Religion,secularity,culture? Investigating Christian privilege in Western Europe

Abstract

Scholarship on religious inequality in Europe has focused mainly on the position of religious minorities, primarily Jews and Muslims. Investigations into Islamophobia, antisemitism, and other forms of discrimination and oppression, however, are merely one side of the coin. This article draws attention to Christian privilege as a different, but related phenomenon. It understands ‘privilege’ to be part of the study of hegemony, as the asymmetrical counterpart of structural oppression. The article situates Christian privilege within secular Christian hegemony in Western Europe and explores its relation to racial and religious exclusion. It identifies three different types of Christian privilege and outlines a framework for normatively evaluating them.

Keywords

Christianity privilege secularism Islamophobia religious inequality hegemony Western Europe

At first glance, Western European countries such as France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom are characterized by religious equality. Religious discrimination is against the law, and governments claim to uphold political secularism and equal treatment of all religious groups. At the same time, we can hardly speak of full equality between Christians and non-Christians. School curricula teach primarily Christian history, Christian architecture can be recognized in almost every city and village, the Christian calendar is used pervasively, and many Christian holidays are institutionalized as national holidays. Moreover, hate crimes and reported discrimination against, primarily, Muslims and Jews are significantly higher than those against Christians (Bayrakli and Hafez, 2019; European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), 2019). These two phenomena are related. However, we cannot simply say that a dominant cultural presence of Christianity is oppressive to other religions or amounts to religious discrimination simpliciter. This article argues for an analytic lens that distinguishes between privilege and oppression as two sides of secular Christian hegemony. To fully understand the dynamics of religious inequality, it is necessary to complement existing research into religious oppression and exclusion with the other side of the coin: Christian privilege. Only once we make explicit the hegemonic position that Christianity¹ still has in European societies, and the privileges awarded to those who have a Christian background, can we fully lay bare the background assumptions against which non-Christian minorities, and today in particular Muslims, are framed as problematic. In short, I argue for a research agenda that examines Christian privilege to complement existing research on racial and religious oppression.

My focus is on the Western European context, where the dynamics between Christianity, secularity, and racial and religious exclusion take on a particular form.² Thus my argument expands the existing research into Christian privilege, which almost exclusively focuses on the United States (Blumenfeld et al., 2009; Joshi, 2020; Schlosser, 2003). It also adds to the literature in political theory on Christianity in the public sphere, by taking a different approach from studies that draw upon a framework of liberal secularism, republicanism, or multiculturalism (Bardon, 2021; Laborde and Lægaard, 2019; Modood, 2019; Seglow and Shorten, 2019). Although there are points of overlap with these debates, current normative political theory tends to start from normative principles to evaluate forms of religious accommodation and religious establishment, only at times – and often implicitly – inquiring into structures of societal hierarchy as a secondary step. A study of Christian privilege, by contrast, focuses primarily on making explicit those hegemonic power relations that often remain invisible. This perspective raises different questions, including a critical view on the binary framework of opposing ‘religion’ and ‘secularism’ (see Jansen, 2017). Normative and policy questions follow only secondarily, and are aimed at reducing or eliminating the role of Christian privilege in perpetuating secular Christian hegemony and related forms of oppression. This secures an explicitly power-sensitive approach to normative questions about religious (in)equality. In short, I start by critically analyzing secular Christian hegemony in Western Europe, in order to set out a normative framework for problematizing (certain forms of) Christian privilege. As the aim of this article is to outline a research agenda, it takes a broad approach, including examples from legal, societal, and governmental discourses across national contexts, inviting further exploration in future research.

In the first section, I explain how a lens of privilege can be used productively, and how to avoid the pitfalls of moralising and individualism for which it is often criticized. I argue that privilege should primarily be understood as an analytical tool in the study of hegemony, which manifests itself in oppression, but also awards structural unearned advantages to privileged groups. Moreover, privilege should not be seen as monolithic: there are different types of privilege, not all of which are equally problematic. In the remainder of the article, I apply this conceptual framework to the case of Christian privilege in Western Europe. In the second section, I argue that Christian privilege is embedded in a secular Christian hegemony. Despite national differences, many hegemonic Christian symbols and practices across Europe are seen as ‘secular’, made possible by a specifically Christian understanding of ‘religion’, alongside ‘culture’ and ‘secularity’. I argue that this secular Christian hegemony facilitates discourses of racism and religious bigotry which portray non-Christians as abnormal and deviant Others, but it also has a complex and at times strained relationship with confessional forms of Christianity. This expands and complicates existing research that points to an anti-religious climate and the domination of the secular (e.g. Cavanaugh, 2009; Hirschkind, 2011). In the third section, I explore concrete examples of Christian privilege and sketch a normative framework to further democratic debate about which kinds of Christian privilege are legitimate, and which are not. Building on the work of Lawrence Blum (2008), I differentiate between privileges as spared injustices, unjust enrichments, and justifiable privileges. I also make some preliminary suggestions for addressing problematic forms of Christian privilege. Here, it becomes clear that simply demanding a stricter form of separating ‘religion’ from ‘secular’ realms does not provide a satisfactory solution.

Privilege as analytic tool: Hegemony and privilege

In the decades following Peggy McIntosh’ seminal article on privilege as ‘invisible knapsack’ of unearned benefits in 1988, the conceptual language of ‘privilege’ has become widespread in activism as well as scholarship on race, gender, and class. The main aim of McIntosh’ article was to broaden our understanding of inequality by not just looking at disadvantages that result from it, but also by examining how some groups benefit from it. Bearers of privilege, McIntosh (1988) argued, are generally unaware of this, because they lack the social information to recognize the obstacles they do not experience. However, the lens of privilege has been criticized for focusing too much on individual self-transformation and guilt, rather than structural analyses of oppression and exclusion (Lensmire et al., 2013; Leonardo, 2004; McWhorter, 2005). The focus on raising awareness and ‘checking one’s privileges’, critics have rightly argued, has often led to an understanding of privilege as a psychological attitude that can be remedied by personal decisions, rather than a structural problem with psychological as well as symbolic and material repercussions (Pease, 2010). This impedes a structural interrogation of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy (Aouragh, 2019; Budgeon, 2015).³

To avoid such an individualizing approach to privilege, it is important to reconsider what role privilege can and should take up in the conceptual toolbox of analyzing power hierarchies. I argue that the concept of privilege has most critical force when it is understood as the concrete materialization of structures of hegemony. Popularized by Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci and later often used in Foucauldian accounts of discursive power, hegemony is a system of hierarchical power based on manufacturing a kind of ‘common sense’. Unlike direct domination or coercion, hegemony works via particular hierarchies embedded in dominant ideas, values, norms, beliefs, and prejudices that are produced as ‘normal’ through ‘societal expectation, peer pressure, propriety and at times politics of shame’ (Dhawan et al., 2016: 3). Those whose behaviour or characteristics fit the norm generally remain unaware of such hegemonic structures.⁴ Conversely, those who deviate from such norms, which are often shifting and changing shape, are subjected to social punishments and control (Dhawan et al., 2016: 3–4). In this way, norms, habits, and symbols play a vital part in justifying violence, exploitation, and marginalization.

Contemporary hegemonies are often facilitated by ‘oppression blindness’, where inequalities are attributed to personal choices or shortcomings, explained and legitimated by asserting that we live in times of equality of opportunity and meritocracy (Ferber, 2012). For example, claims of colourblindness or postraciality obscure how whiteness constitutes the norm in media, institutional policy, and education. Whiteness is ‘invisible and unmarked, as the absent centre against which others appear only as deviants, or points of deviation’ (Ahmed, 2007: 157). This hegemonic norm of whiteness facilitates racism. Similarly, it is often argued that we now live in an age of full gender equality, or ‘post-feminism’. This idea obscures the continuing presence of patriarchal institutions and normative biases towards masculinity, providing the ‘social, cultural and economic forces which reproduce conditions in which inequalities flourish’ (Budgeon, 2015: 11). In short, contemporary racism and sexism are embedded in structures of hegemony.

As hegemonies count on the invisibility of norms, making explicit how they work is vital to dismantling them. Studies into oppression and exclusion can provide one route for this. However, to fully understand hegemony, we also have to consider how those who fit hegemonic norms will not be challenged, but instead rewarded. Privileged groups are those who recognize themselves in hegemonic ideas and practices. Ideal types of career and school trajectories, ways of reasoning, consumer patterns, and legal arrangements are all modelled on their needs. These privileges are not strictly speaking against the law, but they are related to a deprivation of social recognition with real material effects. Spelling out such patterns of privilege illuminates the often invisible benefits and disadvantages hidden in conceptions of hegemonic normalcy.

Privilege and oppression are two sides of the same phenomenon, both playing a crucial role in the reproduction of hegemonic structures. However, they cannot be reduced to each other. Privilege is not the immediate mirror image of sexism, racism, or class discrimination. It is therefore not sufficient to say that privilege needs to be eradicated simpliciter. If anything, such blanket claims obscure the debate and make addressing hegemonic structures more difficult. We need to differentiate between different kinds of privilege, connected to different normative demands (see Blum, 2008). Whereas some privileges need to be extended to all groups, others need to be abolished altogether. There might also be certain majority privileges that are unavoidable and to a certain extent justified, leading neither to a demand for universalization or abolition, but instead demanding attentiveness and adaptation of majority groups towards various kinds of minorities. How this works in practice is explained in the third section of this article, where I explore various types of Christian privilege.

Before turning to Christian privilege in Western Europe, it is important to point out that constellations of hegemony, exclusion, and privilege are always shifting and situation-bound, as well as intersectional. A term like ‘white privilege’ or ‘male privilege’ could suggest that all white people and all men necessarily profit from a high social status and accompanying privileges. This is clearly not the case. As McIntosh (1988) already indicated, one’s age, sexual orientation, gender, skin colour, religion, class, and other factors all influence the obstacles and benefits one experiences in life. This once again shows why it is so important to think of privileges as structural phenomena.⁵ Moreover, as systems of hegemony are interlocking (Ferber, 2012), it is necessary to understand their relation, and attempt to simultaneously confront racial, gender, sexuality, religious, class, and other hegemonies (Combahee River Collective, 1977; Crenshaw, 1989).

Secular Christian hegemony and Christian privilege

In the last two decades, the term ‘Christian privilege’ has slowly entered the debate on privilege, focusing on the ‘seemingly invisible, unearned, and largely unacknowledged array of benefits accorded to Christians’ (Blumenfeld, 2006: 195–196). The concept of Christian privilege has been used by a limited group of scholars, writing almost exclusively in the context of the United States (Blumenfeld et al., 2009; Joshi, 2020; Kivel, 2013; Schlosser, 2003). This article argues that Christian privilege is also an important tool in analysing religious inequality in Western Europe. However, the unique combination of secularity and Christianity in this context warrants a particularly European analysis of Christian privilege. As should be clear from the conceptual analysis of ‘privilege’ above, my aim in investigating this is not to discredit Christianity or Christians, or to deny that certain Christian groups have found themselves in minority positions and have been subject to discrimination (Fox and Akbaba, 2015; Peretz and Fox, 2021). Rather, I aim to point to a structural pattern of privilege which often remains invisible and unquestioned.

European history has been dominated by Christianity and characterized by the violent oppression of non-Christian minorities, especially Jews and Muslims (Anidjar, 2003; Jansen and Meer, 2020; Nirenberg, 2013). European nation-states have historically formed around religious homogeneity and exclusion (Renton and Gidley, 2017). Despite commitments to the principle of religious toleration, manifested especially from the late 17th century onwards, Enlightenment thinkers generally did not extend toleration beyond Christianity (Blijdenstein, 2020).⁶ The hegemonic position of Christianity and exclusion of minorities continued after Europe started understanding itself as secular, as the 19th century was characterized by continued exclusion of racial and religious minorities (Raz-Krakotzkin, 2015; Topolski, 2018). Today, however, religious freedom receives broader legal protection, and many Western European countries have experienced a steep decline in the percentage of the population that identifies as Christian (Norris and Inglehart, 2004). This has led to the belief that Western Europe consists of secular countries that have left their religious past behind. However, this does not mean that Christian hegemony and Christian privilege have now disappeared, and neither have the forms of exclusion that they are related to.

The decline in Christian religiosity is often accompanied by a self-understanding of many Europeans as ‘secular’, and even an aversion to religiosity as ‘backward’ (Brubaker, 2016; Casanova, 2006). At the same time, cultural identification with Christianity has increased (Rommelspacher, 2017: 41). Religiosity understood as religious belief increasingly seems decoupled from a sense of community belonging (Demerath, 2000; Hervieu-Léger, 2003). Whereas ‘confessional’ Christianity, which emphasizes ‘religious creed, belief, and ritual of worship’, has declined, ‘heritage’ Christianity or ‘cultural’ Christianity, which ‘focuses on religion as a source of cultural heritage, identity, art, history and/or belonging’ (Beekers, 2021: 21–22) has not. It seems, then, that we can see a transformation of the role of Christianity in society, rather than simply its disappearance.

Moreover, the influence of Christianity is still very widespread in public cultures across Western Europe. Despite national differences, Christian dietary norms are respected in most restaurants but those of other religions are generally seen as ‘exceptional’; Sunday is often still the day most shops are closed or employees get double pay; Christian architecture and symbolism can be recognized in the public spaces of almost every city and village; Christian holidays are dominant in public culture and often institutionalized as national holidays; and many European countries have a Christian religious establishment. This list does not even mention the more invisible fingerprints of Christianity, such as value systems that have been influenced by Protestantism or Catholicism, depending on the country’s history; understandings of the human body, family, or nature, and the environment that are rooted in a Christian tradition; cultural and aesthetic references to Christianity; and the many theology faculties at universities that are exclusively Christian (Amir-Moazami, 2016; Carruthers, 2011; Hervieu-Léger, 2006; Norris and Inglehart, 2004).⁷

Crucially, many of these Christian values, institutional arrangements, and practices often appear to us as secular, not religious. Ferber (2012: 72) for example, describes the vehemence of the widespread argument that Christmas is not a religious celebration, but a cultural one, which is ‘good fun that everyone can be a part of’. The same views tend to be held about Christian dietary requirements, architecture, art, and ethics (Gilman, 2017; Oliphant, 2015; Smith, 2008). These references to and manifestations of Christianity are often dismissed as innocent remnants of the past or cherished as ‘secular’ cultural enrichments. This makes the dominant position of Christianity compatible with the importance attached to not only religious freedom, but also to secularism and its insistence on a separation between the public realm of politics, public policy, and citizenship, and the private realm of religion. Various national and European discourses even refer to secular Europe as essentially ‘Christian’ or ‘Judeo-Christian’, and indicate that (Judeo-)Christianity is the birthplace or natural ally of secularism (Hurd, 2008).

The term ‘Judeo-Christian’ is often mobilized with problematic consequences. Not only does it diminish the pervasiveness of contemporary antisemitism, it also tends to include only those Jewish elements and values that are reflected in Christianity (Schraub, 2019; Topolski, 2020b). The signifier ‘Judeo-Christian’, moreover, is often used in exclusionary discourses that portray Islam as incompatible with secularism and with Europe.⁸ In this religio-civilizational framework, secularism and Judeo-Christianity are associated with freedom of expression, personal autonomy, and gender equality, whereas Islam is framed as threatening those values (Brubaker, 2017). However, the Judeo-Christian identity can also be mobilized against Jewish practices. Various populist radical right parties across Europe have claimed to defend ‘Judeo-Christianity’ in calling for bans on Islamic and Jewish slaughter, the Koran, or wearing the hijab and the kippah in public places (Kluveld, 2016: 255). Because of these reasons, I refer to Christian, rather than Judeo-Christian, hegemony and privilege.

Christian secular culture and its others

Since Christian public rituals and institutional representations are often seen as ‘secular’, they can co-exist with the dominant idea that the European public sphere is ‘empty’ or ‘neutral’. It is the slippage between the categories of ‘secular’ and ‘culturally Christian’ that makes this paradox possible: culturally Christian traditions, such as Christmas, are seen as not really religious, and therefore they are believed to be inclusive to individuals from all religious backgrounds. As Talal Asad, Saba Mahmood and others have shown, the difference between culture and religion, pervasive in public discourse, rests on a particular understanding of ‘religion’ that itself has a Christian heritage.⁹ This understanding of religion derives from a primarily Protestant theology of privatized worship and individualized faith, although it also became widespread in Catholic countries (Asad, 1993; Brown, 2012; Mahmood, 2009). It consists in the idea that religion is primarily a matter of individual belief in theological doctrines and principles. Religious symbols, rituals, and practices are of secondary importance (Jansen, 2011). This particular understanding of ‘religion’ differs from other traditions, including traditions in Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Druidism (Asad 1993; Dressler and Mandair 2011; Mahmood 2016; Owen and Taira 2015; Spinner-Halev 2005).

As Gil Anidjar (2006, 2009) argues, it is the widespread assumption that ‘real’ Christianity is a religion in this particular sense, which allows ‘cultural’ or ‘secular’ Christianity to be pervasive in Western European societies without drawing much attention to itself. In other words, the particular understanding of religion as primarily a matter of individual faith plays a crucial role in maintaining the invisibility of Christian hegemony. Most individuals only see themselves as Christian when they believe in God, which is understood as the main characteristic of being Christian. This leads to a situation where many who were brought up in a predominantly Christian environment, went to Christian schools, perhaps even attend church services every once in a while, and feel most comfortable with Christian symbolism and architecture, will not see themselves as Christian. However, they often do benefit from Christian privilege. As Joshi (2020: 171) explains, ‘Christian privilege is social capital’. Many who identify as atheists or secular Christians are able to comfortably navigate a society filled with Christian cultural references, assumptions, and representations. This, I contend, constitutes the secular Christian hegemony within which Christian privilege manifests itself.

There is a widespread assumption that secular, cultural manifestations of Christianity are innocent, and those with other religious or cultural backgrounds can be ‘integrated’ into them. This stands in stark contrast with the framing of the presence of non-Christian religions, today primarily Islam, as a new ‘intrusion’ of religion into the European public sphere (Davie, 2006). While some see the accommodation of minority religions in the public sphere as a threat, and others as a reasonable demand, both camps of the political spectrum seem to share the assumption that whereas our public sphere used to be areligious, this is now changing because of the entrance of new religious groups, primarily Muslims. The double standards obscured by the idea of secular Christianity are perhaps most clearly illustrated in debates about religion in public space, which take on a very different form when it concerns Christianity instead of, primarily, Islam. Minarets, for example, have been met with resistance all across Europe, and in Switzerland this even led to a minaret ban. In these debates, it is often mentioned that minarets cause a problematic blurring between the religious and the secular (Green, 2010). When asked to compare minarets to church steeples, the Swiss initiative committee against the building of minarets argued that church steeples are ‘an expression of our western Christian cultural heritage’, which – unlike Islam – they believed to stand for tolerance (Green, 2010: 636).

In other countries, such as the Netherlands, it was not so much minarets as the Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, that triggered controversy. When asked about the difference with the pervasive sound of church bells, Dutch minister Henk Kamp said: ‘Those [church bells] have already been part of the Dutch culture for a very long time and will not be experienced by anyone as disturbing’, whereas ‘the obtrusive presence of Islam in public spaces, as in Islamic countries, is not desired in the Netherlands’ (cited in Verkaaik and Tamimi Arab, 2016: 260). Public controversy notwithstanding, the adhan is allowed by (local) governments in the Netherlands. Interestingly, the defence for the adhan actually referred to the right to religious equality, and relied on a comparison with the ringing of Christian church bells (Verkaaik and Tamimi Arab, 2016). In this case, Christianity’s privileged position seems to have led to an ‘equalizing up’ for other religions (cf. Modood, 2019: 119). The legal framework, here, facilitates equality between the different traditions.

At the same time, several legal decisions have insisted on a difference between Christianity as ‘secular’ cultural tradition and other ‘religious’ traditions that are incompatible with secularity. This is perhaps most visible in the famous Lautsi case, where the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decided that crucifixes in classrooms were part of the Italian and wider European cultural identity, and a symbol of ‘liberty, equality, human dignity and religious toleration’ (Beaman, 2012). The assessment of Christian symbolism in Lautsi stands in stark contrast with court cases such as Dahlab v. Switzerland or Şahin v. Turkey, where the ECtHR spoke out against the possibility of wearing headscarves in public spaces like schools, which it believed to have a proselytizing effect, and to be at odds with the public order (Mancini, 2006; Smet, 2012).¹⁰ These examples are not isolated incidents. In her study of case law of the ECtHR, as well as court decisions from Italy, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, Susanna Mancini (2009) finds a consistent pattern of dichotomous distinctions between Christianity on the one hand, and religious minorities, primarily Islam, on the other, portraying the former as exceptional ‘secularized religion’ in need of protection.¹¹ This echoes societal debates about Christian practices and symbols, for example surrounding nativity scenes in public spaces such as city halls, which have often been defended as ‘cultural’ or ‘festive’ (Thebault, 2017).

The separation between religion and culture allows European states to identify as both secular and Christian at the same time, while demanding of non-Christian religions to restrict their presence to the private sphere. This argument does not entail that practices and symbols such as church bells, church steeples, crucifixes, nativity scenes, Christian cemeteries, or Christian schools are necessarily problematic. This needs to be discussed on a case by case basis (see below). However, when Christian symbols and practices are regularly seen as secular, in contrast to non-Christian religious minorities, this feeds into the myth that religious minorities make unreasonable demands and form a dangerous intrusion into a public sphere that would otherwise be religiously neutral. The widespread cultural presence of Christianity forms the background against which minority religious practices become ‘hypervisible’ and are seen as ab-normal (see also Oliphant, 2021: 18). Their practices are not seen as part of national or European secular culture, but they are judged against a belief-centred standard of religion, and subject to much stronger controlling and policing in the public sphere. This facilitates racism and religious bigotry which portray non-Christian religious minorities as ‘problem people’, incompatible with secularism and therefore at odds with Europe.¹² Islam in particular is portrayed as a religion which ‘fails’ to separate ‘religion’ and ‘politics’, and demands a potentially threatening intrusion of religion in secular public life. Public interventions made by Muslims are often dismissed as ‘religious extremism’ or ‘fanaticism’ – tapping into longstanding stereotypes and racialization of Muslims (Jansen, 2011; Kundnani, 2014). Although this frame is most clear with regard to Islam, we recognize similar dynamics in relation to other religious minorities, such as Jews or Sikhs, whose practices are often exoticized and seen as abnormal and excessively religious (Kluveld, 2016; Mandair, 2011). This resonates with the earlier treatment of Jews, for example in the 19th century, when Jews were suspected of ‘immanent fanaticism’ (Renton, 2018) because of ‘ostentatious’ or ‘barbaric’ social practices, and never fully included in European societies (Gilman, 2017; Jansen, 2013; Raz-Krakotzkin, 2015).

The association between Christianity and secularity also points to another characteristic of contemporary secular Christian hegemony. Although there is less animosity towards practising Christians than practising Jews, Sikhs or Muslims, life in many Western European states is easier for those Christians who are not ‘too religious’. The secular climate demands of all religious people, including Christians, to keep their beliefs and practices ‘private’, so as not to ‘disturb the project of a modern, secular enlightened Europe’ (Casanova, 2006: 67). The main recipients of Christian privilege, then, seem to be secular Christians, sometimes also referred to as post-Christians, those ‘belonging without believing’ (Hervieu-Léger, 2006). Although confessional or orthodox Christians benefit from Christianity’s hegemonic position, and are recipients of Christian privilege, they often do not benefit from the secular privilege that also follows from secular Christian hegemony.¹³

Christian identitarianism

For many who identify as nonreligious, secular Christian hegemony often remains an invisible part of what is ‘normal’. In fact, those who deviate from the Christian norm are often blamed for doing so – for not being ‘integrated’ enough or for ‘attacking’ the values of European society. In recent decades, moreover, politicians and media figures in many European countries have increasingly put forward the idea that ‘Christian culture’ is under attack. Against a background of ‘culturalized’ citizenship (Duyvendak et al., 2016), the protection of a static and essentialized understanding of secular Christian¹⁴ culture or heritage is often invoked as a reason to exclude non-Christian religious minorities.¹⁵ This Christian identitarianism or Leitkulturism is most explicitly found in populist radical right discourses that announce the ‘invasion’ of non-Christian migrants, primarily Muslims, but the trope of protecting a majority Christian culture threatened by attempts at pluralization has also found its way into the political mainstream (Brubaker, 2017). The ‘Easter Egg Controversies’ in countries like the Netherlands and the UK are a telling example. Each year, several companies are challenged for not featuring the Christian aspects of Easter celebrations prominently enough, and suspected of catering too much to the sensitivities of minority groups. Although mainly radical right-wing groups amplify this message, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other figures of the political mainstream have condemned what they deemed ‘politically correct’ naming of chocolate eggs (Van Den Hemel, 2017). Rutte moreover called Easter Eggs an important symbol of Dutch Christian culture. He also emphasized that Dutch people ought to wish each other ‘merry Christmas’ rather than ‘happy holidays’ (Van Den Hemel, 2017). We see here the same kinds of assumptions that undergird colourblindness and post-feminism: Christianity's hegemonic position is denied, and it is even argued that Christianity is now under attack from those who insist too much on plurality and multiculturalism. It is worth noting that many practising Christians have been critical of such identitarian discourses (Beekers, 2021; Cremer, 2021), although others relate to it more ambiguously (Lewicki, 2021; Van Den Hemel, 2020).

Intersections

These examples show the intersectional nature of secular Christian hegemony and Christian privilege. Racial and religious exclusion have always been related, as racial categories were modelled on religious hierarchies (Rana, 2007; Topolski, 2018), and Christian theology has historically underwritten white supremacy in both Europe and the United States (Carter, 2008; Jennings, 2010). As Bayoumi (2006) shows, one’s religious affiliation has historically often played a crucial role in determining which racial group one was categorized as: Christians were more easily seen as white. Today, similarly, there is a clear intersection between ethnic or racial background and religion. Recent forms of racism, sometimes referred to as ‘new’ or ‘cultural’ racism, rely primarily on the idea of cultural incompatibility of non-Christian migrants with white, Christian culture (Lentin, 2020: 90–91). In Islamophobic discourses, there is an implicit association between Christianity and whiteness, and especially Muslims, non-whiteness and Otherness (Kundnani, 2007: 30). Moreover, Schraub (2019) explains how white Jews can sometimes benefit from white privilege, but are not part of white hegemony. Similarly, Topolski (2020a: 298) argues that Jews are at times given a privileged status in Europe, but their inclusion in ‘Judeo-Christianity’ is largely symbolic and Judaism does not constitute a part of white secular Christian hegemony.

The association between Christianity and whiteness not only obscures the origins of Christianity, with most early Christian churches in the Middle East (Kivel, 2013: 21), it also marginalizes contemporary Christianity in large parts of Africa and Latin-America. Christian privilege is generally not extended to primarily non-white Churches as Anglo-American and European denominations of Christianity are taken as the norm (Blumenfeld, 2006: 196). Of course, there is not only a relation between Christian and white privilege, but also with other axes of hegemony. As Wendy Brown (2012), Joan Wallach Scott (2007), Mayanthi Fernando (2014), and others emphasize, debates about non-Christian religions and their position in the public sphere are strongly gendered, as the paradigmatic status given to the ‘headscarf debate’ makes clear.

Lastly, not only religion, race, and gender intersect in privilege and oppression, but also what we might call forms of ‘religiosity’. In many Western European contexts, dominant public discourses associate secularity with modernity, rationality, and progress, and portray religiosity as backward and intolerant (Asad, 2003; Casanova, 2006). Moreover, norms of what is seen as ‘good’ religion, including ‘good Christianity’, favour interiorized, rather than public and embodied forms of religiosity (Mahmood, 2009). In contexts where (especially publicly) practised religiosity is regarded with suspicion or even ridicule, certain practising Christians will also encounter the dominant position of secularity in their everyday lives (e.g. Moulin, 2016), although they differ on other axes of privilege from practising non-Christian religious minorities. These complex dynamics are reflected in studies that explore attitudes towards religious practice. Dangubić et al. (2020), looking at attitudes towards wearing religious symbols and following religious education in public schools in five Western European countries, find evidence of rejection of Muslim but not Christian religious practices (what they call ‘discriminatory rejection’) as well as rejection of both Christian and Muslim religious practices (what they call ‘equal rejection’). Sleijpen et al. (2020), looking at the Dutch context, similarly find that both Christian and Muslim religious practices are often seen as contradicting ‘society’s normative ways of life’, although some examples of religious practice give rise to significantly ‘less tolerance’ when expressed by Muslims (Sleijpen et al., 2020: 413).¹⁶ However, further research is needed to explore how different forms of Christianity relate to secular Christian hegemony. This requires a critical analysis of when, how, and with what effect boundaries are drawn between what is seen as Christian ‘religious practice’ and what as part of Christian ‘culture’ or ‘tradition’.

Three types of Christian privilege

In much the same way as colourblindness and post-feminism obscure hegemonies based on race and gender, cultural secularism and its promise of religious equality obscures secular Christian hegemony. Although secularity and Christianity cannot be equated, many aspects of Christian hegemony are considered to be secular. This hegemonic position of the secular-Christian feeds into structures of oppression, including racial and religious exclusion. Yet Christian privilege cannot be reduced to such structures of exclusion. It would be inaccurate to equate advocacy for preserving Sunday as a day of rest, or appreciation of the public celebration of Christmas with racism or religious discrimination. Exploring different types of privilege can give us a better insight into this complexity, and avoids reductive analyses of privilege. Based on Lawrence Blum’s (2008) typology, I differentiate between spared injustices (1), unjust enrichments (2), and justifiable privileges (3).¹⁷ It is important to point out that these play out in different ways in different national, regional, or local contexts. I have listed examples that we find in various contexts in Western Europe, in order to draw attention to patterns of Christian privilege. I also explore the normative¹⁸ demands that follow from them. This is not a full-fledged proposal, but it shows how the three-type framework can be helpful in relating to different forms of privilege. It will become clear that the normative recommendations I propose cannot be achieved within a difference-blind model of political secularism that demands strict separation of religion and public policy.¹⁹

Spared injustices

First of all, some might consider it a case of Christian privilege that Christians in Europe do not face discrimination and hate crimes anywhere near as much as, for example, Muslims and those who are perceived as such. However, not facing discrimination should clearly be a right, and the language of privilege does not seem appropriate in this context. This is more complicated with other examples, where Christians are awarded advantages that are socially desirable for everyone but are not unequivocally seen as rights. Here we could be encountering privileges in the form of spared injustices. An example of this type of privilege would be that it is often much easier for Christian schoolchildren to take time off during their religious holidays. It would be desirable for everyone to have access to such privilege, even if we perhaps cannot strictly speak of a right. A similar example is that of burial practices. In most Western European countries, Christian burial practices are the norm. As Maddrell et al. (2018) show in their study of England and Wales, migrant and minority practices are often not adequately represented or understood, especially in smaller towns. Likewise, in Switzerland, many municipalities have denied Muslims approval to build cemeteries, and outside of the larger cities in Germany, burial in a shroud, rather than a coffin, is forbidden (Perez and Fox, 2018: 11). In response to this kind of privilege, normative demands would include extending these Christian privileges to other religious groups. We could think of granting time off for religious holidays, adjusting work schedules or work spaces, and facilitating flexible burial practices. Insisting on ‘difference-blindness’ would be an obstacle to furthering inclusiveness, rather than a means to improve it. Instead, there should be legal and policy measures to enable the views and practices of religious minorities. However, it is important to pay attention to how these are framed. Rather than creating space for ‘tolerating’ or ‘accommodating’ religious abnormalities, it is important to point out that these ‘special rights’ are ‘nothing more than the opportunities and treatment that Christians have always received’ (Joshi, 2020: 133). Sometimes the existence of Christian privilege can actually be helpful in demanding the same provisions for other groups, if the approach is to ‘equalise upwards’ rather than ‘equalise downwards’ (Modood, 2019: 119).²⁰ Here, Christianity can be, and has at times been, an ally for minority religions. Other times, a more inclusive solution might entail dismantling the existing arrangements more profoundly, for example by no longer having mandated national holidays, but instead allowing employees to take up vacation days as they see fit.

Unjust enrichments

The second type of privilege consists in unjust enrichments. For Christian privilege, this category would most prominently include the privilege not to be aware of the historical background and particularity of one’s own assumptions, cultural references, or ethical vocabulary. Many Christian references are often assumed to be secular and sometimes even seen as universal. They contribute to the illusion of an empty public sphere, and make non-Christian religious minorities stand out as – literally – ‘abnormal’, as deviations from the norm. The often unquestioned particular understanding of ‘religion’ as individual belief mentioned above is a clear example of where a lack of awareness of other traditions has harmful effects. Many who grew up in a Christian context are not aware that religion is often experienced differently in other traditions, and this has often led to misunderstandings, lack of respect, or discrimination against the position of religious minorities. In the now infamous French ‘headscarf affair’, for example, the headscarf is consistently framed in public discourse as a ‘religious sign’, a chosen expression of personal beliefs, rather than, for example, a religious duty that is constitutive of a way of being (Asad, 2006; Jansen, 2010). This has contributed to and justified the stigmatization of those who wear a headscarf (see also Fernando, 2014; Scott, 2007). In a similar way, the understanding of religion as essentially a matter of personal belief also played a crucial role in the so-called Danish cartoon affair, where the pain caused by satirizing the Prophet Mohammed received little understanding. As Saba Mahmood (2009: 845) explains, secular commentators pointed to the ‘improper reading practice’ of Muslims who felt harmed by the cartoons, as ‘the image (of Muhammed) can produce no real injury’, because the ‘true locus [of religion] is in the interiority of the individual believer and not the fickle world of material symbols and signs’. Taking these assumptions for granted leads to an unequal dialogue between secular and Christian groups on the one hand, often sharing the same cultura franca, and non-Christian religious minorities on the other hand. The former groups are able to pretend to speak without religious or cultural baggage, whereas the latter is forced to ask for recognition of their particular, ‘subjective’ framework (Asad, 2003: 169; Khan, 2017). In short, there is a need for increased societal and institutional acknowledgement and understanding of how ‘religion’ is understood by many non-Christian traditions – not doing so constitutes an unjust enrichment for Christianity.

Justifiable privileges

Thirdly, because Christianity is the longstanding dominant tradition in Europe, it is to a certain extent inevitable that it is overrepresented in the public sphere, with a predominance of Christian religious buildings and architectural norms, or in ethical vocabulary. At times, such overrepresentations can be justifiable. However, it is important to point out that history is dynamic, and the relationship between past and present is and must be constantly negotiated. This requires critical reflection on the legacy of Christianity and its complex interactions with other traditions. Such reflection should include Christianity’s positive contributions to society as well as legacies of violence and exclusion, and take place in various institutional contexts, such as school curricula and museums.²¹ Some cultural nationalists would argue that because of its traditional dominance, Christianity’s larger share in the public landscape deserves to be protected a priori.²² However, national cultures can and should never be understood as static. Although an overrepresentation of Christianity in many European public spheres will be inevitable and even justifiable in the present, it is necessary to create space for other cultural references, architectures, and vocabularies, going forward. In this context, it is especially important to be attentive to the binary between ‘religion’ and national ‘culture’ and the double standard that entrenches the privileged position of Christian rituals, institutions, and symbols over non-Christian ones. As Lori Beaman (2021: 98) argues, when only Christianity can qualify as national ‘heritage’, this fabricates a ‘version of a history that belongs only to a particular segment of society, which is in turn located at the apex of a hierarchy of citizenship and belonging’. Moreover, we should be aware of the continuing stigma that rests on non-Christian groups, primarily Muslims, who are expected to integrate or assimilate into a secular society that is often strongly influenced by Christianity. However, this does not mean that Christianity ought to be diminished or taken out of the public sphere altogether. Pointing to existing privileges and exclusion should open up a discussion about which privileges are justifiable (e.g. Laborde and Lægaard, 2019; Thompson, 2019). In doing so, arguments for the potential beneficial effects Christianity’s presence in public culture or of Christian religious establishment (e.g. Modood, 2019: 206–207) should be weighed against the risks of continuing problematic structures of hegemony.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been threefold. First, I have argued for deploying privilege as important analytical tool in the study of hegemony, the asymmetrical counterpart to studies of oppression. Second, I have described how secular Christian hegemony manifests itself in a Western European context and how it relates to both forms of exclusion and Christian privilege. Third, I have formulated a preliminary conceptual framework for identifying different types of Christian privilege and their normative implications. Each instance of Christian privilege I have mentioned is worthy of a discussion in itself, depending on different national or even regional or local contexts. Future research could further explore how Christian privilege manifests itself between different Christian groups, under different regimes of secularism, and across legal, societal, and governmental spheres. In determining which normative demands follow from them, instances of privilege must be considered in relation to how they perpetuate existing structures of secular Christian hegemony. Privileges are never fixed, and neither are the contours of hegemony. They have been socially constructed, and they can be changed. My aim has been to indicate a pattern that often remains unseen, and to establish a framework that allows us to better discuss at which point Christianity’s privileged position becomes problematic and what kinds of steps can be taken to address this, in order to attain a fuller religious equality.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I presented earlier versions of this article at the European Academy of Religion in March 2019, at an online workshop on Religion and Citizenship I co-organized with Simon Thompson and Francesca Raimondo in September 2020, at the Decolonizing Interfaith Studies Research Group at VU Amsterdam in March 2021, and at the Race Religion Constellation research group at Radboud University Nijmegen, where I discussed both earlier and later versions of this article. I am grateful to the participants in these discussions. I also want to thank Schirin Amir-Moazami, Brian Brock, Tamas Gyorfi, Nadia Kiwan, Tjeu Oomen, Bob Pease, Glen Scislowski, Anya Topolski, Fredericke Weiner, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments. Any errors are of course my own.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 754326.

ORCID iD

A Sophie Lauwers

Notes

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