A Posture of Protest? The Search for Christian Identity in A Post-Secular Society: Between Secularised Eschatology and A Sacralisation of History

Abstract

This article theorises ideations of “the people” in a comparative reflection on Latin-Christian theologies and typologies of time and secularised appropriations thereof in right-wing as well as far-right movements in Europe and the United States of America. Understanding the world in grand narratives of “good” and “evil” emerges from Christian eschatological hope: the hope of the restoration and renewal of the cosmos and the final defeat of evil prophesised in association with the return of Christ. However, this language of good and evil becomes detached from the wider corpus of Christian belief and theology. In its secular expression, it may attach the good to an abstract and normative account of “the people”, who are defined in contrast to a range of others, both internal and external to the nation. Secular iterations might further echo the stratification of present, past and future through a sacralisation of the past and a dramatization of the future. The context of contemporary right-wing and far-right movements poses a series of questions about the relationship between belief and belonging, the acceptability of the secularization of Christian traditions and theologies, and the extent to which Christian communities can legitimately associate with right-wing movements.

Secularisation as the fragmentation of the sacred and of sacred space

“…Now this picture has been challenged by the twenty-first century 'return of religion', but also by post-secular formations of the sacred which are no longer intrinsically attached to Christianity, and perhaps even to religion as such (Balkenhol, van den Hemel, and Stengs 2020). This is evident in contemporary forms of nationalism and populism, some of which draw explicitly on Christian symbolism while others do not (Brubaker 2012;Gorski and Perry 2022;van der Tol and Rowley 2021). Little has been written, however, about the implications of such formations of the sacred for public space, which in liberal political theory tends to be constructed as secular with reference to ecclesial space, and public with reference to private space.…”

“…Another peculiarity is that debates on secularisation tend to overlook how secularisation assumes a narrowed understanding of time, within which a given space is held to be either sacred or secular. Ascriptions of meaning to time transcend the merely mundane and chronological, and may contain various typological temporalities: metaphors and ideas that capture how individuals, communities, and societies understand themselves in space and time, and how they differentiate themselves from others (Koselleck 1979;Fabian 1983;van der Tol and Rowley 2021). Latin Christianity entertained many such typological temporalities, for example, through understanding time as 'exilic', 'eschatological', or speaking of people as already or not yet 'redeemed'.…”

“…It is, however, perhaps not so different from post-modern designations of time, such as 'post-Christian', 'post-secular', as well as 'post-colonial', which also indicate certain ascriptions of meaning to time. Moreover, time might be understood in terms of the secular-sacred, for example when right-wing populisms draw on secular Christian apparatuses, referring to eschatological themes (Cremer 2022;van der Tol and Rowley 2021;Strømmen and Schmiedel 2020). Their lip-service to Christianity is of course expressed by a sacralisation and ascription of final authority to 'the people', the nation (Chaplin 2021).…”