Note: From, Can Religion Save Democracy? (Baker, 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
Our respective stories of faith and politics begin in college. We were both studying political science when the planes struck the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. As the smoke was still clearing from Lower Manhattan, our own Muslim and evangelical communities became embroiled in heated debates around religion, politics, and violence. Both groups were discussing what it means to be a “good American.” As young scholars of faith, we wanted to understand how our sacred texts and faith commitments should (or should not) show up in the public square.
In the subsequent years, we both moved abroad. Shadi studied the rise of Islamist parties in the Middle East amid the religious and political fireworks of the Arab Spring. Matthew spent time in Europe working alongside Muslim asylum seekers and studying European debates over Muslim immigration and the rise of right-wing Islamophobia across the continent.
We came of age in the 1990s, the placid years of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. We were used to a form of politics that was relatively boring. C- SPAN discussions of marginal tax rates, budget deficits, and healthcare spending were rather technocratic and wonky. But what we witnessed in the Middle East and Europe post-9/11 was something much more spirited – and frightening.
As waves of Muslim immigrants arrived in Europe, Matthew witnessed a continent locked in conflict over what it means to be truly French, Dutch, or Swedish. Europeans were asking themselves if devout Muslims could ever truly be European. Political discourse was no longer about the size of the welfare state; it was about the very identity of Europe itself.
In the same vein, during the Arab Spring, Egyptians and Tunisians weren’t fighting about unemployment, taxes, or trade policy. Shadi watched as Arabs vigorously debated which beliefs and practices should be preserved and promoted by the state – and which should be punished. This was an existential debate between Islamic and secular visions of the social order.
Before the terms tribalism and identity politics entered the American lexicon, citizens in Europe and the Middle East were becoming embroiled in questions that are as old as time: Whose tribe is best? Who are the outsiders? How might we assimilate – or expel – them?
Watching Barack Obama and Mitt Romney debate taxes and health care policy before the 2012 presidential election, Americans didn’t realize how lucky they were. The relative staidness of US politics was a historical aberration. The natural state of politics is much more tribal and apocalyptic, as we would soon find out. The conflicts in Europe and the Middle East foretold what was coming to American shores.
Having witnessed deep divides abroad, we both returned to the United States and watched as political conflicts shifted from policy to populism, from the economic to the existential. The right went from Tea Party tax cuts to Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and Mexican wall. The left went from universal health care and minimum wage increases to defunding the police, wokeism, and debates over transgender surgeries for minors. The sleep-inducing C-SPAN discussions about marginal tax rates were a thing of the past.
This wasn’t all bad. Every democracy needs a bit of polarization. In big, diverse, and unwieldy countries, it’s only natural for citizens to disagree and even dislike one another. You should like your family and friends; liking random citizens you disagree with is a taller order. What’s different today is that mere disagreement is giving way to disgust and even hatred. A growing number of Americans see their fellow citizens as both dangerous and deplorable. They see their fellow Americans as threats to be monitored and enemies to be vanquished.
Fighting back against this development animates our research and writing. Our hope is that we can present another way for those who are hungry for an alternative. Our concern isn’t only about politics, though. It’s more than that. Having entered our forties, we are now approaching middle age. This unwelcome passage of time has us taking stock of the sweep of our lives and the role religion has – or hasn’t – played.
On a recent holiday, I (Shadi) was home in Pennsylvania with my parents and brother. Some families avoid talking about the past. My family is different. We took part in various thought experiments about the past: Could I have turned out differently? Could I have ended up more religious? What would have happened had I gotten married in, say, my twenties? For so many Muslim parents of a certain generation, raising children in America while maintaining their Muslim identity was a novel experiment – a task that became more difficult in a secularizing society.
In the same vein, I (Matthew) and my wife are parenting three sons approaching their teenage years. How will we raise our boys to value Christian self- sacrifice and selfless service in a culture that increasingly values self- satisfaction and self- actualization? Moreover, in a culture that values speed, power, and success, how will our boys learn patience, humility, and grace? For both of us, exploring the role of religion in America today is not simply an intellectual or political exercise; it’s personal.
Despite being born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I (Shadi) never had much experience with Christians – at least not serious Christians. Some of my classmates had Christian backgrounds and perhaps occasionally attended church, but that was the extent of it. During and after college in Washington, DC, it was more of the same. To live among hyper-educated elites in major urban centers was to live in a largely secularized, disenchanted world.
In 2015, after living in the Middle East for four years, I was back in Washington, DC. One day, something happened that stood out to me while I was working at a coffee shop. Two young men, who might have otherwise been discussing their plans for the weekend, were engaged in Christian prayer. I couldn’t recall the last time I had seen people looking down, in intense contemplation, praying together – and in Washington, DC, of all places.
I (Matthew) grew up in the only American city that has never experienced a religious revival. Today, fewer than 5 percent of Seattle residents attend church. As a Seattleite and a Christian, I was acutely aware that my faith marked me as “strange.” When I heard Southern Christians claim that America was a Christian nation and a “city on a hill,” I was quite confused. Christianity in Seattle was foreign.
But both of us found that we rather liked the strangeness of being a Muslim and an evangelical in a pluralistic America. And we didn’t like people telling us religion wasn’t strange when we knew full well that it was.
The strangeness of religion is at the heart of the case we hope to make in this book. We need more strangeness, rather than less, because the problems that the United States is facing are themselves quite strange.
Excerpted with permission from Can Religion Save Democracy? by Ruth Anne Reese & Madison Pierce. Copyright 2026, Baker Academic.
Matthew Kaemingk, professor of public theology, Theological University Utrecht; Shadi Hamid, columnist, The Washington Post
