by Bartek Staniszewski, Spectator
The heydays of Christian influence over European politics may seem long gone. In the UK, after the most recent general election, four-tenths of all MPs took secular affirmations – up from less than a quarter in 2019 – while in Europe, parties with explicitly Christian foundations often seem embarrassed about their religious heritage as they tumble down the polls. Yet Christians have not stopped turning up for those parties. To play to its strengths and resolve its identity crisis, the centre-right should embrace its Christian inheritance.
Even as the centre-right shies away from invoking its Christian credentials, it continues to rally Christian voters around its banner. In the UK, according to the most recent wave of the British Election Study, Christian voters were 33 per cent more likely to vote Conservative, compared to only 15 per cent of non-Christians. In Germany, too, churchgoing Christians are more than twice as likely to vote for the CDU/CSU Union than the non-religious. Even in the notoriously secular France, Catholics disproportionately turn up for the centre-right, with 19 per cent of Catholics – and 29 per cent of regular churchgoers – voting for the centre-right UDC at the 2022 legislative election, where the UDC received only 14 per cent of the overall vote.
This reflects a long-standing trend.