Global Christian Nationalism: A Guide

Religious nationalism knows no borders.

In many countries, the line between faith and political power is no longer just blurred — it’s a defining force in public life.

In a new guide at ReligionLink, we offer practical tools for understanding and covering global Christian nationalism: what it is, how it operates across different contexts and why it matters for democracy, human rights and international affairs.

While the term is often associated with U.S. politics, movements that fuse Christian identity with nationalist agendas are shaping policies, society and public debates from Eastern Europe to Latin America and beyond.

Whether you’re on the religion beat or covering politics, this resource is designed to help you ask sharper questions, spot emerging trends and report with greater clarity.

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.