Holy flashpoints, Batman! Religion and the 2026 U.S. midterm elections

Here we go again. 

In the lead up to the 2026 midterm elections, religion is once more at the heart of heated, polarizing and very public disputes about the direction the country should take — and who should be the ones to help lead it there. 

Across several key issues — from immigration policy to gender, reproductive rights to freedom of religion —  religious language, actors and institutions are central to how candidates are framing their campaigns and how voters interpret them or are mobilized to action. 

This time around, candidates are not only appealing to “values voters,” but invoking scripture, moral authority and theological language to justify sharply divergent policy positions — often on multiple sides of the same issue.

At the same time, internal fractures within evangelicalism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and mainline Protestantism are perhaps as politically consequential as divides between traditions. The result is a religious landscape that remains highly influential in politics but far less predictable than in previous cycles.

Whether the issue is immigration, foreign policy, abortion or LGBTQ+ rights, each functions as a political wedge and theological battleground, shaping campaign rhetoric, voter mobilization and grassroots activism.

For example, in Texas, candidates such as state Rep. James Talarico and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are offering starkly different religious framings of public policy — Talarico advocating for progressive theology focused on neighborly love, social justice and church-state separation, while Paxton touts his more traditional, evangelical bona fides emphasizing  gender politics, abortion restrictions and maintaining a “Christian social order” in the face of threats from the political left and the specter of “radical Islamism.”

In Colorado, candidates like State Representative Scott Bottoms and former minister Victor Marx drew national attention in the state’s Republican primary, primarily for their overtly spiritualized campaign rhetoric, including language around spiritual warfare and even exorcism, signaling how charismatic and Pentecostal idioms are entering electoral politics more visibly. As of publication, it looked as if Marx would be the winner, thrusting his spiritually-intoned campaign back into the national spotlight. 

Georgia remains a perennial testing ground for Black church mobilization and evangelical political infrastructure, where faith leaders and voting rights advocates are urging Georgians to “vote like never before.” Meanwhile, states like California are seeing intensified religious advocacy around election integrity, education, gender policy and parental rights.

Elsewhere, the reemergence of “anti-Sharia” legislation efforts in places like Arizona, Florida and Texas underscores how Islam is still mischaracterized and weaponized in broader debates over national identity and religious freedom.

Via the link below, I review key issues for the coming months, whether you are looking at national storylines or state and local trends.

Five-ish books to understand American religion

This month, the United States marks its 250th anniversary.

And as we've already seen, there's a temptation to tell some pretty tidy stories about national origins and shared ideals at such a time as a Semiquincentennial.

Religion usually pops in that narrative, either as a source of moral consensus built around a shared civil religion or as a part of our supposedly celebrated patchwork society. Both assumptions, however, obscure how religion has functioned less as a stable inheritance and more as a contested, creative and often disruptive force in American life.

For the past fifteen years, I have been reading and reviewing books on American religion while trying to make sense of how scholars, journalists, and practitioners narrate the nation's religious past. Since 2014, I have also been teaching courses on U.S. religion, sitting with students as they encounter, often for the first time, the complexity, contradiction and contingency of the nation's religious life.

I was asked to provide a list of five books to help orient those looking to understand the most significant stories in American religious history as the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary.

These five books will not give you a single story. They will, however, sharpen your sense of what is at stake in telling one.

One Building, Three Faiths? Lessons from London's Brick Lane Mosque

"Brother, where are you from?"

Clarifying I was not Muslim, just visiting, the henna-bearded attendant at the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid welcomed me inside between 'asr and maghrib prayers.

Inside the red-brick building, I sat on the royal blue carpet and spoke with a delivery driver who had just finished praying. We compared notes on Christianity and Islam. He invited me upstairs to the overflow prayer room used on Fridays, when more than 3,000 people can fill the mosque. From the gallery, I looked down toward the qiblah marking the direction of Mecca.

"This used to be a synagogue," he told me. "Before that, a church."

We talked about that layered history as we walked back down. Before I left, he added me to the mosque's WhatsApp group. Outside, the late afternoon had turned gray and wet. From across the street, I looked back across the busy Brick Lane to the stone slab set into the masjid'swall, which bore a Latin sundial inscription Umbra sumus(we are shadows), a reminder of how briefly we pass through this world.

Heading toward a Bangladeshi curry house, I thought about the phrase in relation to the building's history and to the politics of difference in Britain today.

The Brick Lane Church/Synagogue/Mosque

The building at 59 Brick Lane in London's East End has been shaped by seasons of immigration that brought various communities to East London's Spitalfields area. Each successive community passed through, left its mark on the neighborhood, and moved on, handing its spaces to and markets to the next newcomers.

Such is the case for what is today the Brick Lane Mosque.

Originally constructed in 1743 as a Huguenot chapel la Neuve Eglise ("The New Church"), it sheltered French Protestant refugees fleeing Catholic persecution across the Channel. In 1809, it changed hands again, becoming a Wesleyan chapel. Known as The Jews' Chapel, it was rented by the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, an organization now known as the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People, which was trying to make inroads among the impoverished Jewish immigrants in East London. From 1819, the building became a Methodist chapel before, ironically, in 1891 it was taken over by a community the earlier missionaries were trying to reach.

Escaping pogroms and antisemitic violence in Russia and Central Europe, a group of Lithuanian Orthodox Jews known as the Mahzikei Hadas ("Strengtheners of the Faith"), acquired the building and made it Spitalfields Great Synagogue in 1897. Working in the area's textile industry, the Jewish community established a strong base in Spitalfields, using the synagogue from 1898 to 1973, when it relocated to the affluent, suburban Golders Green area.

Its most recent transformation came in 1976, when the building was reopened as the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid.

In the decades after the Second World War, Spitalfields and Brick Lane became home to a growing Bangladeshi community, many of whom had migrated from the Sylhet region in search of economic opportunity. Like earlier groups, Bangladeshi migrants arrived seeking work, often in textiles, sometimes in businesses once owned by Jews. As the community grew, so did the need for a central place of worship. Today, the mosque serves one of the largest Bangladeshi Muslim populations in the UK.

The Uses and Limits of Convivencia

In Muslim Europe, Tharik Hussain points to the mosque as a living monument to convivencia, or a shared life built through everyday proximity, of communities not merely tolerating one another but, building by building, street by street, shop by shop, making something shared and sacred out of everyday interactions in London's East End. The term, popularized by Américo Castro, has come to signify anything from pragmatic coexistence to an idealized vision of interfaith harmony in medieval Spain.

Writers like María Rosa Menocal helped cement that ideal, describing al-Andalus as a golden age of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim flourishing. The story has endured because it offers a compelling counterpoint to present-day polarization, a past in which difference did not fracture society. And it is a powerful story, producing genuine inspiration in popular memory and interfaith imagination.

Recent scholarship, however, has challenged these romanticized myths, emphasizing conflict, asymmetry and the contingent nature of coexistence.

Scholars such as Aaron Hughes argue that the "golden age" is frequently retrofitted to modern interfaith aspirations rather than based on concrete historical realities. Historian Mark T. Abate goes further, calling convivencia an "amorphous, simplistic, anachronistic" myth so overused and over-moralized that it risks obscuring more than it reveals.

David Nirenberg argued that violence was not an aberration from convivencia but a central and systematic feature of it. Medieval societies managed difference through systems that combined everyday proximity with hierarchies of power. The dhimmi system, for example, allowed Jews and Christians to live under Muslim rule but within defined limits. Forced conversions, episodic violence, legal discrimination, and cycles of expulsion were woven through periods of intellectual and cultural exchange.

Nirenberg thus encourages us to rethink convivencia not as harmony but as "structured conflict," a daily negotiation of diversity and difference shaped by power and socio-political hierarchies — a pattern of interaction shaped by both cooperation and conflict.

Generative Frictions

The day before I visited the Brick Lane Mosque, I wandered through Trafalgar Square. That trajectory took me straight into the midst of far-right figure Tommy Robinson's "Unite the Kingdom" rally. Drunken revelers with flags in one hand and beers in the other, clean cut youth holding wooden crosses, and a bulldog dressed in the Union Jack strolled past me as I skirted the edge of the throng before bumping into a pair of young, Muslim women who were lingering and staring with a look on their faces that expressed disgust, worry and "what the hell went wrong?!" energy all at once.

Just around the corner, another crowd was gathering to remember Nakba Day, which commemorates the forced displacement of people from Palestine in 1948, and to counter the energy or Robinson's rally.

In my recent reporting on British Muslims, I've found more such political participation and civic engagement than in previous decades. At the same time, there is heightened marginalization and rising anti-Muslim hostility. Data from Tell MAMA recorded over 6,000 cases of anti-Muslim hate in 2025 alone. That same year, most prominently, far-right marches moved through neighborhoods with large Muslim populations, leaving residents questioning their place in the national story.

And yet, from Birmingham's Sparkbrook to South Manchester, East London to Leicester, I've found mosque communities running food banks where 80 percent of recipients were not Muslim, local imams navigating tensions between foreign policy and community safety, Muslim mayors and councillors doing the grinding work of local democracy — creating, as former Solihull Mayor Shahin Ashraf put it, "democratic conversations where everyone is at the table."

Rethinking Conflict

This is not the gleaming harmony of a romanticized convivencia.

But my work reporting on interfaith organizations across different regions tells me it is more honest and just may ultimately prove more durable. The aim, I have found, is rarely the elimination of conflict, but its transformation.

This is convivencia with conflict, you might say, where generative frictions between people of differing traditions is stewarded as a practice rather than a problem. To do so requires giving up the apophatic fantasy that harmony means the absence of tension and accepting that harmony is something you make with friction, not despite it.

Difference does not dissolve when people share a street, a city or a conversation. Often, it can come into sharpened focus as we live life-on-life and discuss some of the most difficult questions the world, the divine and the fate of everyone who ever lived. The question is not whether frictions will arise (they definitely do) but whether we have the relationships, institutions and imagination to steer them in a constructive direction.

Some forms of conflict close down possibility. They harden boundaries and reduce future contact. Others, though uncomfortable, expand the capacity to remain in relation across difference.

In this sense, the romantic version of convivencia is not only inaccurate but counterproductive. It sets an unrealistic benchmark that collapses under the pressure of reality. And when conflict inevitably emerges, the model fails.

A more lasting approach, perhaps, accepts conflict as intrinsic to life together. But it asks how it can be directed rather than denied.

Back on Brick Lane

The history of 59 Brick Lane is not a seamless story of tolerance — though it may first appear so. It is a sequence of occupations shaped by migration, economics and shifting power. Each community adapted the space to its needs. Each, in time, moved or was displaced.

The building endures, not as a symbol of static harmony, but a record of continual renegotiation.

Which brings me back to Umbra sumus. The inscription underscores this impermanence, but also a sense of continuity. People pass through, structures remain, carrying traces of prior lives.

If Brick Lane and the wider British context in this moment have a lesson to teach here, it is not that difference can be resolved once and for all. It is that it must be managed repeatedly, under changing conditions.

Across contexts — from medieval Spain to contemporary Britain — plural societies have relied on institutions that can hold tension without letting it escalate. The question for each is less how to avoid conflict and more how to build forms of shared life that can withstand it.

If we are shadows, then the ethical question is not how to avoid conflict, but to ask: what kinds of institutions, habits, everyday rhythms and yes, even buildings, can hold disagreement without letting it become destructive? What kinds of practices allow disagreement without collapse? What institutions can absorb pressure without breaking? What habits enable people to remain in relation despite deep difference?

These are maybe less inspiring than the dream of perfect harmony. But they are, in the end, more useful in the time we have together.

Lowkey religious, highkey spiritual: A guide to Gen Z religion

Gen Z is often assumed to be the least religious generation in American history. More likely to claim no affiliation, less likely to attend services and deeply skeptical of institutions, their generation seems a new chapter in U.S. religion.

At the same time, there have been rumors of revival as certain surveys suggest large numbers (mostly young men) are returning to organized religion.

In this guide, we show how moving between irony and sincerity, skepticism and longing, Gen Z engages religion with both distance and desire, questioning inherited traditions while still seeking transcendence and belonging. 

Read below for background, reporting tips and expert sources to help you cover Gen Z religion with balance, accuracy and insight.

Background and Trends

By most conventional measures, Generation Z — typically defined as those born between the late 1990s and early 2010s — is less religious than previous generations. Data from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that more than one-third (38%) of Gen Z adults identify as religiously unaffiliated, with young women more likely to be unaffiliated than young men. At the same time, the majority of Gen Zers (62%) still claim some form of religious identity, reflecting both continuity and change as the ranks of the unaffiliated grow younger across the U.S. and the median age of those affiliated with religion grows older.

Among younger people, religion shows up in a variety of forms, as they draw their beliefs and practices from algorithm-driven feeds, in carefully curated aesthetics and in what some observers describe as a “vibe” of meaning-making, where atmosphere, feeling and visual language can carry as much weight as, if not more than, traditional doctrine.

Trends in practice reinforce the narrative of decline. Younger Americans are significantly less likely to attend religious services regularly when compared to older generations, with many reporting that they rarely or never participate. But these shifts are not uniform. Levels of religious identification and participation among young men have remained more stable, complicating narratives of across-the-board decline.

There have even been claims of a religious “revival” among Gen Z, especially among young men. But the data is mixed. Some surveys suggest modest increases in religious interest among young men, often within conservative subgroups. However, findings from PRRI and Pew Research Center show no broad rise in attendance or affiliation. Instead, trends often reflect declining religiosity among young women, narrowing a historic gender gap where women tended to be more religious than their male counterparts. What emerges from the collected data is not a widespread revival but uneven, highly visible pockets of engagement that illustrate broader hallmarks of Gen Z religious practice — a distrust of institutions, but with a concomitant attraction to highly structured traditions, historic liturgies and clear moral frameworks.

Placed in historical perspective, these developments extend longer-term patterns rather than marking a complete rupture with the American religious past. Since the late 20the-century, the U.S. has experienced a steady decline in Christian identification, from roughly 90% in the early 1990s to about 60% in the early 2020s, with the number of Christians stabilizing around 60–64% of Americans. Meanwhile, those affiliated with “other” religions (e.g., Judaism, Islam, Hindu and Buddhist traditions, Sikhi, etc.) has risen to just over 7%.

Scholars of U.S. religion have increasingly interpreted these trends through the lens of reconfiguration rather than pure secularization — especially with the increasing of the so-called “nones,” who claim no religious affiliation. Sociologists such as Christian Smith have argued that younger generations inherit not an absence of religion but a transformed religious field, one shaped by individual choice, therapeutic language and moral frameworks that prioritize authenticity and well-being.

This reconfigured landscape is deeply entangled with digital subcultures and what some describe as the “vibe economy,” where meaning is mediated through aesthetics, affect and online performance. Health and wellness discourses, rebranded forms of purity culture, “tradwifing”, looksmaxxing and the manosphere all circulate alongside, and often within, religious frameworks, often blending moral aspiration, identity formation and algorithmic visibility.

Some observers interpret this oscillation between irony and sincerity as characteristic of the “metamodern,” capturing a generation that moves fluidly between skepticism and longing, critique and commitment. This is in keeping with broader streams in U.S. religious history, which features recurring periods of institutional decline and experimentation — from the disestablishment era of the early republic to the proliferation of new religious movements in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In this sense, Gen Z religion reflects both continuity and innovation in U.S. religion. The decline of institutional authority, the continued rise of individualized belief and the diversification of religious expression are not necessarily new. What is changing is the particular blend of an increasingly saturated digital media environment, heightened social, political and economic precarity and a globalized cultural landscape that accelerates religious change and makes it more visible.

Migrants Fill the Gap Caring for Germany’s Aging Population

At the Immanuel Senior Care Center in Elstal, about 18 miles outside Berlin in the German state of Brandenburg, 26-year-old Sharoon Masih moves between the kitchen and the common room carrying trays of food with a generous smile and the willingness to strike up a conversation.

Officially, Masih works as a service assistant, serving meals, helping residents with personal hygiene, and providing general care. But his job frequently also requires meeting relational needs. “The elderly people are always inviting me over,” he said. “They want to talk. They want to tell stories.”

And sometimes they want to hear his.

From Pakistan’s Punjab province, Masih arrived in Germany in 2018 as an asylum seeker after facing persecution for his Christian faith. Before starting his position in Elstal in 2021, he faced a period of instability, including a denied asylum application and the threat of deportation as he awaited his appeal. Through a local church in Berlin, he found both spiritual and practical help.

A pastor encouraged him to pray, wait, and entrust his future to God. Within weeks, a connection led him to the care home. Within a month, he had a job. Within a year, he had secured residency.

Masih said his journey has shaped the way he approaches his work today. The sense of being a stranger in a new land helps him connect with residents who often feel like strangers themselves—isolated in their rooms, distanced from family, and navigating the numerous psychological, emotional, and physical dislocations that can come with old age.

“My experience taught me what it means to be alone,” Masih said, “but God used that experience and led me to this profession to be a bridge.”

In stories like Masih’s, two of Germany’s most notable demographic shifts converge as its growing aging population meets its freshest newcomers. Among the refugees and migrants filling the role of caregiver to older adults are many Christians like Masih, from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. They’re not only providing for physical needs but also bringing their faith, culture and spiritual presence into Germany’s care homes.

Revival, but only with state permission: In Belarus, Franklin Graham's Festival of Hope raises questions about religious freedom

For three nights starting Friday, the Chizhovka Arena in Minsk will hold the largest gathering of evangelicals ever in Belarus’s history, according to organizers.

Organizers expect around 9,000 people to enter the indoor sports arena for the Festival of Hope, organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) from May 15 to 17. Franklin Graham is scheduled to preach on the final two nights, and a choir of more than 1,300 singers, as well as musicians from Belarus, Russia, and the United States, will also take the stage.

For Leonid Mikhovich, one of the event’s coordinators, the scale itself marks a significant moment. “We’ve never had anything like this,” he told CT, noting that even in the 1990s, when post-Soviet religious life briefly bloomed, gatherings of this size were unheard of. “We had large activities, maybe up [to] 1,000,” he said, “but nothing like this.”

A coalition of Belarusian evangelical networks, including United Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith in the Republic of Belarus and the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists of the Republic of Belarus, is facilitating the festival. Mikhovich, who is also the general secretary of the Baptist Union, said that while Belarus’s evangelical churches have long operated in parallel and partnered on outreach programs, this is the first time they are coordinating at a national scale.

Mikhovich believes the event also gives the small evangelical community in Belarus a sense of legitimacy. “For us, to have something like this in an arena of this importance, it’s almost a kind of legalization,” he said.

In a country where the authoritarian government tightly manages the public square and constrains civil society, the festival represents a rare moment of visibility for evangelicals, who make up less than 2 percentof the population. Meanwhile, the Belarusian Orthodox Church, which is under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate, makes up 60 percent.

But while organizers like Mikhovich describe the gathering as a milestone, religious liberty monitors caution it may not bring greater freedoms for evangelicals. Instead, experts warn, the event highlights how authoritarian systems can selectively permit large religious gatherings while maintaining restrictions on everyday religious life.

Are we talking too much about Christian nationalism?

Maybe you’re here because you read “Christian Nationalism” in the title.

That is, in part, my point.

Over my last 15 years in religion media, I’ve learned that in the competition for public attention, not all subjects are created equal. Some generate more clicks, more eyeballs, more attention, more praise, and more prize money. I’ve also seen how editorial meetings, grant-making priorities and selection committees all play a role in determining which stories dominate the national conversation.

In the past several years, few topics have benefited more from this convergence of attention than what has been called “Christian nationalism.” And rightly so. Its prominence reflects real concerns and urgent questions. But it also invites a reflection on what stories we are missing with so much attention given to Christian nationalism — and in particular, the white version thereof.

Is Christianity the Heart of the American Story?

In recent years, coverage of Christian nationalism has become ubiquitous.

Journalists, scholars and commentators have rightly sought to define the term, trace its historical roots and document its contemporary manifestations. The phenomenon, loosely understood as the fusion of a particular vision of Christianity with American civic identity and political power, has been linked to exclusionary policies, democratic erosion, and cultural conflict. It has been called a democracy demolisher. Given such stakes, the surge of attention seems understandable and urgently so.

Others, however, have raised concerns that coverage of Christian nationalism is “overhyped” and the concept poorly defined.

I’m not here to discount the careful work being done by my academic and journalistic colleagues, but my sense is that there is a growing case for interrogating not only Christian nationalism itself, but also the scale and framing of the attention it receives. Essentially, from my perspective, when coverage becomes disproportionate, when it begins to dominate institutional resources, editorial priorities and intellectual energy, it risks producing unintended consequences.

Chief among these is that in attempting to critique Christian nationalism, media ecosystems may inadvertently amplify its central claim: that Christianity sits at the heart of the American story.

Proving Christian Nationalists Right

With that said, recent commentary reflects increasing unease with how the term “Christian nationalism” is deployed and circulated. Writers have observed that the phrase has, in some contexts, drifted from analytic category toward polemical shorthand. Its elasticity can obscure more than it clarifies, argues historian Heath Carter, for example, flattening distinctions among religious conservatives or disregarding progressive political actors who have also imagined the U.S. as a “Christian nation.”

This ambiguity presents a challenge for journalists, whose tenacity in reporting the subject must meet the reality of the term’s recent overuse and imprecise application. Failing to do so risks dulling the term’s explanatory power, turning it into what Carter describes as a catch-all epithet rather than a rigorously defined concept.

At the same time, others have raised questions about the political economy of attention surrounding Christian nationalism. As sociologist Musa al-Gharbi wrote on Substack a few years back, elite discourse often gravitates toward topics that resonate within professional and academic circles, sometimes at the expense of broader or more materially consequential issues.

Christian nationalism, with its dramatic narratives and moral clarity, lends itself to compelling storytelling. It attracts readership, funding and institutional recognition for the journalists who cover it. But this very appeal may encourage a concentration of resources on a single frame of analysis while sidelining other dimensions of American religious and political life.

And this leads me to my main concern. With all the coverage of Christian nationalism, and with so much type-space, bandwidth and podcast minutes given to its predominately white practitioners, it is possible the volume and framing of coverage may unintentionally reinforce the movement’s claims.

At its core, Christian nationalism asserts that the U.S. is fundamentally a Christian nation and that its identity, history, and future should be understood through that lens. When media coverage repeatedly centers Christian nationalists, whether in critique or condemnation, it risks reifying that centrality. The story remains anchored around Christianity, particularly white versions thereof, even if the moral valence is inverted.

The Stories We Aren’t Seeing Enough Of

This dynamic is particularly salient as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary.

Anniversaries are moments when societies revisit foundational stories and reconsider whose voices are included — or excluded. If the discourse leading up to this milestone is dominated by debates over Christian nationalism, there is a danger that the broader tapestry of American religious life will be overshadowed.

Such an outcome would be a profound loss. As I often teach in my courses on American religion, the religious history of the U.S. is not reducible to white Christianity and its various internal debates, denominations and divisions (as important as those are!).

It encompasses, instead, Indigenous traditions that predate European colonization, the diverse expressions of Christianity in all its forms, as well as Judaism, Islam, Sikhi, Buddhist and Hindu traditions, other faiths brought by immigrants and the many forms of religious innovation that have emerged over the last two-and-a-half centuries. It also includes the growing population of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, but whose ethical and communal lives nonetheless shape the nation’s moral and spiritual landscape and its futures.

To focus disproportionately on Christian nationalism is to risk narrowing this expansive field into a single story. This not only encourages a binary framing of “Christian nationalism v. its opponents” but may divert attention from other notable issues at the intersection of religion and public life: interfaith cooperation, religious responses to climate change, the role of faith-based organizations in social services or the evolving legal landscape of religious freedom.

Widen The American Story’s Scope

None of this is to suggest that coverage of Christian nationalism should stop.

On the contrary, investigative reporting and scholarly analysis remain essential for understanding its influence and mitigating its harms. But narrative diversity matters and, at this point, I am starting to wonder if we are losing the plot.

So, the question becomes not whether to cover Christian nationalism, but how to situate that coverage within a broader ecosystem of stories.

As the Semiquincentennial approaches, the U.S. faces an opportunity to tell a richer, more inclusive story about itself. This story should acknowledge conflict and the important role played by Christianity in shaping the nation’s past, present and future — including the contemporary challenges posed by Christian nationalism.

But we should also celebrate the diversity of religious traditions that have shaped, and continue to shape, America. To do otherwise is to risk conceding the narrative to those that insist on Christianity’s centrality.

Ironically, in other words, in trying to challenge that framework, we may end up sustaining it.

The task, then, is not simply to report on Christian nationalism, but to resist allowing it to define the scope of our attention. By broadening the breadth of our coverage and diversifying the narrative, we can instead contribute to a public discourse that is not only more accurate, but also more expansive — one that resists reduction and embraces, for good and for ill, the plurality that has always been at the heart of the American story.

Who Speaks for Britain’s Muslims?

Is the current political climate about the failure of Muslim representation—or the impossibility of it given the state of UK politics?

On a cold, breezy February night in Manchester, Hannah Spencer, a plumber-turned-politician, did something no Green Party candidate had ever done.

As intermittent rain fell, the results came in and she’d won a Westminster by-election, giving her a seat in Parliament before the next United Kingdom general election in 2029.

Spencer not only defeated her rivals; she also increased the Green Party’s share of the vote by nearly 30 percent from two years prior. In doing so, she secured the progressive party’s first ever by-election victoryin what was a Labour Party stronghold.

In the days after, rival campaigns and commentators rushed to explain how Spencer, who is not Muslim, won in a constituency with a significant Muslim population. Some pointed to grassroots organizing around Gaza and disillusionment with Keir Starmer’s increasingly centrist Labour Party. Others suggested a broader realignment on the political left and a fracturing of the country’s “Muslim vote.”

Then there was the defeated Reform UK candidate, Matthew Goodwin, who polled second. Losing by nearly 12 percentage points, Goodwin told reporters the result showed “a coalition of Islamists and woke progressives” had “dominated” a constituency that some predicted might even swing so far as to support his right-wing populist party. Others suggested Muslim voters had been instructed how to vote or even engaged in fraud, as if the thousands of ballots cast across southeast Manchester were evidence of coordination and corruption rather than people’s political will.

To those who spent weeks canvassing for Spencer, the accusations sounded less like analysis than Islamophobic sour grapes. They had done what political activists everywhere do. They organized, argued, persuaded and, ultimately, showed up to vote for the candidate they felt spoke best to their needs.

But beyond Manchester, the by-election, its results, and the dispute that followed captured a broader, persistent tension in British politics. For decades, Britain’s Muslims have been active participants in the country’s political life—as candidates, campaigners, donors, and voters capable of swinging close contests. At the same time, and at least since the 1990s, successive governments have struggled, or flat-out declined, to engage Muslims’ political demands on their own terms, showing reluctance to address issues such as Islamophobia, foreign policy concerns, or the recognition of representative bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

Now, as Britain’s Muslims are more politically engaged, and fragmented, than ever ahead of another cycle of elections, a long-running, nagging question remains. The issue is not simply who speaks for Britain’s Muslims, but whether the country’s political system is prepared to listen—and whether meaningful representation is even possible in the UK’s current political climate.

American Religion at 250

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary in July 2026, journalists have a rare opportunity to revisit the nation’s story through one of its most dynamic and contested forces — religion.

From before the earliest encounters between Indigenous Peoples and Europeans, to today’s increasingly diverse and “spiritual-but-not-religious” landscape, religion has shaped American identity, politics and culture in profound ways.

The Semiquincentennial is not just a moment to look back but a chance to tell deeper, more human stories about belief, doubt and belonging across 25 decades of American life. The most engaging religion reporting will move past histories and clichés and into the lived realities of Americans whose spiritual lives continue to shape the nation, sometimes in surprising ways.

This guide is designed to help reporters uncover fresh, compelling and nuanced stories in advance of the celebrations and remembrances. It encourages moving beyond institutional histories to critically cover lived religion, overlooked communities and emerging spiritual trends.

At its best, coverage of religion during the Semiquincentennial can illuminate how Americans have wrestled with meaning, belonging and power, what has resulted from these struggles and how those struggles continue to evolve.

A Crash Course on American Religious History

Religion in America predates the nation itself, beginning with the rich and varied spiritual traditions of Indigenous peoples. Scholar of American religion, Thomas Tweed, reflects in his new book Religion in the Lands that Became America: 

Most surveys of U.S. religion have presupposed that the story must begin with and focus on the British colonies—as opposed to starting, as I do, with ancient Indigenous practices in the territory now within national borders, and then chronicling the history of those locales, from Florida to Alaska and Maine to Hawai‘i. That presupposition commits narrators to focusing on Anglo-Protestant men who had political and ecclesiastical power in Britain’s Atlantic colonies. In turn, everyone else—Protestant women as well as racial and religious others—appear as supporting actors with bit parts. More recent survey writers have enriched the story. But the plot has not changed; nor have the supporting players’ roles. Everyone who is not an Anglo-Protestant man becomes defined by her or his relation to those with political or ecclesiastical authority during a relatively brief period, 1607–1776, on a strip of land along the North Atlantic coast.

To alter this pattern, Tweed and other historians have expanded “the narrative scope” to include a range of Indigenous traditions — traditions deeply tied to land, community, and cosmology that were profoundly disrupted by European colonization, which introduced Christianity alongside systems of displacement and violence.

In the colonial period, religion proved both motivator and source of conflict. Some European settlers, such as Puritans in New England, sought to build religiously ordered societies, while others came in search of economic opportunity rather than spiritual refuge. Colonies and their relationships to religion varied widely. Some had established churches, while others, like Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, experimented with religious tolerance. There were also small communities of minorities, such as Jews, in major port cities like New Amsterdam (New York), Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston and Savannah. This diversity laid the groundwork for what would become the First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom and non-establishment.

The 18th and early 19th centuries saw waves of revivalism known as the First and Second Great Awakenings, which helped democratize religion and emphasized personal experience over institutional authority. These movements fueled the growth of evangelical forms of Protestantism and inspired reform efforts, including pushes for abolitionism and temperance. At the same time, new religious movements emerged, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and various utopian communities such as the Oneida Community and Shakers. Each sought to establish “heaven on earth” by separating from mainstream society to practice activities  like communal ownership and shared labor or adherence to strict religious tenets aimed at perfecting life, both in this world and the next.

From the colonial period through the early 19th century, forcibly enslaved Africans brought diverse religious traditions — including West and Central African spiritual practices as well as Islam — which persisted in adapted forms despite forced conversion and repression. Over time, these influences blended with Christianity in what scholars call the “invisible institution,” a vibrant religious life that emphasized liberation, communal solidarity and spiritual resilience. This evolving tradition became the foundation of Black churches such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) or National Baptist Convention — and later Pentecostalism — which would play a central role in American religious and political life by the 19th and 20th centuries.

Immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries transformed the religious landscape immensely. Catholics, Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians established institutions and communities across the U.S. — from the St. Photios Greek Orthodox National Shrine in Florida to the Eldridge Street Synagogue in New York City’s Lower East Side — often facing suspicion and discrimination in due course. Meanwhile, the first Buddhist communities emerged on the West Coast, particularly in California, among Chinese and later Japanese immigrants who faced significant discriminatory laws. Religion became further intertwined with questions of American identity, with leaders and laypeople asking themselves and society who belonged, and on what terms.

The 20th century brought both consolidation and immense change. Mainline Protestant denominations wielded significant cultural influence by the mid-century, while Catholicism and Judaism became more integrated into public life, despite ongoing suspicions about European and Mexican Catholics political allegiance. The post–World War II era saw a rise in religious affiliation and the framing of the U.S. as a broadly “Judeo-Christian” nation, especially in contrast to what was framed as “atheistic” communism.

However, the late 20th century also saw increasing polarization and diversification. The Civil Rights Movement drew heavily on Black church traditions, while also exposing tensions within religious communities. The rise of the Religious Right in the 1970s and 1980s linked conservative Christianity to partisan politics in new ways.

Immigration reforms such as the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 opened the door to new forms of religious diversity, bringing growing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, and changing America’s religious landscape yet again. The rise of Hindu temples in suburban New Jersey, Sikh gurdwaras in California’s Central Valley and expanding Muslim communities in cities like Dearborn, Michigan are only a few examples of this changing landscape.

At the same time, the number of Americans who choose to identify as religiously unaffiliated (or “nones”) has surged, now comprising roughly 28–29% of U.S. adults, up from just 16% in 2007, according to Pew Research Center and Public Religion Research Institute. Among younger adults, the shift is even more pronounced, with close to four in ten identifying as unaffiliated in some surveys. Many within this group still express spiritual beliefs — about a third describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” — often blending practices such as yoga, meditation, and mindfulness with elements drawn from multiple traditions

Today’s religious landscape is marked by both fragmentation and innovation. Traditional institutions face declining membership, yet new forms of community are emerging. Online congregations, interfaith networks, hyper-nationalist enclaves and activist spiritual movements have become increasingly common, with religion continuing to shape debates over American identity, morality and public life, even as its forms become less predictable.

As the nation marks 250 years, and various parties try to define the nation as a “Christian” one, its religious story is less a single narrative than an increasingly vibrant one told from the perspective of multiple voices and reflects ongoing struggles over freedom, diversity and the potential of American futures in the decades to come.

War in Iran: The conflict’s religious contours

Reporting on the war in Iran requires not only bringing a keen eye to its geopolitical realities and ramifications but also a nuanced understanding of how religion shapes, and is shaped by, the conflict.

This reporting requires paying attention to both internal dynamics (e.g., how the state uses religion to justify policy and suppress diversity) and external narratives, including how religious rhetoric is mobilized abroad to offer support for, and protest, the war. 

In this guide, we offer background, resources, relevant stories and expert sources to help you better cover the religion angle on the current conflict and what it might mean in the wake of the latest war in the Middle East. 

Background

Iran’s religious contours are shaped by centuries of history but more recently the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when clerical leadership fused religion with state authority. The Islamic Republic of Iran it founded is a theocratic state that constitutionally embeds its interpretation of Twelver Shiʿa Islam into the country’s legal and political systems, shaping governance, laws and public life. This gives the clerical establishment broad influence over the state and country as a whole — including the laws and how they are implemented across the judiciary, educational sector and to govern public morality.

This framework influences everything from public morality codes to social services, and it is integral to understanding how the state responds to dissent and dissenters. At the same time, this official religious order exists alongside a rich tapestry of religious communities — including Sunnis, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and others — whose rights and freedoms are unevenly protected and often actively suppressed. Most notably, Baha’is, who are not legally recognized, face harsh persecution, including arrests and property seizures, while Christians — especially converts — are frequently prosecuted under charges that frame peaceful worship as “propaganda against the state.”

According to the latest monitoring by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), approximately 90–95 % of the country’s nearly 90 million people are identified as Shiʿa Muslims, with Sunni Muslims making up most of the remainder; recognized non‑Muslim minorities such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians make up a small fraction of the population and have limited, conditional protections under law. Non‑recognized communities — most prominently Baha’is — are denied legal safeguards and are subject to systematic discrimination and violence.

Over the past year, and prior to the 2026 U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, reports of crackdowns on religious minorities have increased. State security forces have carried out raids on homes, arrested Baha’is on broad charges as threats to national security, and aggressively prosecuted Christian converts for basic acts of worship. Authorities often frame these actions in national security language, but independent monitoring sees this as part of a broader effort to reinforce ideological conformity and suppress alternatives to the state’s religious monopoly.

This religious framework also conditions Iranian society’s response to the war. Inside Iran, state media and officials frequently invoke themes of sacrifice, resistance and divine duty drawn from their interpretation of Shiʿa tradition to buttress public support and frame the conflict within a larger moral narrative. Martyrdom — a central concept in Shiʿa thought given the killing of Imam Husayn ibn Ali at Karbala in 680 — resonates deeply when leaders or soldiers fall, bridging state objectives with religious sentiment.

The status of religious minorities, along with other minoritized populations, has deteriorated even further since the start of the 2026 war. The Iranian government has been treating its minority populations as potential internal threats, with arrests and escalating state-sponsored violence. For instance, the government has used the conflict to justify a surge in arrests among members of the Baha’i, Jewish and Christian communities.

Specifically, it has intensified property confiscations and arbitrary detentions against Baha’is; increased the number of arrests of Christian converts for “promoting Zionist Christianity;” demolished Sunni mosque foundations and arrested clerics who challenge official narratives and pressured Jewish Iranians to publicly denounce Israel, with some facing heightened risk of being charged with espionage. Furthermore, reports suggest the conditions of religious prisoners of conscience have deteriorated given abandoned prison management, severe deprivation and a surge in executions.

Externally, the war has also become entangled with religious narratives in the U.S. and Israel. In both, elements of religious framing have emerged that cast the conflict in civilizational or prophetic terms, complicating perceptions and policy debates, as well as an end to the war.

Some U.S. military personnel have reported that commanders used biblical end‑times rhetoric — drawn from parts of Christian evangelical tradition — to frame the conflict as divinely sanctioned, prompting concerns about the mixing of religious ideology with military policy. Likewise, commentators note that political leaders in both Washington and Jerusalem sometimes employ civilizational language — framing the confrontation as a clash between religious identities — to mobilize support, simplify complex geopolitical causes and appeal to domestic constituencies such as Christian Zionists, who believe “the strengthening of the state of Israel will ultimately lead to the erection of the Temple in Jerusalem and hasten the arrival of the day of judgement.”

All this shapes how the war’s religious dimensions are reported: the theocratic nature of the Iranian state, the vulnerability of minority faith communities and dissenting members of the majority as well as the global politics of faith and war are intertwined in ways that extend far beyond the battlefield.

Claims of religious persecution in the media

Religious persecution is a profoundly human story.

Deeply held beliefs, issues of identity and belonging, power and exclusion, violence and reconciliation all play a role in telling that story, which makes it particularly compelling for reporters to cover.

Yet religious persecution is among the most complex issues journalists can report on.

Across the globe, individuals and communities face threats to their freedom of religion or belief.  Such threats include limitations on, not only how people worship and care for their sacred spaces, but also on how they live their public and private lives — because of who they are and what they believe. At the same time, narratives about these violations can be shaped, amplified or distorted by political interests, cultural anxieties and media ecosystems that reward simplicity and dissension over nuance and systems-thinking. 

Journalists have a responsibility to illuminate injustice without reinforcing misleading tropes or inflaming tensions.

This guide offers you the tools to navigate the topic as it plays out in the media, offering background, resources and a special interview with Candace Lukasik, author of Martyrs and Migrants (NYU Press). 

Persian Wine, Made with Swedish Spirit

When the Islamic Revolution swept Iran in 1979, Shahram Soltani’s family was told to stop making wine.

For decades, winemakers like the Soltanis enjoyed the support of the Pahlavi monarchy and its head of government Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who wanted to see Iran become one of the world’s biggest wine producers. With that backing, in the years leading up to the revolution, there were around 300 wineries growing, harvesting, and processing grapes on massive vineyards in the Zagros Mountains and the semi-arid farmlands around the city of Shiraz. These areas were not new to the business of making wine; they constituted a part of viticulture’s fertile crescent—stretching across Iran, Iraq, Turkey and the countries of the southern Caucasus, Armenia, and Georgia—where wine culture existed for at least 7,000 years.

Then, in February 1979, things took a turn. “One day to another, Iran’s commercial wine culture just stopped,” said Soltani. “Everyone was finishing their harvest—all the tribes and families—preparing their new vintage and [then] bang, a seven millennia-long history of Persian winemaking entered a new, uncertain chapter.”

Even with new laws introduced by the Islamic Republic, families kept making wine behind closed doors. And, non-Muslim minorities such as Armenian and Assyrian Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were exempted from the ban, permitted to produce their own alcohol for ceremonial purposes. But it was nothing that Iran’s winemakers could share with the world.

When Soltani left Iran and relocated to Sweden in 2016, he wondered if a new chapter might be written in the history of Persian wine. “I saw urban wineries in Sweden. Or in London. Or in Germany, who would buy grapes from wine regions elsewhere and make wine in the city,” said Soltani. “That’s when I had the thought, why can’t we do the same? It’s legal to export grapes from Iran, so what is stopping us from making Persian wine elsewhere?”

In 2021, Soltani opened Drood—the first new Persian winery in nearly five decades—nestled amidst the old-growth forests, quaint red cottages, and historic glass factories and paper mills of Sweden’s rural Småland province. Over the last five years, the winery not only re-introduced Persian wine to a new audience but helped shed light on its border-crossing history and Iranians’ ongoing fight to preserve their cultural heritage along the way.

Rinse, Repeat, Ramadan

Every year for the last several years, sometime between the last gray days of winter and the first real hints of summer, a familiar genre quietly bloomed across Western media.

You’ve probably seen it, even if you didn’t recognize the rhythm.

Ramadan Coverage Is Stuck on Repeat

A headline announces the beginning of Ramadan. A subheading explains that Muslims will fast from dawn until sunset. There’s a quote from a smiling imam or a woman in hijab about self-discipline.

Sprinkle in a paragraph about charity and mix in an explanation of why there seem to be two “Eids.” Add a dash of photos, perhaps of a crowded mosque, maybe a tray of dates catching warm light at sunset. And, if the newsroom is feeling particularly adventurous, spice things up with the perennial debate over the sighting of the crescent moon.

Rinse. Repeat. And next year, why not even reprint the same story with a few calendar dates changed (as is too often the case with major outlets)?

In a media environment where the bulk of stories about Islam and Muslims are “resoundingly negative,” perhaps we should be thankful this isn’t malicious coverage. In fact, it’s usually well-intentioned. Editors want to mark an important religious holiday, and reporters want to be inclusive. Audiences seem to want a gentle cultural explainer rather than anything too dense or argumentative.

But the cumulative effect of this standardized script is that coverage of Islam during Ramadan gets weirdly flattened. It trades in familiarity, explaining the same things, in the same way, every year, as though Muslims themselves were static characters stuck in an annual ritual rather than living, breathing participants in an evolving religious tradition.

Skipping Beer During Ramadan

The most obvious repetition lies in the fixation on the physical aspects of fasting.

Year after year, readers are repeatedly told that Ramadan involves abstaining from food and drink between dawn and sunset. Sometimes there’s a note about refraining from smoking and sex. Occasionally, there’s a mention of spiritual reflection.

But the explanatory frame rarely moves beyond bodily discipline. Fasting becomes the defining fact of the month, something measurable, tangible and easily translated across cultures. It’s the religious equivalent of counting calories – a practice that can be described without needing to venture too deeply into politics, ethics, or economics.

Or, for that matter, exploring the seeming derivations from general rules.

Although Ramadan fasting is often described as a single, shared discipline observed by nearly two billion Muslims worldwide, on the ground, it tends to look more like a patchwork of locally negotiated practices.

For instance, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (or the wider Balkans), where beer is deeply embedded in social life, some Muslims approach the month less as a total moral overhaul than as a socially meaningful pause – skipping alcohol for Ramadan even if other everyday habits continue.

Elsewhere, believers quietly adjust their fasting around shift work, exams, political scrutiny, or secular public norms, finding ways to honor the spirit of the month without stepping outside the demands of their social worlds.

Ramadan in Jakarta is not Ramadan in Johannesburg. Observance among jet-set professionals in Dubai differs from that of recent immigrants in Paris, which differs again from the practices of Sufi communities in Tunis or Salafi congregations in Leicester. There are generational differences, gendered debates, class-based distinctions, political disagreements and theological rivalries as well — all shaping how the month is interpreted and lived.

As anthropologist Samuli Schielke observes, the month often becomes less about perfect consistency than about navigating the tension between aspiration and reality; between the desire to be good and the complicated conditions in which that desire has to be lived out.

Date Plates and Deep Debates

And then there are the visuals. Newsrooms love a recurring image bank, and Ramadan delivers in spades…or, perhaps, dates.

You can practically storyboard the coverage in advance with tightly packed rows of worshippers bowing in unison, lantern-lit streets, lavish iftar spreads glistening with syrup and steaming tea, and children peering skyward in hopes of spotting the crescent moon.

These images do real cultural work. They make Ramadan legible to non-Muslim audiences by translating it into familiar visual cues of festivity and devotion.

But they also become visual shorthand that substitutes deeper exploration. The crowded mosque flattens the diversity of Muslim religious practice. The delicious meal stands in for the complexity of ritual observance.

Ramadan is presented as a time of community, generosity and shared humanity. Stories highlight charity drives, interfaith Iftar dinners, food banks and neighborhood gatherings.

None of this is wrong, per se. Charity is a central pillar of the celebration. Communal meals matter deeply. But the tone of uplift can obscure the more nuanced, or even uncomfortable, dimensions of Ramadan as lived experience.

For some Muslims, the month is spiritually exhilarating. For others, it is socially isolating. Some approach fasting as an act of joyful devotion, others struggle with health concerns, work schedules or family obligations.

Some communities debate intensely over how the month should be observed. Others contest the authority of those who claim to define it for them. And in a time of intensified immigration regimes and re-entrenched identitarian nationalisms, some community members have been adamant about keeping quiet about events or gatherings, rather than drawing any unwanted attention.

These tensions rarely make it into the annual explainer.

The Stories Left to Tell

A recent conversation with a colleague who works in radio encapsulates this dynamic.

As she sought to put together a short news clip on Ramadan for a national program, she found herself getting bored with the stories she saw. Checking with Muslim sources, she discovered they were too. Rather than re-producing another staid report, she opted instead to skip it entirely.

But this begs the question: What might better coverage look like?

For reporters, the first step is to resist the tyranny of the annual calendar peg.

Ramadan need not be covered solely as a seasonal, feel-good lifestyle feature. It can be an entry point into stories about labor rights (how do shift workers manage fasting?), climate change (what happens when Ramadan falls during increasingly extreme summer heat or in northern environments where winter days are particularly short?), migration (how do displaced communities maintain ritual continuity?), adaptations within broader economic registers (why are “Ramadan calendars” popping up across Germany, where chocolate-filled Advent calendars are a fixture of the Christmas calendar?), or digital culture (what role do apps, social media, digital Quran recitation, and online sermons play in shaping contemporary observance?).

In other words, Ramadan can be reported not just as a religious practice but as a social phenomenon deeply embedded in broader political and economic worlds.

Second, journalists should diversify their sources. Instead of returning each year to the same community leaders or spokespeople, they might seek out voices that complicate the narrative: women negotiating expectations around domestic labor, Muslims of differing abilities adapting fasting practices, or young activists linking Ramadan ethics to environmental justice.

The goal is not to manufacture controversy but to reflect the genuine plurality that already exists within and across Islam.

For readers, especially the religion nerds among them, it might mean asking questions when an article emphasizes communal harmony without addressing any conflicts that might be simmering beneath the surface. Or, when it celebrates charitable giving, consider how economic inequality shapes who gives and who receives. When it notes the sighting of the crescent moon, remember that this is not just an astronomical observation but a site of legal and political negotiation.

In short, Ramadan is not merely a time when Muslims fast. It is a practice produced through social, historical and cultural processes – through debates over authority, adaptations to modern life and encounters with state institutions and market forces.

Treating it as such would move coverage beyond the repetitive and into something genuinely illuminating.

And who knows? Next February, we might finally see a Ramadan story that surprises us.

Global Christian Nationalism: A Guide

Religious nationalism knows no borders.

In many countries, the line between faith and political power is no longer just blurred — it’s a defining force in public life.

In a new guide at ReligionLink, we offer practical tools for understanding and covering global Christian nationalism: what it is, how it operates across different contexts and why it matters for democracy, human rights and international affairs.

While the term is often associated with U.S. politics, movements that fuse Christian identity with nationalist agendas are shaping policies, society and public debates from Eastern Europe to Latin America and beyond.

Whether you’re on the religion beat or covering politics, this resource is designed to help you ask sharper questions, spot emerging trends and report with greater clarity.

Religion + Black History Month

Black History Month is a reminder that the religious traditions of Black Americans are far broader, and more complex, than the stories we usually tell. 

Too often, coverage zooms in on the Black church at election time or dusts off prominent civil rights-era imagery, then moves on. What can get missed are stories such as Black women shaping faith communities with or without titles or pulpits, Black Muslims and Buddhists building institutions and influence, younger generations remixing tradition online and African diasporic spiritual practices sustaining people outside formal institutions.

Just as underreported are the tensions — between generations, over gender and sexuality, between religious traditions, around money, power and politics. Black religion is not frozen in time. It is adaptive, contested and deeply embedded in the everyday experiences of a diverse range of Black Americans’ lives.  

In a moment marked by racial violence and economic strain, Black religious life in the U.S. continues to shape how communities resist, heal and imagine what comes next. The task for religion reporters is not to mythologize Black religious traditions, but cover them with curiosity, range and urgency.

In the latest edition of ReligionLink, we offer background, experts, and relevant stories to help you better understand this diversity and dynamism.

European Evangelicals Tailor Anti-Trafficking Ministries

When Cristhina first arrived in Bologna, Italy, more than a decade ago, she was surprised by how public prostitution seemed to be.

Girls stood along suburban roads and in family neighborhoods, sometimes in broad daylight, visibly soliciting passersby in cars and on foot. “They were everywhere,” she recalled. “Downtown, residential areas. Being prostituted out in the open.”

Cristhina, a Colombian who grew up in Florida and studied social work, learned about the realities of abuse and exploitation in the sex industry through her volunteer work in Miami. Feeling called to bring her knowledge and experience to Italy, she moved to Bologna after college in 2013 to join what was then a small outreach to prostitutes at a local church called Nuova Vita (New Life). Cristhina asked to use only her first name due to threats from traffickers, pimps, and the Mafia.

Before she arrived, church members under the leadership of an American missionary approached women on the streets with cups of hot tea, baskets of snacks, and handwritten notes listing helpline numbers and safe houses. Volunteers received training from ministry workers in Greece and the Netherlands.

“The idea was to listen,” Cristhina said. “To befriend them. To share hope and a way out.”

In 2011, the church converted the outreach program into a full-fledged ministry called Vite Trasformate (Transformed Lives), which works with women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation.

“In the evangelical world [of Italy], we were among the first doing outreach in this field,” Cristhina said.

From Headlines To Trendlines: Religion News In A World Of Chaos

Snap. Pop. Fizzle. Bang.

To me, that’s the sound of the modern news cycle, with headlines blowing up in rapid succession, each demanding our attention before we scroll to the next. We live in the midst of an unrelentless attention economy, where urgency becomes currency, outrage is easy to manufacture and what seems to matters most is whatever is newest, loudest or most emotionally charged.

In this environment, it is perhaps inevitable to get trapped in the present moment, mistaking immediacy for importance and something going viral for significance. But when it comes to understanding religion’s role in society, staying locked on today’s headlines is not enough.

To make sense of religion in public life, we need not only track breaking stories or flip through reels on our social media feed but lift our eyes to the horizon, looking for emerging patterns, global developments, and stories still unfolding.

As 2025 ended and 2026 began, I had the chance to contribute to two recent efforts to chart that horizon: the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture’s “6 to 7 Trends to Watch in Religion and Society in 2026” and ReligionLink’s 2026 predictions.

DHS moves to suspend funding for Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley

The Department of Homeland Security’s move to suspend funding for Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley — and to seek an unusually long ban on future federal grants — is prompting concern among Catholic leaders and immigration advocates who see the action as part of a broader effort to curtail faith-based humanitarian work at the U.S.-Mexico border.

CCRGV, a South Texas nonprofit led by Sister Norma Pimentel, has been given 30 days to respond to DHS’s proposed debarment, which would shut the organization out of most federal funding streams for six years.

The suspension, which applies only to the South Texas organization, not to Catholic Charities USA or other diocesan agencies nationwide, would be a major blow to CCRGV. The charity, which operatesthe Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, has been a major recipient of DHS funds through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter-Humanitarian program and its newer Shelter Services Program.

According to DHS, such allocations are meant to “provide funding to non-federal entities that serve noncitizen migrants recently released from DHS custody” so that they can temporarily provide shelter, food, transportation, medical care, personal hygiene supplies, and staff assistance.

Federal filings indicate CCRGV received over three-quarters of its revenue from federal and state grants in 2023 and 2024.

Although federal agencies routinely audit grant recipients, the scope and severity of the DHS’s proposed punishment stand out. Federal debarments typically last three years. But DHS is seeking twice that length, citing what it describes as “pervasive” problems in CCRGV’s internal controls, irregular intake procedures, and missing documentation.

Wishing my Muslim friends a Merry Christmas

Every December, around the time I begin searching for the box of Advent candles and untangling the lights we swore we’d store neatly last year, I also make my way through digital holiday greetings. And Tuesday, as I whipped through a fresh batch of e-mails, I came across one from my dear friend Mohammed. 

The subject line? “Merry Christmas.” 

His is not the only Christmas greeting I’ll receive from Muslims this year. In fact, numerous contacts and colleagues from Cairo, London, Dubai, Bridgetown, and Minneapolis will send me seasonal salutations for a holiday they themselves will not celebrate…at least not religiously. 

Some hearing of these exchanges might tilt their head in inquiry: Why would Muslims wish me a Merry Christmas? Isn’t the holiday distinctly Christian, defined by the celebration of Jesus’ birth — a figure Muslims understand differently than Christians? 

Those questions are precisely what makes the greeting worth offering, and worth reflecting on.

A Shared Story, Told in Different Ways

Muslims do not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. But they do honor the birth of Jesus. 

The Quran devotes an entire chapter (or surah) to Mary (Maryam), recounting her labor pains, her fear and isolation, the miraculous birth of her son. Jesus (Isa), son of Mary, is mentioned a total of 25 times in the Quran, revered as a righteous prophet, a messenger, a “sign for humanity” (Q 19:21; 21:91), and as the “Spirit from God.” (Q 4:171)

While the Quran denies Christian beliefs about his crucifixion and resurrection (and surely, this accounts for major differences between the two traditions), Muslims believe that Jesus was conceived miraculously (Q 3:45). So, even if Muslims do not mark December 25 with a liturgical celebration, the story Christians celebrate is not foreign to them. It is part of their sacred narrative. And this means that Jesus — and by extension Christmas — can act, in the words of Jordan Denari Duffner and in the spirit of her book Finding Jesus Among Muslims, as a “bridge rather than a boundary” between Christians and Muslims. 

A Very Muslim Christmas?

That bridge can be particularly visible in December, when the Nativity story is central to Christian worship, and when Muslim reverence for Jesus and Mary quietly parallels that of Christians. 

For example, Christmas in Egypt is a vibrant national event, especially among Coptic Christians who mark the holiday on January 7th. The season is marked, however, by both Muslim and Coptic Christian communities with decorations, festive meals and gifts. Muslims widely participate by exchanging greetings, visiting Christian friends and generally enjoying the festive atmosphere in decorated malls and public spaces, viewing it as a shared cultural holiday. 

In Bethlehem, Muslims walk through Manger Square during the tree-lighting ceremony, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Christians. One friend of mine made a special trip back to Bethlehem to join her Christian neighbors in the celebrations, particularly important this year as the tree-lighting returned for the first time since December 2022 and the start of the War in Gaza 10 months later. Attending these events becomes a shared act of memory and solidarity, she said, with Muslims, Christians, and others in Palestine recalling how the original Nativity narrative mirrors Palestinian realities of occupation, displacement and struggle, featuring refugees (Mary, Joseph, Jesus), an oppressive empire (Rome) and massacres (of innocents), finding resonance in modern experiences in Bethlehem and Gaza, where Jesus would be “born among the oppressed.”

In Barbados, Muslim families will join neighbors for festive meals, decorate their houses with lights and serve together in the community. And thanks to the long history of Muslim professionals and businesspeople from Bengal and Gujarat in the Eastern Caribbean, they also serve as essential suppliers for a festive Bajan tradition: refreshing house decor with buying new curtains from stores like Abed’s on Swan St. In a sermon (khutbah) during the holiday season in 2024, an imam advised Muslims to not get carried away but encouraged them to remember the true wisdom (hikma) of the season: that Isa’s miraculous birth shows the power and might of Allah.  

Recently, on a trip to Dearborn, Michigan, which has a significant Muslim population, I was reminded of how much locals love the holiday. A nativity scene is proudly displayed in its Peace Park and at City Hall, across the street from the Arab American National Museum. Festive displays, from Santa and reindeer to Christmas trees and more, can be found in restaurants, salon and other local businesses across town. 

One can find examples from numerous contexts, from Britain to Uzbekistan, Indonesia to Kenya, where Muslims engage with Christmas in ways that revolve around the season’s jolly vibes, personal relationships, shared ritual meals of lamb, chicken or biryani, the giving of small gifts to friends, neighbors, or coworkers, volunteering, or enjoying the lights, music, and markets. 

From Suspicion to Hospitality

Of course, Muslims themselves navigate Christmas in diverse ways. Some embrace the season fully. Others participate selectively, enjoying the warmth of the holidays while staying clear of religious rituals. Still others avoid the season altogether, with an eye to holding firmly to a distinct, and countercultural, religious identity.

And crucially, as the imam in Barbados reminded his community, participation remains cultural, not theological. Muslims maintain clear boundaries around worship, avoiding practices that conflict with Islamic teachings about Jesus’ divine status.

This diversity is not evidence of confusion but a reminder that Islam, like Christianity and other religions, is not monolithic. It is a global, textured, and differently-lived tradition in Cairo and in London, in Tashkent and in Bridgetown.

But the shared reverence of Jesus can create space, perhaps unexpected for some, for common ground. Seeing it as such, Christmas becomes not a point of contention, but a season in which Christians and Muslims can adopt a “hermeneutic of hospitality” toward one another, assuming goodwill rather than suspicion. Through this lens, Muslims’ participation in Christmas is not a religious endorsement but a sign of belonging, an expression of what Duffner calls the “lived reality of interfaith friendship.”

One of Duffner’s most challenging insights, however, is that fear often shapes Christian attitudes toward Muslims more than any theology of hospitality. Fear creates boundaries where God invites connection. Fear distorts our ability to see Muslims’ goodwill for what it is. Fear makes us suspicious of greetings that might otherwise deepen friendship. Her antidote is simple but demanding. It is to adopt a posture of generosity, to listen before judging, to welcome rather than withdraw.

Why I Wish My Muslim Friends a Merry Christmas

Christmas, from my perspective as a Christian, embodies a message of radical, divine hospitality, with God coming near in vulnerability and offering hope to the marginalized and oppressed. In turn, I believe the holiday invites, and challenges, Christians to embrace the season as a powerful moment to practice those very virtues.

So yes, when my Muslim friends send me Christmas greetings, I send them back. Not because we believe the same things about Jesus. We don’t. But because the season’s themes of charity, generosity, hospitality and a hoped-toward, longed-for peace, resonate across our traditions. And because many Muslims, in their own way, already participate in the festive rhythms December brings.

Perhaps the most surprising gift of Christmas, as Duffner reminds us, is that when my Muslim friends wish me a Merry Christmas, I find Jesus among them — not as a point of division, but as a bridge of goodwill, reverence and shared humanity.

And that, I believe, is worth celebrating.

Religion + Culture's Top 25 Books in 2025

For a full-time nerd like me, reading is a professional hazard. Maybe you know what I mean.

But to be honest, I love it. Every morning, I get to start my day reading a couple of books from my ever-growing “to-read” pile. Then, throughout the course of the day, I peruse and dive deep into articles and essays relevant to whatever it is I am researching or writing at the moment. Then, as I settle onto the corduroy couch in our living room for the evening, maybe with a cup of tea or a tumbler of whiskey at hand, I read something “for fun” — whether that be a Krimi or international literature or a non-fiction book that has nothing to do with what I’m working on.

This year, that meant I read over 23,000 pages and 75 different books. And, as is my custom at the end of each year, I highlighted 25 books that stood out for me in 2025.

These books were not all published in 2025, but I read them this year and list them in the order I finished them. Some of them, actually, have yet to be released. They cover the usual themes that draw me in: storytelling, religion, Berlin, James Bond, rugby, Los Angeles, and living in an age of discord, diversity and difference.

Perhaps you will find your next read below. Or, maybe you enjoyed the same book as me in 2025. Either way, take a look at the list and let me know if you have any recommendations for 2026.

📖 The Brass Verdict — Michael Connelly
A sharp legal thriller rooted in Los Angeles. I love Connelly’s morally-complex storytelling, procedural rhythm, and attention to justice under pressure—revealing a narrative craft that respects both character and consequence.

📖 Shaken: 007 Cocktails
A playful, stylish dive into James Bond culture through mixology. It blends pop history, design, and espionage flair—perfect for my affection for Bond’s global imagination, time-capsule like nature and escapism.

📖 Islam: A New History — John Tolan
A lucid, global history of Islam. I value its narrative breadth, attentiveness to diversity, and ability to situate religion within lived historical complexity. As I wrote for Publisher’s Weekly: “Tolan’s impressive geographic scope and fine-grained historical detail combine for a masterful portrait of Islam as a religion and culture. The result is [a] definitive history.”

📖 Arab Brazil — Waïl Hassan
An illuminating portrait of Arab diasporic life in Brazil, Hassan’s work provides a careful interrogation of popular fiction and mass media melodramas to undergird his insightful theorization of what “ternary Orientalism” is and how it functions.

📖 Danubia — Simon Winder
A witty, learned journey through Central Europe’s tangled history. I’m drawn to its playful storytelling, attention to place, and ability to make borders, empires, and cultures feel alive. I’m a sucker for anything Simon Winder writes and this one was no exception.

📖 Arab Berlin — Hanan Badr and Nahed Samour
A compelling account of Arab life in Berlin. It combines urban history, religion, media, commerce and migration—key themes for understanding contemporary Europe and the city I continually return to intellectually.

📖 Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence — Julianne Hammer
A thoughtful exploration of how Muslim American organizations address domestic violence within their communities, family life, and according to principles and practices of faith. I appreciate its grounded approach to religion, ethics, and everyday practice in the context of U.S. identity politics.

📖 The Beauty of Your Face — Sahar Mustafah
A powerful novel of Muslim American life, trauma, and grace. Its emotional depth and narrative courage exemplify storytelling that confronts the realities of life while affirming dignity and faith.

📖 Soldiers and Kings — Jason De León
A haunting account of those who traffic in migrants, shaped by the ever-present specter of survival in American political orders of exception and excess. I value its riveting storytelling and character development, anthropological rigor, and refusal to let readers look away from the human cost of U.S. immigration politics.

📖 Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia — Natalie Koch
A sharp analysis of power, climate, and geopolitics in the deserts of Arizona and the Gulf. It blends geography, politics, and narrative insight—essential for understanding modern empire and environmental futures.

📖 Liebe ist Halal — Carolin Leder und Tugay Saraç
A culturally rich exploration of love, law, the weight of history, and navigating Muslim life in contemporary Germany. I admire its engagement with Berlin, belonging, and the everyday negotiations of faith, being, and belonging.

📖 Leading Under Pressure: My Story — Ian Foster
A rugby coach’s memoir about leadership and resilience. As a rugby fan, I appreciate its reflections on teamwork, humility, and performing faithfully under immense expectation.

📖 One God, Two Religions — Amir Hussain
Amir Hussain was key to my development as a scholar (and a human being). This is a generous, accessible guide to Christian-Muslim theological kinship that continues to shape me. I value its bridge-building spirit, clarity, and commitment to interreligious understanding grounded in lived faith.

📖 111 Orte in Berlin, die vom Islam erzählen — Bettina Gräf und Julia Tieke
A fascinating guide to Islamic narratives embedded in Berlin. It combines place-based storytelling, urban memory, and religious diversity—precisely the Berlin I want others to see.

📖 The Undercurrents — Kirsty Bell
Another Berlin book, this is an essayistic meditation on Europe’s layered histories through the story of a woman in transition. I’m drawn to its reflective style, attention to place, and ability to uncover submerged cultural narratives.

📖 Atlantic Crescent — Alaina Morgan
How do you imagine different worlds? According to historian Alaina Morgan, for African descended – or Black – people in the twentieth-century Atlantic sphere, it meant drawing on anti-colonial and anti-imperial discourses from within and beyond the worlds of Islam to “unify oppressed populations, remedy social ills, and achieve racial and political freedom.”

📖 Punk Spirit! — John Malkin
Punk rock played an outsized role in my political and spiritual awakening. So, I jumped at the opportunity to be part of Malkin’s new book. Here’s my blurb on his forthcoming book, which is fantastic: A skilled interviewer, John Malkin is one of a handful of punk mavens willing to explore its deep, spiritual intimations. This is a monumental collection of conversations, offering anyone with a reasonable curiosity about punk rock and spirituality the opportunity to understand their amorphous, vibrant, and sometimes revolutionary entanglements. If God is dead, punk is not dead, and the anti-establishment postures and rebellious spirit captured in Malkin's book lives on!

📖 A Place at the Nayarit — Natalia Molina
An intimate history of a Mexican restaurant as a social world. It exemplifies microhistory at its best—exploring migration, race, place-making, and belonging through the story of a single restaurant in downtown Los Angeles.

📖 The Eighth Life — Nino Haratischwili
An epic family saga spanning generations and empires. I admire its ambitious storytelling, moral seriousness, and ability to render history personal and unforgettable. Was unputdownable as I traveled in Georgia earlier this year.

📖 Depth Control — Lauren Westerfield
An immersive collection of writing and essays that blends emotional depth with searing, almost uncomfortable, honesty. Westerfield’s prose is confident and atmospheric, punchy and wryly humorous, drawing readers into a highly personal narrative of life as it is, leaving you with feelings that linger well after the final page.

📖 Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
A hard-science fiction story of friendship and survival. I enjoy its humor, optimism, narrative ingenuity, and belief that curiosity and cooperation can save worlds.

📖 God Save the USSR — Jeff Eden
A fascinating and meticulously researched exploration of religious life and policy in the Soviet Union during and after World War II. Eden deftly shows how Islamic practice persisted and adapted within an officially atheist state, offering fresh insight into the complex relationship between religion and power.

📖 Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here — Jonathan Blitzer
A deeply humane account of migration in the broader landscapes of the U.S. borderlands. I value its narrative approach to journalism, moral clarity, and insistence on seeing migrants, and those who craft policy or enforce laws around them, as fully human beings.

📖 Talk of the Devil: The Collected Writings of Ian Fleming — Ian Fleming
A treasure trove for Bond enthusiasts. Beyond espionage, it reveals Fleming as stylist, traveler, friend, and observer of life—deepening my appreciation for the cultural world behind 007.

📖 Getting Through What You’re Through — Tanner Olson
Technically not out yet, this book of poetry and essays reminds us that while life is hard, promise might just be around the corner. With disarming empathy and lucent humor, Tanner gives us words of resilient hope — reminding us to notice the grace of small moments and the goodness tomorrow may yet bring.