SSAHE webinar:

Religion, nationalism and the mainstreaming of the far right.

2 March 2026 5:00-6:30 pm UTC

Register for Zoom link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/religion-nationalism-and-the-mainstreaming-of-the-far-right-tickets-1982026819572?aff=oddtdtcreator

As part of our 2025/26 series on the resurgence and mainstreaming of the far right, this webinar explores the intersection between religion and reactionary politics. We will explore how religious groups can be both perpetrators and targets of far right mobilisation and how this impacts on minoritised groups in the Hostile Environment. Christian supremacy, authoritarian Islamism, Hindu nationalism, and fundamentalist forms of Zionism have all played a role in the dynamics around the resurgence of the far right, alongside bigotries and conspiracy theories against religiously defined groups (including anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish racisms). Questions addressed will include: How do far right formations draw on religious ideas and imagery (including discourses around gender and degeneracy) in their messaging? How do religious identities figure in the right’s re-imagining and policing of who belongs to the nation? What are the dynamics of authority and contestation within faith communities around these issues? How can community activists inside or allied with faith communities resist reactionary politics?

Speakers:

  • Helen Paynter (Director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence) will focus on Christian nationalism and how it can be challenged both within and outside Christian communities.
  • Pragna Patel (Co-Director Project Resist, former director of Southall Black Sisters) will focus on challenging authoritarianism within and across religious populations.

Helen Paynter is a Baptist minister in Bristol, England and a tutor at Bristol Baptist College. She has researched the place of violence in the bible. She is the author of a number of books, including Blessed are the Peacemakers: A Biblical Theology of Human Violence, and The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So: Why you don’t have to submit to domestic abuse and coercive control.Her most recent edited book (with Maria Power) isThe Church, the Far Right, and the Claim to Christianity.

Pragna Patel is the co-founder and co-director of Project Resist, a new organisation focused on the rights of black and minority women and girls in the UK. She is the former director and founding member of the Southall Black Sisters (SBS), an advocacy and campaigning centre where she worked from 1982 to Jan 2022 with a break in 1993 when she left to train and practise as a solicitor. Over those 40 years, she led SBS on some of its most important cases and campaigns on a range of issues from violence against women, to immigration-related abuse and religious fundamentalism. She was also a founding member of Women Against Fundamentalism and is currently a member of Feminist Dissent and the Chair of the Anti-Trafficking, Labour Exploitation Unit. In 2025, she was also appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Pragna has written extensively on race, gender and religion.

Chairs: Joshua Findlay, Amy Cortvriend, Ben Gidley, Nira Yuval-Davis.