Exit for a Homeland: Orthodox Populism, Podcasting Politics, and American Secessionism

• In Event: Religion and Populism (Co-sponsored by Political Sociology Section)

Abstract

In the United States, secessionist movements in the American South have long drawn on the language of Christianity to express their sovereign aims for society, particularly during the Confederacy and continuing through neo-confederate organizations such as the Mises Institute and state-centered secessionist movements, including Texit. Strikingly different from the largely Protestant forms of American secessionist politics, American Orthodox Christian populist ideologues invoke libertarian, traditionalist, and dissident politics with the sense that no other Christian community is “true” or can save communities from the threat of secular liberal democracy. Drawing on data from American Orthodox populist podcasters who engage with secessionist and anti-democratic rhetoric, we use a mixed-methods approach that combines thematic coding and word frequencies, alongside qualitative assessments of social politics and religious values in the digital space, to reframe our understanding of secessionist ideologies. We identify how sovereignty, tradition, and anti-democratic ideologies are (re)cast within the Orthodox podcasting space. Our findings suggest that Orthodox populist podcasters advance a faith position to reify the proper regional and political identity, one of paradoxical freedom from the Western political paradigm, to save the West. Drawing together Orthodox religious ideas, conservatism, state secession, and anti-democratic rhetoric, the primary data allow us to see an alternative political project that is both aligned with other American populist movements and yet in religious tension with them. Bringing Orthodox secessionist ideologies into the broader conversation about American populism, this paper expands the conversation on imagined political futures while contributing to the study of digital religion, demonstrating how religious identity poses anti-democratic possibilities in a technological register.

Authors

• Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Northeastern University

• Kamryn Rae Trapane, Northeastern University