Ian Ellis: Extreme right-wing ideologies threaten to divide societies in ways that ultimately dishonour truly human values

Then, at the beginning of September, the AfD won the largest number of votes (32.8 per cent) in the state election in Thuringia, a region in the East.

This was indeed a historic moment because it marked the first time a far-right party had done so in a German regional parliamentary election since 1945.

However, other parties are unwilling to share power with the AfD, a commitment sometimes described as a political “firewall” against the far-right.

Then, on September 22, in Chancellor Olav Scholz's home region of Brandenburg, also in former East Germany territory, the AfD almost overtook Mr Scholz's Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), winning 29.2 per cent to the SPD's 30.9 per cent.

According to commentators, the reasons for the AfD surge, particularly in the East, vary from historical factors to the economy to immigration. It has been in opposing the last of these, immigration, that the AfD has been especially outspoken.

However, despite it being highly unusual for churches to take party political stances, in Germany they have been unequivocal in rejecting the AfD.

Following a closed meeting last March in Dresden, the Bishops' Conference of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany issued a statement clearly warning against the AfD, saying it was alarming that “anti-democratic forces” were once again striving for power in Germany.

The statement went on to say that anyone voting for the AfD “supports a party that tramples on the Christian view of humanity” and “violates the commandment to love one's neighbour”.

The Protestant move followed a similarly clear stance taken the previous month by the Roman Catholic bishops in Germany.

They declared that right-wing extremist parties and those that were proliferating on the fringes of the ideology could not be “a place for Christians to engage in political activity”.

In June 2019, I had the privilege of attending the German Protestant Kirchentag as the official guest from the Church of Ireland. It was held in the city of Dortmund in the North Rhine-Westphalia region.

A Kirchentag is essentially a biennial, five-day festival of Christian faith characterised by a mixture of devotion, informality, togetherness and thinking through a wide range of issues.

The fact that so many people attend a Kirchentag (some 80,000 in 2019) – mostly from parishes up and down the country – makes the event a very public one and, perhaps because of the predominance of social justice issues in the programme, attracts attention from the media.

Politicians attend. After the 2019 opening service concluded, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, gave an address stressing the need to preserve democracy, and later in the event one of the keynote speakers was the then Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who addressed the need for trust in international affairs.

There was some comment in the national media regarding the decision of the Kirchentag committee specifically to invite representatives of all political parties in the German parliament except the AfD. No doubt the organising committee had thought long and hard in making its decision.

At the event, I spoke to a number of people about the issue and there seemed to be a mixed view – some thinking the AfD should have been given a voice even if only to be challenged, while others felt that because of far-right aspects of the party's attitudes it had crossed a red line in terms of acceptability.

Another recent far-right surge has also just occurred in Austria. At the end of September, the anti-immigration, far-right Freedom Party of Austria, founded by former Nazis in the aftermath of World War II, doubled its share of the vote in a national election, but again it did not achieve an outright majority.

Current Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl has advocated for a "Fortress Austria" with closed borders. The Freedom Party has opposed accepting refugees from Russia's war in Ukraine as well as sanctions on Russia.

As far as ultra right-wing trends in the United States are concerned, the United Church of Christ – a Protestant denomination in the US with over 4,500 congregations - has published a response to the right-wing Project 2025 document, saying: “Project 2025 has become well known as a set of extreme policies which could threaten basic freedoms and harshly impact some of the country’s most vulnerable people.”

The response adds that the Project 2025 policies, if implemented, would “dismantle not only the structure of our federal government but [also] attack deeply held values of religious freedom and the separation of church and state”.

The BBC has described Project 2025 as a policy "wish list" that would “expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision”.

Although Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, saying he had nothing to do with it, the BBC points out that many of former Trump administration officials have contributed to it.

Whether in Europe or America, extreme right-wing ideologies threaten to divide societies in ways that ultimately dishonour truly human values.

​

Canon Ian Ellis is a former editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette