Christian Religiosity and Nativism: Populist Government Participation as an Influencing Factor?

Despite the large-scale secularization in many Western European countries, scholars have pointed to the enduring importance of religion in the political sphere. Although collective religiosity – e.g., church membership and service attendance – is declining, Christian religiosity on the individual level is often discussed and at times found to be associated with anti-pluralistic attitudes and outgroup-hostility such as nativism. Across a range of studies, however, the findings are inconsistent and sometimes even contradictory ranging from a mitigating to a reinforcing association – or report no evidence at all. There is also a lack of insight on relevant contextual factors like the strength and visibility of actors that instrumentalize religion to reinforce nativist sentiments. The most prominent actor in that regard are populist radical right parties (PRRPs) that politicize Christian symbols and narratives to promote their right-wing stances and mobilize voters. In regions with a Christian-shaped heritage, they build their nativist discourse on the construction of a threat to the "Christian West" that must be defended. By doing so, these parties aim to appeal to potential voters’ perceptions of threat, positioning themselves as saviors of the alleged native cultural identity. In fact, PRRPs occasionally associate being Christian with belonging to a nation. While populist radical right success is not an entirely new phenomenon, these parties recently gained not only parliamentary representation but also access to office. Since the politicization of Christianity appears pivotal to contemporary right-wing populist agenda, the establishment of PRRPs within the political arena should also be relevant to the relationship between religiosity and nativism. In this study, I hence address the puzzling relationship between religion and nativism by providing answers to the following research question: Does PRRPs’ participation in government influence the impact of individual religiosity on nativism? I argue, first, that more religious people are likely to have a stronger tendency toward nativism and expect, second, that the government participation of PRRPs reinforces this effect. This can be explained by the relative attention and visibility of government communication vis-à-vis the communication of other parties, resulting in a higher salience of their messages that politicize Christianity and emphasize the need of defending an alleged Christian heritage against the threat of immigration and foreigners. To test these theoretical expectations, I conduct a cross-country analysis using data from the Joint European Values Study/World Values Survey for the period 2017–22. In this manuscript, I provide evidence for an association between Christian religiosity and nativism. Findings suggest that Christians are more likely to tend to nativist attitudes when they hold higher levels of religiosity. This relationship is, however, not strengthened by populist radical right participation in government. Overall, these results contribute to existing literature by adding to the evidence of those studies that already report such a reinforcing religiosity– nativism linkage. Thus, this study underscores the conclusion that the religiosity of individuals might indeed be related to attitudes that oppose a plural society.