Christianism in Europe

In a 2016 article, Rogers Brubaker describes a trend in European politics. Having defined the enemy of European civilization as “Islam,” rightists in Europe have come to define themselves in religio-civilizational terms as well. They are posing as defenders of “Christianity.”

Problem is, many of their beliefs are distinctly at odds with Christian orthodoxy and Christian tradition. Arguing that secularism and liberalism have Christian roots, they defend contemporary European order as a defense of Chrisitanity:

“In Northern and Western Europe today, this reactive Christianity (or ‘Christianism,’ to use a term coined by Andrew Sullivan to designate a counterpart to Islamism) presents itself as closely linked with secularity and liberalism. Once understood as antithetical to liberalism, secularism, and modernity, Christianity is increasingly seen as their civilizational matrix, and as the matrix of a whole series of more specific ideas, attitudes, and practices, including human rights, tolerance, gender equality, and support for gay rights.”

Lived Christianity, “serious forms of Christian religiosity” are still marginalized. But this freed Christianity up “for reinterpretation in cultural or civilizational terms, with no reference to matters of theology, belief, or ritual.” Such a defense of Christianity remains within the limits of secular public reason, since what is being defended is the cultural byproduct of Christian religion and not Christian religion as such.

In the Netherlands, “the rapid and extreme secularization of Dutch society since the 1960s and the marginalization of serious Christianity made it possible to claim a culturalized Christianity—a ‘Judeo Christian humanistic culture,’ as [Pim] Fortuyn called it—as the matrix of gender equality, gay rights, and freedom of speech.”

This civilizational politics is sometimes displacing, sometimes modifying, nationalist forms of rightwing politics: “talk of ‘the nation’ would not disappear, but ‘the nation’ would be re-characterized in civilizational terms, with less emphasis on what distinguishes the nation from other nations (such as language) and more emphasis on what distinguishes the broader civilization to which the nation is seen as belonging from other civilizations.”

All this creates various “ironies and reversals” in the European political landscape: “Secularism is redefined as an ideology of the Right, and the Right is also appropriating liberal themes like gender equality and tolerance of homosexuality. The most secularized region of the world is being characterized in religio-civilizational terms. Christianity is redefined as the matrix of liberalism, secularity, gender equality, and gay rights.”

It’s the fate of weakened Christianity to be coopted as civilizational religion.