A growing body of evidence suggests that the rise in religious disaffiliation can be partly attributed to a political backlash against the Religious Right. Yet the concept of “political backlash” remains undertheorized, limiting our ability to evaluate how backlash against the Religious Right has impacted the religious field as a whole. This article develops a general account of how political backlash against a radical actor can impact participants within a given field, distinguishing between broad backlash, narrow backlash, and counter backlash. It then applies this framework to the case of the religious field. An analysis of available evidence suggests that backlash against the Religious Right has had ripple effects beyond the rise of the “nones,” including a rise in “spiritual” identification, positive attention to the “Religious Left,” depoliticization of liberal religion, and purification and radicalization within the Religious Right itself. This article encourages religion scholars to connect dots between trends that have not been understood as related, and deepens our understanding of the relational nature of religious change. More generally, it offers a framework for understanding how backlash against radical actors can shape entire fields.

中文翻译：

---

政治反弹理论：评估宗教权利对宗教领域的影响

越来越多的证据表明，宗教分离的增加可以部分归因于对宗教权利的政治反弹。然而，“政治反弹”的概念仍然缺乏理论化，限制了我们评估对宗教权利的反弹如何影响整个宗教领域的能力。本文概述了针对激进行为者的政治反对如何影响特定领域内的参与者，区分广泛反对、狭义反对和反反对。然后，它将这个框架应用于宗教领域的案例。对现有证据的分析表明，对宗教右翼的强烈反对已经产生了超越“无神论者”崛起的连锁反应，包括“精神”认同的上升，对“宗教左翼”的积极关注，” 自由宗教的去政治化，以及宗教权利本身内部的净化和激进化。本文鼓励宗教学者将尚未被理解为相关的趋势之间的点点滴滴联系起来，并加深我们对宗教变革的关系性质的理解。更一般地说，它提供了一个框架，用于理解对激进行为者的强烈反对如何影响整个领域。