I tend to think of "Christianism" as a neologism, and a term that few people have heard of or use, but then saw that I had blogged about it when I first came across it twenty years ago. It struck me then (and I still believe now) that Christianism is to Christianity what Islamism is to Islam, as Zionism is to Judaism, and as Hindutva is to Hinduism -- a militant use of religion as a kind of cultural identify for distinguishing "us" from "them".
Then I read about a new book, The Many Faces of Christianism: The ‘Russian World’ in Europe, edited by Marietta van der Tol, Sophia R.C. Johnson, Petr Kratochvíl and/ Zoran Grozdanov. It sounded as though the term had gone mainstream, well, at least in academia. I saw several mentions of the book, and thought it might be worth reading and discussion, since it seemed to be one of the areas and one of the issues over which World War 3 might break out. So a year ago I put it on my "to read" list, and this week I discovered that the publishers are distributing the ebook copies free, so I got a copy and have started to read it.
But it seems that I am the only person on the GoodReads site who is actually reading it. I asked on various online forums dealing with theology and missiology if anyone was interested in discussing it, but there were no takers, so I've decided to write my thoughts as I read it in my blog here as I go along.
This isn't a review, though the notes I make might be useful for writing a review later on but is rather my conversation with the authors and editors of the book, though no doubt they will never read it. If anyone does read this, and is open to discussing it, well then I'd love to hear from you. There are things that puzzle me about the book, and other people may be able to throw some light on them.
One reason for my interest in it is that Christianism is the militant and extremist wing of Christian Nationalism, and Christian Nationalism was the ruling ideology of the National Party government of South Africa during the apartheid years, from 1948 to 1994. With the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994 we thought that Christian Nationalism was a discredited ideology. Many of those who had supported it in the past abandoned it when they saw that the sky didn't fall, and it was something of a surprise when it began to be adopted in parts of Europe and the USA.
To give an idea of where it is going, then, here is the Table of Contents.
Marietta van der Tol, Petr Kratochvíl, Sophia Johnson, and Zoran
Grozdanov
2 Populism and Religion: Why the Twain Will Always Meet 17 Petr
Kratochvíl
3 When a Light Cloak Turns into a Pious Cage: Thinking National
Identity with Karl Barth and John Paul II 41 Zoran Grozdanov
4 Fratelli Tutti: A Failed Battle against Christian Nationalism?
60 Anne Guillard
5 The Russian World, The Hungarian World, and Make America Great
Again: Political Imaginaries and Their Spaces 80 Marietta van der
Tol
6 Russian World, Holy Russia: Towards a New Ideology? 107 Veronica
Cibotaru
7 Putinism and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Religious Motifs 125
Dmytro Bintsarovskyi
8 From St. Paul and Carl Schmitt to Alexander Dugin: The Katechon
as a Political Category in Empire Building 143 Dustin J. Byrd
9 Between Religious Nationalism and Universal Familism:
Anti-Gender Movement Values in Croatia and Serbia 169 Ivan Tranfic
10 The Orthodox Church and the Greek Solution Party: A Stunted
Political Relation between Adjacent Ideological Platforms 194
Konstantinos Papastathis and Anastasia Litina
11 Belonging without Attending? National Identity and Contemporary
Religious Patterns in Serbia 210 Marko Vekovic
12 The Danish People's Party and the Heritage of Tidehverv: A
National Example of a European Tendency 230 Erik Sporon Fiedler
13 Christianity, Religion and Christian Democracy 250 Katharina
Kunter and Leon van den Broeke
14 The European Union as a Space of (In)Securities: Analysing
Political Reasoning by Lithuanian Catholics 273 Rosita
Garskaite-Antonowicz
15 Theopolitical Visions of National Belonging: Resisting the
Totalising Tendencies of Inclusion 290 Jenny Leith
16 The Contested Meanings of the Anglican Parish in Multireligious
England 308 Lauren Morry
17 Concluding Reflection: The Call for Political Theologies after
Christendom 325 Marietta van der Tol, Petr Kratochv¡l, Sophia
Johnson, and Zoran Grozdanov Appendix 1: A Declaration on the
"Russian World" (Russkii Mir) Teaching 336
Appendix 2: A statement of solidarity with the Orthodox
Declaration on the "Russian World" (Russkii Mir) Teaching, and
against Christian Nationalism and New Totalitarianism 342
