Illiberal Cultural Christianity? European Identity Constructions and Anti-Muslim Politics

This paper refers to the ambivalence of secularization in order to explain why Cultural Christianity can show both a liberal and illiberal character. These two faces of Cultural Christianity are mostly due to the identity functions that, not only faith-based religion, but a particularly culturalized...

Verfasser: Hennig, Anja
Hidalgo, Oliver
Dokumenttypen:Artikel
Medientypen:Text
Erscheinungsdatum:2021
Publikation in MIAMI:20.10.2021
Datum der letzten Änderung:17.01.2023
Angaben zur Ausgabe:[Electronic ed.]
Quelle:Religions 12 (2021) 9, 774, 1-20
Schlagwörter:Cultural Christianity; illiberalism; ambivalence; secularization; democracy; European identity; memory politics
Fachgebiet (DDC):320: Politikwissenschaft
Lizenz:CC BY 4.0
Sprache:English
Förderung:Finanziert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU Münster).
Format:PDF-Dokument
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:6-96009439888
Weitere Identifikatoren:DOI: 10.17879/31059582316
Permalink:https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:6-96009439888
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Onlinezugriff:10.3390_rel12090774.pdf

This paper refers to the ambivalence of secularization in order to explain why Cultural Christianity can show both a liberal and illiberal character. These two faces of Cultural Christianity are mostly due to the identity functions that, not only faith-based religion, but a particularly culturalized version of religion, entails. Proceeding from this, it will be demonstrated here how Cultural Christianity can turn into a concrete illiberal marker of identity or a resource for illiberal collective identity. Our argument focuses on the link between right-wing nationalism and Cultural Christianity from a historical-theoretical perspective, and illustrates the latter with the example of contemporary illiberal and selective European memory constructions including a special emphasis on the exclusivist elements.