Dear Colleagues, 

In the current SARS CoV-2 pandemic, increasingly authoritarian measures and instruments are being implemented, and nationalist discourses are being initiated. This means that despite global challenges, global interactions, and burgeoning globalization, national and ethnic identification patterns remain extremely relevant today. To be sure, this development is far from new and has been going on for a couple of decades. Nevertheless, currently, we are experiencing a persistence and resurgence of the national in very different countries, such as in Hungary and the United States, Poland and India, and Turkey and Russia.

Moreover, in many cases, such trends are linked to religion in one way or another. In many ways, the nation or the dominant ethnic group often draws on religious symbols, couches its representation in religious language, and fosters commemoration by equating national and religious history. In so doing, however, there seems to be a tendency to favor more authoritarian forms of government. Around the world, phenomena such as patriotism, nationalism, and illiberalism are gaining ground and often follow a trend towards “indigenization”. From conservative Protestants in the United States to Catholicism in Poland and Orthodox groups in Russia, from factions within the Anglican Church in the United Kingdom to Muslim communities in Turkey, different religious traditions emphasize national belonging and tend to support identification with the respective nation, even at the expense of ethnic, religious, or other minorities.

Based on these developments, we intend to analyze and compare different religious traditions in relation to patriotism, nationalism, and illiberalism. To what extent, we would like to ask, can we enrich our understanding of religion in relation to patriotism, nationalism, and illiberalism by providing new empirical material? Can we gain any new insights if we take a strictly comparative research perspective and try to elaborate on the differences and similarities more clearly? Of course, our aim is not to provide a simplified picture of religious fundamentalism and conservatism as a state ideology, exclusively introduced from above. Instead, we ask, what is the repertoire of ingredients for such formations and to what extent is the combination of local cultural elements with more idealized and general connotations and ideas important? For this, it is necessary to analyze the interrelation between the “center” and the “periphery” in its full complexity. Moreover, we attempt to contribute to a better understanding of recent developments whereby the SARS CoV-2 pandemic is used to implement further authoritarian measures for nationalist inclinations.

To do so, we invite interdisciplinary contributions to this Special Issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444), which show how more empirically grounded and comparative research can contribute to a better understanding of patriotism, nationalism, and illiberalism in relation to religion by addressing themes such as, but not limited to, the following:

• Religious fundamentalism;
• Religious Messianism;
• Religious communities versus national and/or ethnic communities;
• Religion and patriotism;
• Religious education;
• Commemoration, memory politics, and religion;
• Place- and identity-making based on religion by sacralization of borders and communities;
• Material religion and the nation. 

This Special Issue will draw on the existing body of literature on patriotism, illiberalism, and nationalism but will add a number of new insights. A first contribution of the Special Issue will be new empirical material based on original research from different social sciences. Secondly, the Special Issue will offer a cross-cultural research perspective by including comparisons. Lastly, such comparisons will allow for new theoretical understandings that can be generated from the comparisons between the different research approaches.

Dr. Tobias Köllner
Dr. Boris K. Knorre
Guest Editors

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• patriotism
• illiberalism
• nationalism
• religion
• cross-cultural perspective
• comparative approach