Transnational Aspects of Christian Nationalism
Marietta van der Tol
The County Election by George Caleb Bingham (CC0)
This article is part of our series on Transnational Christian Nationalism, and its impact on politics, the rule of law, and religious freedom. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here.
This year has been described as a ‘super-election’ year, with many elections taking place around the world. This represents a window of opportunity, namely, to shape the direction of public policy in the years following many crises. For Far Right parties and movements, this has been a year of opportunity, albeit with variable success, and with one of the main elections yet to come: the presidential election in the United States of America.
Over the coming weeks, the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and Canopy Forum will host a series of essays on the transnational dimensions of the Far Right, addressing the ties between American political movements and European populists, and especially Russian politics. This series will shed light on the development of transnational dimensions to Christian nationalism, and its impact on politics, the rule of law, and religious freedom.
Convergences of Christians and the Far Right?
The overlap between these movements might be understood in resonances around loosely organised groups, movements, and political parties. These resonances revolve around a series of contrasts: religion and secularism, traditionalism and LGBT+ rights or feminism, images of good and evil, which are mostly a matter of ideas and ideology. Where such issues come up, conservative Christians might find that aspects of their traditionalism are held in common with Far Right actors.
For other issues, however, it is not so clear where Christians come down: the changing world order, for example, in which America is no longer the undisputed leader of the free world and finds its international leadership challenged by both China and Russia. Most Christians would not sympathise with the Extreme Right or with antisemitism, whereas the boundaries between far-right actors and the extreme right can be quite porous. Similarly, conservative Christians may not necessarily be liberal, but that does not mean they are ‘against’ the West, or NATO, instead, these might be structures through which America pursues its international interests.
Lastly, there is a meaningful difference between conservative Christianity, even anti-liberal Christianity and those who pursue illiberal politics. Whereas illiberal politics is often conflated with anti-liberal or conservative sentiments, these are two different things: illiberal politics uses conservative rhetoric to justify structural changes in the law. Some people call this democratic backsliding. Examples include putting political loyalists in the highest courts so the courts cannot do its work fully independently anymore, limiting the freedom of the press and media, changing electoral laws to benefit their own party, using the law to advance the interests of a smaller circle of loyalists, or putting loyalists in positions of power in institutions of civil society.
Moreover, illiberal politics refers to ‘the people’, but also appoints itself to speak for ‘the people’. In the name of democracy, sovereignty, or the will of the people, it is in fact a small group of politicians who make the important decisions. In all of this, elections are still important as a political procedure or ‘right of passage’, but illiberal governments no longer serve the people: they prefer to serve the interests of a small group of cronies. In the worst case scenario, the law can be used against the people, to repress dissidents, to frustrate the opposition, and even to send the masses to war, as we currently see in Russia.
While Far Right political movements have become very clever at navigating core messages to a wide range of audiences, including Christians, it would be a mistake to equate a traditionalist or anti-liberal message with Christianity. While a subset of Christians might identify with illiberal politics, it goes too far to equate Christianity with illiberalism. In fact, many churches and Christian organisations are beginning to speak out more loudly against the use of Christianity by the Far Right.
From a transnational perspective, however, it is often the ‘Christian’ dimensions of the Far Right that people recognise across different contexts. That might happen overtly, by using churches as a façade, like the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia, Catholic and Protestant churches in Hungary, the Catholic Church in Poland, or a variety of churches in the USA. It might happen more implicitly, by invoking issues of gender and sexuality, or other issues that we have come to associate with the so-called culture wars. In this introductory essay, this issue will be discussed based on three claims: a claim to the sacred, a claim to world order, and a claim to the future of democracy.
A Claim to the Sacred
When Donald Trump lost the election in 2020, his self-proclaimed ‘prophets’ needed to backtrail quickly: they had regarded Trump as some form of Messiah. Some might remember pastor Paula White’s comments on ‘the angels from Africa and South America’. The claim to the sacred is persistent in Far Right circles and certainly not limited to the “Make America Great Again” campaign. This claim to Christianity tends to be less successful when church leaders speak out against the Far Right, as shown by Ulrich Schmiedel and Hannah Strommen in A Claim to Christianity. Tobias Cremer, in The Godless Crusade, suggests that the plurality of Christian voices in America makes it harder to make a stand against such claims.
However, what exactly is that claim to the sacred? My sense is that the claim to Christianity is part of a claim to the sacred: that might be God or something ‘beyond’ the structures of contemporary democracy, or simply ‘beyond’ the political reality. This claim to Christianity seems to serve several purposes: first, to appeal to Christian voters for immediate gain; second to be able to use the freedom of religion and associated benefits of protection where otherwise their language or actions would clash with the limits of the law earlier; and third, to construct their authority separate from the vote or any given election, but with an appeal to something that is more transcendent.
Moreover, the claim to Christianity may look different depending on context. In the case of Russia, it might look like the drumming up of Orthodox priests as well as the violent repression of minority religions, especially those who might be associated with America, such as Baptists, Protestants, or Jehovah’s Witnesses both in Russia and in the occupied territories in Ukraine. In the case of Hungary, it might look like privileging the main Catholic and Protestant churches to the point the government can control them, while quietly ensuring an opposition church goes out of business and even putting one of their workers in administrative detention (without charge, let me add).
The claim to Christianity might look like anti-LGBT+ legislation, the controlling of children’s literature, or ‘LGBT-free zones’, but in other contexts, particularly in Western Europe, such rhetoric would drive too many voters away. The claim to Christianity might be anti-Western, while claiming that traditionalism represents the ‘true’ West, or be anti-Muslim or anti-migrant in the name of a Judaeo-Christian civilisation, while openly antisemitic and pro-Israel. In other words, the claim to Christianity is, from a transnational perspective, hardly coherent.
The American context is, from a transnational perspective, only one such context in which such contradictions come to the fore. This process is then replicated at a national level: many Americans will remember the events of January 6th, and the carefulness with which Donald Trump had to express his sympathy for the rioters while also distancing himself from their actions. But others, who were not sympathetic to the insurrection, did not necessarily distance themselves from such actions (that would be, say, ‘too democratic’).
It shows the power of focal points, whether Trump, President Putin, Viktor Orbán, or other such leaders: their personal brand might transcend specific events or issues, which may even be disregarded for the sake of ‘a greater good’. I fear this might be true for the claim to Christianity: particularly un-Christian behaviour might be disregarded for the sake of some greater good. It might also happen the other way around: that certain benefits make some Christians blind for the price thereof, and so contribute to the train of democratic backsliding as well.
Even so, the critique of secularism has emerged as a powerful tool of mobilisation in anti-Western discourse: it features in the political rhetoric of Viktor Orbán and his counterparts in Serbia, Slovakia, and Poland, as well as in the justifications that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill have offered for the war in Ukraine. In this discourse, “secularism” functions as a code-word for “the West,” liberalism, the overturning of traditional gender and family roles, and sometimes, antisemitism. Churches are used to assert a Christianist alternative to Western liberalism.
However, their invocation of Christianity is not simply about a “return of religion” in European politics. Rather, churches serve as the symbolic basis for a claim to the sacred, offering alternative conceptions of political legitimacy, as well as justifying their attacks on the rule of law, and in the case of Russia, the international order. These anti-Western discourses in Europe find some resonance in American political movements. This essay series queries transnational dimensions to Christian nationalism in America and the interconnection of political rhetoric, transnational networking, and highly engaged activism on both continents.
A Claim to World Order
The rise of the Far Right in Europe and the USA takes place against the backdrop of a changing world order. In the literature, this is referred to as the rise of a multi-polar world order, in which America is no longer superior to other powers but shares its leading position with China and Russia. For Russia, the rise of China is troubling as well, and for Russia the question is not whether Russia might be number one in the new world order, but whether it will at least be number two rather than number three. Being number three does not square with Putin’s self-image.
The war in Ukraine expresses several dimensions of Putin’s anxiety: anxiety over the legacy of his presidency, as he wishes to regain the territories of several Former Soviet Union states; anxiety over Ukraine itself, as he wishes to portray it as core to a ‘holy’ Russian identity, while Ukrainians overall seek to stress that they are something else: Ukrainian, as distinct from Russian. Anxiety over the changing world order: Russia needs a stronger foothold in Eastern Europe to strengthen its position in the world. The ‘holier than thou’ rhetoric coming out of both the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate lean into some of the above contrasts and appeal to sympathisers elsewhere in the world, whether in Africa, Europe, or Latin-America.
Beneath the veneer of religion is the reality of war: the ordinary soldiers who are forced to dig their boots in the mud while thousands are returning in body bags each month. The Orthodox church may be there for the funerals and the occasional liturgy close to the front line, but perhaps people will remember the church for its involvement in the loss of their loved ones, embodied by their standing at the grave. However, for the Kremlin, human life has become cheap currency, while at the same time it continues its support for pro-life movements elsewhere, supposedly in the name of human dignity.
The war in Ukraine is also a worry for the White House. The commitment to support Ukraine, while keeping an eye on other hot spots around the world is a crucial and costly endeavour. Any withdrawal of support to Ukraine, for which J.D. Vance soon became infamous, looms as a possible second Afghanistan: will America be sticking this one out? Will it show the upper hand to Russia? Russia has the time and manpower to test the answer to that question, and some other states or armed groups might look to test it as well. For America, a second Afghanistan is simply not affordable.
The changing fault lines are also appearing in the circles of the Far Right: despite the disdain for NATO across Far Right parties in Europe, the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni had to make a difficult decision and realign to NATO and the USA. It turns out that the Far Right rhetoric comes up to the limit of security calculations. The same is true for Poland, where the Far Right Law and Justice party was staunchly pro-Ukrainian, except during the election season, after which Poland soon reaffirmed its commitment to the support of Ukraine.
Hungary, which finds itself bargaining between Brussels, Moscow and Beijing all the time, is already looking at how it can be part of the EU, get cheap energy tariffs from Moscow, and sermon-free investments from China. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders also had to admit that supporting Ukraine was crucial for the Dutch interests in the region. While the Kremlin seems to understand that the pro-Russian rhetoric is opportunistic political chatter, there are some insidious dimensions: the Czech intelligence revealed that numerous politicians had been bribed across Europe to actively promote Russian interests in a range of Parliaments, including in the European Parliament.
That is before we talk about Russian efforts to meddle in foreign elections, particularly through campaigns of misinformation and their use of trolling farms. It is shocking how under the Far Right favourite of free speech ordinary people continue to be exposed to material they cannot judge to be true or not. Fact is that misinformation plays a strong role in electoral seasons, while the Kremlin laughs at a Europe and USA so divided they can barely govern themselves. In whose interests might that be?
A Claim to the Future of Democracy
Meanwhile, political movements and academic movements around the Far Right seek to articulate alternatives to democracy, even if couched in anti-liberal or anti-woke language. However, it is important to separate criticisms of liberalism from criticisms of democracy. And the question is if there are viable alternatives to democracy in the current context, as it has long been described as ‘the worst form of government, except all those other forms which have been tried from time to time’.
Illiberalism takes a slim view of democracy: it will lean on the idea of “the people”, the practice of elections, and on legalism, but it sees political procedure, checks and balances, and judicial review as obstacles to the realisation of its goals. Moreover, illiberalism is happy to grant the human rights that are convenient to it, while challenging those that limit their political power. However, while each of these may be time-consuming or steeped in bureaucracy, they collectively embody the ‘rule of law’, which marks the limits of political power, regardless of who is in office.
Several contributions will delve into the transnational networks that claim either or both Christianity and nationalism to further their illiberal ideals. That such groups are active in the USA comes as no surprise, but the fact that they would turn out so vocally around ‘Project 2025’ of the Heritage Foundation nevertheless comes as a surprise. For Trump and his Vice Presidential pick J.D. Vance, a similar issue emerges as in the aftermath of January 6th: to hold together their sympathy for the project while also needing to distance themselves from it. However, even a slimmed-down version of Project 2025 would be profoundly damaging to the institutional structures of the USA.
As will be clear from the next contribution on the successes and failures of the Far Right in Europe, it might be difficult for Far Right movements to fully implement their ideas. For that, they simply lack the electoral numbers, forcing them into coalition agreements with more moderate parties. Such is not the case in the USA because of the dominance of two main parties and the associated ‘winner-takes-all’ mentality in politics. The deepening polarisation (and radicalisation) of political discourse has made the gap yet more difficult to bridge.
Conclusion
The presidential elections in the USA come in a pivotal election year. The outcome of this election will have consequences for the future of democracy and the changing world order, drawing interest from around the world. Significant as it is, the US elections are also but another instalment of Far Right theatre. Irrespective of their own religious or political commitments, readers of the Canopy Forum might find insights into the entanglement of politics, law, and religion from other contexts, and the transnational linkages between them, helpful in shaping their own thoughts on what is at stake on November 5th. ♦
Dr Marietta van der Tol is Leverhulme early career fellow at the University of Cambridge, specialising in the comparative study of politics, law, and religion. She studied at Utrecht University, Yale and Cambridge, and worked at the University of Oxford as Alfred Landecker postdoctoral research fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government and College Lecturer in Politics at St Peter’s and Lincoln College.
Recommended Citation
van der Tol, Marietta. “Series Introduction: Transnational Aspects of Christian Nationalism.” Canopy Forum, October 2, 2024. https://canopyforum.org/2024/10/02/series-introduction-transnational-aspects-of-christian-nationalism/.
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