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In this contribution, Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen's Populism and Civil Society is confronted with current gender studies research on populism. This research mainly focuses on right-wing populism and highlights strong links between right-wing populists and the religious right, which are to a large degree organized by "anti-gender," a stance both against social constructivist notions of gender and against basic gender rights, especially in the fields of reproduction and of LGBTIQ concerns. Against the backdrop of this literature, I argue that in Populism and Civil Society, right-wing populist anti-gender politics are not addressed in a way that takes account of their full complexity; and that these politics furthermore suggest to treat right-wing populism and left-wing populism as phenomena that do not only differ in content, but also in form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how labeling as a transframing device alters an audience's experience of a political conflict. Drawing on socio-narrative theory to translation, 150 Arabic original posts from the official Palestinian Authority (PA) Facebook page and their English translations by the Israeli watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) are analyzed. The results reveal that PMW's labeling system both rejects and corrects Palestinian "inaccurate narratives," emphasizing Israel's territorial sovereignty and its narrative of victimization and of its historical and religious right to exist. More importantly, it produces a hybrid/double-voiced narrative that aims at "exposing" Palestinian "radical voices" and influencing how the world perceives and responds to them (e.g., by condemning or cutting off funding to PA). In this hybrid narrative, the Palestinian voice is often depicted as violent, deviant, and false, while the Israeli as victimized, normal, and right. The combination of voices may sacrifice textual elements like comprehensibility, readability, and fluency, but it seems that PMW prioritizes political legitimacy and security over any translation or reading measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Piece responds to recent critiques of litigation articulating a religious liberty right to access abortion. It argues that under current and expansive religious liberty doctrine, patients seeking a religious right to abortion have standing to sue even prior to pregnancy, their sincerity should not be unfairly disputed, and existing secular exemptions in abortion laws undermine the state's alleged compelling government interest in prohibiting abortion. The Piece concludes by noting that if legislators and courts are unwilling to apply the religious rights they created in cases like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Tandon v. Newsom, and Fulton v. Philadelphia to abortion litigation, then existing religious-exemption laws should be reconsidered. The alternative--a regime in which only expansive RFRA claims made by religious conservatives are granted--is both constitutionally problematic and normatively unfair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the connection between queer advocacy and the labor movement in the United States. It highlights the efforts of queer Starbucks baristas who organized to address low wages and workplace discrimination. The article argues that unions can be more effective than civil rights laws or corporations in delivering LGBTQ+ protections and benefits. It also discusses the historical ties between queer workers and the labor movement, as well as the role of unions in combating anti-LGBTQ+ agendas. Additionally, the article examines how conflicts over anti-discrimination laws in certain towns were influenced by socioeconomic factors and conservative politicians. It concludes by emphasizing the need for a queer working-class politics that addresses the shared interests of LGBTQ+ and all other workers. [Extracted from the article]

The article delves into the case of Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections & Public Safety, focusing on the Fifth Circuit's decision to bar individual capacity money damages under the U.S., RLUIPA (Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act). It states that despite invoking the Spending Clause, the court denied Damon Landor the right to sue prison officials for damages after his religious rights were violated.

An essay is presented which explores the opposition of White conservative evangelicals to environmental protection efforts in the U.S. Topics discussed include the way the late evangelical leader Jerry Falwell portrayed environmentalists as competitors, the possible reasons behind the anti-environmental stance of the Religious Right movement, and the views of the White conservative evangelical community on climate change and other environmental issues.

An essay is presented which discusses the Christian Right political faction and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. Topics explored include the changing aspects of White American Evangelicalism that have been observed through the said event, the way apocalyptic narratives functioned as a mobilizing concept of the incident, and other examples of these mobilizing concepts that tend to encourage extremist ideologies.

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses various reports within the issue on topics including evangelicalism in the U.S., the alleged clergy sexual abuse, and the Religious Right movement.

The article narrates the history of the Yiddish press and its role in the development of South African Jewish community and its political institutions from 1890 to 1914. Topics discussed include international networks as the focus of the approach of the Yiddish press to immigration historiography, Yiddish as metonym for Jewish rights, Zionist orientation of the Yiddish press, Jewish nationalism, libels and limits of Yiddish influence, and Yiddish press in a colonial British world.

A partisan divide over LGBT rights has emerged in the U.S. Yet unlike other issues on which the parties have traded places or polarized, most of the change on gay rights has occurred within one party, the Democrats. How did this unusual change occur? LGBT rights was originally a fringe cause, rejected by most politicians in both parties. As gay rights activists slowly became more prominent in the Democratic Party, many politicians adapted, abandoning earlier positions informed by their personal backgrounds and state or district constituencies. Meanwhile, incorporating the religious right led most Republicans to maintain the anti-LGBT rights stand that was once common to both parties, even as public opinion shifted. The result was a partisan divide in this issue area that had consequences for policy. The role of adaptation by incumbents in producing it—contrary to some prominent models—is evident in both Congressional co-sponsorship and roll-call data. The growing party divide is also evident in platforms. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of how party position change occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Satanic Temple's ongoing efforts to protect abortion rights through legal challenges against state abortion bans. It examines the evolution of free exercise jurisprudence, particularly in light of recent expansions under the new Supreme Court supermajority. It delves into The Satanic Temple's origins, belief system, and previous legal battles to defend its religious rights.

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This paper attempts to trace the Hui Muslim minority who has been recently undergoing a dual process in identity transformation. A new ethnic governance highlighted by citizenship over religious rights as well as the state's campaign of Sinicization of Religions has been promoted to create homogeneity. Beyond the long-existing system of minzu, Sinicization and citizenship has become a new double-edged tool in managing ethnic minorities and faith communities. Under the campaign of Sinicization, expressions of Islamic religious practices are endorsed only if they are culturally compatible in Chinese characteristics. While all ethnic groups are preferentially treated and culture differences respected in multi-ethnic China, Muslims like other ethnic minorities are increasingly identified within the common framework of citizenship in which all nationals are citizens with equal standing, de-emphasizing the plurality of interethnic and cultural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the discourse of organizations associated with the religious right and by radical right groups, through the lens of Converse’s right-wing ideological constraint. It focuses on the convergence of the themes of the nation as a family, and of the supposed Christian origins, traditions, and identity of the “Western civilization”, within a narrative that is being increasingly adopted by both religious and radical right groups advocating for various forms of nationalism, nativism, and authoritarianism. Drawing on the narrative of a prominent religion-based US organization and questioning the supposed imposition of gender ideology through governmental measures, this essay aims to highlight the concept of gender, as deployed by religious-right and radical right groups, as the umbrella term representing the threats supposedly endangering traditional families and the whole fabric of “Western civilization”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “Western hemisphere” has entered the twenty-first century plagued by a resurgence of right-wing and extreme-right ideological movements which found, in their intersection with Christianity, a renewed, powerful platform to advance nativist and nationalist agendas. The scholarly debate surrounding these topics, far from having begun in the new millennium, has experienced in the last decade a new vitality and a flourishing of literature that draws from events, narratives, and political actors having their ideological roots in the twentieth century but finding heightened activity and resonance in the present moment. This issue of Ácoma is dedicated to exploring past and current manifestations of the so-called religious right in the United States and in Europe. Investigating the intersection between conservative politics, Protestantism, and Catholicism, and touching upon issues ranging from the right to abortion to what is now labeled “gender-ideology”, this issue of the journal discusses and explains the phenomenon of the religious right in the twenty-first century, and joins a conversation that is of great consequence for the times we live in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2016, Americans' attitudes toward Russia and Vladimir Putin have shifted, with Republicans becoming far more supportive of both. And though condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 remains bipartisan, many Christian‐right leaders still support Putin and Russia. What undergirds this support? Drawing on three national data sets, we theorize Americans' warmth toward Putin and Russia is reinforced by an ideology that seeks to institutionalize America's mythical Anglo Protestant ethno‐culture—Christian nationalism. Though we propose Christian nationalism's relationship with Russia is more contingent on Russia's geopolitical activity vis‐à‐vis the United States, we theorize that Christian nationalism consistently predicts Putin support due to his authoritarian ethno‐nationalism. April 2018 data show those who affirm America's Christian heritage in the past and/or present are more likely to view Putin and Russia favorably and Russia as our ally. March 2021 data also reveal a linear positive association between Christian nationalism and favorability toward Putin. And March 2022 data reveal a linear positive association between Christian nationalism and admiring Putin's leadership. They also show a U‐shaped curvilinear relationship with viewing Russia as a threat. Paradoxically, Christian nationalism may warm Americans toward foreign authoritarians like Putin even when it compels Americans to perceive their nations as threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use Supreme Court amicus curiae briefs filed by seven religious groups—four liberal and three conservative—to understand the changing nature of political conflict between American religious groups in the predominantly White Protestant tradition from 1969 to 2020. Religious groups on both sides of the ideological divide have increased the frequency of their amicus filings, and increasingly become involved in issue areas which were once primarily the concern of groups on the other side. These findings suggest that the culture war that redefined party politics in America has also shaped religious activism, including legal activism. We argue that these groups have increased their involvement in a wider range of issues for two reasons: their rivalry for influence over the nation's moral center has become more encompassing and overtly political, and their appreciation for and consciously developed ability to tap into the courts' influence on American politics has grown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a film review of Under G-d (2022), directed by Paula Eiselt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1960, John Kennedy, the Democratic nominee for president, appeared before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to address concerns about what the election of a Catholic would mean for Protestant America. His speech was a classic defense of the separation of church and state and the right to privacy in matters of religion. In 2007, in his first, unsuccessful run for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, Mitt Romney gave a similar speech trying to explain how his Mormon faith would inform his term in office. The speeches had similar purposes, with each candidate trying to calm fears about his faith, but the differences between them are striking and reveal much about the changing role of religion in presidential politics over those forty-seven years. The most consequential change in the intersection of American religion and politics between these two speeches was the emergence of the religious right and its place as a part of the Republican Party's base. Where Kennedy faced a more generalized Protestant resistance to his candidacy, Romney had to deal with a conservative faction within the Republican Party that had embraced a specific policy agenda. Kennedy was thus able to appeal to broader American values such as religious liberty and church/state separation, while Romney, to win the nomination, had to support policies that weakened his appeal in the general election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wave of anti-trans bathroom bills since 2015 has raised awareness of the importance of bathroom politics for trans people. Long before this, feminist scholars have argued that bodies and spaces are simultaneously forced into a gender binary through the regulation of gender-segregated spaces such as bathrooms. In this article, I offer a trans feminist reading of the media events and rhetoric of the Christian right opposing trans access. I analyse the opposition of the Christian right towards trans access to gender-segregated spaces as an imaginative geography of linear gender. As I argue, the Christian right builds an imaginative geography of a threatened, White 'cis America' through rhetorical devices. Vulnerability attached with micro-level spaces across the United States is evoked through the figure of the child, 'women and children' and the predator. Through these rhetorical devices, bodies and spaces are imagined simultaneously. These figures work as powerful 'stopping devices' for anyone bending the straight line of linear gender. These stopping devices can mobilize cis bodies around a defence of a conservative gender order, legitimize a 'protective' control over cis girls and women, make living in the social world even harder for trans people, all the while envisioning an exclusionary 'America'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indeed, right-wing Catholic and Evangelical Protestant leaders and organizations in Brazil, he contends, have played a pivotal role in the global networks of ultraconservative political mobilization. In subsequent chapters, Cowan fleshes out analogous tensions between social progressives and reactionaries in the Protestant churches in Brazil. In analyzing the rise and resilience of a religious-political movement, Cowan might have ventured beyond the rhetoric of leaders to explore the lived religion of rank-and-file right-wing Christians in Brazil or the United States. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the religious right's goal of achieving a federal prohibition on abortion. Topics include the religious conservatives' desire to establish fetal personhood, the use of incremental measures to advance their agenda, and the revival of race-based arguments in anti-abortion laws.

The anti-LGBTQ politics of the Religious Right has been implicated as one of the critical forces promoting the rise of disaffiliation from religion. The association seems plain given the rapid rise of the nones among younger cohorts of Americans – a group which also holds the most pro-LGBTQ attitudes. However, little work actually tests the link between shifting attitudes on same-sex marriage and declining religious behavior and affiliation. Drawing on the Portraits of American Life Panel study with waves in 2006 and 2012, we use appropriate measures to document the religious effects of changing views on same-sex marriage. We find that while shifting views did have a negative effect on church attendance and affiliation, these effects were not limited to shifts toward support for same-sex marriage and were not limited to liberals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the founding of the Northern colonies and the creation of the United States, conservative Christianity’s involvement in the political realm has followed cycles of activity and subsequent retreat into passivity. Donald Trump’s presidency, and the support he gathered from major religious right’s organizations as well as conservative Christian voters, represent the latest of such cycles of involvement and withdrawal. But if his defeat signaled the end of yet another participation cycle for the movement, Trump’s figure managed nonetheless to usher in the white Christian nationalist revival some his voters were longing for.

"Moral Majorities Across the Americas" by Benjamin A. Cowan is a scholarly book that explores the historical origins and development of the religious right. The author argues that the right-wing religious movements should be understood as a transnational phenomenon with deep roots in Brazil, moving beyond the limited regional or national boundaries typically associated with these movements. The book examines the religious agenda and activism of Brazilian Catholic traditionalists, the emergence of conservative Protestant groups, and the contrasting progressive Protestant movements. The final chapters focus on the connections between Brazilian and U.S. activists and the factors that bind the religious right in both countries. While the book may be challenging for readers without a strong background in Brazilian history, it is a valuable resource for researchers studying Latin American religious history and transnational right-wing political movements. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines a badly understudied topic, the feminist leadership provided by southern women in the Department of Christian Social Relations, a subunit of the Woman’s Society of Christian Service (WSCS), and the United Methodist Women (UMW) from 1940 to 1990. It examines the origins and influence of the powerful UMW and its predecessor organizations, and explains why southern women predominated in leadership and why southerners, who are usually understood to be forces of conservatism, led the church to adopt progressive positions and policies regarding racial and gender justice in the mid- to late twentieth century. Profiled are the three most influential women within the UMW and its predecessors: Thelma Stevens, Peggy Billings, and Theressa Hoover. It briefly describes the effect that the Religious Right had on progressive women, and concludes with a brief discussion of the current debate over human sexuality within Methodism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the way forward for social policy in America considering the conflicting religious and political ideologies that confront the polity. The paper applies Secularized Evangelical Discourse to analyze the position of the religious right, New Christian Right and mainstream evangelicals to seek answers on the way forward for the American welfare state. This paper argues that the debates between left-wing liberal Democrats and right-wing conservative Republicans have generated an ideological fulcrum that sometimes destabilizes, but often ensures stability for democratic checks and balances. The paper therefore suggests that the way forward for effective social policy implementation is to embrace a secularized notion of moral justice that admits equity, fair play and true statesmanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In chapter 2, Cowan shows how state agents turned away from Catholics and toward conservative evangelical Protestants. In Rome, Sigaud, Mayer, and Oliveira worked behind the scenes with figures like Archbishop Marcel Fefebvre to mobilize church fathers against progressive reforms (20-26). In 1960, Sigaud and his longtime allies, Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer and lay activist Plínio Corrêa de Oliveira, coauthored I Reforma agrária: Questão de consciência i (Agrarian reform: a question of conscience), "an anticommunist battle cry for Catholic renewal and against wealth redistribution" (18). [Extracted from the article]