The Communicative Frame of the Right as a New Form of Secularized Religiosity

Abstract

Building on Juan Linz’s well-known distinction between political religion and politicized religion, this contribution adopts the latter perspective, which involves the instrumentalization of religion for political purposes. Within this framework, the article advances the hypothesis that a new form of religiosity is emerging from the communicative practices of certain conservative right-wing and far-right party formations. Their narratives display a strong appeal to religious values by evoking forms of identification and belonging that are largely detached from lived religious practice. Drawing on three corpora comprising electoral programs, political discourses, and interview excerpts from Fratelli d’Italia (Italy), Alternative für Deutschland (Germany), and Vox (Spain), the analysis combines a keyword-in-context approach with qualitative content analysis. The resulting communicative frame is composed of terms and concepts that function as symbolic realities similar to those of traditional religion, such as religion itself, the family, and the homeland, which are rearticulated within fully secularized contexts. This symbolic and narrative reactivation of such elements not only constitutes a strategic use of religious references but also points to the emergence of a distinctively political form of religiosity, which operates both as a stimulus for electoral behavior and as a cohesive force for highly identity-oriented party communities.

1. Introduction

To better understand the relationship between religion and politics, it is necessary to return to the essential lesson of Juan Linz, which represents a milestone in the analysis of this relationship. Linz introduces the fundamental distinction between political religion and politicized religion, corresponding to the two different ways in which political movements and non-democratic regimes legitimize their proposals and their systems. This is a conceptual distinction of the utmost importance, as it makes it possible to grasp the different uses of religion.

In this regard, Linz distinguishes between the religious use of politics and the political use of religion. In the first case, the emergence of political religion is made possible by the conflictual separation between Church and State, in contrast to the liberal model of consensual separation between these two spheres. The State attempts to confine religion to the private sphere of the individual, replacing it with secular models of reference, the totalitarian ideologies of communism and Nazism, which are imposed even within the public religious sphere. In this sense, political religions, functioning as truly pseudo-scientific religious substitutes, enter into competition with preexisting religious traditions to the point of eliminating them.

In the second case, by contrast, the rise of politicized religion stems from the will of political leaders to politicize preexisting religion, transforming the State in a confessional direction, or more simply to strengthen and legitimize their own ideology. Far from being separate, politics and religion are here closely intertwined. It is precisely by virtue of this close connection that religion lends itself to legitimizing not so much the existing social order as, more specifically, a particular vision of the world and of politics. When pushed to its extreme consequences, religion becomes an ideological surrogate in support of political leadership (Linz 2006).

The vision of the world and of politics, of which religion is an indispensable foundation, should more precisely be defined as identity. The ideology of identity uses religion as a surrogate because, like other identity components, it is capable of defining who we are and of strengthening bonds within the group. Religion becomes a boundary line that helps define an us, a sense of belonging that distinguishes us from others and becomes the most important dimension of life. From a political standpoint, the rediscovery of identity is relatively recent, dating roughly to the early 1990s, and it now stands as one of the most significant dimensions of politics in Western democracies. This occurs above all on the right, in its populist versions, in which the people themselves, as a single and unifying entity, are sacralized. The underlying logic is that of us against them, or of the people against their enemies, who are intent on dividing and desacralizing them.

The aim of this article is to trace, frame, and analyze an emerging form of secularized religiosity within the political language of the populist and radical right. This phenomenon can today be observed within a party family that, since its emergence, has consistently presented itself as the defender of traditional religion in the public sphere, drawing on a set of themes from traditional religion, family being a case in point, that lend themselves particularly well to propagandistic repurposing. This use of traditional religion shapes, to a considerable extent, the political culture of these parties, giving rise to a recognizable identity with clearly defined constitutive principles. The aim pursued here takes into account the scope and complexity of this phenomenon, in which religious discourse functions as a common denominator across otherwise diverse national contexts. This party family is today variously labelled, yet one designation seems to command broad agreement, namely, that of populist, as several authors have underlined (Betz 2003; Minkenberg 2011; Mudde 2004; Papadopoulos 2000; Taggart 2000).

2. Theoretical Framework

This dynamic can be situated within the broader literature on the new cleavages that, since the 1990s, are held to have activated new party families across Western Europe. Of particular relevance here is the cleavage produced by processes of globalization, described as generating a dichotomous outcome between “winners” and “losers” (Kriesi et al. 2006). For the latter, this opposition has triggered a twofold reaction: one tied to material claims following the erosion of socioeconomic status, the other more closely linked to an affective response to the radical transformation of the values that define the national community and its integrity (Bornschier 2010). The question of values thus becomes central again, as the so-called “losers” of globalization attempt to remain anchored to a system of traditional values in which religion functions as an indispensable pillar, defending stricter moral standards (Ignazi 2003) against the perceived libertarian drift of the globalized left. This claim should not be read as an attempt to reassert a confessional logic, but rather as a defense of culture and identity pursued through an exclusivist lens (Arato and Cohen 2017), one in which religious identity is transformed into a discursive stronghold against whoever is made to represent the “other.”

Since right-wing populism cannot exist, in its own logic, without a clearly identifiable collective subject, the question of identity becomes decisive, and its construction cannot do without its principal glue, namely, the appeal to traditional religion. This identitarian glue, tied to a system of religious values, beliefs, rules, and institutions, creates not only a sense of commonality and belonging but, more importantly, defines a boundary between a community, or more precisely a “people,” and those who remain outside it, such as those who do not situate themselves within the traditional religious horizon. What is at stake here is not the influence of religion in its broadest sense, but the use that a given political family makes of religious influence within society. Throughout history, Christianity has been associated with a range of different political ideologies, from the right to Christian socialism, and the notion of influence should accordingly be read in light of the selection that groups, movements, and parties make from the contents of scripture, magisterial teaching, and the messages of religious hierarchies, from which adherence to one theological orientation rather than another may follow (Stepan 2000). More precisely, the influence of traditional religion on politics can occur in different ways, whereby the sacred exerts influence as a system of values, as religious structures, or through groups, movements, and parties (Haynes 1997). It is in this latter sense that the present study examines how the parties under analysis exercise their influence through a discourse that places religious beliefs at its center. This does not necessarily make them confessional parties, but parties that constitutively ground their ideology in traditional religion. Their capacity for influence depends on the sensitivity of a more or less significant share of public opinion, depending on national context, to this religious appeal, without disregarding what Norris and Inglehart (2007) describe as the persistence of a religious sentiment that continues to pervade human societies. Finally, a public discourse grounded in a religious frame allows access to what Bourdieu (2013) calls “symbolic capital,” capable of mobilizing symbolic interests that underlie both political-electoral mobilization and its legitimation (Roy 2016).

Building on the conceptual distinction outlined above, identity can be understood as the central ideological dimension through which religious references acquire political significance (Linz 2006). The contemporary political landscape, particularly the “fourth wave” of the populist radical right theorized by von Beyme (1988) and Mudde (2007), appears to provide a clear illustration of how cultural and symbolic elements are mobilized to define political belonging. Seeking to achieve normalization and present themselves as legitimate actors, these formations seem to have largely marginalized openly racist rhetoric. Instead, as Wodak (2015) and Marzouki et al. (2016) point out, their discourse has shifted toward debates concerning gender equality, secularism, and religion. Within this context, faith appears to operate less as a strictly theological doctrine and more as a central marker for internal cohesion.

Religious belonging tends to be the strongest and most durable form of identity, and appears to turn the concept of the people into a powerful myth, using highly symbolic narratives to justify a specific sociopolitical order and establish an emotional bond (Canovan 1981). This process reflects the core of populism, defined as a thin-centered ideology that divides society into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups: the pure people and the corrupt elite (Mudde 2004). Within this Manichean framework, which has been extensively analyzed by scholars such as Brubaker (2017a, 2017b) and Zúquete (2017), this dynamic solidifies the people as a sacred entity. Stemming from the national populism described by Taguieff (1995), the community is discursively granted a form of salvific sacredness (Yilmaz and Morieson 2021) and is often portrayed as inherently virtuous, suggesting an instinctive moral compass. This sacralization of politics appears to rely heavily on the figure of the populist leader, a dynamic that Linz (2006) alongside DeHanas and Shterin (2018) describe as a potential surrogate for traditional religion. Echoing the political theology of Schmitt (1922), the leader may act not merely as an institutional delegate but as the physical embodiment of this collective identity (Pérez-Agote and Aleman 2023).

This worldview seems to fuel a constant tension with anyone perceived as an enemy, driving rigid and antagonistic political orientations (Urbinati 2020). By claiming the supremacy of the popular will, this ideology defines a “non-people” that includes everything outside the historical, territorial, and cultural homogeneity of the group (Viviani 2020). In addressing the nature of this homogeneous in-group, Zanatta (2023) distinguishes between the profane and the “sacred people.” The latter is central to narratives proposing a new form of religiosity, as it is framed as a natural, homogeneous community permanently united by historical roots and destiny. Conceived as a living organism in the divine image, the sacred people appear to function as a bridge between immanence and transcendence. Within populist frameworks, this vision tends to portray the community as the “chosen” and purest, defined primarily through its stark opposition to perceived “enemies” such as cosmopolitan elites, mass immigration, and secularizing modernity. This exclusionary logic appears to be sustained by an ideological core that intertwines authoritarianism and populism with nativism (Peker 2022; Beuter et al. 2023).

Because nativist ideologies inherently view non-native elements as an existential threat to the nation-state (Mudde 2007), they tend to generate a strong impulse to expel these out-groups from the sociopolitical arena, which may lead to various forms of explicit or latent exclusion (Betz 2003). To preserve the community against multiculturalist theories and class divisions, this fideistic conception of the people appears to promote ideals of cultural purity (Diamanti and Lazar 2018; Mény 2019; Canovan 1999). The resulting ideological framework is frequently eclectic, attempting to balance modernizing ambitions with the restoration of past models (Zanatta 2002).

This dynamic can be interpreted in light of broader analyses of conservative political culture. As noted by Veneziani (2002), conservative thought is rooted in inherited bonds, beginning with religious affiliation, which provides the foundation for collective identity and social cohesion. Political belonging is thus conceived not merely as an institutional relationship but as an expression of deeper cultural and historical continuity. Within this framework, religion contributes to the construction of a shared symbolic universe that reinforces collective identity and political legitimacy.

A central role within this symbolic structure is played by the family. Conservative political discourse frequently presents the family as the primary site in which identity is formed and transmitted across generations. The family functions as a bridge between individual and collective belonging, linking personal identity to broader cultural and national continuity. As argued by Lakoff (2008), the family operates as a powerful cognitive and communicative frame capable of structuring political perception and providing a model through which broader social and political relationships are understood. Because family-based frames are deeply embedded in everyday experience, they possess strong emotional resonance and serve as particularly effective tools for political communication.

Within identity-centered ideological frameworks, family, religion, and homeland form an interconnected symbolic constellation. Religion provides the cultural and moral foundation, the family ensures the transmission of identity, and the homeland represents the territorial space in which this identity is preserved and protected. Together, these elements create a coherent symbolic structure that supports narratives centered on continuity, sovereignty, and collective belonging.

This symbolic configuration seems to acquire particular relevance in contemporary political contexts characterized by advanced secularization. Recent studies highlight the compatibility and growing standardization of this religious resurgence within a highly secularized European landscape (Marzouki et al. 2016; Morieson 2021; Peker 2021; Grau Innerarity 2023; Cremer 2023). Although secularization has reduced the direct influence of religious institutions, religious symbols and references continue to play a central role in political communication. As suggested by frame theory, symbolic language rooted in religious and cultural tradition functions as a powerful instrument for shaping political perception, reinforcing collective identity, and mobilizing political support (Lakoff 2008).

In this sense, religion in contemporary political discourse appears to function primarily as a cultural and symbolic resource rather than as a purely theological system. Often instrumentalized for ideological interests (Marzouki et al. 2016), religion seems to be used to construct a civilizational framework based on an identitarian Christianity (Brubaker 2017b; Giorgi 2022). This appears to create a distinction between a good “us” and a bad “them” (Roy 2016), defending the Occident against an external “Other” frequently identified as Islam (Wodak 2015).

This dynamic can be observed across various national contexts, where the public display of religious items serves as a powerful symbolic resource. From Donald Trump’s use of the Bible and Vladimir Putin’s appeals to national orthodoxy, to the rhetoric adopted by Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Italian party Fratelli d’Italia, faith appears to be increasingly utilized as a political tool. As highlighted by Fatigante (2023), this instrumentalization of religious references often aims to mobilize popular sentiment and compensate for potential vulnerabilities in political action. This theoretical perspective provides the analytical framework for the empirical analysis that follows.

3. Materials and Methods

The analysis draws on a corpus of documents, including political speeches, electoral programs, and interview excerpts, produced by prominent figures from three European right-wing parties: Fratelli d’Italia (Italy), Alternative für Deutschland (Germany), and Vox (Spain). The figures whose communication was included were selected on the basis of two combined criteria, namely, the occupation of a top position within the party organization and national public visibility. For Fratelli d’Italia this corresponds to Giorgia Meloni, for Alternative für Deutschland to the parliamentary group co-chairs Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, and for Vox to Santiago Abascal. The corpus also includes official party statements and parliamentary initiatives issued under the party’s name, which were included insofar as they reflect the same institutional line of communication.

The selection of these three parties reflects a most-similar-systems logic (Przeworski and Teune 1970). Fratelli d’Italia, Alternative für Deutschland, and Vox appear as radical right formations that have undergone a broadly comparable process of normalization within consolidated democracies characterized by pluralist media environments (Mudde 2007), and each mobilizes a civilizational reference to Christianity as part of its identity discourse. Cases such as Hungary’s Fidesz were deliberately left outside this design. In Hungary, Christianity has been nationalized at the constitutional level, with the state exercising a marked degree of control over media and religious institutions (Ádám and Bozóki 2016), a configuration that seems closer to what Linz (2006) describes as political religion than to the politicization of religion within secularized contexts that this study seeks to address.

The corpus covers communication produced between 2017 and 2025, a period that corresponds to the consolidation and electoral rise of the three parties and allows their identity-based communication to be observed across comparable phases of political visibility. It should be noted that the documents were selected on thematic grounds, that is on the basis of their relevance to religion, identity, and cultural belonging, and not through keyword searches. The keyword list described below was applied only to generate the keyword-in-context extractions, and did not serve as a criterion for document inclusion.

The corpus is made up of official party communication produced within this period. For Fratelli d’Italia it includes the programmatic document Le Tesi di Trieste (2017), the 2024 European electoral program, and six public speeches delivered by Meloni between 2022 and 2023, covering party events, electoral campaigns, the programmatic conference, and the investiture speech. For Alternative für Deutschland it includes the 2025 federal electoral programme Zeit für Deutschland, the 2025 Leitantrag, and four press statements issued by Weidel and Chrupalla between March 2018 and July 2024: a parliamentary speech by Chrupalla on migration and the economy (27 March 2018), a statement by Weidel on the government’s migration summit (15 March 2023), a joint statement by Weidel and Chrupalla following the Conference of Minister-Presidents on migration (7 November 2023), and a statement by Weidel on border controls ahead of regional elections (26 July 2024). For Vox it includes the 2023 electoral program, the 2024 European elections program, and a set of party statements and parliamentary initiatives issued between 2021 and 2024, addressing themes such as religious symbolism, religious pluralism policy, and the persecution of Christians abroad.

Social media content was not included, since posts are typically shorter, often produced by party staff rather than by the figures themselves, and shaped by platform-specific dynamics that differ across the three countries, which would make them difficult to compare with the more formal and party-sanctioned communication analyzed here. The corpus thus includes nineteen documents in total, eight for Fratelli d’Italia, six for Alternative für Deutschland, and five for Vox. Since documents were identified on thematic grounds at the outset, all the material initially selected was retained for analysis.

A keyword-in-context (KWIC) analysis served as the starting point for the Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) and was performed with the R (R Core Team 2021) package quanteda (Benoit et al. 2018). Keywords referring to the relationship between politics and religion were identified and analyzed in their immediate textual context in order to examine how related concepts and rhetorical elements were employed in political sources from the three countries under study (Moreno-Ortiz 2025). QCA was then used to provide a deeper qualitative examination of the textual data through systematic coding and interpretation (Hsieh and Shannon 2005) using MAXQDA, a software tool for qualitative and mixed-methods data analysis (VERBI Software 2021), for the Italian and German corpora.

Starting from the keyword-in-context segments, we carried out an initial round of open coding to identify recurrent thematic elements. We did not use factor analysis, since the material consists of qualitatively coded textual segments rather than quantitative variables, and an interpretive, category-building approach fits this kind of data better.

The designed scheme includes seven subcodes distributed across three macro-categories. “Identity and Cultural Frames” groups “West/Civilization Frame,” covering references to national and Western civilization as a shared cultural and value system rooted in the classical and Christian heritage of Europe; “Christian Roots,” covering explicit references to Christianity as a foundational element of national or European identity, often invoked against secularizing pressures; and “Islam as a Cultural Threat,” covering Islam framed as incompatible with national values or as a source of cultural and social risk. “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames” groups “Defense of the Family and National Continuity,” covering the traditional family presented as a pillar of the demographic and cultural continuity of the nation, and “Supranational Identity Standardization,” covering supranational institutions or ideologies framed as flattening national and cultural identities. “Conflict and Defense Frames” groups “Aggression/Invasion Frame,” covering migration or ideological pressure described through the language of invasion or external aggression, and “Defense of the Homeland,” covering calls to protect national territory and borders. The same scheme was applied to all three corpora.

The reliability of the coding process finds further support in the fact that, once the keyword-in-context segments were re-extracted in R, the Italian and German coding was reviewed against this newly extracted material, while the Spanish corpus was coded in its entirety on the original-language text. This process functioned, in effect, as an internal consistency check on how the codebook was applied across the three corpora.

In order to provide the KWIC basis for the analysis in MAXQDA, a set of keywords was identified deductively from the core concepts of the theoretical framework outlined above, namely, religion, family, homeland, identity, civilization, sovereignty, and the construction of an external threat, including references to Islam and migration.

Italian: “aggress*,” “battagli*,” “civiltà,” “Crist*/giudaico-cristian*,” “cultur*,” “Dio,” “famigli*,” “gender,” “identit*,” “immigra*/migra*,” “indipenden*,” “inva*,” “Islam*/musulman*,” “libertà,” “occident*,” “patria,” “popol*,” “radic*,” “religio*,” “sovranis*,” “tradizion*.”

German: “Abendland*/christlich-abendländ*”, “Aggress*”, “Bevölker*/Volk*”, “Christ*/christlich-jüdisch*/jüdisch-christ*”, “Einmarsch*/Invasion*/Überfall*”, “Einwander*/Flüchtling*/Migration*”, “Familie*”, “Freiheit*”, “Gender,” “Gott*”, “Heimat*/Vaterland*”, “Identität*”, “Islam*/Muslim*”, “Kampf*”, “Kultur*”, “Migrant*,” “Religi*”, “Souverän*”, “Tradition*”, “Unabhängig*”, “Wurzel*”, “Zivilisation*”.

Spanish: “agres*,” “batall*/luch*,” “civiliz*,” “crist*/judeocristian*,” “cultur*,” “Dios,” “famili*,” “géner*,” “identi*,” “inmigra*/migra*,” “independen*,” “invas*,” “islam*/musulman*,” “libertad,” “occident*,” “patria,” “pueblo*/popular*,” “raíc**,” “religi*,” “soberan*,” “tradici*.”

For all three corpora, the KWIC analysis was conducted on the texts in their original language, using keyword lists constructed separately for Italian, German, and Spanish. For the Spanish corpus, given that the coder is not a native speaker, an Italian translation was used as a support during coding, while the coded unit always remained the original Spanish segment.

A 10-word window before and after each keyword was selected in order to ensure adequate contextualization. Asterisks were used to capture all morphological variants of the keywords. Associations that were irrelevant to the research focus or too fragmented to allow contextual interpretation were removed, and associations referring to the same textual unit but retrieved through different keywords were counted only once.

The code co-occurrence maps presented in the Results section were generated in R using the igraph (Csárdi and Nepusz 2006) and ggraph (Pedersen 2024) packages, based on the co-occurrence matrix of subcodes derived from the coding described above.

4. Results

4.1. Italy

The exploratory KWIC analysis of the Italian corpus identified 389 associations using the “kwic” function provided by quanteda. After data cleaning, 118 valid associations remained. Irrelevant or overly fragmented items were removed, and associations referring to the same textual unit but identified through different keywords were counted only once.

These segments were subsequently subjected to qualitative content analysis with MAXQDA. Multiple codes could be applied to the same segment in order to capture the different dimensions present in the material. Three macro-categories were identified inductively: “Identity and Cultural Frames,” “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames,” and “Conflict and Defense Frames.”

Within “Identity and Cultural Frames,” three subcodes were developed: “West/Civilization Frame,” “Christian Roots,” and “Islam as a Cultural Threat.”

“Sovereignty and Supranational Frames” comprised two subcodes: “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” and “Supranational Identity Standardization.”

Finally, “Conflict and Defense Frames” included two subcodes: “Aggression/Invasion Frame,” referring both to the rhetoric of migration as invasion and to that of ideological attack, and “Defense of the Homeland.”

Subcodes associated with “Identity and Cultural Frames” were applied to 84 segments, making this the most prevalent category. This was followed by “Conflict and Defense Frames,” which accounted for 44 coded segments, and “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames” with 31.

Within “Identity and Cultural Frames,” the most frequently applied subcode was “West/Civilization Frame,” which occurred in 62 segments, followed by “Christian Roots” (14) and “Islam as Cultural Threat” (8).

Regarding “Conflict and Defense Frames,” “Defense of the Homeland” emerged as the most prevalent subcode (34 occurrences), while “Aggression/Invasion Frame” was applied to 10 segments.

Finally, within “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames,” the most frequently used subcode was “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” (18 occurrences), followed by “Supranational Identity Standardization” with 13.

Overall, the Italian corpus shows a marked emphasis on identity-related themes, particularly with regard to references to Western civilization and Italian cultural belonging. Within the category “Conflict and Defense Frames,” “Defense of the Homeland” is the most frequently applied subcode. Likewise, within “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames,” “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” appears as the most frequently used subcode.

Further insights emerge from the map of the subcodes used for the qualitative content analysis (Figure 1), which shows the presence of three main clusters. The map is based on code co-occurrence patterns across the corpus: codes that tend to be applied within similar discursive contexts are positioned closer to one another, while those that rarely share such contexts appear farther apart.

A first cluster brings together “West/Civilization Frame,” “Christian Roots,” “Defense of the Homeland,” and “Islam as a Cultural Threat,” which appear closely and repeatedly connected, suggesting a tendency for these subcodes to be applied within the same textual segments; “Aggression/Invasion Frame” also connects into this cluster, though somewhat more loosely, through its links to “Christian Roots” and “Defense of the Homeland.” A second, smaller connection links “Aggression/Invasion Frame” to “Supranational Identity Standardization” and to “Defense of the Family and National Continuity,” the latter appearing at the edge of the map and linked mainly through this single connection rather than to the rest of the network.

4.2. Germany

The “kwic” function extracted a total of 772 associations, reduced to 133 after data cleaning, following the same criteria applied to the Italian corpus. The manual coding process with MAXQDA reflected the prominence of the code “Conflict and Defense Frames,” with 68 coded segments. Specifically, the two subcodes of the category were distributed quite evenly: “Defense of the Homeland” with 38 segments and “Aggression/Invasion Frame” with 30.

The second most used category was “Identity and Cultural Frames,” with 65 coded segments. The most prevalent subcode was “West/Civilization Frame” (40 segments), followed by “Islam as Cultural Threat” (20) and “Christian Roots” (5). “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames” accounted for the lowest number of coded segments (27), distributed as follows: “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” (21) and “Supranational Identity Standardization” (6).

Overall, the German corpus shows a frequent use of subcodes associated with “Conflict and Defense Frames,” which represent the most commonly applied category. Within this category, the two subcodes “Defense of the Homeland” and “Aggression/Invasion Frame” display a relatively similar number of coded segments.

Within “Identity and Cultural Frames,” the most frequently applied subcode is “West/Civilization Frame,” followed by “Islam as Cultural Threat,” while references coded as “Christian Roots” occur less frequently. Regarding “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames,” a higher number of segments were coded with “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” than with “Supranational Identity Standardization.”

The map of subcodes (Figure 2) shows the presence of two clusters in the German corpus.

A first cluster brings together “West/Civilization Frame,” “Aggression/Invasion Frame,” and “Supranational Identity Standardization,” which appear closely and repeatedly connected, suggesting these three subcodes are frequently applied within the same textual segments; “Islam as a Cultural Threat” and “Defense of the Homeland” seem to sit at the edge of this same cluster, each linked mainly to “West/Civilization Frame” and “Aggression/Invasion Frame” rather than forming a distinct group of their own. A second, separate cluster includes “Christian Roots” and “Defense of the Family and National Continuity,” which appear notably distant from the rest of the network and do not seem directly linked to one another, suggesting these two subcodes are applied in fairly isolated segments of the German corpus.

4.3. Spain

The KWIC analysis of the Spanish corpus produced a total of 474 associations. After data cleaning, following the same criteria applied to the Italian and German material, 132 valid associations were identified. These associations formed the basis for the qualitative content analysis, which applied the same coding scheme developed for the Italian and German corpora. Given the discontinuation of MAXQDA licensing during the course of the revision, the Spanish segments were coded manually within a structured spreadsheet, following the same codebook and macro-category scheme that had been applied to the Italian and German material.

A total of 62 segments were coded with subcodes related to “Identity and Cultural Frames,” making this the most frequently used category, followed by “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames” with 53 coded segments, and “Conflict and Defense Frames” with 32.

Within “Identity and Cultural Frames,” the most frequently applied subcode was “West/Civilization Frame” (42 occurrences), followed by “Christian Roots” (11) and “Islam as a Cultural Threat” (9).

Regarding “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames,” the most prominent subcode was “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” (27 occurrences), followed by “Supranational Identity Standardization” (26).

Finally, within “Conflict and Defense Frames,” “Aggression/Invasion Frame” was the most frequently applied subcode (17 occurrences), while “Defense of the Homeland” was used in 15 segments.

Overall, the Spanish corpus shows a higher number of coded segments associated with “Identity and Cultural Frames” compared to the other two categories. Within this category, subcodes related to civilizational and religious references are the most frequently applied. “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames” are also applied to a substantial number of segments, with a relatively balanced distribution between “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” and “Supranational Identity Standardization.” By contrast, subcodes associated with “Conflict and Defense Frames” are applied less frequently than those related to identity and sovereignty.

The map of subcodes (Figure 3) highlights patterns of proximity among the codes applied to the Spanish corpus. Two main clusters can be observed.

A first cluster groups “West/Civilization Frame” and “Christian Roots,” which look closely connected and suggest these two subcodes often show up together in the same segments; “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” seems to sit more at the edge of this cluster, linked mainly to “West/Civilization Frame” rather than to “Christian Roots” directly. A second cluster brings together “Aggression/Invasion Frame” and “Supranational Identity Standardization,” reflecting their recurrent joint use in the material, with “West/Civilization Frame” seeming to bridge this cluster and the first one. Finally, “Islam as a Cultural Threat” and “Defense of the Homeland” sit at the edges of the map and do not appear directly linked to each other; each seems to connect instead into one of the other two clusters, “Islam as a Cultural Threat” toward “Aggression/Invasion Frame” and “Defense of the Homeland” toward “Supranational Identity Standardization.”

Taken together, the results point to both shared patterns and differences across the three national contexts. Identity and cultural frames are more frequently applied within the Italian and Spanish corpora, whereas the German material is characterized by a higher use of conflict- and defense-related framing. References to sovereignty and supranational dynamics are present across all cases, though with varying intensity and thematic focus, with the Spanish corpus showing the highest number of coded segments associated with this category.

5. Discussion

The discussion that follows addresses the main results of the analysis.

Taken together, the three cases suggest that religious frames play an important role in shaping how identity, belonging, and perceptions of threat are articulated, even though they take different forms across national contexts.

5.1. Italy

Overall, the Italian corpus suggests a pronounced focus on identity-related themes, particularly with regard to references to Western and Italian civilization. This emphasis appears consistent with the frequent use of the subcode “Defense of the Homeland” within the category “Conflict and Defense Frames,” indicating an association between civilizational references and homeland-related rhetoric.

Likewise, the prominence of “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” within “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames” indicates that family-related themes occupy a relevant position in the Italian material. The relative isolation of this subcode in the code map, linked mainly to “Aggression/Invasion Frame” rather than to the rest of the network, may suggest that family functions here as a more self-contained reference. This is suggested by the corpus itself, where the electoral program states that “defending the family and our identity also means defending our children” (Fratelli d’Italia 2024), a formulation that ties family directly to identity without an explicit religious anchor.

The clustering of “West/Civilization Frame,” “Christian Roots,” “Defense of the Homeland,” and “Islam as a Cultural Threat” suggests a close connection among references to Christianity and identity belonging as elements to be protected against religious differences. The Tesi di Trieste describe Italy as part of the “cradle, together with Greece, of Western civilization and its system of values, founded on freedom” (Fratelli d’Italia 2017), while in public speeches Meloni ties this same civilizational claim explicitly to Christian heritage, describing freedom and democracy as “precious fruits stemming from the classical and Judeo-Christian roots of Europe.” The same document also oppose “to remove the symbols of our Christian tradition in the name of a distorted secularism,” and frames the “ongoing process of Islamization of the European continent” as a threat from which “Patriots” must defend national identity, which may explain why “Islam as a Cultural Threat” clusters so closely with the civilizational and homeland-related codes.

“Aggression/Invasion Frame” connects into this same configuration and reaches toward “Supranational Identity Standardization.” An example is the program’s commitment to “keep fighting ideologies that seek to deny identities, such as gender theory” (Fratelli d’Italia 2024).

This interpretation appears consistent with the theoretical framework outlined above, in which family and religion function as central symbolic resources for the construction and transmission of collective identity (Veneziani 2002; Lakoff 2008). In this perspective, family represents the primary site of identity formation, while religion provides the cultural foundation that reinforces collective belonging.

It also seems to reflect the historical trajectory of Italian conservative culture. During the dominance of the Christian Democratic party, religious political discourse was largely mediated through Catholic institutions, reducing its explicit visibility without eliminating the symbolic link between religion and political identity. This link re-emerged following the crisis of Catholic political representation and remains consistent with Schmitt’s (1922) view that political communities are grounded in shared symbolic belonging, helping explain the persistence of religious identity frames in the Italian corpus. In this context, the populist leader tends to act as the physical embodiment of this collective identity (Pérez-Agote and Aleman 2023).

This symbolic configuration seems to be reflected in political discourse. For example, Giorgia Meloni declared in a widely circulated speech: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian,” presenting familial, national, and religious identities as inseparable elements of the same symbolic structure. Similarly, in public speeches she emphasized the need to defend “God, homeland, and family,” explicitly linking religious tradition, territorial belonging, and national identity. As observed by Fatigante (2023), this instrumentalization of religious references appears designed to mobilize popular sentiment and construct a cohesive political narrative. Comparable themes emerge in official party documents. The Tesi di Trieste (Fratelli d’Italia 2017) explicitly refer to the need to develop a “philosophy of identity” aimed at preserving European civilization and resisting cultural and ideological homogenization. Within this framework, identity is articulated through interconnected references to religion, family, and homeland, which together form the symbolic foundation of political belonging.

Further empirical evidence confirms the centrality of identity and religion within this discursive configuration. In public speeches delivered at various political events, Meloni framed the defense of national identity as the central challenge of the contemporary era, warning against globalist forces allegedly seeking to weaken national sovereignty and cultural traditions. This discursive emphasis appears consistent with the prominence of the “Supranational Identity Standardization” code identified in the analysis, suggesting that references to religion, identity, and family are frequently articulated in opposition to supranational actors and processes perceived as threatening national and cultural distinctiveness (Mudde 2004; Zúquete 2017). This framing of the family as a pillar of cultural continuity and social order is consistent with broader currents in Meloni’s public self-presentation (see also Meloni 2021).

Within this discursive framework, family, religion, and homeland emerge as key symbolic elements for preserving collective belonging and political autonomy. Religion, in particular, functions primarily as a cultural marker that defines the boundaries of the political community and reinforces narratives of continuity and protection, distancing the in-group from a culturally defined “non-people” (Betz 2003; Viviani 2020).

Taken together, these findings indicate that religion plays a central role in identity-based political discourse within the Italian corpus. Religious references provide symbolic legitimacy to narratives of belonging, sovereignty, and cultural continuity, contributing to a coherent ideological framework structured around family, homeland, and religious heritage (Linz 2006). What emerged so far seems to correspond to what Haynes (1997) describes as the mobilization of the sacred through groups, movements, and parties. What circulates in Fratelli d’Italia’s discourse does not appear to ground its discursive strategy on traditional religion, but it appears to focus on a selection of its themes, family and civilizational belonging above all, which lend themselves to identitarian and propagandistic use (Stepan 2000). This selective use appears to function as a form of symbolic capital (Bourdieu 2013), capable of mobilizing belonging without requiring doctrinal adherence, and may help explain why a party family consistently described as populist (Betz 2003; Mudde 2004; Taggart 2000) can draw so heavily on religious language while remaining, in practice, largely indifferent to religious observance.

5.2. Germany

The German corpus appears to place greater emphasis on conflict-related framing than the Italian and Spanish cases, as reflected in the prominence of “Conflict and Defense Frames” and the relatively even distribution of its two subcodes, “Defense of the Homeland” and “Aggression/Invasion Frame.” Within this configuration, religious references emerge as a fundamental dimension of the discourse, contributing to the organization of narratives of threat, defense, and belonging.

With regard to identity-related themes, the frequent use of the “West/Civilization Frame,” together with recurrent references to Islam framed as a cultural threat, suggests that religion plays a central role in boundary construction, distinguishing an implicitly Christian or Western in-group from culturally and religiously defined out-groups (Betz 2003; Roy 2016). References to “Christian Roots” are comparatively less frequent.

The clustering of subcodes reflects this distinction. “West/Civilization Frame,” “Aggression/Invasion Frame,” and “Supranational Identity Standardization” appear closely and repeatedly connected, with “Islam as a Cultural Threat” and “Defense of the Homeland” at the edge of this same cluster and further illustrating the Manichean division inherent to populism (Yilmaz and Morieson 2021). By contrast, “Christian Roots” and “Defense of the Family and National Continuity” form a separate cluster, disconnected from the rest of the network, which suggests that religious heritage and family policy, are not part of the dominant conflict-oriented discourse.

This interpretation is further supported by empirical evidence from party documents and political speeches. In its federal election program, Alternative für Deutschland explicitly frames the family as the basis of collective continuity, declaring its commitment to “strong families for a strong society” (Alternative für Deutschland 2025) and linking family policy directly to the future of the nation. In this perspective, the family is treated as the primary site of cultural and demographic reproduction, in line with Veneziani (2002) and Lakoff (2008), though occupying a more self-contained position in the discourse than its counterpart in the Italian corpus.

The civilizational and conflict-oriented dimension of the corpus is instead reinforced across multiple sources. The Alternative für Deutschland (2025) program explicitly warns against cultural transformation associated with migration and declares its intention to resist “further Islamization,” consistent with the prominence of the “Islam as a Cultural Threat” frame identified in the analysis and suggesting that Islam is perceived as a threat to a homogenous national and cultural identity (Mudde 2007; Wodak 2015). This interpretation appears reinforced in political speeches, where migration is described as an “out-of-control migration crisis” threatening national stability and institutional capacity (Weidel 2023), while party leaders emphasize the need to secure national borders and halt migration flows in order to preserve social cohesion and political order (Chrupalla 2023).

Overall, these findings suggest an identity-based ideological framework in which the boundary between a Western, implicitly Christian in-group and religiously or culturally defined out-groups is drawn primarily through conflict-related and civilizational references, rather than through an explicit appeal to religious heritage.

In contrast to Italy, in the German corpus, it is Christian roots and family, rather than civilizational and homeland-related frames, that remain comparatively separate from the conflict-oriented core of the discourse. This may suggest a more circumscribed use of religion as symbolic capital (Bourdieu 2013), consistent with Germany’s more mixed confessional setting. Nevertheless, religion here seems to operate through the party itself as the vehicle of a selectively religious political identity (Haynes 1997).

5.3. Spain

The Spanish corpus shares several features with the Italian case, particularly with regard to the prominence of “Identity and Cultural Frames” and the recurrent presence of civilizational references. At the same time, some differences can be observed. Compared to the Italian material, references to Christian roots and to Islam framed as a cultural threat appear relatively more frequent in the Spanish corpus. By contrast, frames explicitly related to conflict are less dominant overall, although within this category the “Aggression/Invasion Frame” is more frequently applied than “Defense of the Homeland.” This pattern may point to a discursive connection between representations of migration and broader constructions of cultural threat.

A further distinctive element of the Spanish corpus concerns the use of “Sovereignty and Supranational Frames.” These frames are applied to a substantial number of segments and display a relatively balanced distribution of subcodes. Alongside references to family and national continuity, critiques of supranational identity standardization occupy a notable position. This configuration suggests that sovereignty concerns are articulated not only in demographic or cultural terms but also through perceived processes of ideological or normative homogenization. This trend appears more prominent here than in the other two corpora, reflecting the populist tension between a pure national community and supranational elites (Mudde 2004; Zúquete 2017).

Moreover, the clustering suggests a link between “West/Civilization Frame,” “Christian Roots,” and “Defense of the Family and National Continuity,” although family-related references seem to connect mainly through the civilizational frame. For example, the electoral program (Vox 2023a) frames family in explicitly civilizational terms, referring to “Fueros of a civil nature in their private dimension, family, marriage, succession,” presented as elements that have been “denatured and degraded” by supranational and ideological pressures. By contrast, the party’s own defense of Christian heritage is articulated separately, in a 2023 parliamentary initiative stating that “Western civilization cannot be understood without the three pillars on which it was built: Christian tradition, Greek philosophy and Roman law,” and that “Christianity is an essential part of Spanish historical identity” (Vox 2023b). This may indicate that family-related themes are discursively mostly positioned alongside references to civilizational continuity.

This interpretation is further supported by the cluster combining “Aggression/Invasion Frame” and “Supranational Identity Standardization,” which may suggest a recurrent association between representations of migration as an invasive process and critiques of supranational normative frameworks perceived as contributing to cultural standardization. The electoral program frames this concern in explicitly territorial terms, calling for the protection of national territories “against invasions promoted by neighbouring states or international organizations,” while elsewhere denouncing “massive immigration encouraged by the Moroccan government” and pledging to “defend our sovereignty against foreign interference” (Vox 2023a).

Finally, “Islam as a Cultural Threat” and “Defense of the Homeland” do not appear directly linked to one another in the network; rather, each seems to connect into a different cluster, with the program calling for “the protection of Spaniards against jihadism and the growing Islamization of Spain” on one side, and, on the other, a 2024 parliamentary initiative condemning the persecution of Christians abroad as an attack on “the world’s most persecuted religious group” (Vox 2024). This may suggest that cultural and religious difference, on one hand, and territorial defense, on the other, are articulated through somewhat distinct argumentative paths, even though both remain part of a broader framing in which the homeland is represented as a space that may require protection from culturally defined external challenges (Yilmaz and Morieson 2021).

Further empirical evidence appears consistent with this interpretation. Within the Spanish corpus, family, religion, and national identity are frequently intertwined, contributing to a narrative oriented toward cultural continuity. The electoral program (Vox 2023a) presents the nation as an inherited community that should be protected and transmitted across generations, describing Spain as “an inheritance received from our ancestors that we must preserve and improve in order to transmit it to future generations.” In this sense, national identity tends to be framed as a historically grounded community shaped by shared traditions, in line with Veneziani (2002).

Within this framework, the family is presented as a central social institution linked to demographic continuity and national sustainability. The electoral program (Vox 2023a) refers to the promotion of policies that “allow family stability” and connects demographic concerns to the long-term future of the nation. As suggested by Lakoff (2008), the family functions here as a key reference supporting collective continuity, similarly to the Italian and German cases.

Furthermore, political communication and campaign materials associate Spanish identity with Christian heritage, presenting Christianity as a significant element of national and Western civilization and helping to construct a civilizational framework based on an identitarian Christianity (Brubaker 2017b; Giorgi 2022). Within this discursive configuration, Christianity appears to function primarily as a cultural marker that helps distinguish the national community from external others.

This dimension appears particularly evident in relation to Islam. Immigration, especially when associated with Islam, tends to be framed as a potential challenge to cultural continuity and national cohesion, creating a distinction between a virtuous “us” and a threatening external “Other” (Roy 2016; Wodak 2015). Political discourse frequently connects the defense of sovereignty and national identity with the protection of cultural and religious traditions.

Taken together, these elements suggest a broader interconnection between family, religion, and homeland. In this context, religion appears primarily as a cultural resource mobilized in support of narratives of national continuity, collective identity, and political belonging, in line with the other analyzed cases (Linz 2006).

5.4. Comparative Analysis

Across the three cases, a further shared pattern concerns how “Supranational Identity Standardization” relates to migration- and religion-related frames. Rather than diverging by country, the three corpora appear to converge on the fact that “Supranational Identity Standardization” is most consistently connected to “Aggression/Invasion Frame,” while “Islam as a Cultural Threat” tends to constitute a more distinct discursive path. This suggests that critiques of supranational governance are primarily rooted in the framing of migration as invasion, with religiously and culturally defined threats such as Islam functioning as a connected topic. Taken together, these patterns are consistent with the populist and nativist core of these parties (Mudde 2007; Peker 2022; Beuter et al. 2023) and appear to function as a rhetorical device to delineate the common “enemies” of a people perceived as sharing historical roots and a distinctive, threatened culture (Zanatta 2023).

This convergence across the three national contexts resonates with the cleavage-theory account outlined in the theoretical framework, according to which the opposition between “winners” and “losers” of globalization structures a shared political reaction across Western Europe (Kriesi et al. 2006). The recurrent framing of supranational governance, migration, and cultural standardization as threats to national and cultural distinctiveness is consistent with what Bornschier (2010) describes as the affective dimension of this reaction, a defense of the community’s values and integrity that, across the three corpora analyzed here, appears to be articulated primarily through religious, familial, and civilizational references rather than through explicitly material claims.

The frequent use of Western identity frames, in line with the higher number of coded segments shown in the Results, together with the recurrent references to Christianity and to the defense of the homeland and its cultural specificities, suggests a politicized use of religious references. In this sense, religion appears to be used less as a strictly theological element and more as a symbolic resource that helps frame broader narratives of national and cultural identity (Linz 2006; Marzouki et al. 2016).

A further shared element concerns the centrality of the family across the three cases. The family is frequently framed as a key site of national continuity and cultural transmission. In migration-related discourse, this emphasis appears to intersect with representations of cultural difference, contributing to the reinforcement of symbolic boundaries between the national community and external others (Canovan 1999; Urbinati 2020).

These narratives seem to be associated both with representations of migration as a source of cultural and religious difference and with critiques of supranational elites and organizations perceived as threatening national and cultural distinctiveness.

6. Conclusions

Drawing on Linz’s (2006) distinction between political religion and politicized religion, this article has suggested that contemporary conservative discourse may be contributing to the consolidation of a secularized form of religiosity grounded in identity, national continuity, and shared traditions.

Through the comparative analysis of three European conservative parties, Fratelli d’Italia, Alternative für Deutschland, and Vox, the findings indicate a recurrent interconnection between references to national and Western identity, Christian roots, and the defense of the homeland against perceived threats such as migration and supranational governance. Across contexts, religious references appear less as expressions of theological doctrine and more as symbolic resources used within broader narratives of cultural continuity and collective belonging, in line with what Haynes (1997) describes as the exercise of religious influence through parties and movements rather than through institutions or doctrine.

However, this pattern appears to take different forms across the three cases. In the Italian corpus, civilizational and religious references seem closely tied together, with Christian heritage working as the basis of a broader narrative of national and Western continuity, in line with the civilizationism described by Brubaker (2017b). In the German material, conflict- and defense-oriented frames appear dominant, while Christian references and family-related themes are used in more limited segments, which may reflect the more mixed confessional setting in which Alternative für Deutschland operates. The Spanish corpus seems to stand in between, with sovereignty-related frames particularly present and civilizational references tying identity claims to a religiously and historically defined national community (Giorgi 2022). These differences may suggest that the use of religion as identity rather than as belief is filtered through each country’s distinct religious and political history.

Across the three cases, the capacity of religious references to work as symbolic capital (Bourdieu 2013) appears to be present, building belonging without requiring belief, rather than any shared doctrinal content. This seems in line with what Roy (2016) describes as the detachment of Christian identity markers from religious practice, and with the persistence of a diffuse religious sentiment that secularization does not appear to have dissolved (Norris and Inglehart 2007). In this sense, the communicative frame examined here appears to work as politicized religion in Linz’s (2006) sense, where the substitute function of religion seems directed at holding together an identity-based political community.

These findings can also be read as an empirical illustration of how the “losers” of globalization, as theorized by Kriesi et al. (2006) and Bornschier (2010), pursue not only material but also affective and identity-based forms of compensation. Read through Ignazi’s (2003) account of the demand for stricter moral standards, and through Arato and Cohen’s (2017) discussion of exclusivist identity politics, the communicative frame identified here appears to translate this broader cleavage into a specific discursive strategy, one in which religion, family, and homeland function as anchors against a perceived loss of both material security and cultural integrity.

Rather than signaling the emergence of a new religion in a doctrinal sense, these patterns suggest a reconfiguration of religion as a cultural and identity-based frame within contemporary political communication. This perspective may contribute to ongoing debates on the transformation of religion in secularized societies and offers a useful analytical lens for examining identity-based political rhetoric in comparative perspective.