Introduction Research Topic Digital religion meets politics: pushing boundaries and opening-up new perspectives

Eva-Maria Euchner^1*Simon Fink²Oliver Fernando Hidalgo³

• ¹Fliedner Fachhochschule Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany
• ²Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, Göttingen, Germany
• ³Universitat Passau, Passau, Germany

New digital technologies are transforming the landscape of religion and religious practices.Religious influencer (Myers et al. 2023, Sheldon 2024), faith tweets (van den Berg 2019, Bathan andRamos 2021), digital chaplaincy (Winiger et al. 2025, Bezabih et al. 2025), or online religiously motivated hate speech (Ramponi et al. 2022) are popular examples in place. The rapidly growing scholarship, known as digital religion studies (cf. Campbell 2013, Campbell and Bellar 2022, Schlag and Radde-Antweiler 2024), explores the extent to which traditional religious practices are adapted to digital environments and how aspects of digital culture inform offline religious groups and institutions. While the young field profits from interdisciplinary collaborations and perspectives, the political dimension of this transformation is still underdeveloped. How do political actors refer to religion in digital times? Will governments respond to newly created religious online communities, and if so, with which governance tools? How do digital tools change forms of expression at the intersection of religious beliefs and political preferences? And how do processes of societal mobilization and politicization based on religious grounds change in an ever more digitalized world? This special issue unites scholars from various social science disciplines (e.g. religious studies, sociology, political science or theology) to respond to these questions and to push boundaries in the nascent scholarly terrain of digital religion and politics further. The participating scholars apply diverse methods (e.g., qualitative as well as quantitative research techniques, single case as well as country-comparative approaches), and explore a diverse set of social media channels (e.g. Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram) as well as different types of political and societal actors (e.g. political parties, parliamentarians, Christian Reddit communities, Muslim TikToker, young Instagram users, Christian activists) to enhance our knowledge about the intersection between religion, digitalization, and politics. This introductory essay tries to synthesize the contributions of the special issue and draw some overarching conclusions. The next section defines the intersection of digital religions and politics. Section three teases out the themes on which the contributions of this special issue converge, and identifies research desiderata. Section four concludes.Digital religion meets politics: merging two disciplinary perspectives Digital religion studies and the studies on religion and politics are so far somewhat disconnected scientific subfields, although an integrated perspective of both (trans-)disciplinary groups would be highly fruitful to better understand the role of religion in modern democracies faced with comprehensive digital changes.Digital religion studies explore the extent to which traditional religious practices are adapted to digital environments (Campbell and Evolvi 2020, p. 6;Campbell 2007, cf. also Neumaier 2022, Schlag and Radde-Antweiler 2024). The term "digital religion" was suggested as a comprehensive way to describe and investigate the intersection between religion and digital media (ibid.; Peterson 2020). Specifically, Campbell (2013, p. 1) describes digital religion as a "framework for articulating the evolution of religious practices online which are linked to online and offline context simultaneously". Utilising this new framework, interdisciplinary teams of sociologists, communication and religious studies scholars attempt to answer various questions including "Does technology shape religion (and vice versa)?", "How can scholars measure the impact of digital culture on religion?", and "How do religious leaders and believers approach the internet?" (Campbell and Evolvi 2020, p. 6).The scholarly community on religion and politics is also quite diverse, integrating different political science sub-disciplines (e.g. political theory, comparative politics, policy analysis) and exploring the relevance and constitution of religion in offline settings of the political system (e.g. party manifestos, parliamentary speeches, constitutions specifying state-church relationships, or the impact of religion on public policies) (van Kersbergen and Manow 2009, Foret 2015a, 2015b, Fox 2015, Engeli et al. 2012). Online settings such as political communication on social media received more attention only recently, and primarily in regard to radical rightwing parties and their references to religion (e.g. Bramlett and Burge 2021, Schwörer and Fernández-García 2023, Marchetti et al. 2022).Although both communities may certainly follow different aims and interests due to different disciplinary identities, a more integrated discourse and analyses enriches them equally. In the following synthesis and reflection of the contributions to this special issue, we discuss some findings of this integrated discourse. The contributions to this special issue raise some overarching points, linking back to two theoretical discussions in both disciplinary fields: (1) the growing individualization of religion in current societies (Davies 1994, 2002, Norris and Inglehart 2004) , and (2) the puzzle of politicization and polarization of religion and religious content (Anderson 2004;Engeli et al. 2013;Knill and Preidel 2014;Perry 2022). Next, we elaborate on some more specific findings and future research agendas in this interdisciplinary endavour. This includes methodological advances and challenges in analyzing religious content on digital platforms, market logics of these platforms, and how design differences between platforms shape the manner in which religion is discussed online.Overarching take-aways: individualization of religion and the puzzle of politicization and polarization Individualization of religion in the digital political sphereIn both scholarly communities the discourse on the individualization of religion is very vivid. This phenomenon guides most contributions to this special issue, either directly or indirectly.Changing dynamics of religious behavior, believing and belonging as well as identification of religious authority are observable in many countries. Shrinking numbers of (Christian) church members, reduced attendance rates of religious services as well as decreasing donations and church taxes are just some of many indicators of the pattern (Davies 1994, 2002, Norris and Inglehart 2004). New technologically mediated spaces offer a particular promising environment to explore this trend in a more fine-tuned way. Social media platforms, for instance, are accessible for elites and "ordinary" citizens and designed to communicate "private" stories, and hence, also experiences with religion considered as private issue in many social spheres.The political science community somewhat disregarded religion in the digital sphere, despite knowing that not only the electorate articulates religious preferences via social media channels but also politicians. For several years, Twitter/X has been the most common social media tool among politicians and professional communicators of politics (Castanho Silva and Proksch 2022). Even after Elon Musk's acquisition and the subsequent changes in content moderation policies and algorithmic dynamics -including amplification patterns (Nutakki et al., 2025) -Twitter continues to serve as a relevant tool for political actors (Braun et al. 2024). Facebook, Instagram and especially TikTok, however, have become popular more recently (Cervi et al 2023). For instance, the former German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, posted his first video on Tik-Tok about his briefcase in April 2024. Compared to Twitter/X, the latter platforms are known as outlets where "private stories", like favorite meals, are more "welcome" and less so political statements (cf. Braun et al. 2024). In other words, these platforms offer more room to talk about "private issues" like religious practices or experience.Additionally, the political science community so far conceptualizes religious profiles of political actors somewhat superficially. It is most common to distinguish between religious and secular political parties or actors (cf. Lipset's societal cleavages theory, but see also Ozzano's (2013) typologies on different religious parties). Some scholars stress religious and denominational divides between politicians, like parliamentary behavior of Christians vs. Muslims or Catholics vs. Evangelicals (Baumann et al 2015). However, such individual level data of religious profiles of members of parliament (MPs) are very rare, especially outside the US context (cf. Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) 2025; but see for German MPs Euchner andPreidel 2017, 2018). In other words, processes of individualization in religion are quite underexplored among political elites. At this point, the digital religion scholarship is particularly inspiring as it uncovers various dynamics, ranging from networked (online) communities, convergent practice to multisite reality, storied identity and shifting authority (cf. Campbell and Bellar 2023, p. 7).In this special issue, most contributions relate to this process of individualization in religion in the digital sphere, either explicitly or implicitly. Klevesath (2025), for instance, explores the growing pluralization of islam-related claims to authority in the digital sphere. Based on a qualitative case study on the interpretations of "Islam Ridda" (apostasy from Islam) and "Islam theft" on Google and YouTube, he discovers that on Google, Muslim and non-Muslim content is almost equally visibly present. On YouTube, by contrast, interpretations posted by Muslim preachers dominate. Klevesath (2025) argues that this finding might be related to the long tradition of oral transmission of Islamic authority and its use on the internet that cannot easily be matched by secular interpreters of Islamic commandments, illustrating that platforms shape processes of individualization of religion. Euchner et al. (2025) examine religious references during online campaigning for the elections to the European Parliament. Their study uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze European politicans' X (formerly Twitter) profiles, including more than 97,300 tweets and 853 candidates. Generally, religion is not very salient in this sphere. In line with the individualization idea, Euchner et al. observe large intra-party variation and hence, references to religion (e.g. religious practices, values etc.) by candidates from very different political parties. Mattes et al. (2025) build on a qualitative study with 41 young believers of different religious traditions and explore individual negotiations of belonging in digital spaces, as well as negotiations in relation to religious communities and political concepts.The authors argue that the digital spaces reinforce certain boundaries (e.g., among religious traditions) whereas they facilitate the blurring of others (e.g. confessional structures). This pattern seems to be guided by algorithms following the logic of attention economy that structure social media as well as by the conscious search for digital forms of inclusion. Young believers develop strategies to navigate complex discourses of being religious in a secular world and the role of the digital within it.The individualization of religion also has methodological consequences, that are to some extent caused by the prevalence of social media, but where social media also offers a remedy (see also below on the methodological take-aways): If religion is increasingly individualized, broadsweeping generalizations about religious behavior of whole groups become more and more tenuous. Thus, many studies in this special issue go down to the level of individuals (e.g. the studies of El Sayed and Hotait 2024 or Mattes et al. 2025) to make intra-group variation, e.g. among Muslim TikTokers visible. This variation is probably to some extent caused by social media -individuals have the opportunity to construct and communicate their specific identity.At the same time, social media data collection and coding techniques allow to empirically grasp this variation -a variation of religious outlooks and identities that was maybe to some extent present even before the times of social media, but that could not be expressed and researched, because the construction of religious identity was confined to private spaces and private conversations. In general, since more than a decade, severe polarization meaning the division of society into clashing "us" versus "them" identities has become an international problem which imperils democracies and provokes the rise of populism worldwide (Carrothers and Donohue 2019). In this respect, societal anger and an increasing rich-poor-gap play a role, but the main reasons for the divided democracies are rather cultural issues and non-economic insecurity. Accordingly, there is the widespread diagnosis of a new cleavage between liberal cosmopolitans and conservative communitarians (de Wilde et al. 2019, Schäfer andZürn 2023). "Anywheres" and "Somewheres" (Goodheart 2017) who either support open borders and the further liberalization of multicultural societies, or fight against global migration and the rights of minorities in the sense of a cultural backlash. Therefore, with regard to the USA, but also relevant for many Western-democracies, Ezra Klein suggested political, social and cultural polarization as pervasive phenomenon at a global scale: "The polarization we see around us is the logical outcome of a complex system of incentives, technologies, identities and political institutions. It implicates capitalism and geography, politicians and political institutions, human psychology and […] changing demography. […] [The polarization] we see today will become the norm, while the depolarized political strategies of the mid-20th century will be the exception." (Klein 2019: 250) Against this background, it would be much too easy to think that the conservative cultural backlash being observed includes the opposition towards digital technologies, social media, and global communication processes. The ideological disparities and different identities of the present are not congruous with supporters and deniers of new IT-technologies and digital media.Instead, the latter contribute to the polarization of societies in a rather indirect way as a catalyst of radical, one-sided and provocative political options beyond all ideological camps. To understand this, is has to be clarified first that polarization as such is a usual phenomenon in modern democracies, where multiparty-systems and partisan politics offer political alternatives and represent the existing pluralism of interests, values and programs. As primarily Chantal Mouffe (2005) pointed out, this pluralism means that conflicts, political struggles and oppositions are main characteristics of every (agonistic) democracy. What should be avoided, however, is a destructive antagonism, in which political differences turn into enmity and the resources for an overlapping consensus (John Rawls) and respect for the institutional framework of democracy and for the rule of law are lost.Unfortunately, there is a lot of empirical evidence that social media and digital information and communication platforms exactly provoke that destructive friend-foe-dichotomies rather than agonistic politics. An explanation for this is already given by Cass Sunstein in his book #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (2017). Here, the author describes and analyses vividly how political communication via hashtags and social networks leads to selective and self-referential information and thus to the polarization of group identities. Moreover, Sunstein points out that digitalization is increasingly causing a lack of personal encounters, which prevents citizens from exchanging arguments and constructively dealing with dissent.By contrast, echo chambers, filter bubbles, and spirals of silence in virtual spaces foster a narcissistic confidence in one's own opinion, leading to further fragmentation, polarization and radicalization, as well as the to the acceptance of extreme political positions, not least because the anonymity offered by the internet often encourages hate speech, whereas control and regulation measures are usually difficult to implement (Sunstein 2017, pp. 176ff.).With regard to our subject of digitized forms of religion, as well as in view of the general processes of digital politization and polarization just described, the question arises, of whether digital religion further accelerates the observed trend of social and political division in society or whether it could also act as a kind of counterweight. As a central factor of cultural identity, religions also appear to be predestined either to fuel the conservative cultural backlash, or to have a progressive effect in the direction of multi-religious societies.In this context, it can be assumed that religions are particularly well suited to evoking and structuring highly polarizing identities, in that they build agencies of truth which performatively distinguish between an in-group of the true believers and an out-group of those who are different believers or non-believers from a theological perspective (Ysseldyk et al. 2010). In this respect, a digitalized religion would primarily be expected to have the effect of further increasing or intensifying politization and polarization. The tendencies of digital individualization of religions could, on the one hand, have a depoliticizing effect to a certain extent. On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that religious identities not only polarize, but also lead to an overarching, shared identity of believers of different denominations. The latter would be an effect of religion, which could either be enhanced or absorbed by digital processes. Key contributions exploring these processes include for instance Jakob Schwörer's (2024) analysis of religious references in online campaigns in Latin America and Western Europe, focusing on political parties' communication on Facebook. The author discovers that political parties in Western Europe rely on religion but primarily to exclude non-native groups, while in other discourses religion is rather secondary. In Latin America, by contrast, religiosity plays a much greater role for individuals, which is reflected in the discourse of political elites aiming to use religious principles to appeal to conservative religious audience, which Schwörer terms "sacralization of politics." Euchner et al. (2025) complement these findings by uncovering a subordinate role of religion in online political campaigning; however, there is substantial country variation, indicating a higher salience of religion in Swedish and Dutch campaigns in comparison to German or British online discourses. Furthermore, candidates from political parties with religious roots are more likely to refer to religion than those from more secular parties, reflecting traditional secular-religious divisions. TikTok. They study Muslim female content creators in Germany, and how they represent themselves in their videos. The first takeaway is the impressive variety of content. These creators mix and blend religious, political and everyday-life topics. As El Sayed and Hotait argue, this use of TikToks fosters community-building among like-minded individuals (in this case, Muslim women) and gives them visibility. Not all topics have the potential to be politicized -many posts coded concern beauty, style, and fashion, or matters of personal or social life not related to religion or politics. However, other topics such as gender inequality, racism or social injustice are clearly politicized. An interesting topic at the intersection of fashion and politicization of religion is the presentation of the hijab. El Sayed and Hotait term this "playful activims and fashionable religion", with a form of self-expression that merges fashion issues (the hijab as an object of fashion) with political statements (the hijab as a political and religious statement). In this context, the contribution by Rodenhausen ( 2025) is also particularly relevant, as it examines the progressive and conservative role of religion in identity formation and therefore the "polarization (with)in religion", which arises not least from controversial gender issues in social media. In line with this, Hunklinger and Limacher (2025) analyze the influence of Christian online activism on gender and sexuality politics using TikTok as a telling example. In doing so, the authors emphasize the decisive role that the respective image of God plays in the formation of personal identity in social media. Additionally, Max Tretter's (2025) contribution transfers the problem of religiously driven identity formation in digital forums and channels to the dimension of democratic theory. In this vein, he outlines different ways in which spiritual technologies such as digital religious platforms, apps specialized on spirituality or religious chatbots can influence democratic processes. With a particular focus on phenomena such as digital polarization or the religious condemnation of certain achievements of liberal democracies (e.g. gender equality or non-discrimination against queer people) as violations of divine commandments, Tretter shows that there are currently no national or international measures in place to curb the potential of spiritual technologies to undermine democracy. Finally, Margvelashvili (2025) uncovers how Orthodox Churches in Georgia and Greece influence national identity narratives in the digital space and thus, foster societal polarization into "us" and "them." Both churches used their cultural capital they have accumulated through the extensive role in national formation to mobilize the masses and generate narratives. The discursive struggle about national identity is mirrored in social media in both countries, yet, to a lesser extent in Greece than in Georgia. In Georgia, the church's involvement in political affairs further polarizes society due to still-fragile state institutions. Meanwhile, in Greece, institutional memory is long-standing and church-state relationship very close, mitigating open political attacks. In other words, state-church relationship as well as the seniority of democracies may influence religious-motivated polarization pattern in the digital sphere.Specific take-aways: methodological and analytical innovations and future research agendas The contributions to this special issue show an interesting variation of methodological approaches including large-n, small-n and -in the case of Max Tretter (2025) -evaluated chatbots powered by AI-techniques to collect data, and quantitative as well as qualitative methods to analyze online content. Most tellingly, our contributions illustrate that large-n or big data methods that rely on scraping internet content are not the only way to explore the field. Instead, many contributions combine large-n and small-n methods, or even introduce wholly new approaches to study individual social media behavior.The studies by El Sayed and Hotait (2024) and Schwörer (2024) leverage the availability of large textual and visual data corpora (TikTok in the case of El Sayed/Hotait (2024), Facebook content in the case of Schwörer (2024)), but combine these data with hand coding and dictionary coding approaches to disentangle the religious content of these posts and videos. Euchner et al.(2025) combine hand-coding, quantitative as well as KI-based text analyses to tease out the relevance and key topics of religious-related discourse during the electoral competition for the European Parliament in 2019. Especially the contribution by El Sayed and Hotait (2024) not only uses the verbal content aspect of the TikTok videos, but extensively relies on coding the visuals that try to communicate religious content. That is, the identification and classification of religious content can still fruitfully be done with human coding. Mattes et al. (2025) introduce "social media tours" to the methodological toolbox of scholars of digital religion. In keeping with the theoretical postulate that religion has become more individualized (see above), they ask their participants to scroll through their social media (in this case: Instagram) feed and comment on their profiles, the accounts they followed and the posts they get presented. In this way, the distinct individual religious profiles can be mapped (although the open question is in how far this social media tour is influenced by the algorithms of the platform, see the discussion below). Mattes et al. (2025) also introduce a fruitful method to connect the digital world of social media to the physical place in which people live. Participants were asked to use needles to indicate places on a map that are important for their religious life. These places were then aggregated in a digital map. What emerges is something like a social landscape, arraying places of social and religious significance in the physical space.The examples of the special issue demonstrate that adding a political science perspective to the field of digital religion studies allows for multi-modal methods that combine textual and visual, and digital and physical artefacts. These methodological innovations offer inspiration for future studies. Methods of analyses and data collection will remain of one the most critical aspects of future research, not only because online content is growing extraordinarily fast but also due to the increasing amount of AI-generated content. How does discourse and communication about religion change if chat bots/AI is "doing communication" respectively shaping human digital dialogue?Apart from that, our special issue also includes two decidedly theoretical studies by Rodenhausen (2025) and Tretter (2025), which conceptualise relevant terms for researching the new scientific field of digitised religions. It remains to be seen to what extent these conceptual proposals can be operationalised for future empirical research. The contributions to this special issue study different (social) media platforms. Schwörer (2024) and Margvelashvili (2025) The interesting question is thus in how far the results of the studies are comparable: To what extent do these studies tap into the same social sphere, and to what extent is that social sphere constructed by the algorithms of the platform? That is, would the results of Schwörer (2004) have been the same had he studied Twitter/X, would the results of El Sayed and Hotait (2024) have been the same had they studied Instagram and so on. All the contributions of this special issue discuss their choice of platform, and they reflect on the specifics of the platforms -what are the upsides and downsides? For example, Schwörer decides to study Facebook as this allows him a comparison of Western Europe and Latin America (Schwörer 2024). Euchner et al. (2025) examine religious-related discourse on Twitter/X, as the platform is the most prominent online forum amongst politicians of the European Parliament, even after Elon Musk's acquisition and the subsequent changes in content moderation policies and algorithmic dynamics (cf. Nutakki et al., 2025, Braun et al. 2024). On the downside, the question is what sociodemographic groups are on Facebook or Twitter/X, and what sociodemographic groups are not on this platform? How does religious-related communication change depending on the expected audience? Similarly, El Sayed and Hotait (2024) reflect that the TikTok algorithm may allow lesser-viewed creators to gain views quickly, as their productions are also considered by the algorithm and are presented to users who may not have subscribed to these creators. Mattes et al. (2025) justify the choice of Instagram arguing that this is the platform that most of their target group -young people in Austria -use. Hunklinger and Limacher (2025) defend their choice on TikTok by the relevance of this medium for organizing online protest among young voters. Margvelashvili (2025) opt for Facebook due to the large number of Georgians and Greeks using the social media platform as well as the popularity of the platform among official church representatives.However valid these reasons for choosing specific platforms to study are, they also imply that it is not clear how generalizable the results are -are they specific to the platform, or do they tell us something about digital religion in general? Obviously, there is need for comparative work. In sum, the contributions of our special issue cover a broad range of digital platforms, offering thus diverse insights on how religion is referred to in different digital spaces. The selection of the platform is most commonly motivated by its popularity for key (political) actors or relevance for political processes (e.g., candidates for the election of the European Parliament, young voters in Austria, resp. organization of online protest)."Double Market logics" in digital religious-related discourse?Religion has always been analyzed with regard to a market aspect, elaborated as the "religious economy argument" by Iannacone (1991) that Schwörer (2024) uses to theorize religion in Latin America. The religious economy argument centers around the idea that religion behaves like a market-with supply and demand, competition, and consumer choice. Religious communities compete and need to adapt to changing environments by innovative strategies to attract new believers and satisfy community members. In other words, if religious communities offer new digital services and spaces, one might argue that they act according a market logic as they respond to new demands and compete for believers with other religious communities. The digital space facilitates such market logics in a double sense. First, religious communities independent of the prevailing state-church regime may effectively follow this logic as social media platform are accessible and affordable for all people and communities. Second, as digital platforms are subject to a strong market logic, platform providers want to make money with advertising -how does that influence the social interactions that are facilitated by the platforms? Schwörer (2024) uses the classic religious market argument to explain why he finds more religious references in electoral campaigns in Latin America than in Western Europe. According to his interpretation, the religious market in Western Europe is less competitive than in Latin America and does thus not incentivize the use of religious messages in campaigns. This market logic of the digital platforms is visible in the study of El Sayed and Hotait (2024), where they show that the self-representation of female muslim content creators is deeply intertwined with considerations of self-marketing. These creators not only advocate social justice issues, but also market beauty products and present aspects of their social and private life, and in effect, creating themselves as a marketable brand. As has been argued above, the most deeply intertwined form of content is the use of the hijab both as a fashion and beauty object as well as a political and religious statement, where the political and religious self-representation feeds into the self-branding. The contributions to this special issue highlight the multi-faceted nature of the research on digital religion and politics. While the contributions are highly diverse in their methods and theoretical outlook, they converge on some common themes. First, they show the individualization of religion that has become possible in the digital sphere.Many contributions drill down to the individual level of religious identity, that has become possible to express (and to research) due to digitalization and social media. Thus, our picture of religious identities, their antecedents and consequences, becomes more nuanced, but maybe also blurrier, as it becomes harder to aggregate people to larger entities.Second, the contributions delve into the question of political polarization and digital religion.Closely connected to the first point, individualization could result in increasing polarization, as it becomes harder to aggregate religious and political worldviews into larger and coherent entities like parties and churches.Third, the contributions showcase the methodological variation that researchers can use to study digital religion. Studying digital phenomena by no means implies large-n methods, but handcoding and interpretative approaches are suitable to delve deeper into forms of religious selfexpression as well.Fourth, the contributions show how studies of digital religion must be (and can be) sensitive to the algorithmic and market logic of the platforms. Digital religion is never "purely" expression of religious identities, but filtered through and biased by the commercial and algorithmic logics of the platforms.An open research venue which has only been hinted at by most contributions is the relation of digital religion to "nondigital" and more formal spaces. While the contributions by Schwörer and Euchner et al study parties and politicians, there is little research on how formal religious organizations (e.g. churches or religiously informed interest groups) react to the digital trends that our contributors have uncovered. This is to some extent a consequence of the research focus on individual forms of religious expression. But it seems that there is a need to study how the established players react to this individualization, how they adapt their messages and strategies. This is maybe the most important way forward for digital religion studies: To connect the digital realm with the "old world", and elucidate their interactions.