Last week, Viktor Orban, the right-wing Prime Minister of Hungary,
vowed to build a ‘Christian homeland with national values’. Elsewhere,
politicians from Putin to Trump have claimed to be champions of Christianity as
they pursue anti-immigrant agendas.
It would be easy for me to rant about
the fact that using so-Christian identity as an excuse to ignore those in need
breaks Jesus’ commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves. There is,
however, a bigger fundamental problem with the way politicians like Orban talk
about Christian identity. The idea of a Christian homeland is unchristian not only
because it is racist, but because it is a contradiction in terms.
The central event in Christianity is the
life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is at this moment that the God of the
Bible ceases to be the God of one people. In the Old Testament, God revealed
himself to the people of biblical Israel. He made promises that they would have
a homeland and that He would be their God. Of course, as creator of the world,
God still deserved the worship of people from all nations. And many people from
outside the nation of Israel (Gentiles) decided to worship the God of Israel
before Jesus. For the most part, however, they did this by becoming part of the
people of Israel.
All this changed with the death and
resurrection of Jesus. Before He returned to Heaven, Jesus commanded his
followers to ‘make disciples of all nations.’
God had been the God of Israel, but now He would be the God of people
from ‘all nations’. Providing they believed that Jesus was the Son of God and
had died to save them from their sins, they could be part of their promises
that had previously been reserved for the nation of Israel. In the words of one
book of the Bible that was written for those who struggled with this new idea; “there is
neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
You can see this development in
the way the Bible is written. The Old Testament is mainly written in Hebrew.
The New Testament, meanwhile, is written in Greek, which was spoken as a second
language across the Mediterranean. The message of Christianity was intended to
be spread as widely as possible. And so the first people to embrace Christianity
were Jewish, Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Roman, Turkish and Libyan-to name just
a few.
Since that time, people from
every country across the world have abandoned their traditional beliefs in
favour of Christianity. Some see that as a tragedy, but those same critics are strangely
reluctant to return to the traditional beliefs of their own ancestors. Long
before Western missionaries began travelling to Africa, Asia and South America,
the West itself abandoned its own traditional beliefs. If Victor Orban were a
true nationalist, he would be calling on his followers to return to the worship
of Isten, the Hungarian god of the sky.
Of course, many Western countries
like Hungary have been influenced by Christian beliefs. But that does not justify
the creation of a Christian homeland. Hungary has been influenced by
Christianity precisely because there is no such as thing as a Christian
homeland. It is the borderless nature of the
Christian message that allowed
those first Hungarian Christians to choose to follow God.
It’s true that Christianity has often become tied up in nationalist and imperialist projects. Empires have actively forced Christianity onto their subjects while missionaries have used the freedom offered by empire to spread Christianity. But you can embrace a message without embracing the messenger. Take Nigeria, for example. While its religious makeup might be influenced by the fact that it is a former British colony, today, many Nigerian Christians continue to practice their faith despite the risk from attacks by Islamist militants. Can anyone deny that their faith is entirely their own?
Not that those Nigerian
Christians would be particularly welcome in Orban’s ‘Christian homeland’. What
Orban really means by Christian is 'European'. When politicians like him appeal
to the idea of Christian homeland, they forget that Christianity is intrinsically a faith
that transcends borders. And it is a faith-
not a cultural identity.
With all his talk of a Christian homeland,
Victor Orban might come across as a Christian extremist. The problem, however,
is not that he attaches too much importance to Christianity, but that he
doesn’t know what it is.
