Rise Of Christian Nationalism, And The West's Double Standards

On February 6, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a task force 바카라�to end the anti-Christian weaponization바카라� of the government and the 바카라�unlawful conduct targeting Christians바카라�. In a country where Christians make up two-thirds of the population, he promised to protect Christians from religious discrimination.

The task force, officially known as the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, will review the activities of all departments and agencies to identify and eliminate anti-Christian policies, practices or conduct. The departments, as Trump바카라�s speech indicated the same day, include the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Trump argued that until and unless Christians in the US had religious liberty, 바카라�we don바카라�t have a free country바카라�. The next day, he signed an executive order to open a 바카라�Faith Office바카라� at the White House. Trump banned the legal recognition of transgender people by the US government. He pardoned anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading the entrances of abortion clinics.

Trump had literally announced the arrival of Christian nationalism바카라�an ideology that fuses Christian religion with national character바카라�at the helm of US affairs. Such a chain of developments in any Muslim or Hindu majority nation would have triggered a flurry of reportage over the capture of state power by religious fundamentalist/ nationalist/communal forces. But in the case of the US, the coverage appears to be rather mellow.

This, however, is not without a pattern. The case of Tanzania shows that the Western media tends to ignore, or take lightly, the threats from Christian fundamentalism. In 2019, Bettina Rühl, a freelance journalist based in Cologne (Germany) and Nairobi (Kenya), wrote in an article published in International Politics and Society that John Magufuli, a professed and practising Catholic who became the president of the African country of Tanzania in 2015, fought his electoral campaign with prayers, making a show of his faith.

Rühl pointed out that had Magufuli prayed to Allah as demonstratively as he practised his Catholic faith, the Western world would likely have been less at ease. 바카라�When, as in this case, a practicing Christian comes to power, no one in Western countries gets nervous,바카라� she wrote.

As it turned out, in September 2018, Magufuli said that women using birth control were 바카라�simply too lazy to feed a family바카라� and advocated against birth control. Subsequently, his government barred pregnant girls and single mothers from attending school바카라�a ban rigorously enforced바카라�and criminalised homosexuality, with provisions up to the death penalty, and launched a crackdown.

Such Western bias in their treatment of the societal and political developments in the West and in Asia got reflected in how the Western media responded to two incidents involving writer Salman Rushdie.

Christian Christensen, a professor of journalism at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden, showed in a 2023 essay that when Rushdie came under attack from a suspected Muslim fundamentalist in 2022, the incident was leveraged by politicians and journalists across Europe and the US to frame Islam as the greatest threat to the 바카라�Western바카라� value of free speech. 바카라�There were countless news articles, opinion pieces, tweets, Facebook posts and television soundbites,바카라� he wrote. But when Rushdie, in 2023, identified 바카라�populist Right-wing authoritarianism바카라� as a greater threat to free speech in 바카라�the West바카라� than fundamentalist Islam, 바카라�Gone were the news articles, opinion pieces, tweets, Facebook posts and television soundbites.바카라�

This silence was despite religious fundamentalism of a different variety바카라�Christian fundamentalism or Christian nationalism바카라�remaining intrinsically linked to the rise of the Right-wing populists in the West. As political scientist Gionathan Lo Mascolo and sociologist Kristina Stoeckl wrote in their 2023 work: 바카라�The rise of the Christian Right is inextricably linked to the ascent of the Far Right both in Europe and in the United States.바카라�

The fact that the religious aspect did not get enough attention was reflected in what journalist Katherine Stewart said in February 2025. In an interview with Ms. Magazine, Stewart, author of the recently released book, Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, said, 바카라�Some political commentators have scratched their heads over the fact that Latino support for Republican candidates has shifted so dramatically over the past eight years. This shows that they haven바카라�t been paying attention to religious organizing on the ground.바카라�

A Historical Construct

Such a lack of focus existed despite the rise of Christian nationalism/fundamentalism having been expected to impact politics and society beyond Trump바카라�s territory. In March 2019, an investigation by the UK-based independent media platform, Open Democracy, revealed that Trump-linked US Christian 바카라�fundamentalists바카라� poured millions of 바카라�dark money바카라� into Europe to push ultra-conservative agendas boosting the Far-right.

An apparent lack of alarm bells in the Western media and political discussions over the rise of religious fundamentalism/nationalism in regions dominated by Christianity may have its roots in the colonial-era notion of the secular occident (Western world) and religious orient (Eastern world).

What was the East and what was the West? The East or the Orient is merely what Europeans and North Americans called Asia. One of the biggest flaws in this binary is that neither the West nor the East includes Africa and South America. But there are bigger flaws. It generalises the whole of Europe and the US on the one hand, and Asia on the other.

There also was a religious angle to it. The Orient comprised followers of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, whereas the Occident was the land of Christianity. This bias of portraying the East as religious and the West as secular is well-reflected in how the 19th-century British historian James Mill periodised the history of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu, Muslim and British (not Christian) periods. This notion may have had a partial historical basis in the fact that the western part of Europe became highly secularised during the 19th century.

However, the scene was different in Eastern Europe or the US. In both the US and Eastern Europe, organised religion바카라�especially Christianity바카라�had traditionally been conspicuously strong. As many studies have suggested, the religious fervour in the politics of the US and Eastern Europe steadily rose since the 1990s, especially after the end of the Cold War.

While Christian fundamentalists kept raising their heads in regions dominated by Christianity since the 1990s, the 바카라�Western바카라� media kept talking about Western civilisation바카라�s impending clash with Islam.

An influential role in this narrative was played by American political scientist Samuel P Huntington바카라�s work, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. It speculated about a scenario in which the secular and the democratic Western cultures were coming into increasing conflict with religious non-Western cultures. He identified the major cultures as Western, Orthodox, Hindu, Islamic, Sinic, Buddhist, Latin American, African and Japanese.

How he mixed geographic and religious cultures could not be missed. Wasn바카라�t he carrying the legacy of James Mill? In this categorisation바카라�Arab countries, Indonesia, Bosnia and Herzegovina바카라�became part of one world, the Muslim world. But the Christian world is divided into Western, Orthodox and Latin American.

In 2001, following Al-Qaeda바카라�s 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in the US, Huntington wrote that the attack was Osama bin Laden바카라�s attempt to draw the US and the West into a full-fledged clash of civilisations with Islam. Again, how he used a secular (geographic) term to refer to Christian-majority areas cannot be missed. Huntington바카라�s theories have been widely accused of spreading Islamophobia. Nevertheless, the media grabbed it. Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian wrote in a 2003 paper that the mainstream media in the US 바카라�automatically, implicitly and unanimously adopted Huntington바카라�s paradigm to explain September 11바카라�.

The same attitude continues. When the West discusses the rise of the Right in Asia, it highlights the religious or cultural aspects. But when the 바카라�Western바카라� media discusses the rise of the Right or the Far-right in the 바카라�West바카라�, issues like immigration and economic distress find greater priority over the part being played by religion바카라�the Christian Right.

Old habits die hard.

This article is a part of Outlook's March 1, 2025 issue 'The Grid', which explored the concept of binaries. It appeared in print as 'Secular Occident And Religious Orient?'