ABSTRACT
The American religious right and the populist Christianists share some common language and aspirations to power but are otherwise quite distinct both in their intellectual heritage, the depth of their piety and in their specific political aims. This chapter discusses Brubaker in treating Christianism as an identitarian movement that considers Christianity as a civilizational marker of a pure people counterposed against an outside threat. It aims to seek more clearly differentiate the underpinnings of the Christianist movement by exploring its common features while recognizing the difficulties in clear dividing lines with other related movements. The root of Christianist support for secularism and, simultaneously, for a dilution of the distinction between Church and State in favour of publicly privileging Christianity, lies in a narrative of civilizational conflict. In most European contexts, the process of nation-building was a partnership between the political elite and Church, while contemporary Christianism is often at odds with, or at least clearly distinct from, the Church.
