Chapter 6 - Defenders of the Faith?

Summary

Chapter 6 analyses the Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) use of religious themes in more detail. Relying on several dozen elite AfD leaders, mainstream party politicians and religious authorities in Germany, it shows how the AfDs renewed reference to Christianity is not necessarily representative of a return of religiosity to society, but rather of the attempt of a comparatively secular party to employ Christianity as a secularised national identity marker against Islam. In particular, AfD policies and ideas of Christian identity are revealed to stand in strong conflict with traditional Christian doctrine as formulated by the German Protestant and Catholic churches, the AfD’s leadership and membership to be disproportionately irreligious, and its attitude towards religious institutions to be characterised by a strong anti-clerical sentiment and hostility towards the system of ‘benevolent neutrality’. All of this suggests that the self-proclaimed ‘defender of the Christian Occident’ might, in fact, be Germany’s most secular party.