Review of The Christian Right in Europe

The Christian Right in Europe: Movements, Networks, and Denominations. Edited by Gionathan Lo Mascolo. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023. 386pp. $55.00 paper.

[ 1 ]

It was only after religious voters had a decisive role in consecutive US presidential elections, mobilizing first for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and then for Ronald Reagan in 1980, that some notion of a unified Christian Right entered the vernacular of American politics. Electoral outcomes of a lesser magnitude in European and post-Soviet countries now prompt scholars to observe an analogous, supranational development across the Atlantic. Gionathan Lo Mascolo and Kristina Stoeckl argue that “sophisticated networks . . . between think tanks, non-governmental organizations, oil and gas companies, dubious financiers, state-funded charities and associations, extremist parties and groups, church leaders, and other initiatives” constitute a loose but nonetheless unitary phenomenon (pp. 12–13), one which links Evangelicals, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox over a continent, in the EU and beyond.

[ 2 ]

Christianity, either as religion or cultural-religious hybrid, has begun to feature in European politics in ways that mirror the American trends which some have called “white Christian nationalism” (p. 18). That is new: Religiously coded politics in postwar Europe has tended to be a bulwark of liberal democracy. But the past decade has seen a shift—not only in Europe but around the world—toward Christianities becoming platforms of right-wing populism, especially on issues of abortion, gender, and migration. In their wide-ranging introduction, Lo Mascolo and Stoeckl attribute the new religious articulacy of European conservatives to influence from the US and Russia. On one side is “the globalization of the American culture wars” (p. 20), while on the other is the values conservatism of Vladimir Putin, which aims to show that “the Soviet Union may have lost the Cold War, but—just as Russia won the Second World War—it will win [those] culture wars” (p. 67). But in spite of that fearful symmetry, prospects for any collaboration between the two poles were severely downgraded after February 2022, when Russia initiated its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

[ 3 ]

The chapters in The Christian Right in Europe proceed country by country, apart from an early consideration of the “European bubble” of Brussels institutions (p. 43). Treatments of Russia, Poland, and Hungary are placed right after the introduction—owing to their importance for the subject—while the remaining chapters are arranged alphabetically, from Austria to the United Kingdom. Across the whole, readers will find an unevenness of quality and voice. A standout chapter is Ukraine, whose authors helpfully outline their methodology for research on “religious nationalism” (p. 352). The chapter on Hungary, where megachurch Pentecostalism has flourished, shows in microcosm the influence of American conservatism throughout Eastern Europe. Overall, the density of information in this slim volume will make it a powerful scholarly resource, regardless of whether its broader theses can be borne out.

[ 4 ]

In these pages, as in much coverage of overtly Christian politics, there often emerges the large methodological question of how to distinguish a sincerely held faith that expresses itself politically from the “cultural Christianism” that amounts to a “secularized ethnic identity marker,” as Anne Guillard and Tobias Cremer write in the context of France (p. 199). On that question The Christian Right in Europe contains little that is new, and here Lo Mascolo and Stoeckl resort to question-begging. “We define the Christian Right by what its representatives think, how they operate, and the goals they pursue” (p. 13). But without a definition of the movement, how are those “representatives” to be identified in the first place? Nor is there anything novel about the instrumental use of Christianity for political ends, which has featured in the faith’s dialectical development at least since Constantine the Great (272–323). Strongly argued distinctions between real and ersatz religion read more like interdenominational polemics than political science.

[ 5 ]

The thesis that there is a Christian Right in Europe comparable to the US Christian Right is belied by the complexity and multifariousness presented here. Scholars and commentators will probably feel themselves on surer footing in referring to a European “Christian right wing”: a general orientation that takes different forms and motivates different aims according to national cultures and regional affinities. Our understanding of that orientation is greatly aided by the wealth of knowledge in The Christian Right in Europe. But that much may suffice without overstating a tendency which in reality remains tenuous, protean, and marginal. Lo Mascolo and Stoeckl plainly state their point of view: “This volume throws into sharp relief how the Christian Right in Europe is not a fringe phenomenon but instead poses a real threat to liberal democracy” (p. 35). But can it plausibly be said that the selfsame movement is represented by Pentecostals in Hungary, the Catholicism of Giorgia Meloni, and the Patriarch of Moscow? Perhaps only when a truly pan-European electorate produces the psephological evidence will it be possible to speak with confidence of a singular Christian Right in Europe.