CATHOLICS AND THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

This article examines the role of Catholics within the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Although Catholics were once a crucial and dependable component of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, their vote in more recent years has been much more splintered. Nevertheless, Catholics have been deemed to be an important “swing vote” in American politics today, as in recent presidential elections they have aligned with the national popular vote. This article therefore focuses on the part that Catholics played within the 2020 presidential election process. It addresses the level of political change and continuity within the ranks of Catholics over the past several elections, how they voted in the Democratic primaries during the initial stages of the 2020 presidential election, their level of support for different candidates over the course of the campaign, how they ultimately came to cast their ballots in the 2020 election, and the extent to which their voting patterns in 2020 differed from that of 2016.

RELIGIOUS VOTING IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: TESTING ALTERNATIVE THEORIES

Scholars of American electoral politics have documented the recent partisan realignment of religious groups. Indeed, careful analysts often find that religious variables are better predictors of partisan choice than classic socioeconomic divisions. Still, there has been relatively little effort to put this religious realignment in both theoretical and historical perspective. In this article, we update our previous work on the historical evolution of religious partisanship, demonstrating the continued relevance of ethnocultural (or ethnoreligious) theory, utilized by political historians, and restructuring theory, an important sociological perspective. Both viewpoints help us understand presidential elections since the 1930s, as we demonstrate with data from a wide range of surveys. After utilizing the 2020 Cooperative Election Study to examine the contemporary voting of ethnoreligious groups in greater detail, we test the impact of religious variables controlling for other demographic, attitudinal, and partisan influences and find that religious identities and orientations often retain independent influence even under stringent controls for other factors shaping the presidential vote.

THE CONFLICT AND POST-CONFLICT ISLAMIZATION OF CHECHNYA AS SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHENOMENON

The article is aimed to reveal the influence of religious factor on the conflict and post-conflict societal and political spheres of the Chechen Republic. The study is based on the retrospective and discourse analysis of central and republican newspapers, interviews and speeches of political leaders, publications of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Chechen Republic, materials of opposition and hostile Internet resources. The study identifies several phases of the Islamization of Chechnya: 1) an attempt to create an Islamic state during the struggle for sovereignty; 2) the choice of Akhmad Kadyrov in favor of loyalty to the federal center and adherence to traditional Islam in defiance of the Wahhabi project; 3) Wahhabism, which had not taken root in Chechnya, went into the cyber underground, and its supporters joined the “Global Jihad”; 4) today’s penetration of traditional Islam into social (school, family, gender relations) and political (local and regional administration, international relations) life of the republic. The restoration of the role of Islam as an important social, moral and political regulator demonstrates the possibility of new gaps between secular society and the political system of modern Russia and Chechnya as a part of the country.

DID THE NONES PUT JOE BIDEN IN THE WHITE HOUSE? AN ANALYSIS OF THE VOTING PATTERNS OF THE RELIGIOUSLY UNAFFILIATED IN 2020

The fastest growing segments of the American religious landscape are atheists, agnostics, and nothing in particulars. In 2008, these three groups together (often called the Nones) represented 22% of the population, but just twelve years later their numbers surged to 34% of the populace. Given that one in three adults is a None, it stands to reason that they are having a growing influence on electoral politics. To that end, this analysis focuses on how those three types of unaffiliated Americans shifted their political ideology, partisanship and voting patterns from 2016 to 2020. The results indicate that Donald Trump’s baseline of support dropped among all types of Nones, and that the drop was especially acute for nothing in particulars who had high household incomes in 2020.

TRUMP, CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM, AND ISSUE POLARIZATION: THE ATTITUDES AND ACTIVISM OF IOWA CLERGY IN THE 2020 CAUCUSES

Prior research has investigated the differences between evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, and Catholic clergy in American general elections. We know less about attitudes and activism of clergy in presidential nomination campaigns. This research highlights results from a survey of 480 clergy on candidate support, issues, and political activism in the 2020 Iowa caucuses. A strong Iowa caucus showing often fuels momentum for candidates in the rest of the nomination race, as with Barack Obama in 2008. This 2020 survey covers issues such as immigration, racial justice, health care, and more. I also explore how Iowa clergy think about political activism and views on Christian nationalism. I find that most Democratic-leaning clergy supported center-left candidates in Iowa in 2020. Among Iowa clergy of all parties (including independents), most disapproved of the job Donald Trump was doing as President. A comparison with a 2012 survey reveals increasing polarization of the three clergy groups on political ideology, church-state issues, and racial justice.

“ISLAM, AUTHORITARIANISM, AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT: A GLOBAL AND HISTORICAL COMPARISON”

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CONTEXT OF RELIGION SECURITIZATION: CASES OF ARTSAKH AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Securitization of religion, or consideration of religion within the context of the security sector, has returned to the Slovak and Serbian context in connection with the migration crisis. This paper is mostly theoretical, and the question of religious identity is categorized under the sector of societal security. Unlike other conflicts of identity, religion is polarizing, and religious conflicts feature the destruction of cultural heritage and religious monuments. Religious conflicts can be observed among both believers of different religious groups as well as among different denominations of one particular religion. The last section deals with the particular cases of Artsakh and Northern Ireland. In the former conflict, nationalism and overlapping territorial claims play a key role, but the later conflict can be better understood as a hierarchical ethnic conflict.