Religion and Politics Unit
The Religion and Politics Unit welcomes papers, full panels, and roundtable proposals on any topic related to the intersections of religion and politics. We are especially interested in proposals that engage the 2026 presidential theme- “Future/s,” address unfolding political events, consider international dynamics, or reflect on the conference location of Denver, Colorado.
We invite work that explores how AI technologies intersect with--and increasingly drive--religious movements, political imaginaries, and ethical debates. We welcome proposals examining how religious practitioners resist, reinterpret, or collaborate with nationalist ideologies, as well as analyses of religious participation in political protest, including cross-movement solidarities.
Other areas of particular interest include:
- Religion and immigration politics, including the ethical and legal implications of ICE enforcement, detention, and deaths in custody
- Temporal politics, such as how religious and political actors reconfigure the past to shape imagined futures, or how religious traditions help communities discern when to obey or resist unjust laws
- Affective futures, exploring the politics of hope, despair, anticipation, and apocalypticism
- The future of church-state relations, including debates over pluralism, secularism, and religious freedom
- Environmental futures, including how religious communities address climate change, public lands, water rights, and Indigenous sovereignty
- Carceral and abolitionist futures, exploring religious engagements with policing, prisons, and transformative justice
- Religion and political violence, including how communities navigate rising extremism, transnational conflicts, and the afterlives of war
We encourage proposals that are interdisciplinary, methodologically creative, and attentive to the multiple ways religion and politics shape--and are shaped by--our collective futures.
This Unit provides a forum for scholars and professionals interested in the relationships among religion, the state, and political life, both in the United States and around the world. Our members focus on the interaction between religious and political values, movements, and commitments, and the role of religious individuals and communities in bodies politic. This focus includes attention to the ways in which religion and religious actors participate in public discourse, contribute to debates over public values and social policy, and affect — and are affected by — activity in the political sphere. We welcome members doing both normative and descriptive work from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including religious studies, political science, philosophy, social ethics, law (including church–state studies), history (as it relates to contemporary understandings), and theology. We seek to advance scholarly inquiry on religion and politics and we seek also to speak to broad and diverse publics about areas falling under the Unit’s purview.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Candace Lukasik | c.lukasik@msstate.edu | - | View |
| Scott Culpepper, Dordt University | scott.culpepper@dordt.edu | - | View |