Religion and the Global Crisis of Democracy

Democracy is experiencing multiple crises globally. Far-right leaders invoke threats from people of specific religious identities to justify harsh restrictions on minorities and violation of rights to freedom of expression. The right to freedom of religion or belief is used to justify limiting the rights of women and LGBTQIA+ populations. Religious imagery and rhetoric is mobilised on behalf of civilisational and “strongman” geopolitics that openly subverts claims to a rules-based international order.These developments raise a core question for scholars of religion: Are these cracks in democracy's facade new, or has democracy always been on the edge of this crisis? In an effort to understand the entanglements of religion in democracy’s current moment of crisis, this panel examines the phenomena of US foreign policy, transnational Catholic democratic mobilization, interrogations of the intersection of secularism with national security and polarization, and the uses or abuses of the concept of religious freedom.