We distinguish two streams of theory that dominate explanations of religious change: cohort-based cumulative decline theory, which emphasizes small and ongoing declines in individual religiosity accruing across generations; and political backlash theory, which emphasizes period- and identity-based changes due to the politicized meaning of religion. Notably, Muslim countries have largely been excluded from a recent wave of quantitative research on individual-level religious change, implicitly continuing an assumption that Islamic societies require different theoretical concepts. We deploy both theories to examine religious identity and behavior over multiple decades in Turkey, a Muslim-majority country with recent social conflict over religion. Utilizing age-period-cohort interaction models, our results suggest minimal evidence for a cohort-based process in Turkey, in contrast to that observed in Western countries. Rather, a political transformation—the politicization of religion through the rise of Turkey’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) and President Erdogan—is most salient to Turkish religious change. We introduce two concepts to backlash theory—identity updating and performance signaling—to show how different dimensions of individual religiosity respond to different politicized contexts. These findings extend our understanding of religious change beyond the Western context, with further implications for theorizing political backlash and cohort-based processes.

中文翻译：

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宗教反弹、政治反弹和最年轻的群体：了解土耳其的宗教变革


我们区分了主导宗教变革解释的两种理论流派：基于群体的累积衰退理论，该理论强调代际间个人宗教信仰的小幅持续下降；以及政治反弹理论，该理论强调由于宗教的政治化意义而导致的基于时期和身份的变化。值得注意的是，穆斯林国家在很大程度上被排除在最近一波关于个人层面宗教变革的定量研究之外，隐含地延续了伊斯兰社会需要不同理论概念的假设。我们运用这两种理论来研究土耳其几十年来的宗教身份和行为，土耳其是一个穆斯林占多数的国家，最近因宗教问题而发生社会冲突。利用年龄-时期-队列相互作用模型，我们的结果表明，与西方国家观察到的情况相比，土耳其基于队列的过程的证据很少。相反，政治转型——土耳其正义与发展党和总统埃尔多安的崛起使宗教政治化——对土耳其宗教变革来说最为重要。我们向反弹理论引入了两个概念——身份更新和绩效信号——以展示个人宗教信仰的不同维度如何应对不同的政治化背景。这些发现扩展了我们对西方背景之外的宗教变革的理解，对理论化政治反弹和基于群体的进程具有进一步的影响。