‘God Protects Us’: Nationalism versus Religious Representation in the US and Indonesian Presidential Speeches

: Presidential speeches may reflect the cultural identity of the nation and this corpus-based research investigates the religiosity reflection in the U.S. and Indonesian presidential speeches to reveal their underlying religious values. It built the corpus from the US presidential speeches (321,508 words) and the Indonesia presidential speeches (93,419 words) It applies Wordsmith 4.0 for the data mining. The findings show that both presidents used religious-related words, particularly ‘god’. The US president has used ‘god’ in fixed expressions ‘God bless you all’ and ‘May God protect our troops’, while the Indonesian president uses the word ‘god’ including its synonym in Arabic ‘Alloh’ in a wider variety of expressions such as ‘May god bless us all’, ‘May God protect us’, ‘the almighty God’, and ‘God’s help’ and ‘ Bismillah’ (by the name of God), ‘ Alhamdulillah’ (Praise be to Alloh), and ‘ Insyaalloh’ (God willing). However, the use of ‘god’ in presidential speeches has different underlying values: the American president demonstrates strong nationalism, while the Indonesian president shows the strong religious side of the Indonesian people. The research concludes that the US president expresses religiosity in a more implicit manner, being in line with the self-reliant attitude of American society. On the contrary, the Indonesian president expresses religiosity in a very explicit manner, reflecting a god-dependent attitude in Indonesian society.


INTRODUCTION
Religious activity can be used to lobby the government, influence elections, or shape society.The response of political leaders has a significant impact on whether religious action is either successful or unsuccessful (Fowler et al., 2018).In Indonesia, religion is considered to be an important factor in influencing everyday interactions.(see Putra, et al., 2022).Meanwhile, the United States of America is the most religious country among the societies in the industrial countries (Welle, 2007).Because of this, we can infer that Indonesia and the US have a similar view on the significance of religion in life.However, the two countries differ in their policy toward the relationship between religion and state.The US law separates religion from the state, while Munandar, A. , 'God Protects Us': Nationalism versus Religious Representation 3 in the US and Indonesian Presidential Speeches https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v23i1;ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ Indonesia does not have any regulation that separates religion from the state.This difference affects the ways the two countries express religiosity in the public domain or give meanings to those religious expressions when delivered in the public domain.Johnson, et al. (2021) acknowledge that faith and religious identities are mediated by social and cultural factors and, therefore, the way that these are expressed in contexts matters.
One of the important communications in the public domain is speeches by the country leaders, for example, the presidential speech.Political speeches, which are reshaped by functions and topics, are also a type of writing delivered by concerned authorities.Politicians do more than just speak; they engage with language and use it to communicate interpersonal meanings.As a result, speech becomes a rich, multifaceted phenomenon that can be studied from a variety of perspectives (Shakila, 2015).Considering the different socio-cultural backgrounds of the two countries, understanding how religious expressions are used and intended to mean in presidential speeches is important for the shake of multicultural understanding in the globalized world today.
Studies on religious identity have been conducted by several scholars from different points of view.Using extensive empirical data derived from presidential speeches and parliamentary debates, Polat (2018) conducted a critical study of AKP discourses on Syrian refugees.The speeches aim to recreate the Turkish nation along more Islamic lines by justifying Turkey's open-door policy for Syrians on the basis of religious solidarity and using religious images, lexical terms, and rhetoric.Within the sphere of US politics, Christian nationalism, as vocalized in Donald Trump's campaign speeches, was crucial in determining which Americans voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election (Whitehead et al., 2018).Hasan (2009) observes the rising consciousness of Indonesian Muslims to demonstrate their religious self in the public sphere.Kuipers (2017) in his study of 'Linguistic piety in Islamic Java' concludes that the Arabic language is highly valued by Muslims themselves as a sign of piety.Howell (2014) has compared the religion in late-or 'liquid' modernity in the North Atlantic Christian heritage countries to the Muslim world by focusing on a newly salient type of religious mobilization in Indonesia: mass audience religious revival (dakwah) ministries.This article discusses the use of religion-related words in American and Indonesian presidential speeches in order to reveal the underlying values of religiosity expressions found in presidential speeches.A corpus for this purpose is specially created from the speeches of the American President and the Indonesian President during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Studies on religious identity have been a research interest in recent years due to the dynamic of Muslim society or growing identity conflict in pluralistic societies.Java, for instance, has grown from its traditionality into modernity, requiring Javanese Muslims to strengthen their identity of being Moslem in a global world.Kuipers (2017) focuses on four types of Arabic language usage in Java that reveal the piety among Javanese Muslims: 1) proper names 2) generic performance of a Qur'anic verse 3) situationally specific hadis performance 4) use of Arabic pronouns.Although this trend does not hold among all Muslim peoples everywhere, but rather than continuum is available as a resource for evaluating and interpreting in culturally specific ways, relative degrees of commitment and involvement of the speakers towards what they are saying in particular settings.Hasan (2009) examines the transformation of Indonesian Islam towards the creation of new 'Islamic' public spaces and markets that open up a realm of opportunities for emerging Muslim youth, intellectuals, middle classes, and professional groups to seek visibility and legitimacy in the national public sphere.Through a study of relevant literature, observations, and in-depth interviews, it discusses the way Islam carves out a public space of its own, in conformity with the requirements of the Muslim faith and embodied in new Islamic language styles, corporeal rituals as well as spatial and bodily practices.It also examines the cultural process of religious commodification, occurring through the intensive commercialization of symbolic religious goods.
When seen through the lens of the concept of "public Islam," religiosity in Indonesia also takes on a new expression.This new form represents the individual Muslim's proactive reaction to the current modern technologies of digital media and the different venues that it offers.A study by Muslim (2017) demonstrates how the affordances of certain technologies-in this case, mobile technologies, and the WhatsApp application-contribute to the formation of the digital religion as well as the manner in which it functions.It is important to note that the case indicates that digital religion is not just a "natural" mix or confluence of individuals' religious desires with digital technology.
In modern Indonesia, urban Salafi activists have grown adept at adjusting both the content and the presentation of their Islamic dissemination, as researched by Chaplin (2018).In keeping with other movements of Islamic revival across the archipelago, Salafis are actively creating radio stations, online social media services, and commodities that promote an Islamic identity.This activity is taking place in parallel with broader tendencies of Islamic revival.However, this type of activism is indicative of both a person's personal religion and their membership in a certain social class.This article offers a case study of how urban Salafi activists have become skilled at changing both the content and form of their religious propagation in contemporary Indonesia.However, because it is restricted to a small number of specific student-based foundations and industries like the YPIA and Yufid, it is in no way representative of the broader Salafi movement.
Another research on religious identity in the global world was conducted by Savitri Hartono (2018), specifying how Facebook serves as a platform for confirming and enhancing one's identity as a devout Muslim as well as for exchanging knowledge regarding appropriate Islamic attire for women, with or without reference to Muslim clerics.Modern Indonesian pious Muslim women may show their identity and piety and discuss their religion without worrying about a fatwa or other orders from religious leaders thanks to Facebook.In addition to being informed by their personal experiences and perceptions of Islam, they are also impacted by Muslim feminist discourses in Indonesia when forming ideas regarding appropriate Islamic wear.Facebook at least gives women the chance to remind one another of their religious obligations and to foster a sense of Muslim sisterhood.
O'Brian (2013) has demonstrated how a group of Muslim American youth uses specific kinds of interactions with hip-hop music to manage the cultural tension between religious piety and profane pop culture forms.He identifies three musical practices (quoting DeNora, 2000) through which youth work together to forge local solutions to the pop culture-religiosity dilemma.He also shows how these actions contribute to the ongoing production of a collective identity performance that blends religious commitment with youthful secularity -cool piety.This analysis reveals one means by which highly religious youth in America work to smooth the friction between their religious and youthful cultural obligations.More generally, his analysis establishes that specific modes of pop culture reception -and the bi-cultural identity performances and experiences they generate -can assist actors in negotiating situations of conflicting social and cultural expectations.Driezen, et al. (2021) study how young Muslims in the super-diverse city of Antwerp negotiate the tensions between their religious identification and the broader cultural framework of individualism.Young Muslims in Antwerp face the challenge of presenting themselves as autonomous while maintaining their religious identification.Based on 26 interviews with Muslim students in two secondary schools, they describe how presenting a dignified self to both non-Muslim and Muslim audiences requires a delicate balancing act.Drawing conceptually from cultural sociology, they explore how the respondents present themselves to various audiences by selectively employing elements from the cultural repertoire of 'religious individualism'.In their analysis, they examine four ways in which respondents employ this repertoire to rework the potential tensions and present themselves as agentive within their religious framework.They also discuss how negotiating a contested identity requires more taxing boundary work for girls, and how they challenge gender norms without denying their religious identification.Overall, their analysis demonstrates how young Muslims in a West European context engage in complex boundary work and creatively draw on the cultural repertoire of religious individualism to negotiate their multiple identifications.Howell (214) conducted the comparative analysis of religion in late-or 'liquid' modernity beyond its place of origin in the North Atlantic Christian heritage countries to the Muslim world by focusing on a newly salient type of religious mobilization in Indonesia: mass audience religious revival (dakwah) ministries.These ministries each have one dominant form: either televangelism, or mass prayer rallies, but they may also use the other form of outreach in their ministries as well.Both types of ministry utilize the mass media (electronic media and book sales) and other forms of public advertising.The audiences of both kinds of mass revival ministries cut across each other and across other forms of the Islamic community.Thus, while these ministries inspire greater awareness of Islam as a global faith and intensify commitment to the idea of the ummah as a worldwide fellowship of Muslims, they make the 'lived' religious community more diverse and multi-layered.In so doing, paradoxically, they further problematize religious belonging, increasing the felt necessity for choice, as the choices of where and how to actualize community proliferate.

B. Christian Nationalism in America
Christian nationalism, an ideology characterized by the conviction that America is a Christian nation, may provide insight into how a sense of religious nationalism affects prejudice against immigrants.Research by (Al-Kire et al., 2022) examined the connection between Christian nationalism and negative perceptions of immigrant groups, as well as support for restrictive immigration policies.The findings indicate that Christian nationalism was a major and reliable predictor of negative stereotypes, discrimination, and dehumanization of immigrants as well as support for such policies.Other causes of anti-Munandar, A. , 'God Protects Us': Nationalism versus Religious Representation 7 in the US and Indonesian Presidential Speeches https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v23i1;ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ immigrant sentiments, such as political ideology, nationalism, and religious fanaticism, did not significantly alter these impacts.Additionally, the association between Christian nationalism, the dehumanization of immigrants, and sentiments toward immigration policy were moderated by perceived threats from immigrants.Davis (2018) examined the connection between respondents' adherence to Christian nationalist ideology and their approval of punitive social control methods.Even when adjusting for a belief in theological evil, the study shows that Christian nationalist ideology is a robust predictor of the death penalty and support for heavier criminal punishment.This implies that, regardless of a person's religious affiliation, convergence with his or her national identity enhances the desire to ensure a homogeneous society by harshly punishing those who violate social standards.The effect of Christian nationalism on people's perspectives on large-scale social issues, including reactions to criminal and deviant conduct, has far-reaching ramifications for the future of the United States.
Christian nationalism was highly apparent during Donald Trump's presidency.Barrett-Fox (2018) studied how conservative Christians believe they have a particular right to shape American law and policy, as well as to dominate others politically.At a July 2016 rally in Iowa, Donald Trump told the gathering conservative Christians that they have the ability to be powerful, that they are entitled to use that power, and that they are expected to use that influence in order to preserve the future of hegemonic Christianity.Because they had previously built a narrative in which he did not need to know their beliefs to appeal to their emotions, Trump could stumble when he spoke about God, exposing his lack of Biblical literacy or grasp of fundamental theology.Power promises are appealing to any group, but they are more powerful for a group whose self-concept is based on sentiments of fear and resentment over fading authority in a community that requires it to live.The current US President, Joe Biden, is leading America amid the growing support for Christian nationalism, ''an ideology that idealized and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture" (Whitehead & Perry, 2020, p. ix-x).This ideology significantly affects today's Americans' attitudes and behaviors, such as it drives many Americans to advocate for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico, and be unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States.Therefore, in his speeches to appeal https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v23i1;ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ to people's support, he negotiates between the desire to make America more religious, and awareness of the separation of state and religion.
There has been a related study conducted by Davis & Perry (2021) on the possible impact of Christian nationalism on a more subtle form of racism, namely, increased tolerance for racists themselves in comparison to other historically stigmatized groups.Racism is still more often practiced discreetly in the policies that white people are ready to support, despite what seems to be a rise of overt white racism and ethnocentrism in response to the rise of Trump and the Alt-right.However, as compared to other stigmatized groups, white Christian nationalists demonstrate higher tolerance toward racists than other whites.This impact is separate from the relationship between personal religion and lower relative tolerance for racists.In addition, this study shows that both time and gender moderate the relationship between white Christian nationalism and relative racism tolerance.White Americans who practice Christian nationalism have authoritarian tendencies, showing less tolerance for all groups while giving more tolerance to traditional racists who could help them in their efforts to impose societal control and coercion.
Prior U.S. research has found that religious conservatism is positively associated with anti-vaccine attitudes.(Corcoran, et al., 2021).They believe that one of the strongest predictors of anti-vaccine attitudes in the U.S. is Christian nationalism-a U.S. cultural ideology that wants civic life to be permeated by their particular form of nationalist Christianity.Corcoran, et al. (2021) examine the relationship between Christian nationalism and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake.Using a new nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, they find that Christian nationalism is one of the strongest predictors of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and is negatively associated with having received or planning to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.Since Christian nationalists make up approximately 20 percent of the population, these findings could have important implications for achieving herd immunity.

METHOD
The research reported in this article is a corpus-assisted discourse study (CADS) research.It used Wordsmith 4.0 software (Scott, 2004) for the data collection and analysis.acknowledged the sufferings the pandemic had brought to the people and then offered hopes for recovery through government-initiated activities.The suffering is, especially, a high rate of unemployment which has caused financial difficulties for many families throughout the nation.Therefore, the recovery focuses on creating jobs to decrease the unemployment rate.In their speeches, both the Indonesian and American presidents use words related to religion.The list of religion-related words is presented in Table 1.These words are classified into the fifth dimension of religiosity, i.e.Religious Salience (See Pearce, et al., 2017) which is an individual's commitment to religious beliefs.
The religion-related words are found in almost all parts of the speeches as Table 2 shows.However, there are different parts where the words are frequently, or seldom found in the speeches by the American President and the Indonesian president.

Table 2: Parts of the Presidential speeches using religion-related words
Part of the speech Indonesian American Opening The Indonesian Presidential Speeches use religion-related words in the opening, especially in the form of greetings.This opening part is formulaic, containing a set of expressions including address and prayer: Assalamu'alaikum warohmatullahi wabarokatuh.The most frequently used word indicative of prayer is 'May' which may combine with other words to produce various expressions of prayer such as 'May God bless us', 'May God protect us', and 'May Alloh grant them grace and mercy'.The choice of 'Alloh' rather than the more general word 'god' is a strong Munandar, A. , 'God Protects Us': Nationalism versus Religious Representation 11 in the US and Indonesian Presidential Speeches https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v23i1;ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ indexical of Islam.Along with the growing spirit of pluralism in Indonesia, the greeting in Indonesian formal speeches is a combination of greetings originating from major religions in Indonesia: Assalamu'alaikum warohmatullahi wabarokatuh (Islam), Shalom (Christianity), and Salam Kebajikan and Om santi santi santi om (Hinduism/Buddhism).The American presidential speeches, however, hardly use religion-related words in the opening part.The opening part mainly uses time-bound greetings, i.e. good morning, thus, sounding more casual.
Among the words presented in Table 1, the word 'god' is the most strongly related word to religion.It is a universally accepted referent despite the different concepts or specific referents of God in the existing religions today.God is universally described to be loving, giving, and protective of human beings.American presidential speeches use a single word 'god' for less various contexts than the Indonesian presidential ones.Indonesian presidential speeches also show more variety of words referring to god, including the Arabic word Alloh or other borrowings ending in -llah/-lloh (a contracted form of Alloh): "Insya Alloh" (god willing), "Alhamdulillah" (Praise be to Alloh), and "Subhanalloh" (Alloh the most refined).The use of the word "God" and its synonyms are presented in Table 3.

Table 3:
God or its synonyms found the presidential speeches.

American Context
Indonesian Context God God bless us (May) God bless us all.(May) God bless you all We must be grateful and thank God (May) God protect our troops

God willing
With the grace of God … May God always protect us.Thank God … May Allah the Almighty … Please, God, give solace to all … God, the Most Glorified, the Most High, … may God ease the pain in the hearts of so many … beg for God's help Om santi santi santi om.
Table 3 shows that both Presidents use the words God in the expression of gratitude, prayer, and hope.President Biden quite frequently mentions God in his speeches even though the US separates Religion from the State.Meanwhile, the expressions containing God and its synonym (Allah) in the Indonesian presidential speeches are explicit and abundant, being in line with the fact that Indonesia does not separate religion from the state.
Adopting the view that language is a reflection of who its users are as a person and an outlet by which individuals can build their identities (see Bucholtz, 2014), this paper analyzes the choice of words to reveal how the Americans and Indonesians express their religiosity in the public sphere.Bucholtz uses the term 'social positioning', which has the meaning: the language that one uses or chooses to use serves as an indication to others of how we want to be seen.We have embedded beliefs and assumptions as to how we and other people use language.
From the above-presented findings, this paper infers different representations of religiosity by the presidents.The following parts discuss the interpretation of the perspectives of Indonesian and American people toward religiosity.For this purpose, the theory of representation by Hall can best explain this phenomenon because representation connects meaning and language to culture (Hall, 1997, p. 15), i.e., the production of meaning through language.Munandar, A. , 'God Protects Us': Nationalism versus Religious Representation 13 in the US and Indonesian Presidential Speeches https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v23i1;ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ (p.16) Signs are organized into languages and it is the existence of common languages which enable us to translate our thoughts (concepts) into words, sounds, or images, and then to use these, operating as a language, to express meanings and communicate thoughts to other people (p.18)The relation between 'things', concepts, and signs lie at the heart of the production of meaning in language.The process which links these three elements together is what is called 'representation ' (p.19).
If visual signs are called iconic signs, written or spoken signs are called indexical (Hall, 1997).Iconic signs bear, in their form, a certain resemblance to the object, person, or, event to which they refer.On the other hand, indexical bears no obvious relationship at all to the things to which they refer (p.20) Meaning does not inhere in things, in the world.It is constructed, produced.It is the result of a signifying practice -a practice that produces meaning, that makes things mean (p.24).

B. God-dependent vs. Self-reliant
The positioning as God-dependent or self-reliant is interpreted from the part of 'offering hope' in the rhetorical structure of the presidential speeches.The Indonesian president's speeches acknowledge explicitly the intervention of God's power in any undertaken effort for recovery.It reflects the fact that religion is part of Indonesia's daily life.A direct way of expressing Goddependent value is by asking God through the word 'beg'.A rather indirect way is by expressing hope through the word 'may' or expressing gratitude to god through 'Alhamdulillah'.The following is an example that shows god-dependent positioning.
[1] Send prayers, beg for God's help to ease our burden so that the people, the nation, and the country, as well as the world, can soon be freed from the pandemic.
Among the many religion-related words, Arabic words are quite dominant: greeting, mentioning of God's attributes, and exclamations.It is in line with Kuipers' observation that Everyday Arabic greetings and sayings are now commonplace and sprinkled frequently into everyday conversation (2017).
[2] Despite the pandemic, alhamdulillah, thanks to the hard work of all elements, the COVID-19 case in Indonesia is under control.Therefore, this year's Ramadan, Muslims can perform obligatory prayers and tarawih prayers (evening Ramadan prayers) in congregation at the mosque.Ahead of Eid al-Fitr, it is also in the US and Indonesian Presidential Speeches https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v23i1;ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ the other side he is aware of the restriction to express religiosity in the public domain.As a result, he uses 2 strategies, which are stance-shifting and detaching hope from god, as discussed in the following parts.

C. Stance Shifting
Being restrained by the law of religion-state separation, the American President adopted a stance-shifting strategy when expressing religiosity.In doing this strategy, the president withdraws himself from the public domain into his personal domain.is done by recalling his personal experience or recounting another person's saying.By shifting his stance when making a statement related to religion, he not be seen as a president who is representing America.Several signposts he uses to introduce a different (personal) stance are such statements as: '…a lot of this is just personal…" and "…as X used to say…" [7] "Look, I'm -I'm not going to -a lot of this is just personal.Pope Francis has become a -I don't want to exaggerate -has become a -someone who has provided great solace for my family when my son died.He has -he is, in my view -there's always been this debate in the Catholic Church, going back to Pope John the 23rd, that talk about how we reach out and embrace people with differences.
If you notice what -what the Pope said when he was asked when he first got elected Pope -he was traveling with the press, and they said, "What's your position on homosexuals?"He said, "Who am I to judge?"This is a man who is of great empathy.He is a man who understands that part of his Christianity is to reach out and to forgive.And so I just find my relationship with him one that I personally take great solace in.He is a really, truly genuine, decent man." [8] "Well, as my grandfather used to say: "With the grace of God and the goodwill to the neighbors," we'll be able to get a lot done." [9] "And as my grandfather used to kiddingly say, "With the grace of God, the goodwill of the neighbors, and the crick not rising," that's exactly what we're going to do." [10] "The folks there are doing God's work, as my mother would say.