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 

 

Flemish separatists triumph in Belgian election - Europe- msnbc.com

Flemish separatists triumph in Belgian election:

The Flemish N-VA (New Flemish Alliance) was set to be the largest party in Dutch-speaking Flanders and in all Belgium, narrowly ahead of the French-speaking Socialists, results showed after 86 percent of the votes had been counted.

'The N-VA has won the election today,' N-VA leader Bart De Wever, 39, told cheering, flag-waving supporters who burst into a rendition of the Flemish national anthem.

The Interior Ministry projected the N-VA would win 28 of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament, compared to just eight now. It forecast heavy losses for the Christian Democrats and the liberals, former partners in government.

Funny, isn't it, that 20 years ago the West wanted South Africa to drop apartheid, and almost immediately imposed it on Eastern Europe, most notably in Yugoslavia, where the West has consistently supported the independence of Kosovo, the Bapetikosweti of the Balkans. Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace.

And now it's spreading West, with English nationalists increasingly demanding independence from the UK, and waving the flag of the patron saint of Palestine -- one hardly ever sees the Union Jack nowadays.

Perhaps if the Flemish section of Belgium gains independence our diehard apartheid holdouts could emigrate there, and have it as their Boerestan. There's just one problem -- the Flemish are Catholic, and "die Roomse gevaar" ranks pretty close to "die Rooi gevaar" and "die Swart gevaar" as things for which there must be zero tolerance.

End of the US dollar?

Is this the beginning of the end for the US dollar as an international currency?

Iran Ends Oil Transactions In U.S. Dollars, OPEC's Second-Largest Producer Now Pegs Petroleum To Euros And Yen - CBS News:

(AP) Iran, OPEC's second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran's nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq.

Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.

The Rand, unfortunately, seems to be following the US dollar, and dropping against the Pound and Euro. Perhaps we need to link to the Euro. Or perhaps we need asn Afro. On second thoughts, thinking of Zimbabwe, perhaps we don't.

Bantustans for Europe? Should Kosovo be independent?

Is Europe about to get its own independent homeland of Bapetikosweti? The Nato attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 (which was every bit as foolish as the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, lest anyone think that there is any significant difference between the two major US political parties) not only failed to solve the problems of Kosovo, it exacerbated them.

One of the things that seemed odd to me, as a South African, was that just at the time that we were at last abandoning the follies of apartheid, Europe seemed to be embracing them. The following extract from an article by Jan Oberg puts the situation in a nutshell:

One of the most dangerous and unrealistic ideas circulating today in international politics is that the Serbian province of Kosovo is a "unique" case.

So much blood has been shed and so many international administrations and peacekeeping forces have ruled in dozens of other regions around the world facing a similar situation involving separatism. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Palestine, Northern Cyprus, the Basque region, Chechnya, Northern Ireland, Tibet, Taiwan, Kurdistan ...

People in all of these areas, and many more, are following the Kosovo story very closely, especially given that most of them have suffered more violent conflicts and have waited for the solution of their problems much longer than the province of Kosovo.

Given the continuous pressure on the Serbian community in Kosovo, it is easy to imagine that the independence of the province would most certainly lead to a mono-ethnic Albanian Kosovo. Serbs who left would never come back.

Such a result would completely undermine the arguments of those who supported the NATO bombings in 1999, which were said to be carried out for the "multiethnicity" of Kosovo. The 1999 bombings would be seen as a campaign for Kosovo's independence, which is a long way from the proclaimed goals of the "humanitarian intervention."

It has been an open secret for a while now that "goodwill advisers" have been suggesting to the team of the United Nations chief negotiator for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, to find a legal basis for the "uniqueness" of Kosovo in order to avoid setting a precedent that could affect other regions of the world.

But Ahtisaari should avoid a "one- time solution" that gives independence to Kosovo. Breaching international law might appease Albanian separatist aspirations in Kosovo, but it would certainly open a Pandora's box of separatist causes worldwide.

Jan Oberg, Lund, Sweden. Director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research

Aleksandar Mitic, Brussels. Chief Analyst at the Institute 4S and TFF Balkans team leader

There is also a longer and more detailed article about the ethnic cleansing that has been taking place under Nato supervision here.

Apartheid didn't work in South Africa, where its detractors sometimes referred to it as "balkanisation". And now it has been re-exported to Europe, where the voices calling for the Bantustanisation of the Balkans are growing louder.

It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack.