The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 4: Populism and Religion

Continued from Part 3

Comments on Populism and Religion: Why the Twain Will Always Meet by Petr Kratochvíl [1]

In this essay Petr Kratochvíl argues that liberal democracy is under threat from populism, and that populism is linked in various ways with religion, even when it doesn't appear to be. 

He explains that, "By liberalism, I generally understand the large group of theories that are concerned with the limits to the scope of state power and the related defence of individual and collective rights of citizens." I can go along with that. 

But I'm sceptical when he claims that "liberalism is a core element of the hegemony on which the global order is built". I think Samuel Huntington came closer to the truth of that when he ascribed it to: (1) the social and class relations of the West, with the rise of cities and commerce, and the dispersion of power in Western societies between estates, monarchs and secular and religious authorities, and the development of state bureaucracies; (2) the technological invention of the means of ocean navigation for reaching distant peoples and (3) the development of the military capabilities for conquering those peoples. As he put it: "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do".

 Kratochvíl's next point, however, I believe is accurate: that liberal democracy is threatened by populist movements that wish to uncouple liberalism from democracy. They want simple majoritarianism. An example in South Africa, where the Bill of Rights prefaces each clause with "Everyone has the right to....", is populist majoritarians who want it changed to "South African citizens have the right to..."

That was also a feature of Afrikaner Nationalism, which claimed to be based on Christian Nationalism. Within the perceived boundaries of the "Afrikaner nation" it was very democratic, and very illiberal. There were to be no restrictions on the power of parliament (in Afrikaans, "volksraad"="people's council") which was there to exercise the "volkswil" (people's will) unrestricted by any liberal notions like bills of rights. The sovereignty of parliament was almost an article of faith. But Christian Nationalists were also authoritarian, and regarded Christian Nationalism as essentially anti-democratic.

Kratochvíl sees two kinds of links between populism and religion. The first is that religious groups may form an alliance with populists because they share some common aims or values. Religious leaders could therefore encourage their supporters to support populist movements. The second kind of link is deeper, though perhaps less visible -- that a populist movement tends to be a quasi-religious entity. It is marked by a return of the sacred, and the political world is reenchanted. "The populist redemptivism directly or indirectly draws on the chiliastic conviction of the end of time, the coming of the Antichrist and the fight of the just against the hosts of Satan." And also "populist movements are much more frequently built upon the principle of charismatic leadership, verging on a cult, rather than the bureaucratic authority which is typical for mainstream political parties."

Populist movements are also characterised by an emphasis on the return of the natural (common sense) and the return of the past. They hold out the promise of a past golden age, when everything worked, even though the remembered past is often a sanitised version of the actual past.

In thinking about all this I'm reminded of a book I read 60 years ago, The Secular City by Harvey Cox, in which he said:

We should oppose the romantic restoration of the sprites of the forest. It may seem pleasant at first to reinstate the leprechauns, but - as Hitler made all too clear - once the Valkyries return, they will seek a bloodthirsty revenge on those who banished them. We should also be wary of any attempt to resacralize politics. Political leaders and movements should never be granted any sacred significance, and all efforts to use public authority to support traditional religious beliefs or the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism must be resisted.

 Kratochvíl would probably agree with most of it, except the last bit about "the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism". He regards the distinction between sacred and secular as important for liberalism, and suggests "secularism" as one of the positive values promoted by liberalism. Cox, however, made a distinction between secularization on the one hand, which he said was a process that was compatible with, and indeed initiated by the Christian worldview, and secularism on the other, which he said was an ideology with quasi-religious characteristics.

So I see liberal democracy, and the threats to it, somewhat differently from Kratochvíl. I don't see the main threat to it as populism, but rather as authoritarianism, which Kratochvíl doesn't mention. And that threat comes from within as well as from without. The US is often referred to by journalists as "the leader of the Free World" -- I assume that by the "Free World" they mean the liberal-democratic countries of the world -- but recent arbitrary arrests by secret police (the masked members of ICE) and resulting detention without trial show that the US is decidedly unfree and authoritarian.

Of course its current government doesn't claim to be liberal, rather the opposite. I think the UK still regards itself as a liberal democracy, but the recent arrests of people protesting against genocide and charging them with "terrorism" shows that the "liberal democracy" label is no longer securely attached. A few years ago, when the UK parliament was debating detention without trial, most of the UK news media were speaking of advocating detention without trial as "the moral high ground". In the present the UK also has by far the highest number of people who have been prosecuted for things they said online.

I think Kratochvíl has missed a couple of important points here.  I believe that in the Christian faith there is an important difference between authority and authoritarianism, and between tradition and traditionalism, and between secularisation and secularism, and we need to be talking more about those. 

 

________

Notes and References 

1. Populism & Religion, in van der Pol et al 2025:17

 

The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 3: The 'Russian World' in Europe

The Many Faces of Christianism: The 'Russian World' in Europe -- Part 3, continued from Part 2 

Chapter 1 is an introduction to the book by all four editors:  Marietta van der Tol, Petr Kratochvíl, Sophia Johnson, and Zoran Grozdanov.

It introduced the concept of "imaginaries", which I struggled to understand, but I think I can interpret it in the Lacanian sense of an external image that shapes one's self-perception, as a child's image of itself is shaped by its reflection in a mirror. So there are two things: the child itself -- the reality, and the imaginary -- the external image that shapes the child's perception of itself. 

Among the imaginaries discussed in this chapter are the concepts of "Holy Rus'" and "Holy Russia" and what strikes me about it is that in this chapter they are discussed purely as imaginaries. They are not examined in context, and there is apparently no attempt to understand them theologically, or relate them to the thing that is reflected in the mirror. They are simply assumed to be exactly as the external Western observers assume them  to be in a kind of self-referential circle. The "Holy Rus'" referred to in this chapter is a Western imaginary of a Russian imaginary of an unmentioned original.

Recently, the idea of the Russian World has increasingly aligned with Russia’s expansionist policies. A politicized version of Christianity, and Russian Orthodoxy in particular, is highly influential in shaping the idea of the Russian World, partially through the canonical claims of the Russian Orthodox Church, but mostly through popularised notions of Holy Rus’ and Ancient Rus’ that imply the unity of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians as ‘brothers’. In this sense, the Russian World refers to an “organically unified transnational orthodox Christian Russian civilisation that includes the territories and people of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and sometimes other nations” (Van der Tol et al 2025:6). 

If this was meant to be a serious critique of the way a theological imaginary (Holy Rus') has influenced a secular political imaginary (Russian World), then it should surely compare the imaginary with the reality, and show how they differ. It should at least attempt to understand the original in its own terms rather that rather arrogantly assuming that its imaginary of an imaginary is the only correct view of the world.

What is Holy Rus', or Holy Russia? 

Holy Rus' refers to the spiritual descendants of Saints Olga and Vladimir of Kievan Rus', who introduced the Christian faith into the regions to the north of the Black Sea in the ninth century. Over the following centuries it spread to an area roughly covered by modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Over the centuries it developed some features that made it distinct from Christians in other parts of the world. It had a common liturgical language (Church Slavonic), and honoured as Saints a set of Christians unique to that part of the world. It is these Saints that constitute the essence of "Holy Rus'".

"Holy Russia" was a subset of those spiritual descendants of St Olga and St Vladimir who spoke the Russian language or lived in the Russian state, which developed mainly as a resistance to Mongol conquest in the twelfth century.  

In the 19th century the Napoleonic conquests sparked a resistance in the form of a romantic nationalism, which emphasised the distinctness of language and culture. In Russia it also led to the growth of a pan-Slavic nationalism. In the 20th century the Bolshevik Revolution resulted in most of the territory of Holy Rus' falling under  the domination of a radical Western secularist and internationalist ideology, which encouraged atheism and discouraged religion of any kind, including Christianity, and at least two generations grew up under this regime.

When the Bolshevik regime fell in 1990, many of the suppressed movements, including nationalism and Christianity, resurfaced. But after two generations of suppression, very few people had any idea of what they were about, and only had "imaginaries" to go on. These were often confused and mingled, sometimes quite deliberately by some people, and so various forms of Christian Nationalism (and unChristian Nationalism) developed.

In its original meaning, Holy Russia was not holy because it was Russian; it was holy because it was Christian. Holy Rus' linked people of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine because they were baptised, and not because they were part of a "Russian World". In the reality of Holy Rus' (as opposed to the imaginary) the war between Russia and Ukraine is tragic because it is a war between people who have been baptised in the Orthodox Christian faith and are therefore brothers through common citizenship of the Kingdom of God, and not of some earthly political entity. If they assert (or deny) that they are brothers because of belonging to some earthly political entity, then, from a Christian point of view, their attitude is idolatry -- they have idolised some secular conception of a nation, an "imaginary", if you like.

But this essential background history is entirely missing from the opening and introductory chapter of The Many Faces of Christianism. It is a serious defect.

It also seems to me that there is also a legitimate sense in which Holy Rus' or Holy Russia can be imaginaries -- rather in the way that C.S. Lewis described the relationship between Logres and Britain. 

Continued in Part 4: Populism and Religion  

The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 2: Imaginaries and other buzz words

 The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 2 -- continued from Part 1.

The first thing that struck me when I began to read The Many Faces of Christianism was the use of the word imaginaries. It appeared in the first paragraph, and about seven times in the first chapter (more if you include footnotes, none of which explained it).

Here is one of the sections in which the word appears in context:

In all of this, the bulwarks of present-day anti-liberalism, such as the notions of Holy Rus’ or the Russian World, nationalist and populist movements in Europe, as well as the Make America Great Again-campaign feature major political imaginaries: they assert a timeless connection between certain territories, certain people, and cultural or civilizational exceptionalism. All of these build on a connection of these political imaginaries with (selected aspects) of religious tradition.

One might conclude, therefore, that "imaginaries" are things that assert timeless connections between certain territories and people on the one hand, and cultural and civilizational exceptionalism on the other -- but it's still a rather nebulous concept.

I recalled, however that I had seen the term used a couple of years earlier in a book I had been editing. It popped up in Chapter 12, and I was unable to edit the sentences in which it appeared, because I had no idea what they meant. I asked the author, and suggested that he include a definition of it and a couple of other terms (like "hybridity") somewhere in the first chapter so that readers who encountered them later in the book could see what he was talking about.

He said the term had been suggested to him by a mutual friend and former colleague of mine in the Missiology Department at the University of South Africa (Unisa), Klippies Kritzinger, so I asked him what the term meant. I thought I had made a note of his reply, but I had mislaid it. I did a web search, which said it has something to do with the square root of -1. It took me some time to find Klippies Kritzinger's reply, and when I eventually did find it, it said:

I used the term 'imaginary' more or less in the sense that the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor does. He coined the term 'social imaginary', which is not the same as a theory. I use the term ecclesial imaginaries, which I first called the 'functional ecclesiologies' by which members view and experience the church. These are imaginaries such as: church as stokvel (you don't get buried from church building if you are owing on your 'dues'; church as theatre (it is mainly about entertainment: vibrant music and motivational speeches); church as school (mainly about teaching and learning); church as business (minister as CEO, flashy marketing and huge building); and so on... The wonderful biblical images of Body of Christ, people of God, group of disciples, bride of Christ, and so on are perhaps affirmed intellectually, but the actual praxis (theory-practice-theory-practice) is driven by these imaginaries. And I told Stephan that many URCSA members and students do church in these ways, which I find problematic and disappointing. I hope this helps a bit....

That did help in the case of the book I was editing two years ago, but it doesn't help much in the case of this book, which has "imaginaries" scattered throughout, but they seem to mean something other than popular erroneous conceptions of the Church. 

It does, however, seems to have become the Western theological buzzword of the 2020s, as "relevant" was in the 1960s, "contextual" in the 1970s, and "holistic" in the 1980s. It's one of those words that lots of people seem to use, but no one is quite sure what it means. 

Since retiring, however, I seem to have got out of touch with most Western theology, and I realised that I'd kept in touch with most of it while I was working through gossip in the Unisa cafeteria and editing theology study guides, but, since losing access to the Unisa library ten years ago, I've been pretty much out of touch with it. 

But reading The Many Faces of Christianism I begin to suspect that many Western theologians are as out of touch with Orthodox theology as I am with Western theology and view it mainly through Western Protestant/secular/political spectacles, and perhaps even primarily through the spectacles of the CIA.

In trying to get a handle on "imaginaries" I also asked on an English usage internet forum, some of whose members had access to more resources than I do, and it appears that it is not in the Oxford English Dictionary, but suggested it may have been imported from French, and was possibly connected with the French philosopher Lacan. And yes, that seems a promising path to follow, except that  I learn that, like Lacan's other contributions to psychoanalytic theory, it was subject to a continual reformulation throughout his work. It appears to mean an image external to oneself, like a child observing its reflection in a mirror. I'll have to think about that some more, and see if there are any clues further on in the book.

Holy Rus' is mentioned as one of the "imaginaries", but if an "imaginary" in the Lacanian sense, bears the relation of the image of a child in a mirror to the child itself (as Kritzinger's distorted ecclesiologies in relation to the Body of Christ suggest), then surely in a serious work of theology they should also be discussing the child, rather than just the imaginary? But the authors of this book, in effect, live in the world through the looking glass.

There are other terms that pop up without clear definitions, for example "anti-liberalism"  in the passage quoted above, and "liberal democracy" elsewhere. My initial impression (which may change when I've read more, though I doubt it) is that for the editors and most of the authors, "liberal democracy" is characteristic of the countries of Western Europe and North America, and "anti-liberalism" characteristic of Christian Nationalists. I'm sure that the second part of that is right, but I'm not sure of the first part. Britain's terrorism laws, for example, which treat opposition to genocide as terrorism, are far more draconian than South Africa's 1967 Terrorism Act, passed at the height of its Christian Nationalism phase.

Continued in Part 3. 

 

 

The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 1

 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.

    1 The Many Faces of Christianism: The 'Russian World' in Europe 1
    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

 

Continued in Part 2