This panel explores how religion, as both a moral vocabulary and a tool of collective identity, shapes contested visions of freedom—visions that often authorize, inspire, or conceal acts of violence. Whether deployed in digital political mobilizations, charismatic church movements, or literary representations of revolution, religious ideas are appropriated to claim both divine mandates and devil’s pacts: theological appeals to truth, justice, or redemption that become entangled with manipulation, extremism, or terror. Aligned with the 2025 AAR Presidential Theme of Freedom, this panel examines the weaponization of theological narratives, in which liberation becomes exclusion and faith is transformed into fuel for radicalization. The papers—drawing from South Asia, Europe, Aotearoa New Zealand, and nineteenth-century Russia—interrogate how religion becomes both battlefield and banner in contemporary and historical struggles over justice, belonging, and power. Together, they invite reflection on how religious communities might resist these distortions and reimagine freedom beyond violence.
While digital religion (Campbell 2023) and digital protest can serve the common good, religious nationalist movements increasingly exploit these tools to disrupt social cohesion and drive political agendas. This paper examines how communicators within Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and Alternative for Germany (AfD) use digital spaces to shape religious and political identities, mobilize collective action, and bypass traditional media. Drawing on Campbell’s “networked community” and Gerbaudo’s “digital crowd,” it explores how these groups leverage digital platforms to merge religion with nationalism, frame political issues as religious mandates, and foster emotionally charged engagement. Using Luhmann’s (2013) systems theory, this study analyzes how these movements create belonging and purpose online while influencing offline political realities. Finally, it considers the theological implications: How do digital religious communicators reconcile their theological commitments with the social impact of their messages? Can digital religious communities foster cohesion rather than division?
The Christchurch Mosque attacks in 2019 shocked New Zealand out of its sense of safe isolation. While New Zealand Christians would rightly distance themselves from this act of terrorism, the 2022 Parliament Grounds occupation in response to Government Covid-19 vaccine mandates was strongly supported by many Christian leaders. This dispute ended with a violent confrontation between protestors and police. Is there a rise in radicalisation towards extremist activity happening in New Zealand? This research uses Reflexive Thematic Analysis to investigate the rhetoric of Brian Tamaki and Peter Mortlock, two of the most vocal church leaders against the New Zealand Government over this time. The themes are discussed using a multidimensional model examining their theological, ritual, social and political aspects. Issues including conspiracy theorism, the Overton Window, Accelerationism and Stochastic Terrorism are discussed. Recommendations for Christian leaders to mitigate against potential radicalisation are presented.
Responding to perspectives on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as merely ‘glancing’ at its revolutionary backdrop, my paper will illustrate a more explicitly reimagined political landscape, labeled under ‘nihilism’ and the development of revolutionary terrorism. I focus on the characterization of the ‘Gentleman Devil’ in Book XI and present a reading through the evolving social profile of the nihilist revolutionary and the “gentleman” terrorist. The Brothers Karamazov’s “religious drama” frames the revolutionary movement as a national identity crisis, of which the Devil is central to understanding Dostoevsky’s portrayed consequences of the alienation of the (Russian) self. Underscoring the increasing presence of the Devil across Dostoevsky’s fiction of the 1870s, I seek to demonstrate how Dostoevsky’s portrayals of the Devil signal his own religious concerns and those of his time, found in responses to the revolutionary movement and its strands of terrorism that culminated in Alexander II’s assassination.