Fourth Annual International Symposium on Civilizational Populism: National and International Challenges’
May 22–23, 2025 | University of Warsaw
We are honored to present the keynote address by Professor Jocelyne Cesari, a leading authority on religion and politics, whose lecture, “A Relational Approach to Religion and Populism: Recontextualizing Civilizational Narratives in National and Global Contexts,” offered a groundbreaking exploration of how religious narratives and civilizational imaginaries are co-opted and reframed by populist movements in both national and transnational arenas.
Drawing on her extensive comparative research and most recent book We God’s Nations (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Professor Cesari challenges static interpretations of religious identity and civilizational tropes. Instead, she proposes a relational framework to understand how populists reconfigure religion and belonging in response to political, geopolitical, and social anxieties—often turning religion into a marker of national authenticity and global resistance.
This keynote engages deeply with the symposium’s central theme: how civilizational populism transforms the political landscape across continents, and how religious claims are mobilized to draw boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Professor Cesari’s insights illuminate how populists selectively mobilize Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism—not simply as belief systems, but as civilizational signifiers—to justify exclusionary politics and cultural hierarchies in an increasingly interconnected but divided world.
