Banal religion and national identity in hybrid media: “heating” the debate on values and veiling in Sweden

Religion has become a hot topic in Sweden, often perceived as the most secularized corner of the world. This article analyzes how Islam and Lutheran Christianity come to be used in the construction of national identity, through discourse analysis of an opinion piece by the Christian Democrats in 2021 on banning veils in elementary schools, and the following discussion on Twitter1. The concept “banal religion” from mediatization of religion theory is used to analyze when implicit understandings of religion and national identity become “heated” into a polarization between Islam and Swedish values. This represents a novel use of the concept that can contribute to previous research on religion and national identity by revealing how this dynamic is played out in hybrid media, where the logics of conventional news media become mixed with those of social media.