September 8: Polarization in the pews?

In which, new polls illustrate interesting trends in religious and political affiliation, India tries to reshape its global image, Nikki Haley makes a move in the polls, and that economic data, man...

Polarization in the pews?

A very interesting set of data from Gallup this week suggested that the trend of religious affiliation tightly aligning with political affiliation continues in America, and appears to be deepening the divides within the country.

Christianity Today picked up on this data and noted a more troubling sub trend: Within churches, there’s a male-female divide opening up alongside these political divides.

India floats a name change at the G20 summit

The G20 summit is being hosted by India this year, and the rising South Asian power used the opportunity to float a “new” name for the country: Bharat. The Indian government argues that this name more accurately reflects India’s pre-colonial history, but here’s the rub: It’s designed to reflect a distinctly Hindu pre-colonial history, which makes the proposed change controversial in India itself as opposition parties and religious minorities who have been recently targeted by violent Hindu mobs argue that 1) “India” itself is an ancient name and 2) the proposed name change merely advances the BJP’s Hindu nationalist project.

Controversy over the name change isn’t the only difficulty for India in hosting this summit. The summit appears to have become something of a BRICS battleground as China’s Xi declined to attend the summit, and attendees seemed split over how to address the war in Ukraine. Both of these issues, the China-India rivalry and managing relations with Russia, not only illustrate the internal tensions in the BRICS, but also the difficult diplomatic geometry for India as it tries to triangulate between the world’s great powers while trying to find its own great power niche.