Kristina Stoeckl

This chapter examines how religion functions both as a network and a repertoire of dissensus in relation to liberal democracy in Europe, when dissensus is understood as structured, ongoing contestation over liberal norms. We trace the evolution from a post-war Christian Democratic consensus to the rise of global culture wars and the emergence of a transnationally influenced European Christian Right. Empirically, we focus on two arenas: the European Parliament, where Christian-heritage framings and sovereigntist claims shape conflicts over gender, migration, and identity; and the European Court of Human Rights, where coordinated legal advocacy channels these framings into strategic litigation. We propose the dual frameworks of “religion as network” and “religion as repertoire” as conceptual tools to unpack the dense transnational networking of European Christian Right actors, the deep cultural resonance they generate by strategically employing religious themes, and their capacity to reframe norms from within EU institutions. The chapter contributes to debates on dissensus over liberal democracy by identifying the timeline, actors, and debates that are reconfiguring Europe’s Christian landscape into a site of ongoing contestation over democratic ideas.

This article examines the evolution of Russia’s traditional values agenda in the context of the Russia–Ukraine war, focusing on its domestic radicalization and international projection through the Russian Orthodox Church. Domestically, the agenda has fostered repressive policies and an ideological framing of societal challenges, deflecting blame onto Western influences and internal “foreign agents.” Internationally, the war has disrupted Russia’s ties with Western conservative networks but strengthened its appeal in the Global South. As Russia pretends to develop a global counter-model to Western liberal democracy, it wants to be recognized as the leader of what we call the “Moralist International,” a transnational network of actors united by conservative values. The analysis highlights the paradoxical reliance of Russia’s anti-Western rhetoric on Western conservative ideas, revealing a fragile ideological foundation.

This article examines the evolution of the Russian Orthodox Church’s identities and political alignments from the post-Soviet era to the present in three chronological phases. First, the author explores the church’s varied post-Soviet identities shaped by experiences of repression, collaboration, dissidence, and emigration from 1991 to approximately 2010. The author identifies key legislative and political developments between 2010 and 2021 that have aligned the Russian Orthodox Church with the autocratic state. Finally, the author analyzes the shifting stance of the Moscow Patriarchate on Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, including Patriarch Kirill’s support for Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine since 2022, which is interpreted as a continuation of the church’s historical role as a collaborator during Soviet times. The author argues that the church’s contemporary role is confined to providing ritualistic and spiritual legitimization for state ideology, perpetuating a logic of authority, control, obedience, and dichotomous friend/enemy thinking reminiscent of Soviet-era security services. Through this analysis, the author reveals how the state and church leadership of the past decades has strategically positioned the church in preparation for conflict.

Dans cet article, nous établissons que le discours russe sur les valeurs traditionnelles doit une grande partie de son contenu et de sa formulation stratégique aux guerres culturelles mondiales. En remontant beaucoup plus loin que les récentes élaborations du Kremlin, nous examinons les origines des débats sur les valeurs publiques en Russie depuis la période de la perestroïka, lorsque les acteurs russes ont été socialisés à la réalité des guerres culturelles par des activistes occidentaux approchant les sociétés post-soviétiques avec un zèle missionnaire. L'article reconstruit l'émergence du discours sur les valeurs traditionnelles en Russie et souligne sa nature hybride en tant que mélange de notions sur la culture, la religion et l'histoire russes avec des idées de la droite chrétienne occidentale. Sur la base de documents, de la littérature et d'une recherche empirique qualitative avec des acteurs conservateurs en Russie et à l'extérieur, nous montrons que les valeurs traditionnelles autour desquelles les dirigeants russes ont construit leur doctrine de sécurité nationale anti-occidentale reflètent en fait la dynamique mondiale des guerres culturelles.

The rights of people who are marginalised by their sexual orientation and gender identity (LGBTI) have improved in many countries. Largely, these achievements can be traced back to the ‘spiral model’ of factors including transnational mobilisation by the LGBTI rights movement, the actions of a few pioneering governments, and advances in the human rights frameworks of some international organisations (IOs). Yet a rising and increasingly globally connected resistance works against LGBTI rights. It rests predominantly in the hands of a transnational advocacy network (TAN) that attempts to lay claim to international human rights law by reinterpreting it. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork and 240 interviews with LGBTI, anti-LGBTI, and state and IO actors, this article explores how the conservative TAN functions, in terms of who comprises it and how its agenda is constructed. We argue that this TAN has employed many of the same transnational tools that garnered LGBTIQ people their widespread recognition. It also conforms to the spiral model of rights diffusion, but in a process we call a double helix. As the double-helix metaphor suggests, rival TANs have a reciprocal relationship, having to navigate each other’s presence in an interactive space and thus using related strategies and instruments for mutually exclusive ends.

In the last two decades, Russian state actors and the Russian Orthodox Church have come to play an increasingly important role in the undermining of established understandings of international human rights law by reinterpreting its aims and repurposing its institutions, in particular the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the European Court of Human Rights. Russian state and church leaders have appropriated and coopted the language of human rights in order to advance an illiberal and nationalist agenda that undercuts democratic values and targets particular groups and their rights and freedoms—most notably liberal civil society, political opposition, and the LGBTIQ+ community. Written from the angle of a constructivist sociology of human rights, this article brings together three case studies of Russian rights appropriation around the topics of traditional values, family, and homeschooling and draws six lessons on the (mis)appropriation of human rights for illiberal purposes. The analysis of Russia’s rights appropriation sheds light on the background and build-up for current events in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In the context of a special symposium in The Review of Faith & International Affairs dedicated to the OSCE Policy Guidance “Freedom of Religion or Belief and Security,” this article offers a comparison of the comprehensive security approach in that document and rival Russian understandings of national and human security. The article draws on Russian legal documents and the analysis of Russian public, church, and academic discourse from 2000 to the present.