Uncovering a surprising flow of influence from Europe to the USA, Tobias Cremer’s new book outlines a new ‘Christianism’ within the populist right. Here, Cameron Howes reviews ‘The Godless Crusade’.
The hollowing out of hallowed symbols for political gain is far from a new phenomenon, but in his book The Godless Crusade, Tobias Cremer explores in sophisticated depth the development and trajectory of this trope within the right-wing populist movements of Germany, France, and the USA with lessons and warnings extending beyond these rich case studies.
Any social scientific survey that endeavours to reintegrate and rehabilitate a thematic focus on religion within a wider discourse in which it remains noticeably absent is most welcome; but Cremer skilfully avoids the pitfalls of an overcorrection that centres his analytical lens on an assumption of religion’s resurgence and inherent explanatory power. Instead, through a solid theoretical grounding in established political science and sociological theories and a thorough empirical survey, he derives compelling insights that challenge simplistic understandings of the West’s religio-political landscape.
Cremer’s thesis is that an emerging ‘Christianism’ within the populist right, one that makes use of Christian symbols and imagery as cultural identity markers whilst remaining distanced from traditional Christian beliefs and institutions, is driven by an interaction between ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ side factors within an emerging politics of identity.
On the demand side, Cremer identifies an emerging ‘social cleavage’ that disaggregates cosmopolitans, those who embrace an individualistic globalism with a delineated space for minority group identity, from communitarians, those who define collective identity on inherited markers of ethnicity, culture, history, institutions, and language. Cremer argues that this distinctive divergence is beginning to supersede the traditional explanatory power of existing economic and moral cleavages and has its roots in rapidly advancing secularisation since the turn of the millennium, and a wider erosion of community and belonging more generally.
On the supply side, in recognition of this new cleavage, elites within populist parties strategically position themselves as defenders of the people against the enemy from within, the liberal elite, and the enemy from without, the ethno-cultural other. They use concepts of Christendom and theological tropes to produce political doctrines with moral and salvific qualities situated within a struggle for good and evil. Cremer posits that the resonance and success of this approach amongst practising Christians depends on critical aspects of the religio-political landscape, namely: viable political alternatives and clerical confidence, and legitimacy to denounce such activity.
Within his study, Cremer picks up on two particularly interesting phenomena that merit further exploration. First, a convergence of national populist politics across the Atlantic with a surprising flow of influence. Until very recently, since its rise as an economic and military superpower throughout the 20th Century, the cultural influence of the USA within the wider West has been understood as ‘where America leads, the rest will follow’. However, within Cremer’s study of the Christianisation of right-wing populism, it appears that the rhetoric and strategy forged in Europe has been highly influential on the Trumpist brand of identity politics that is slowly infiltrating, marginalising and sideling traditionally powerful Christian voices and groupings within the GOP.
The second is that secularisation itself is a stratified process, one that has historically affected the white working classes of Cremer’s study more rapidly than other socio-economic brackets. Cremer suggests that whilst this group’s experience of class and commitment to religion may be waning, a yearning for group identity remains, and is an important factor in accounting for the resonance of religiously-laden ethno-nationalist rhetoric within the emerging cosmopolitan–communitarian political dimension. This has very worrying implications as it leaves little room for the church to combat the appropriation of its message into right-wing populism. If the majority of white working class adopters of Christian symbols have already left the influence sphere of the church, clerics taking a stand will have a limited and diminishing effect.
So how might we respond academically, politically, and spiritually to these worrying developments? Both of these phenomena identified by Cremer raise serious questions about who can respond and how that response should be framed.
Whilst The Godless Crusade is a tour de force in its ‘supply’ side analysis, it seems more willing to observe ‘demand’ side trends as empirical social fact without always satisfactorily accounting for them. This is exemplified in Cremer’s use of political cleavage theory. Whilst drawing upon a school of thought that identifies the cosmopolitan–communitarian dimension as an emerging fundamental cleavage for 21st Century politics, and putting it to compelling use in his ‘supply’ side analysis, there is an overly brief dismissal of the economic cleavage and its artificial separation from the emerging identity cleavage.
Though the evidence base demonstrates supporters of right-wing populist movements don’t tend to name traditionally understood economic issues as a priority compared with identity issues, and right-wing populist elites tend to sidestep committing to economic policy programmes, this does not necessarily mean the classical economic cleavage is no longer relevant. Instead, I would argue, the cosmopolitan–communitarian cleavage emerges as a direct consequence of a frozen orthodoxy on the economic dimension. The internal logic of which has led directly to the liberalisation of global finance beyond effective taxation, national stratification into consumer or producer economies, supranational governance, and immigration dependency. Combinations of which have contributed to an intense material alienation of working class communities of all backgrounds. In response to this, right-wing populists seeking to mobilise a white sub-demographic do in fact articulate an economic theory, one that declares ‘purity equals prosperity’. It just happens to be both empirically unsound and morally repugnant.
In situating right-wing populism as more deeply connected with economic politics, albeit in indirect and complex ways, a series of responses come more sharply into focus. For those of us who call Europe our home, rather than commenting on American politics in a dismissive or despairing posture, there is a responsibility to take this European influence on the emerging American right very seriously. The European continent has a rich tradition of class politics and analysis which remains complementary to the important insights generated by identity and intersectional understandings. A more concerted effort to re-articulate this tradition in light of rather than in conflict with contemporary studies that highlight differentiated class experiences through the lens of protected characteristics must be an intellectual and political priority of those with an interest in combatting right-wing populism on both sides of the Atlantic.
In addition, the churches of Europe have a particular role to play. Cremer’s spotlighting of religious demography concentrating itself within the middle classes hints at a particularly pernicious failing of the church in the latter half of the 20th century. As a response to secularising trends, churches with constitutional privileges adopted a defensive programme of elite retention and conversion as a mode of preserving power and influence; with the Church of England and the role of its evangelical networks within elite universities and private schools being a particularly indicative example. Churches across the continent that are willing to atone for and reverse this strategic abandonment through a deliberate return to the public sphere with radical, prophetic, and grassroots contributions to alternative economic theories and political movements might well provide more than just a vaccination effect to right-wing ‘Christianism’ but contribute to a re-shaping of the religio-political landscape of the West more generally.
In his erudite and intricate survey of a growing and worrying movement that has the power to reshape our politics for the worse, Cremer’s analysis provides a sophisticated diagnosis and invites us all to participate in developing a treatment plan across geographic, political, and religious boundaries.
