Governance of religious diversity in Central Europe: A religious nationalism inspired illiberal turn in Hungary and Slovakia?

Introduction

Countries of Central Europe with historically dominant Roman Catholic heritage make a particular cluster in the region in respect to the governance of religion in the post-communist era. The Holy See is known to have been staunchly anti-communist throughout the communist era. Consequently, the Roman Catholic Church was perceived by the national communist regimes as an adversary and an obstacle on the path of the set goal of creating an atheist communist society. (Vörös, 2009) With the collapse of the communist regimes, in many of the countries of the region, the Roman Catholic Church received both formal and informal recognition as a supreme spiritual caretaker of the nations. At the same time, religious freedoms of practically all other faith communities were also formally recognized and registration of all sorts of religious organizations, hitherto unknown to the region, mushroomed. However, soon enough, the liberal regimes of the governance of religion gave way to a civilizationist primordialism-infused forms of the governance of religious diversity which increasingly acquired features of religious nationalism. The Christian heritage of the nations, particularly in the wake of the so-called ‘European migrant crisis’ of 2015-2016, was declared to be preserved and nourished (Wolkenstein, 2022) apparently, at the expense of other walks of life and belief systems. With new instalments of relevant legislation, ‘alien’ faiths and religious groups deemed ‘dangerous sects’ have been increasingly securitized, sometimes to the point of their virtual banning.

Yet, government-promoted religious nationalism in post-communist Central Europe needs to be viewed from the perspective of the level of religiosity among the inhabitants of the respective countries. Overall, surveys reveal that religiosity among the populations of Central Europe is waning away, although followers of non-traditional religious movements in the region somewhat increased (Kovács and Lajtai, 2020). Nevertheless, the gradual stifling of the regimes of the governance of religion in the region with their apparent tilt toward religious nationalism linked to traditional religions of the region need not to taken as a consequence of rising religiosity, but rather as a political strategy to a great extent. This is related to reactions to the more global developments, including South-North migration, religious radicalization and consequent securitization of religion or at least particular faiths.

The present article provides, through the theoretical perspective of religious nationalism, a comparative critical analysis of the developments in and around the regimes of the governance of religion in two countries of Central Eastern Europe, namely, Hungary and Slovakia. The main aim of this research is to answer the question of whether and, if so, how religious nationalism has been affecting the observed changes in the regimes of governance of religion in the two countries under investigation. Additionally, the research aims at enquiring into the nature of the arguably rising religious nationalism in Central Europe. The choice of the two countries has been chiefly circumscribed by the fact that their successive governments for the past decade or so appear to have been particularly keen on revamping hitherto rather inclusive (liberal) national regimes of the governance of religion toward a pronounced illiberal type all the way to becoming some of the most restrictive, if not in all of Europe, then certainly within the EU. In Slovakia, the left-wing populist Robert Fico and his SMER-SD party has been an influential player in domestic politics having been in power for a number of years in the past decades. In Hungary, it is right-wing populism that is characteristic to the FIDESZ-led alliance that has been a dominant player in domestic politics since the late 1990s.

In both countries, nationalism has a clearly religious dimension. In Slovakia, it is the Catholic church that plays a historical role in the nationalist narrative. In Hungary, it is Christianity in general that nationalist movements invoked a number of times in recent history. Not only the nationalist movements in both countries had deep rooted Christian identification in the interwar period. The forced secularization of the Soviet Bloc countries in the name of the international proletariat further strengthened Christianity in the contemporary nationalist narrative after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Besides, in both countries we see far-right movements on the political arena that invoke religio-civilizationist arguments in their political discourse. In this respect, both countries have been affected by populist ideas, but it was since these countries saw populist parties from the left and right being in government, this gives further relevance to our comparison.

If one regards secularism to be a kind of ordering principle in governing the state (Göle, 2010, 47-48), one may also regard post-secularism to have the same characteristics in governance particularly as far as religions are concerned. By moving beyond the Habermasian (2006, 2008) approach to post-secular being a clearly liberal, Western reality of affluent societies, we share the views of Parmaksız (2018, 109) about a state’s seculanormative role. According to this idea, states may create their own normative order that treats certain beliefs preferentially over others. This allows the taking up of certain religious values and normative structures by the government. As a result, we can see a clear intention to bring back certain ideas and normative values in the name of religion into the public space. This is a move away from the ‘classic’ Western liberal post-secular, and in the case of Central Europe, it may also contain illiberal elements.

In this process, the governing elite attempts to dominate the discourse on the idea of the nation that is ethnically and religiously exclusivist. This creates a tension among religions in general that are inherently transnational and certain nationalist interpretations of religion or rather religious interpretations of nationalism. Governing elites may create post-secular narratives of the state, where religion and religious heritage can be used as a reference point to underpin a nationalist agenda. It also creates a value-laden public space where the state may be separated from religious organizations institutionally, but it is not separated by certain value-sets that are anchored in a certain religio-nationalistic narrative.

Based on this narrative and these value-sets, states obtain normative authority that enables them to differentiate between religions and religious organizations. This leads to states creating entry barriers to public space for certain undesirable religions. As a result, those religious organizations that fall into line with the nationalistic narrative and value-sets would be treated preferentially and have access to additional state resources. Whereas those groups who do not fit the value-set or oppose the exclusivist narrative may find themselves marginalized.

These dynamics are easy to recognize in case the domestic politics of a country is dominated by what Triandafyllidou (2020) regarded as neo-tribal or ethno-religious nationalism. This type of nationalism is based on the ethnic or religious purity of the nation. According to Ádám and Bozóki (2016), in the case of Hungary, this is only a “quasi-religious” stance from the government, utilizing religion to legitimate its own actions. However, this “quasi-religious” stance creates an essentialized (Modood 2013) image of religions that may be in conflict with what other interpretations of these religions represent. For instance, both the Hungarian and the Slovak governments invoked Christianity and their nations’ Christian heritage when they introduced radical measures against mostly Muslim migrants during and after the so-called ‘European migration crisis’ (Wildmann, 2018; Zvada, 2018).

Dynamics in the regimes of governance of religion

The two countries in question share historic heritage, as both Hungary and Slovakia, were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with Slovakia belonging to the Hungarian part of it. Though initially primarily a Catholic Christian state, gradually Austro-Hungary became a multi-confessional country where, alongside Christians, Judaist and Muslim minorities (particularly after the occupation in 1878 and subsequent annexation of Bosnia in 1908) lived. All major confessions were recognized by the State and centrally controlled. With the communist takeover in the late 1940s, religious life in Hungary and the then Czechoslovakia (part of which Slovakia then was) of practically all faith communities, like elsewhere in the communist-ruled Eastern Europe, was made very difficult and only the major Christian denominations managed to continue it. Catholic and other Christian Churches adapted to the political reality and sometimes even went into tactical collaboration with the communist regime (Sulák, 2022).

Identarian instrumentalization of religion and top-down religious nationalism

In the wake of the so-called ‘European migrant crisis’ of 2015-2016, the idea of saving the Christian identity of both Hungary and Slovakia but also of entire Europe as a whole has been called to the foreground again. But this time, in Hungary, this discourse was presented somewhat differently. Instead of only targeting the opposition parties, the discourse also positioned Hungary and the government against liberal post-Christian secular forces trying to change the ethnic and cultural/religious setup of Europe as a whole. This discourse rejected the idea of secularism and obtained an illiberal post-secular stance, where Christianity has become a cultural and also political marker. According to this narrative, the FIDESZ-led Hungarian government was one of the few governments that tried to protect Christian Europe from Muslim-dominated migration and the Western political elite that supported such migratory flows. The government positioned itself again as the protector of Christianity and Christian values against these perceived internal and external enemies.

The relationship between the Hungarian government and the Churches could be characterized as political pragmatism. We agree with Bozóki and Ádám (2016) the interdependence between the State and privileged Churches has been increasing. Still, religion and Christianity is present only in a limited and very one-sided way in the politics of rightist political parties. Gradually the political space that used to be occupied by former conservative and Christian democrat parties have moved to the extreme right and became increasingly populist in their nature. They are very conscious on exploiting the fusion of national and Christian religious identity (Marcinkiewicz and Dassonneville, 2022) that became central to domestic politics under their watch.

As Fekete (2016) points out, the current Hungarian nationalist interpretation of Christianity focuses more on notions such as on national identity, family, work and order, whereas little emphasis is given to caring for the poor and vulnerable. The ruling elite claims to represent the nation and attempts to monopolize discourse on national religious identity, representing themselves as the guardians of Christianity and Churches as well. In line with the basic populist tool to claim to represent the people against a supposedly evil elite (Mudde, 2004), the ruling elite presents itself at the representative and protector of a pure Christian Hungarian people (Hisarlıoğlu et al., 2022) against a secular leftist-liberal elite domestically and globally as well. This ethno-religious nationalist (Triandafyllidou 2020) stance creates a very clear normative space in which the state is able to give preferential treatment to certain religious groups over others. This is paired with political pragmatism. The government not only gives preferential treatment to “historical” religious groups, but those groups too, who may fit the religionormative (Parmaksız, 2016) scope of the ruling elite and plays a politically useful role. We agree with Brubaker (2017) that populists in Hungary and Slovakia reject liberal and secular values, unlike populist parties in North and Western Europe. However, we think this kind of Christianity is not secular as Brubaker (ibid.: 1208), interprets is, but essentially post-secular with a Christian identarian normative political domain, and in case of constitutional supermajority, an institutional framework, too.

Though securitization of migrants had been a feature of the threats’ perception in Slovakia since the early 2000s (Goda and Ušiak, 2016), it had remained more of a hypothetical issue until the so-called ‘European migrant crisis’ of 2015-2016 affected Slovakia directly to a certain extent. In reaction, the once again ruling SMER-SD with its leader Robert Fico as the PM, mimicried Hungary in its assessment of the processes around this crisis. Very much like Orban in Hungary, Fico resorted to sustained public othering and securitization of arriving migrants in general and those of Muslim background among them at the same time calling on Europe to protect its purported Christian values, something his government was supposedly doing in Slovakia.

Despite the fact that there have been no instances of Muslim religious radicalization in Slovakia, since (and, practically, prior to) the start of the ‘European migrant crisis’ and the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Islam and Muslims have been increasingly vilified and securitized at both the social and political levels. Kovanic (2021: 131) accepts that “[i]n Slovakia, the political elites traditionally held a restrictive approach to migration, even though it was not especially present in the public discourse” but notes that “[t]his changed dramatically with the migrant and refugee crisis in 2015. The topic of migration became dominant in public discourse, and also one of the main issues of the March 2016 parliamentary elections.” He describes the discourse that centered around migration to have been “a discourse of othering and exclusion, associating Muslim refugees with the theme of crime, including organized crime and terrorism, as well as the theme of cultural incompatibility with the local population, making the Muslim migrants undeserving and unacceptable.” (ibid.)

According to Kovanic (2021:131) “these discourses of threats were instrumentalized by political actors and used as a legitimization strategy in the electoral campaign.” During this period, Robert Fico, the prime minister at the time and the leader of the ruling party, made numerous negative remarks and statements about migrants, whom he identified with Muslims. For instance, in November 2015, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Fico publicly stated that the Slovak government was ‘monitoring every single Muslim currently present in the territory of Slovakia’ (Colborne, 2017); he has also said, in 2016, that ‘Islam has no place in Slovakia’ (Chadwick, 2016) and that he firmly stood by his objective to prevent the ‘emergence of a united Muslim community in Slovakia’ (ibid.). Such statements by the PM are argued to have “perpetuated and emphasized the construction of an “imaginary suspect community” and [given] it prominence in the public sphere, since the securitization discourse came from the highest political position.” (Kovanic, 2021: 131)

Besides the PM Fico, numerous ruling coalition partners and other high-ranking Slovak politicians would, since the outbreak of the ‘European migrant crisis’ continuously resort to the civilizationist Christian primordialist pattern. In August 2015, the then Slovak Ministry of Interior spokesman, Ivan Netik, declared that “Muslims would not be accepted because they would not feel at home.” (BBC, 2015) He further argued: “we don’t have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?” He also was quoted to have said that “Since the Catholic church is dominant in Slovakia, and the second most dominant one is the evangelical church, we will not tolerate three or four hundred thousand of Muslim who are coming. They will start building mosques and they will change the character of this state”. (Zvada, 2018: 227) The chairman of the parliamentary Slovak National Party, Andrej Danko, who in 2015 was very active in pushing for the raising of the number of required number of members of religious collectivities who seek registration, is also quoted to have stated that “we have to do everything for Catholic Europe to remain the same Catholic Europe.” (Zvada, 2018: 228)

Slovakia initially agreed to accept several hundred refugees within the framework of the EU refugee distribution quota system but very soon decided not to take them in, arguing that accepting refugees presumed to be chiefly of Muslim background would increase the country’s vulnerability and decrease its national security. So, as Kovanic argues, “[t]he discourse of otherness resulted in the willingness to aid only Christian refugees, based on the assumption of a shared religious background and thus higher compatibility with the local culture.” To this end, Slovakia ultimately decided to accept just some 150 migrants of Christian cultural background (Kovanic, 2021: 132)

As Kovanic notes, in Slovakia, “[a] major change in the focus of right-wing extremism came about with the migration and refugee crisis, after they shifted their rhetoric on the anti-migration and anti-Islamic attitudes and fight against multiculturalism more intensively.” (Kovanic (2021, 126). Without a doubt, the leading actor among Slovak far-right has been Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia (K- ĽSNS). As is stated on its official website, “the People’s Party Our Slovakia was founded on three pillars - Christian, national and social” (Kotleba, n.d.b). The program of the party includes a promise to “base the upbringing and education of the youth on traditional national and Christian principles and values” (Kotleba, n.d.a).

Paulovicova (2020: 185) points out that the party’s ‘national’ pillar “is built solely on ethnonationalism and majoritarianism”, while the ‘social’ pillar “signifies “economic protectionism and social chauvinism” and “Christian” is a normalized term for “neoludak version of political Catholicism”, representing historical-political continuity with the clerical-fascist heritage of the wartime Slovak Republic’s Hlinka Slovak People’s Party.” Members and supporters of the party have expressed their Muslimophobic stance in numerous statements and public protests (Rafa, 2015). In the elections of 2016 the party made it for the first time into the Parliament – it received more than eight per cent of the votes what secured 14 seats.

Though the ‘European migrant crisis’ has long passed and has not really affected Slovakia in any material sense – virtually no immigrants sought to stay in it, as reported, well into the 2020s, “Islamophobia, as one of the tools of the politics of fear” continued to be used not only by politicians of the far right but also by SMER-SSD politicians (Robert Fico, Ľuboš Blaha, and others)” (Lenč, 2022: 516). Richard Sulik, Freedom and Solidarity coalition chair and later on Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister, wrote in 2020 ton his blog that his party viewed Islam as “incompatible with [Slovak] culture” and that “in Islam … [p]edophilia, polygamy, and several other norms are in stark conflict to our rules.” (U.S. Department, 2021: 7) Furthermore, the International Religious Freedom Report for 2020 claimed that “anti-Muslim rhetoric also featured prominently in the parliamentary election campaigns” of far-right parties. For instance, the Direct Democracy party is reported to have “stated in its program that it aimed to “stop the Islamic invasion into Europe” and stressed that “Islam must never become even a small part of [Slovak] culture.” (U.S. Department, 2021: 8)

Securitization of Muslims may also be observed in the annual reports of the Slovak intelligence organizations. For instance, the 2018 report of the Slovak Information Service (2019) states that “[t]he Muslim community in Slovakia did not publicly react to the events associated with terrorist attacks with an Islamist background. No open spreading of jihadist content or sympathies for jihadist organizations were noticed. However, the activities of a few individuals on social media websites were identified as potentially threat posing.” Reacting to this passage, Kovanic observes that although the report “does not demonise the community as a whole (…), the mere link to terrorism through the inability to condemn it, coupled with suspicious activities of a few individuals, constructs a category of mistrust, which feeds into and perpetuates wider ideas about Muslims as a suspect community within the societal and political context in which Islam is perceived mostly negatively” (Kovanic, 2021: 123) He further notes that “[t]he method by which threats are constructed by the intelligence service has effects on the political discourse and policy formulation in some specific areas” and argues further that the effect of these constructions “can influence the formation of discourse, or be instrumentalized for political purposes. The connection to the ruling political coalition exists through the Security Council of the Slovak Republic, which assigns responsibilities to the Slovak Information Service. The Head of the Council is the Prime Minister, and the Director of the SIS is a permanent member.” (Kovanic, 2021: 131)

Conclusions

Both, the Slovak and the Hungarian regimes of the governance of religion have in the past decade or so made sharp illiberal turn with a civilizationist Christian primordialist underpinning, where the State, in the person of the government, posits itself as a defender of Christian values and Christian Europe, however both concepts are understood. In this regard, one may observe identarian instrumentalization of religion and top-down religious nationalism at work in both countries. Yet, the trajectories that the two countries have pursued are somewhat different – while in the Slovak case, it took a decisive staunchly anti-Muslim track, in the Hungarian case, it has become more about realignment of State-Church relations to draw some of the latter (‘the chosen ones’) closer to the State.

The uniqueness of the Slovak regime in the governance of religion lies in its strict rules of registration for religious collectivities, which has led to Slovakia being one of the few European states where Muslims do not have a registered Muslim religious organization and are forced to operate (including religious rituals and other activities) through NGOs. Though there are a number of faith communities in Slovakia which are legally deprived of the right to have a religious organization, it is widely believed that the draconian legislation was designed to prevent followers of Islam from institutionalizing their religion in the country as both the country’s political elite and the population are decidedly Muslimophobic. ⁵ And all this against the backdrop of the reality where people of Muslim background make just several thousand souls and no signs of Muslim religious radicalization have ever been reported. In Slovakia securitization of Islam across the political elite has reached unprecedented levels.

Hungary resembles Slovakia in the sense that the government uses Christianity to drum up support to its ethno-religious and neo-tribalist nationalist narrative. After winning a supermajority it managed to shape the constitutional and religious institutions of the country to draw “old” and politically “useful” Churches closer to the State and into the public space. This created an asymmetric interdependent relationship between Churches and the State, where in theory both sides operate separately, but in practice, there are pervasions between the two sides. Even though Muslim Churches have the highest level of recognition in Hungary, as they do not have a CCA with the government, they are not getting funds to run schools and social institutions, so their presence in the public space is very limited. The hostile government narrative that conflates migration with security and Islam further pushed Muslim Churches on the margins, which is similar to the Slovakian case.

While in Slovakia the political elite introduced legislation that created a very high entry barrier for new religious communities to register officially, this direction was abandoned in Hungary and the FIDESZ-led government introduced a multi-tiered recognition system and the CCA to differentiate among the Churches and allow to treat certain Churches preferentially. In this sense, neither country has a neutral public space as far as religion is concerned and both countries try to guard their “old” or poltically “useful” Churches from competition.

This is in line with the idea of the nation that is immersed in Christian heritage in both cases. The movement of Robert Fico from the political left towards an increasingly populist and nationalist domain went hand in hand with his “rediscovery” of religion. The same could be said about Viktor Orbán, who used to voice anti-clerical views during the early 1990s, before turning towards the political right and establishing ever closer relations with Christian Churches. The supermajority enjoyed by FIDESZ since 2010 enabled the ruling party to radically reshape the constitutional and legal framework of the country to treat those religious communities preferentially that fall in line with their Christian nationalistic narrative and marginalize those who do not. In Slovakia, no political player enjoyed this position, so the constitutional and legal framework has remained relatively stable. Nevertheless, both countries’ governments have used religion to underpin their nationalistic agendas. This resulted in “old” and politically useful Christian Churches re-occupying a bigger share of public space and legislation that favors these Churches at the expense of “small” or non-traditional Churches, which for some reason do not fit in the religious nationalist narrative of the increasingly right- and populism-leaning governing elite.