KEYNOTE:James Guth:Religion & American Populism:Views from the 2020 American National Election Study
Channel: GIRES-Global Research Institute
Date: 2021-08-09

KEYNOTE SPEECH:
FULL TITLE:Religion and American Populism: The View from the 2020 American National Election Study

JAMES L. GUTH (B.S. University of Wisconsin-Madison; Ph.D. Harvard University) is William R. Kenan, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Furman University, where he has taught since 1973.His work on religion and politics has appeared in several co-authored books and many book chapters, as well as in the American Journal of Political Science, American Politics Research, Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Public Opinion Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Party Politics, European Union Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, Review of Faith and International Affairs, Religion, State and Society and other scholarly journals.He is the recipient of several awards for teaching and in 2008 received the American Political Science Association’s Paul J. Weber Award for the Best Paper presented at the association’s 2007 annual meeting. His current research focuses on religious influences on populism in the United States and Europe.

ABSTRACT
Perhaps no topic has stimulated more research by political scientists in recent years than the rise of right-wing populism in Western democracies. While religious factors often play a cameo role in many scholarly treatments, they are seldom at the center of analysis. This might not be a major problem in “secular” Europe, but the neglect of religious factors in explaining populist advances in the more religious American context misses an important part of the story. In this essay, we consider the role of religious affiliation, belief and behavior in producing populist orientations. Using the American National Election Studies from 2020, we consider the contribution of religious factors to what scholars have delineated as critical or characteristic populist attitudes. We discover a “populist syndrome” of such attitudes, dominated by ethnocentrism, moral traditionalism, and disdain for “democratic values.” Evangelical Protestants and other religious traditionalists are most inclined to hold such positions, producing a broad basis for their oft-noted strong support for President Donald
Trump, the avatar of American conservative populism.


CONFERENCE INFORMATION
"Religion and Politics in the United States"
Organizer: GIRES-Global Institute for Research Education & Scholarship  
Date: 17-18 July 2021
Place: Amsterdam (Virtual)
More information: https://www.gires.org/activities/conferences/religion-and-politics-in-the-united-states/