Blessing America First: Religion, Populism and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Trump Administration(s)

March 27, 2025
David Buckley gives the 2025 Durfee Lecture at the Department of Philosophy and Religion, American University.

How did the first Trump Administration change the place of religion in U.S. foreign policy? And what can this teach us about the relationship between religion and democracy in an age of global populism? Drawing on firsthand experience in the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs during the Obama-Trump transition, Buckley explores populism’s effect on the substance and structure of offices related to religion and in the foreign policy bureaucracy. His analysis points to religion’s role in fueling populism around the world, as well as potential religious contributions to democracy’s stabilization.

David Buckley is Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion at the University of Louisville, where he serves as the Director of the Center for Asian Democracy. From 2016-2017, he served as Senior Advisor in the U.S. State Department’s Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. His first book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines, received the International Studies Association’s 2018 Book Award for Religion and International Relations.

The Annual Durfee Lecture was initiated in 2007 by a generous gift from Harold A. Durfee and Doris G. Durfee. Held every spring, the series provides our students and American University community with the opportunity to meet distinguished scholars in religious studies.

More about the Department of Philosophy and Religion at AU: https://www.american.edu/cas/philrel/