Pulse
02 December 2024
In July 2011, my wife, Serene, and I were in Norway to visit an old friend, a retired philosophy professor, who lives in Stavanger, and to spend some time in Oslo, the country’s capital.
In the afternoon of 22 July, as we were just stepping out of a cake shop in Oslo that was located about two hundred metres from the Parliament House, we heard a very loud blast. The explosion shook the ground and sent broken glass from nearby buildings cascading down on the pedestrians.
As Serene and I ran to safety, we saw numerous people running in disarray and screaming, some of whom were injured and bloodied from the broken glass.
We were unable to return to our hotel, so we followed a British couple, whom we had just met, to theirs. At the lobby of the hotel, we watched the BBC news with horror, and learnt that the bomb that had exploded outside Parliament House had killed eight, wounded many and badly damaged surrounding buildings.
But that was not the end of it. We also learnt that after leaving the bomb to go off, the attacker went to the Island of Utøya, where the youth organisation of Norway’s Labour Party was holding their annual summer camp. Dressed as a policeman, the attacker shot and killed 69 people on that island, most of them under the age of 20.
It was later revealed that the attacker was Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian man in his thirties, who regarded himself as a ‘crusader’ whose mission was to save Europe from Islam. Breivik had posted his manifesto entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, which spells out his ideological justification for his acts of terror, online prior to the attacks.
In his manifesto, Breivik claims that the political leaders in Europe, especially the European Union, have conspired to turn Europe into a colony of Islam. This is a classic example of what scholars have dubbed as the ‘Eurabia theory.’
In their recent book, The Claim to Christianity: Responding to the Far Right (2020), Hannah Strømmen and Ulrich Schmiedel argue that ‘two Christianities are at work in Breivik’s world, a “Culture Christianity” and a “Crusader Christianity”’. They add that ‘both are about the control of Christianity as a tradition that is opposed to anyone who is deemed an other or an outsider.’
Although Breivik claims to be defending Christian values, he is in fact a Culture Christian and not a Christian in the traditional and theological sense.
In his manifesto, Breivik presents himself as ‘a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe’. And he revealingly clarifies that he and his followers ‘do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social identity and moral platform. That makes us Christian.’
Consequently, for Breivik the cross is just a symbol of unity for conservative Europeans who wish to protect their culture from pollution by an alien culture. He writes:
… the cross will be a symbol in which every cultural conservative can unite under our common defence. It should serve as the uniting symbol for all Europeans whether they are agnostic or atheists.
Culture Christianity, then, is a particular understanding of Christianity that is intricately interwoven with Europe and its broader culture. It presents a vision of a pure Europe which is devoid of cultural and ethnic diversity, and where Christianity is the dominant religion.
Culture Christianity opposes multiculturalism because it regards it as a threat to the cohesiveness of European society under one religion. Culture Christianity is therefore suspicious of an ‘other’ culture, and seeks to protect the dominant culture (in this case, European culture) from adulteration.
The Norwegian social anthropologist, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, has accurately described Culture Christianity as ‘purity-ideology’. It stands for the quest to achieve the repristination of European culture shaped by a version of Christianity, a return to some imagined ‘golden age’.
Culture Christianity even attempts to retrieve a particular translation of the Bible – in Breivik’s case, the Vulgate – because of the belief that later translations have obscured the Bible’s original message. Contemporary translations of the sacred text, it claims, are driven by political correctness and distorted by the cultural temper of the day.
It is not difficult to see how this miscegenation of a particular vision of European culture and an idiosyncratic understanding of Christianity can inspire a compelling politics of identity and exclusion. As Strømmen and Schmiedel note:
… the Culture Christianity of Breivik’s brand of the far right is cultural and political. The strong identity that is called for is one that unites people under one banner as Culture Christians. Culture Christianity gathers together faithful and faithless Europeans. But it is crystal clear who is not gathered into the fold: Muslims.
It is also not difficult to see how Culture Christianity can provide the impetus for a Crusader Christianity. In their fear that Christian Europe will be ‘destroyed’ because of the invasion of the ‘other’ (in this case, Muslims), Culture Christians resolve to ‘fight back’, to reclaim Europe from their ‘enemies.’
It is therefore not surprising to find a section entitled ‘Christian Justification of the Struggle’ in Breivik’s manifesto. It is also perhaps not surprising that its author is willing to use any and every means to achieve his goal, including violence.
Right wing terrorists such as Breivik often appeal to passages from the Bible (especially the Old Testament) to justify their Crusader Christianity. A passage such as Isaiah 42:13 (‘The Lord goes forth like a mighty man, like a man of war stirs up his fury; he cries out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against his foes’) is commonly used to support their campaigns.
It is also common for Crusader Christians to employ the vivid and evocative apocalyptic images and ideas from the Bible (especially the Book of Revelation) to inform and shape their social imaginary.
It is important to note that Crusader Christians do not see themselves as the aggressors. They see themselves rather as the defenders of Christianity, of European culture, and of a particular way of life, against their ‘enemies’ (in this case, the Muslims), who are the real aggressors.
Crusader Christians lament the way in which contemporary Christians have become soft and docile. They argue for a more ‘masculine’ form of Christianity that boldly declares the truth without compromise, and they call for courageous Europeans to stand against their adversaries and reclaim their cultural heritage.
Needless to say, the two Christianities – Culture and Crusader – of right-wing extremists such as Breivik are antithetical to the Gospel, and to traditional, orthodox Christianity. Christians must have no truck with their erroneous interpretation of the Christian Faith, and their use of religion to justify violence.
At its core, the Christian Faith proclaims love, grace, forgiveness and inclusion.
The most fundamental ethic of the Christian Faith is expressed by Jesus in Mark 12: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (v 31). This command to love the neighbour is inextricably bound with the prior command, namely, to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ (12:30).
The Christian’s obedience of the first command is seen in and measured by how faithfully and sincerely he obeys the second. Most significantly, the Christian ethic of love can never justify the use of terroristic violence by a believer.
Thus, what right-wing extremists such as Breivik present as authentic Christianity is in fact not biblical Christianity at all, but a specious and dangerous perversion.
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.