Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Anton Jäger (Journal, 11 June) are right to suggest we take note of the far right’s hijacking of religious feeling to forge a “ global theological counter-revolution”. I don’t think we should just fall back on Marx’s “haven in a heartless world” truism to understand why. Given, for example, the Catholic church’s doctrines of original sin and personal sin, it provides little in the way of haven in this world, and posits, at best , a post-mortem “judgment of God” as salvation.
What the far right makes use of is simply the role of hierarchy within the religions with which it allies, such as to normalise the anti-democratic hierarchy it also seeks to establish. The “Christian civilisation” the likes of Viktor Orbán and Steve Bannon refer to is one conceived of as pre-democratic, so that a false history and a liturgy of supplication combine as ideological props for the legitimisation of the world view of the right.
Fascist and rightwing populists have always formed convenient alliances with hierarchical religions. One solution available to the left in the face of rightwing populism’s critique of the failings of capitalist democracy is to argue precisely that capitalism is not democratic enough, and push for the extension of working-class democracy and extra-parliamentary institutions. We cannot combat the new anti-democratic forces by cleaving to the status quo.
Nick Moss
London
• Steinmetz-Jenkins and Jäger have helpfully drawn attention to the link between rightwing populism and religion. This link is as much with conservative Catholics as with conservative evangelicals (as in the case of many Trump supporters). Indeed it applies to conservatives of all religions.
Broad church and liberal Christians sometimes struggle to get their views heard in the midst of the loud clamour of the conservative right. But readers may be pleased to know that Modern Church (of which I am a trustee), which started out in 1898 as an Anglican society determined to promote a rational approach to theology and which welcomed Darwinism, is working on this very issue. In fact our annual conference in July is dedicated to this subject.
Rosalind Lund
Cambridge
• Not only do far-right European populists seek an “unholy alliance with religion”. Angela Merkel, of the Christian Democratic party and daughter of a Lutheran pastor, has recently used religious language to attack President Trump. Her first point, in a speech to the alumni of Harvard, was to encourage “a change of mind”. The Greek is “metanoia”; the Christian word is “repentance”. And “A change of mind” was the first of Luther’s theses he nailed to the door 500 years ago. Religion resonates. It has as Steinmetz-Jenkins and Jäger suggest the “capacity to recraft norms”. A pity it is now too late for another minister’s daughter, lacking such a clearly stated “moral centre” as Mrs Merkel, to stand up against our English nativists. She just caved in.
Rev John Longuet-Higgins
Hartpury, Gloucestershire
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