Religious Change, Political Incentives, and Explaining Religious-Secular Relations in the United States and the Philippines

Abstract

Abstract The interactions between religious and secular elites differ across societies, and those interactions may evolve differently even in the face of similarly controversial issues. What explains variation in relations between religious and secular elites in comparative settings? We highlight the links between religious change, political incentives, and the level of conflict or cooperation between religious and secular actors in public life. We illustrate distinct patterns of religious-secular relations with a paired comparison of two democracies with an intertwined history: the United States and the Philippines. In the United States, religious-secular relations have becoming increasingly conflictual as political incentives have changed in response to religious change. In the Philippines, in contrast, religious and secular actors maintain cooperative ties in part because relative religious stability has diminished political incentives to stoke religious-secular tensions.