Is The Christian Right Coming For Europe?

If you’re anything like me, you pay attention when an e-mail is marked “URGENT!!” 

The particular e-mail I have in mind carried a subject line that was direct and equally attention-grabbing: “Christian nationalism is coming for Europe.”

The content was a single link, to an article written by United States journalist Katherine Stewart for The New Republic on the rise of the Christian Right in the United Kingdom. In it, Stewart tells of how she believes a form of hyper-patriarchal, homophobic and nationalistic Christianity often associated with evangelicals in the US is gaining a beachhead in the UK. The developments there, she writes, “are like a window on the American past. 

“This is how things must have looked before the antidemocratic reaction really took hold,” she wrote. 

As a correspondent covering European Christians and as a scholar teaching religion in Germany, I’ve tracked some of the developments, institutions and movements Stewart cites. While rumors of the Christian right’s rise in Europe need to be taken seriously, it is also vitally important that the careful observer of religion take note of some of the complexities that have shaped the Christian right’s contours in ways distinct from, if related to, the forms we see taking hold in the U.S. 

How Latter-day Saints, Muslims in Michigan, Black Protestants or Latino Catholics might sway the 2024 election

In the lead-up to the 2024 elections, white Christian nationalists and “MAGA evangelicals” are sucking up a lot of the air in the religion media space.

And for good reason. As Tobin Miller Shearer of the University of Montana wrote for The Conversation: 

In the 2016 race, evangelical voters contributed, in part, to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s victory. Those Americans who identified as “weekly churchgoers” not only showed up at the polls in large numbers, but more than 55% of them supported Trump. His capture of 66% of the white evangelical vote also tipped the scales in his favor against his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Evangelicals look set to support the former president in outsized numbers again — with a Pew Research Survey indicating 82% of white evangelical Protestants are likely to vote for Trump in November — and a significant “subset of Christian nationalists, which some suggest amounts to roughly 10% of the US population,” are rallying around him as they push “for Christianity to be the official, dominant religion of the US.”

But religious Americans from other backgrounds and traditions, such as Catholics, mainliners and Black Protestants — whom Bob Smietana and Jack Jenkins of RNS called “swing state faith voters” — could also prove critical to electoral victory due to their influence in key swing states. 

In this edition of ReligionLink, we offer a roundup of stories, perspectives and sources from a broad swath of faith constituencies around the U.S., addressing questions such as: How might Hindus be approaching local and state elections? How might Muslims in swing states prove decisive for the Electoral College? How might the nonreligious approach key ballot issues differently from others? 

What is Christian nationalism? And how has it gone global?

The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol brought the Christian nationalist movement into sharp focus.

Christian symbols prominently displayed on banners and T-shirts as well as faith-filled messages that fueled the fire that day forced many to consider the role that white Christians’ religiously motivated rage plays in U.S. politics. 

But Christian nationalism exists beyond U.S. borders. It is a global phenomenon. 

In Europe and the Americas, far-right leaders are invoking a heady mix of racialized, religious rhetoric to rally support, upturn elections and threaten the democratic order. From Hungary to Italy, Brazil to Russia, Christian nationalism plays an increasingly critical role in the far right’s growing power and appeal.

The latest edition of ReligionLink provides background on what Christian nationalism is, stories that show how it is influencing politics worldwide and experts to help reporters and readers better understand its heady mix of ideological politics and national identity.