with the majoritarian project, the experience can be increasingly marginalising or directly threatening. Understanding which experience you are likely to have, and what protections exist, is part of practical citizenship.
If you are religious yourself
The relationship between your particular tradition and political projects that claim its authority is one of the most important questions of practical religious life in this moment. Most major traditions have substantial intellectual resources for distinguishing between the tradition's actual commitments and political-religious projects that claim its name. Engaging those resources directly is more useful than either uncritical alignment or reflexive opposition.
If you are not religious yourself
The Western-secular assumption that religion is a transitional phenomenon is one of the more confidently held positions that is also empirically weak. Engaging seriously with religious traditions and political-religious projects, on their own terms, is part of being able to think clearly about most of the world. Treating them as residual or irrational systematically produces analytical errors.
If you vote on policies that touch religious communities
The questions are often more complicated than they look. Religious-freedom protections matter; so do limits on religious-political projects that constrain other people's freedoms. The line between them is contested in good faith across multiple traditions. Political rhetoric that flattens this complexity in either direction is usually substituting partisan signal for substantive engagement.
