Why are Christians in Germany more immune to far-Right populism than in the US?
Whether Pro-Trump rioters parading oversized crosses and Jesus flags during the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021 or the far-Right parties in Europe stylizing themselves as the defenders of their countries Judeo-Christian heritage, right-wing populists are determined to use Christian symbols in order to appeal to voters concerns about national and cultural identity. From Washington to Berlin, these populists often appeal to Christian identity as a marker against Islam, but without necessarily aligning themselves with Christian doctrine, beliefs, and institutions. But between one side of the Atlantic and the other, the Christian communities these groups hope to attract are reacting very differently. In the US, white Christians supported Donald Trump at record levels. However, in much of western Europe, Christian voters appear comparatively immune to right-wing populists appeals. A prime example is Germany, where the far-Right Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) consistently scores significantly higher amongst irreligious voters than amongst Protestants or Catholics, and where the institutional churches themselves have emerged as some of the far Rights most outspoken public critics. There are a host of reasons that may help us understand this discrepancy. Differences in theology, the different make-up of party systems and the availability of Christian Democratic electoral alternatives in Europe, or the unbroken tradition of white Christian nationalism in the US, which is contrasted by a historical aversion to far-Right politics in European churches after their experience of Nazism and fascism, are some possible explanations. However, one key factor that is often overlooked in this debate is the role of church-state relations. Germanys church-friendly political system of benevolent neutrality formally includes faith leaders in the policy-making process and provides them with institutional privileges and a high social status, which encourages them to consider themselves as part of the establishment and defenders of the status quo. As a result, they tend to perceive right-wing populists anti-system agenda more critically. By contrast in the US, the formal separation of church and state, and a perceived secular surge in parts of the Democratic party, has allowed many conservative Christian leaders to stylize themselves as system outsiders, and for a victimhood narrative to flourish within Christian circles. While many observers stress that this persecution complex is often dramatically overdone, most US Christian leaders I spoke to during my own research agreed that within their community there is increasingly a fear that the secular world is closing in on them, as one prominent Christian conservative commentator put it. A leader of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee concurred adding that there is a growing scare, and a sense of fear (which) can cause us to defensively turn inward. It is against this backdrop that many US faith leaders were willing to enter a transactional bargain with Trump, if, in return, he was to protect them against what they saw as a secularist re-interpretation of the First Amendment.