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5 September 2023

5 min read

Beware Europe’s political messiahs

As European leaders increasingly co-opt Christianity, George Pitcher asks if they have come to serve or be served?

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

Jorge Buxadé, a leader of Spain's Vox party, and Giorgia Meloni, Italy's Prime Minister, at a Brothers of Italy press conference.

Vox.

I worry that European Christianity may face an identity crisis. Not in the usual sense of us beginning to forget what we are and, as a consequence, who we are. Rather that the continent’s formative creed may be misappropriated by a gathering global trend towards identity politics, which may seek to conflate and deliberately confuse a messiah with the Christ.

It’s easily enough done. Indeed, the first disciples did so. The Jewish resistance movement against the Roman oppressors, of which we presume John the Baptist was a leading light, was expecting a new Elijah to lead them to liberation – their messiah.

What it got was a Nazarene called Jesus. The scales finally fall from the eyes of rock-like fisherman Peter when the Nazarene asks him who the crowds say that he is. Maybe John the Baptist, maybe Elijah, maybe a risen prophet, replies Peter.

“But who do you say that I am?” asks Jesus of him. In one of the most dramatic verbal responses of the gospel, Peter (I imagine) whispers his answer: “The Christ of God”, though other followers evidently remain confused. The crowds who welcome him triumphantly into Jerusalem hail the “Son of David” and lay palms in his path. And arguably Judas Iscariot anticipates a popular uprising, a Passover insurrection, by arranging his arrest.

They confuse the Christ with a messiah. The distinction is important today in the conduct of our polity. Because the latter delivers temporal deliverance, the former eternal. A messiah is cultic, the Christ is universal.

That’s important because populist European politicians can adopt a messianic pose. But they struggle to be Christ-like. Do they come to serve or be served? Let’s just say that our popular political parties are light on foot-washers.

The messianic leader, the chosen one, anointed by nation rather than by God, is at the heart of Europe’s current identity crises.

But being messianic remains more than enough for nationalistic leaders, just as it would have been for one whose sole brief was to lead the people of Israel from under the jackboot of Rome two thousand years ago. The messianic leader, the chosen one, anointed by nation rather than by God, is at the heart of Europe’s current identity crises.

Behold Christian Nationalism. It is cultic of the personality and it has a specific self-interest in co-extending the messiah with the Christ. Jared Stacy wrote excellently here recently that Christian Nationalism “has political potency because it taps into primal identities, theologies, and moralities.”

Stacy’s article is a tour de force on the subject, connecting Christian Nationalism’s social and historical reality to its current political potency, and I don’t intend to channel it. What I will attempt is to pick up where he leaves off.

He writes that the movement’s main error seems to be “its move towards supremacy. Jesus’s rejection of political power in the wilderness and his resistance to political power through the Cross are lost in the rising tide of Christian Nationalism.”

This seems to me to allude to precisely the distinction I wish to make between the servant ministry of the Christ and the political potency of a messiah. To elide the two is the intention of popular nationalists when they claim Christian heritage. And there lies the true danger in this identity crisis.

What I find so alarming is that it points towards the Church’s role in an emerging rejection of some aspects of liberal democracy in favour of populist nationalism.

A Financial Times article this month traced the populist Catholic counter-revolution in Europe, which corrals religiously conservative young voters in support of nationalism and conservative family values. And it shows us why messianic Christianity can be so frightening.

Its central argument, based on a poll in the French religious newspaper La Croix, is that youthful conservative Catholicism is re-emergent “as a political, as well as religious, force” and nor “is the fusion of Catholic identity politics with nativist and ‘sovereigntist’ populism… particular to France.” It notes the electoral success of the Vox party in Spain, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Law and Justice party.

What I find so alarming is that it points towards the Church’s role in an emerging rejection of some aspects of liberal democracy in favour of populist nationalism. And, while I don’t want to be melodramatic about this, I believe that in turn directs us to the darkness of the Church’s role in 20th-century European history.

We may or may not be familiar with photos of clerics giving the fascist salute, as in Spain in support of General Franco. But it’s been a matter of constant debate since the Second World War whether the Church was an active collaborator with the Nazi regime, an honest dupe or a double agent, appearing to co-operate so that it could subversively defend persecuted Jews.

It’s dangerous to invoke Hitler at every apparent threat to the liberal democratic federalism of the post-war European experiment. But it’s also valid to note resonances when the Church allies itself with nationalism. And that’s what is frightening.

The direction of travel of European popular politics, from France to Vox to Brothers of Italy, places Christian witness chillingly into question. And, of course, this isn’t just about Europe.

Donald Trump attempted to annexe scriptural authority to himself as president by posing outside a church brandishing a copy of the Bible during the Washington DC riots in response to the death of George Floyd at police hands (and knee) in 2020.

Returning to Stacy’s commentary, he writes:

“Christians may need to distance themselves from the American Jesus, only then to discern the things they have picked up and called ‘Biblical’ which are merely ideological.”

Amen to that. A simple start to that might be to quote Terry Jones in Monty Python’s Life of Brian and assert of Trump that “he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”

Rather more seriously, we need to recognise, not just from our history, but the warning that the United States offers us today of sub-messianic nationalist leadership. For those of us of faith in Europe, we’ve had more than enough examples of the dangers when the Christ is adopted as a personality cult.

The most supranational authority to which Christians owe allegiance is not a worldly power. And we lose sight of that identity at our peril.

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Film & TV

18 May 2024

1 min read

Théoden and breaking the spell

Bernard Hill’s most famous role sheds light on where humanity needs to be.

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles. He previously studied Dark Age archaeology at Cambridge, and afterwards worked in international law.

A movie scene of a king and prince walking confidently.

Bernard Hill, middle, in The Lord of the Rings.

New Line Cinema.

Recently we saw the sad passing of Bernard Hill, one of the great British actors of his generation, whose career enjoyed many high points. Hill came to prominence, in Britain at least, in the 1980s with his role as an unemployed tarmac-layer in the BBC series Boys From the Blackstuff. Through the 1990s, he went on to star in a number of big budget Hollywood feature films, such as The Ghost and The Darkness, Titanic, and The Scorpion King. But his best-known role, the one which won him global recognition, was as King Théoden in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In both Tolkien’s book and Jackson’s adaptation, the character of King Théoden plays a pivotal role in making a stand against the forces of evil advancing under the banners of first the wizard Saruman the White in The Two Towers, and then the Dark Lord Sauron himself in The Return of the King, the trilogy’s climax.

Théoden’s character arc is as heroic as any in Tolkien’s epic. But perhaps the most memorable moment within it comes when he is first introduced. Gandalf comes to Théoden’s hall of Edoras to rally support against Saruman’s rampaging armies of orcs. But instead of a redoubtable king and ally in the fight against their common enemy, he finds a weak man buckled under the weight of old age and infirmity, cowed by fear and indecision, and enthralled to the counsel of Grima Wormtongue - whom Gandalf reveals to be an agent of Saruman.

In Jackson’s version, Gandalf ‘delivers’ Théoden from his enthrallment, in effect breaking the spell of inertia and inaction which Saruman, through his minion Wormtongue, has cast over him. Théoden awakes from his bondage, is physically rejuvenated, and is now able to rise and take his proper place in the battleline against Sauron’s evil power. In Tolkien’s version, Théoden has more agency. He chooses, at last, to throw off the counsel of Wormtongue and cling to the slim thread of hope which Gandalf represents, however desperate it may seem.

It is a powerful image, and one from which we can and must learn today.

Our ears are open to so many voices through both mainstream and social media that it becomes a matter of extreme importance to be able to discern who is Gandalf and who is Grima Wormtongue?

Few would deny that recent times have revealed new and determined manifestations of evil in our culture and our world. And yet, both inside and outside the church, these latter years have also been characterised by a feeling of helplessness and inaction in the face of such evil. It’s common to hear both men and women complain that they feel unable to speak up in opposition to what they perceive as wrong. They have been silenced. Either those who dare to speak up find themselves cancelled. Or else those who don't self-censor, keeping their mouths shut and their heads well below the parapet. Like Théoden, they lock themselves away in their hall. In this latter case, the battle is ceded without ever having drawn a sword.

As the famous Edmund Burke quote goes: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ Much of the church, some might dare to say most of it, resides in this place of cowed inaction. Enthralled and confused by the Wormtongue whisperings of the media as mouthpieces for agendas diametrically opposed to the good, we have willingly subjected ourselves to this spell. And the consequence? Like the Westfold of Rohan, the land is burning.

It is not controversial to say anyone who cares about our culture and its future needs to awaken from their slumber. Needs to cast off - or else have cast out - the gag of silence. But what is more troubling perhaps is that, even having done that, we cannot agree on what is evil and what is good.

In the Bible, the devil is portrayed as often masquerading as an angel of light. And it warns against the descent of some cultures into a state of such moral confusion that God’s ordinances are inverted: good is called evil, and evil is called good.

So how are we to navigate our way through this mire of uncertainty? Warnings against misinformation and disinformation abound. And yet, those in positions of power who proclaim them may equally be charged with propagating untruths and dissembling realities, all for the sake of shoring up their own power structures.

All this is to say - our ears are open to so many voices through both mainstream and social media that it becomes a matter of extreme importance to be able to discern who is Gandalf and who is Grima Wormtongue?

Tolkien’s choice of the name Grima Wormtongue is significant. ‘Grima’ derives from the Old Norse word, grímr which means ‘mask’. ‘Worm’ similarly derives from another Old Norse word: ormr which means ‘snake’ or ‘serpent’.

As such, it throws us right back into the Garden of Eden and the honeyed words of the serpent which led humanity into such disaster, offering some purported good up front, while concealing the calamity (and shame) which comes hard on its heels. If we are to stand up and contest the modern manifestations of evil, we must be able to recognise the side of the field of battle on which to take our stand.

Who is Gandalf? In Tolkien’s world, though he hated the idea of his work being interpreted as allegory, Gandalf does represent the Christ figure. And Sauron in turn suggests the Anti-Christ - a nebulous figure arising from scripture, poorly understood at the best of times. But somehow the fountainhead from which, humanity is told, all evil must flow.

But if humanity thinks of Christ on the side of good, and Christ as the most human of us all, perhaps this provides a yardstick by which we can discern the lines of battle.

Is it human or anti-human to stand up for life at its most vulnerable? Is it human or anti-human to stand up for the family unit? Is it human or anti-human to honour and celebrate each and every Imago Dei as they were created to be? Is it human or anti-human to safeguard a parent’s right to speak good into their children’s life? Is it human or anti-human to preserve the innocence of our young? Is it human or anti-human to challenge systems of power which enable all kinds of exploitation and other self-evident evils?

First we must awaken. Then we must choose our side. And finally, like Théoden, we must ride to the fight.

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