Christian organizations come together to take boycott, divestment action as Rafah campaign continues

‘A core practice of nonviolent resistance, including within our tradition, is economic non-cooperation with injustice,’ the Christian organizations wrote.

Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike where displaced people were staying in Rafah, Gaza Strip, May 27, 2024. Palestinian health workers said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 35 people in the area. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

May 29, 2024
By Aleja Hertzler-McCain


(RNS) — Amid global outrage over an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 45 displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in Rafah, a coalition of Christian groups is calling for a boycott and divestment of companies “supporting Israel’s military oppression of Palestinians.”

“As Christians, we seek to illuminate the sacred dignity of all people. We have tirelessly advocated for our U.S. government to stop the mass slaughter in Palestine,” the organizations wrote in a Wednesday (May 29) statement.

RELATED: Dozens of Christians arrested after shutting down Senate lunch in protest of Gaza famine

“Yet, more leverage is needed,” the statement continued.

Citing the New Testament story of Jesus overturning sellers’ tables in the Temple, the organizations called “economic non-cooperation with injustice” a core practice of nonviolent resistance within the Christian tradition.

The letter links to a list of companies that American Friends Service Committee, a major advocacy organization for Quakers, has identified as involved in specific human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and Israel.

The signatories of the letter include the Alliance for Baptists, American Friends Service Committee, Christians for a Free Palestine, Friends of Sabeel North America, Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace and Pax Christi USA.

More than 36,000 people have been killed and more than 81,000 injured in Gaza, according to health officials there, since Israel began a military operation in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which left an estimated 1,200 people dead and more than 200 taken captive.


Palestinians inspect the damage of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Abdul Qader Sabbah, File)

Eli McCarthy, a peace activist involved in organizing the letter, said organizers had already heard from additional Christian organizations interested in pledging to join the collective boycott efforts, including the United Church of Christ Palestine Israel Network.

“The Christian call to boycott and divestment deepens our practice of active nonviolence. It illustrates how the way of nonviolence challenges us to withdraw our cooperation from the resources and material power which enable injustice and mass atrocities,” McCarthy told Religion News Service in an email.

The letter also specifically highlights a boycott campaign against Chevron organized in part by the American Friends Service Committee as well as anti-fossil fuel advocacy groups. “The Chevron corporation supplies Israel’s war machine with light and power via the operation and co-ownership of the major gas fields off the coast of occupied Palestinian land,” the organizers of the Chevron campaign wrote on their campaign page.

Chevron began producing natural gas again on a platform 12 miles offshore from the Gaza Strip about a month after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, according to The New York Times.

Judy Coode, communications director for Pax Christi USA, told RNS: “We have to keep doing creative and more significant actions to have a real change in the Middle East. We support any nonviolent effort to draw attention to this issue and make people in this country aware of how we’re connected to this crisis.”

The Christian organizations, which have all previously been involved in peace activism in various ways, are also advocating for a military embargo, which they explain would involve governments, unions and universities ceasing to do any business with Israeli military and security companies.

The letter comes after more than 3,000 people, including college students and professors, were arrested at protests calling for universities to divest from Israel. It also comes a week after the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity for Israeli and Hamas leaders.

The effort echoes an international strategy known as BDS, or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which aims to exert economic and social pressure on Israel’s government to force it to uphold Palestinian rights. The movement draws inspiration from the boycotts used during the fight against apartheid in South Africa. However, the Christian letter organizers emphasize that they are not calling for sanctions, which makes their strategy different from BDS.

The Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel organizations have denounced BDS as antisemitic because they argue that the movement calls for “the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state.”

Despite those concerns, several Christian denominations, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and Mennonite Church USA, as well as the United Methodist Church’s pension board, have all approved specific divestment measures long before Israel’s current military campaign.

RELATED: Mennonite Church to divest in protest of Israeli policies

In the letter, the Christian organizations write, “This strategy of nonviolent non-cooperation is not against the existence of the state of Israel, but is for the sacred dignity, well-being, security, and human rights of all Palestinians as well as Israelis.”

This article has been updated to clarify that the letter’s organizers are only calling for boycott and divestment, not sanctions.

JESUS WAS PALESTINIAN

Opinion

At ‘Christ at the Checkpoint,’ Palestinian Christians rail against Western church’s response to war

Attendees at a conference called for global church leaders to be held accountable for one-sided support for Israel

.
Attendees listen to a presentation during the biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank in late May 2024. (Photo by Alaa Khoury/Bethlehem Bible College)

May 30, 2024
By Daoud Kuttab

(RNS) — Daniel Bannoura, a Palestinian and a Ph.D. candidate in theology at the University of Notre Dame, was disappointed in Russell Moore. Bannoura had been reading the Christianity Today editor-in-chief’s recent book, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America,” in which Moore bemoans Christian nationalists’ rejecting Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as “weak.” At the same time, Bannoura said, Moore had failed to consider the Sermon on the Mount in his Oct. 7 commentary in his magazine, justifying Christian support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

“How can you quote ‘love our enemies’ when you are supporting bombing them? How can you talk about just-war theory?” Bannoura asked the audience crowded into the auditorium at Bethlehem Bible College, in the West Bank, on May 24 at the biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference.

Noting that Moore serves on the council of The Gospel Coalition, Bannoura chided him for his association with a group that compared Hamas to the Amalekites, the biblical enemies of the Israelites, before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the comparison as justification for annihilating Hamas.

“Maybe Russell hasn’t read his own book, maybe, like MAGA Christians, he also thinks the Sermon on the Mount is too weak,” said Bannoura.

RELATED: On Nakba Day, some Palestinians dream of a single, secular state

The divide that has opened during the Israel-Hamas war between Christians in the Holy Land and Christians in the West was a prominent theme at Christ at the Checkpoint, held May 22-26 this year under the banner “Do Justice, Love Mercy,”

The Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, and the Bible college’s academic dean, said the past seven months have created a huge chasm between Palestinian Christians and the global church.

The Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, addresses a vigil at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, Nov. 28, 2023. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

Isaac called for a more vocal action to hold Western church leaders accountable. “We need to be more strategic. General calls are not enough. We need to think of specific calls, such as a possible campaign against Christianity Today signed by evangelical leaders.”

Bannoura, who is on the conference’s steering committee, urged his colleagues to issue a strongly worded rebuttal to evangelical leaders like Moore who have defended Israel.

That document, “A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians,” quickly garnered backing from Christian Palestinian leaders. Posted on Change.org, the petition quickly received more than 21,500 signatures.

This year’s conference, which drew about 250 participants from around the world, took place despite challenges presented by the war’s security measures. Israel turned back two South African registered members at the King Hussein Bridge, the only operating land entry point to the West Bank. An American participant was refused entry at the Tel Aviv airport. (Isaac, his travel permit revoked by the Israeli government due to his activism, was not allowed to make a visit to Jerusalem with other conferees.)

Those who were able to attend heard a wide range of speeches and participated in workshops with such titles as “Mobilizing for Peace in the U.S.,” “Reconciliation to Coexistence” and “Media Bias in Coverage of the War on Gaza.”


George and Sara Salloum, of North Carolina, pose with letters of hope they brought to the 2024 Christ at the Checkpoint conference at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank. (Photo by Alaa Khoury/Bethlehem Bible College)

Varsen Aghabekian, the first member of the Palestinian cabinet from the Armenian Palestinian community, read Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ address to the conference, saying, “Peace will prevail when questioning the plight of Palestinians for self-determination and accessing their rights is not understood as anti-Jewish, antisemitic or an attempt to demonize or delegitimize Israel, which has been recognized by Palestinians on 78% of historic Palestine.”

The speech, the sole nontheological presentation at the conference, nonetheless appealed to the audience in familiar terms: “We all need to expend effort to maintain hope,” the address declared. “Hope in a better future where there is no occupation of another people’s land, and when the Bible is used for promoting peace rather than war, killing and suffering.”

Jack Sara, president of the Bethlehem Bible College, also spoke in terms that any Sunday school child would understand. Repeating one of the best-known Bible verses, he said many Western church leaders seem to have forgotten its words. “’For God so loved the world’ also includes Palestinians,” Sara said. “God’s love for all includes Palestinians and is not conditional.”

But the Christian gathering pointed to solutions, and healing. Salim Munayer, founder of the Jerusalem nongovernmental organization Musalaha, which facilitates reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, noted the significant power imbalance in the conflict. “An honest diagnosis reveals we are dealing with settler colonialism aimed at eliminating the other,” Munayer said.

Effective reconciliation, he argued, must therefore be twofold: It must both restore relationships and address systemic injustices. “Without tackling these root issues, any efforts at reconciliation will merely perpetuate victimization,” Munayer asserted. “For true reconciliation, we must confront the reality of the situation and the structures of injustice nonviolently. This requires a change in attitude and approach, especially among fellow Christians.”


Daniel Bannoura, from left, the Rev. Fares Abraham and Lamma Mansour participate in the 2024 Christ at the Checkpoint conference at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank. (Photo by Alaa Khoury/Bethlehem Bible College)

Fares Abraham, the Palestinian American CEO of Levant Ministries, made a passionate call for a “Christ-centered response,” saying, “Followers of Christ can’t ignore the suffering in Gaza.” But he expressed regret for all the deaths that have led to the current situation. “We mourn every loss of life. We mourn those killed on Oct. 7,” he said, “and we pray for the release of the hostages, and we mourn all Palestinians killed in this war.”

Abraham, who said 25 members of his wife’s family have taken refuge in Gaza’s churches, insisted that his call for compassion for both sides should not be controversial. “This is who we are as Christians,” he said. “We need to follow Christ’s example and respond biblically to human suffering with unconditional compassion.”

The calls for a Christian response to the war were present in the 100 handwritten messages of hope and support for the church in Palestine that an American couple from North Carolina, Sara and George Salloum, delivered to the conference organizers, who posted them at the Bible college and sent copies to the churches in Gaza.

RELATED: Latin Patriarch Pizzaballa’s visit provides Palestinians a basic human need: Hope

But there was a more defiant strain of hope in some of the speeches. Lamma Mansour, a researcher in social policy at the University of Oxford and a Rhodes scholar, called on Palestinians to become an example of hope. “Not the naive kind of hope but the hope with power to be bold, to defy arrogance of the oppressor and hope that speaks truth to power.”

Mansour noted that “hope gives us the power to defy the arrogance of oppression and to persist. It renews our strength to love our enemy and to keep protesting, and hope gives us the power to imagine.” Her concluding words brought a standing ovation: “We may be persecuted, and hope ensures us that we will not be abandoned.”

(Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem and the publisher of Milhilard.org. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Mainline Protestant clergy are increasingly pro-Palestinian. Their congregants may not follow.

Will mainline leaders be swayed by their silent pro-Israel majorities?

Palestinians wait for aid trucks in central Gaza Strip on May 19, 2024.

 (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

May 29, 2024
By Motti Inbari, Kirill Bumin


(RNS) — Mainline Protestant churches are often linked in the media to support for the progressive agenda — same-sex marriage, for instance, and abortion access — and their clergy are increasingly active on racial inequality, civil rights and environmental issues. But over the past few decades, they have also become significantly more pro-Palestinian than the average American when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

With the collapse of the Oslo peace process in 2000, mainline criticism of Israel exploded. Since 2004, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has made a significant breakthrough among mainline churches, with 10 resolutions supporting divestment passed by clergy and their most involved lay leaders at their denominational conventions. The United Methodists at their General Conference just last month passed such a vote, following the lead of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ, which did so in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Pastors and their parishioners are typically assumed to be aligned on these types of issues, but our most recent national survey examining American Christian opinions about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals that 80% of mainline attendees have never even heard of the BDS movement and only 7% support it. The views of the clergy on these issues, in other words, are often out of sync with the views of the congregants.

Since 2018, we have surveyed the public opinion of different U.S. Christian movements to understand their views of Jews, Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For this most recent survey we reached 2,000 self-identifying Christians in the United States in March 2024, months after the start of the war in Gaza. The survey polled evangelical and born-again Christians (such as Baptists and Pentecostals), mainline Protestants and Catholics.

RELATED: Survey: Mainline clergy are more liberal than their congregants

Despite their lack of knowledge about BDS, mainline Protestants tend to be the best informed about the conflict, with a larger percentage of them correctly identifying the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as the ones in the chant “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” (49% versus 44% for evangelicals and 39% for Catholics).

We were both surprised and encouraged that this group had not been swayed by the prevailing anti-Israel media narrative. In fact, 22% of mainline respondents said their support for Israel increased as a result of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, while 47% said their support remained the same. A majority of this group — 54% — blame “mostly Hamas” for the current war in Gaza, the highest percentage among the three groups that we surveyed.

“In relation to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, where do you place your support?” (Courtesy graphic)

Half said the Israeli response had been mostly justified, almost 7% higher than the evangelicals who said so.

As these numbers show, the congregants of this important Christian movement clearly support Israel over the Palestinians, as most Americans do, and see greater justification for the Israeli, rather than Palestinian, actions in the current war in Gaza.
RELATED: Are white evangelical pastors at odds with their congregants? A new study says no.

As mainline denominations continue to respond to the war, it is certain to generate heated discussions. The calls for more resolutions condemning Israel, more boycotts of Israeli businesses and more divestment of funds will likely follow.

Will the mainline leaders be swayed by the vocal minority of their pro-Palestinian members, or heed to the significant but silent pro-Israel majority?

(Motti Inbari is a professor of Jewish studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Kirill Bumin is associate dean of the Metropolitan College and director of summer term at Boston University. They are the authors of “Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Public Opinion on Israel.” 

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Adults raised in the ‘Christian parenting empire’ of the ’70s-’90s push back

Leveraging social media, these parents and professionals aim to show that this parenting approach can result in trauma, estrangement and views of God as abusive.
(Photo by Monstera Production/Pexels/Creative Commons)
May 30, 2024
By
Kathryn Post

(RNS) — For Tia Levings, it was blanket training.

A method where a parent places an infant or toddler on a blanket and punishes them — often by hitting them — if they stray, blanket training was a line Levings refused to cross, and a technique that made her question the teachings that enveloped her as a young mother in the Christian patriarchy movement.

“We were not to listen to our instincts,” said Levings, who raised her kids in Jacksonville, Florida, in the 1990s. “Our mother instincts would lead us to make weak choices that cater to the flesh, and instead we needed to raise our babies the way God would.”

When Levings spoke about corporal punishment in the hit documentary series “Shiny Happy People,” her story didn’t just resonate with viewers raised in fundamentalism. Though the series focused on Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, the idea that spanking results in obedient, righteous children was a hallmark of mainstream evangelical parenting in the ’70s-’90s.

“Dobson taught people, spank your kid, but sit them down and put them on your lap and hug them,” therapist Krispin Mayfield said about psychologist and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, whose book “Dare to Discipline” has sold more than 3.5 million copies since 1970. This combination of pain and affection, Mayfield told Religion News Service, can shape how children view parents and authority figures. And, according to Mayfield and Levings, it can impact their view of God.

Tia Levings. (Courtesy photo)

“It leaves you without any spiritual solace,” said Levings, author of the forthcoming book “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy.” “You don’t know where to turn for any kind of safe spirituality because the Divine was used … as the justification for why you were being hurt.”

In the late 20th century, a specific, often white evangelical brand of authoritarian parenting emerged. Framed as being God-glorifying, it was characterized by rigid hierarchies, demands for children’s immediate and cheerful obedience and the absence of negative emotions among children. It was enforced by spanking, often starting when a child was just a few months old.

Now, some of the adults raised in that context are pushing back. Leveraging social media, they aim to show that this parenting approach can result in trauma, estrangement and a view of God as abusive. Their warnings are often paired with a plea to raise kids in a way that honors children’s agency.

Books like Dobson’s were an explicit response to the perceived disruptions of the feminist movement, Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests and 1960s youth culture, several experts told RNS. Evangelical authoritarian parenting prioritized parental authority as a stabilizing force and were also an answer to parenting models seen as permissive, including those popularized by such authors as Dr. Benjamin Spock and, later, Dr. William Sears.

As Dobson’s reach extended beyond the evangelical parenting world, other self-appointed experts such as Gothard, Tedd Tripp, Gary Ezzo, Michael and Debi Pearl and Nancy Campbell emerged. Their advice proliferated via conferences and parenting books, some with provocative titles such as Larry Tomczak’s “God, the Rod, and your Children’s Bod” or Reb Bradley’s “Born Liberal, Raised Right: How to Rescue America from Moral Decline.”

Author Marissa Burt said that, barring Dobson, most of these authors were pastors who lacked relevant credentials.

“They marketed themselves well, they made claims to spiritual authority, they generated fear in parents, and they presented their opinion as God’s way to hundreds of thousands of people,” said Burt.


Marissa Burt, left, and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis. (Burt photo by Janeen Sorensen 2021; McGinnis photo © 2024 KC McGinnis)

Together, these authors created a cohesive movement or, as Burt and scholar Kelsey Kramer McGinnis say in their forthcoming book, from Brazos, a “Christian parenting empire.” These writers viewed parents as God’s representatives charged with using physical punishment to enforce instant obedience, constant composure, strict hierarchies and gender binaries. This approach, parents were taught, would preserve the nuclear family and, by extension, society as a whole — and would prevent their children from losing their souls.

“Parents are being told, you have to do this or your kid is going to either end up in hell, or end up a criminal,” said R.L. Stollar, author of “The Kingdom of Children.”

As writers D.L. and Krispin Mayfield note in their new multimedia “Strongwilled” project, these authors often rejected the authoritarian label. But the Mayfields developed the term “religious authoritarian parenting” to discuss those like Dobson, Gothard and the Pearls whose impacts and techniques, they argue, are nevertheless authoritarian in nature.

“It wasn’t marked by having to wear skirts or like not going to the movies or those sorts of things. It was marked by, do you submit to the authority figures in your life?” Krispin Mayfield said.

Krispin, left, and D.L. Mayfield. (Courtesy photos)

For many parents, the promises of this movement never materialized. Rather than a lifetime of happiness with compliant, Christian children, several sources told RNS, parents in some cases have become estranged from children who eventually sought autonomy beyond the parent-child relationship.

“The parents feel utterly betrayed, and the only way they can handle that is by saying, I didn’t do something wrong. It’s my children. They are not grateful for the sacrifices that I made,” said Abbi Nye, an anti-abuse advocate raised with the Quiverfull ideology, often characterized by large families, homeschooling and female submission. Parents who refuse to acknowledge the harm caused by Christian authoritarian parenting, she said, risk alienating their kids long-term.

Nye is one of several Christians and former evangelicals, or exvangelicals, speaking out against Christian authoritarian parenting and seeking different approaches. As she teaches her son to regulate, rather than stifle, his emotions, she said, she draws inspiration from child liberation theology, an emerging Christian movement that says children have the same worth as adults.


Abbi Nye in New York in 2023. (Courtesy photo)

One of the leaders of that field is Stollar, a child of evangelical parents who were “somewhat resistant adopters of some of the more authoritarian aspects of parenting,” he told RNS. Now, he argues in blogs and articles that adults can parent without exerting force to exact compliance.

“I want parents to know there are different ways to read the Bible that are valid, that understand and respect who Jesus and God are, and are still treating children in a way that is humane and respectful,” said Stollar.



R.L. Stollar. (Courtesy photo)

Deciding to parent differently than their evangelical parents was part of what led the Mayfields to eventually depart Christianity. Their “Strongwilled” project suggests kids raised by religious authoritarian parenting are more susceptible to political authoritarianism — including that of Donald Trump.

“We’ve been traumatized for political purposes,” D.L. Mayfield told RNS. “All of this was done to undo the progress made in the 1950s in the United States of America … and us as kids, we’re just collateral damage.” Through “Strongwilled,” the Mayfields hope to build a community for those reckoning with their childhoods.

As they share findings from their book research, Burt and McGinnis, both Christian parents themselves, have reached hundreds of people trying to unpack the Christian parenting empire they belonged to. People who’ve left Christianity, too, tune in to YouTube or Instagram to hear Burt and McGinnis discuss corporal punishment, perfectionism and spiritual authority in Christian parenting.

“There’s a way to talk about this that is absolutely accusing my parents’ generation of being either these authoritarian, spiritual tyrants or just sheep to people like James Dobson, and neither of those is true,” said McGinnis, who is also a correspondent for Christianity Today. “I think there’s a way to talk about this that welcomes those folks. So I’m really thankful when someone from that camp chimes in.”
RELATED: Child liberation theology says God is a child, too


Yolanda Williams. (Courtesy photo)

The parents and professionals analyzing the previous generation’s Christian parenting are doing so amid a culturewide shift away from punitive parenting tactics. But as gentle and conscious parenting becomes more mainstream, it can also become whitewashed, warned parenting coach Yolanda Williams, who argues that true conscious parenting — which teaches parents to be mindful of their own trauma — must reckon with how colonization interrupted Indigenous parenting methods.

“There were reports that Indigenous people were appalled by the way that the Europeans treated their children like property,” Williams, creator of the Parenting Decolonized social media accounts and resources, said. “The roots of conscious parenting are from Black, Indigenous and other people of color.”

But though the tides of parenting culture seem to have turned, some artifacts of Christian authoritarian parenting have remained, with new iterations gaining popularity on social media, where self-platformed experts and “tradwife” influencers have been doling out parenting advice in what they see as a revival of old-fashioned Christian family values. To those raised in the original Christian parenting empire, these freshly packaged lessons about obedience, discipline and strict gender roles are grimly familiar.

“Whether we are exvangelicals, whether we still consider ourselves Christians, wherever we are on the political spectrum, we’re saying, what we experienced was not OK,” said Nye. “We want to warn the next generation.”

GNOSTIC    ANTINOMIANISM 

‘Bad Faith’ sounds the alarm on the past and future of Christian nationalism

Filmmakers Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones trace the origins of Christian nationalism from the Ku Klux Klan to the election of Donald Trump.

In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, a man holds a Bible as supporters of Donald Trump gather outside the Capitol in Washington. The Christian imagery and rhetoric on view during the Capitol insurrection sparked renewed debate about the societal effects of melding Christian faith with an exclusionary breed of nationalism. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

May 30, 2024

By Jim McDermott

(RNS) — In 1980, conservative political operative Paul Weyrich approached evangelical Christian leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson with a proposal: If they would mobilize their believers to begin voting Republican, he would help them in their quest to roll back many of the civil rights protections they chafed against. Over the next 40 years, Weyrich and his Council for National Policy would guide these groups to greater and greater political success while slowly radicalizing them into a potent force — the Moral Majority — whose particular ideas of Christianity and Christian values drove nearly all their voting decisions.

Weyrich was not subtle in his motivations for a reigning political class, telling a group of evangelical leaders in 1980 that “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

In “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy,” filmmakers Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones trace the origins of Christian nationalism from the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th century through the creation of the Moral Majority, the sudden rise of the tea party and the election of Donald Trump. What they uncover is an essential aspect of our current political situation, one that puts evangelical Christianity in new light.

Where many liberals have long dismissed evangelical Christians and their fundamentalist beliefs as ridiculous and absurd, Ujlaki and Brown work to understand them on their own terms — and discover not hypocrisy but a deeply consistent, radically dualistic theology that, for many, is worth defending, even to the point of violence.

Religion News Service spoke with Ujlaki by phone in Los Angeles about the making of “Bad Faith” and the story it tells of how a large swath of religious voters came to believe that President Joe Biden is in league with the devil while Trump is essential to the spiritual salvation of America. The film is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Tubi and other platforms.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What initially made you want to tell this story?

When Trump got elected, I was shocked. Nobody thought he had a chance. He was obviously a joke. It was never going to happen. When he got elected, I realized I didn’t really know anything about what was going on. I was in a bubble.

Stephen Ujlaki. (Photo by Jon Rou/courtesy of Loyola Marymount University)

More than anything, my wanting to make the film was just to find out: How did he do it, how did he win, and who were the Christian evangelicals (who supported him)? But then I discovered all of this plotting, all of these deals, and the fact that those behind them were anti-democratic from the beginning.

The heart of the film is the story of Paul Weyrich and the deal he made with evangelical Christian leaders to use abortion to motivate their people to begin to vote for Republicans. How did that all work?

There were a couple of congressional elections in which the people who were running for office were very anti-abortion. And Weyrich, who had been a Catholic, found that they were successful campaigns, more so than they should have been. Abortion was very successful in ringing people’s bell.

Evangelicals had nothing against abortion. Frankly, they thought it was a good way to keep the Black population down. The Southern Baptist Convention applauded Roe v. Wade in 1973. But Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson agreed to start telling people this is bad, in return for which they were going to get help turning back all the progressive things they hated that the Supreme Court had done and that Lyndon Johnson had done. The Great Society, all of those progressive things that gave a lot of us hope in the 1960s and ’70s were anathema to them, and they were determined to turn that back. So they would faithfully help elect Republicans, and they would get rewarded.

It (abortion) was a great way to cover the fact that they were really trying to stop integration. It’s much better to say that we’re trying to defend the rights of the unborn.
I was surprised to learn that Christian evangelicals were not always so politically engaged.

For many, many years they were completely opposed to political involvement. The public square was the devil’s playground. To convince them to get involved and to vote Republican, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson applied the Manichaeanism of their theology. There’s a good and bad; there’s evil, and there’s God. The Republican Party is the party of God, and the Democratic Party is the party of the devil. They got that.

But this has nothing to do with theology, nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with God or with Jesus. I don’t even consider Christian nationalism as a religion. What is its ethos? What is its morality? It’s actually amoral, which is why it uses the church. The church lends it that moral, ethical authority that it doesn’t have otherwise.

Jesus is anti-democratic and God likes authoritarian governments? It’s the antithesis of anything Christian.

Would it be fair to say Christian nationalism’s goal is fascism?

“Bad Faith” poster. (Courtesy image)

Yes. It’s pure fascism. It’s pure power. They have been wanting and plotting the same thing for 40-plus years. They were incredibly adept at concealing what their motives were. You had to decode what they were saying. When they were talking about re-creating the kingdom of God on Earth, if you thought they were talking about something theological and spiritual, you would be mistaken. They were talking about replacing democracy with theocracy.

The one exception, and this to me is like the smoking gun in the film, was the Weyrich Manifesto (“The Integration of Theory and Practice,” 2001). Born of his complete frustration with the knowledge that his followers were never going to be the majority, Weyrich argued the only way they were going to create a Christian nation was to bypass democracy. They had to weaken and destroy it, creating a vacuum, which leaves room for the strongman to appear.

If you look around you at the divisiveness and the distrust of institutions that exist today in this country, you will realize how incredibly successful they have been in executing their plan. It’s been like a slow-motion revolution in a way, happening bit by bit all over the place.

And yet even so, Donald Trump seemed like such a reach for people concerned about goodness and morality.

Everything he stood for was against what they believed in. A number of people were saying they would do it but they would be holding their noses, because they didn’t really believe in it.

Then you had his spiritual adviser, a charismatic, Paula White, who had befriended Trump a year or so earlier and was his sort of secret adviser. She started the ball rolling by telling her group that Trump had become a Christian. That was one attempt to deal with the thing. But more was needed.

Then, looking in the Bible, another charismatic Christian came up with the idea that God sometimes uses pagans to accomplish good works on behalf of the Jews. King Cyrus was this horrible pagan who did all kinds of bad things, but he was very good for the Jews.
And so Trump becomes reinterpreted as, in a sense, part of salvation history?

The notion was that looking at the Bible, we see that what was really happening was God using Trump in order to redeem America and bring it back to God. And as (evangelical Christian and former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security) Elizabeth Neumann says in the film, the notion that they could be living out the prophesies got evangelical Christians so excited they all got behind this notion of Trump as King Cyrus. That’s what God was doing. That was the answer. They figured it out.

There comes a point in the film where you interview a man who seems very thoughtful about Biden’s desire to unify the country. But then his conclusion is that it’s impossible because good and evil cannot work together.

That’s one of the scarier parts of the film. Because he seems like a reasonable, intelligent person, and yet he’s deeply convinced of this, even sad about it, not triumphant. It’s simply a fact, good cannot unify with evil.

The notion that over half the country is in fact demonic and evil, and evangelical Christians are the holy ones and should be allowed to do whatever they need to do in order to take control from the devil, it’s incredible when you think about it.

Watching the film, it certainly sounds like the leaders of the Christian nationalist movement see civil war, or something like it, as the path to power.

That’s right. That’s the only way they’re going to get it. They’re not going to get it through democracy, they’re never going to be the majority. They are going to weaken and destroy and then conquer. That’s the game plan.

It’s so hard, people aren’t willing to accept the fact there are sizable numbers of people in this country who don’t believe in democracy. And the national media doesn’t know how to deal with it. They’re constantly accommodating, normalizing, and not fulfilling what I would take to be the mandate of proper newsgathering. They call them “conservative” in The New York Times. They’re not conservative. These are seditionists, treasonous, anti-democratic.

People with this kind of liberal notion of fair and balanced think we’re not going to be over the top like them. But the thing is, one is following the rules and the other isn’t.

It’s so difficult, because you don’t want people to be so terrified that they think it’s hopeless. You don’t want to have to think “I better stay out of this.”

On the contrary, what it should show you is that you need to fight for your democracy if you want to keep it.

RNS is the recipient of an ongoing grant from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, founded and led by Todd Stiefel, who is an executive producer of “Bad Faith.”

 Religion Hub

France’s headscarf ban in the 2024 Summer Olympics reflects a narrow view of national identity

Laïcité, which historically upheld individual freedom, denies minority rights today, as seen in the ban on French athletes wearing hijabs at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

May 30, 2024

By 

Armin Langer

(The Conversation) — The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris have sparked a discussion about whether female Muslim athletes who wear a headscarf should be allowed to compete.

In September 2023, the International Olympic Committee, upholding freedom of religious and cultural expression for all athletes, announced that athletes participating in the 2024 Paris Games can wear a hijab without any restriction.

French athletes, however, are bound by France’s strict separation of religion from the state, called laïcité. French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said that French athletes would be barred from wearing a hijab during the Paris games to respect this commitment to the principle of laïcité.

Human rights organizations argued that such a ban infringes upon the religious freedoms of Muslim athletes, perpetuating discrimination and marginalization. The United Nations human rights office stated that “no one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear, or not wear.”

This debate highlights the conflict between laïcité and the right to express one’s religious beliefs. As a scholar of European studies, I know about laïcité’s impact on sports, politics and society in general. In my view, laïcité, which historically upheld individual rights and freedoms, increasingly denies minority rights today, as seen in the ban on French athletes wearing hijabs at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Laïcité yesterday and today

Before the 1789 revolution, France was an absolute monarchy, where religion and the state were deeply intertwined.

The close relationship between the French monarchy and the Catholic Church began when King Charlemagne was crowned by the pope in 800 A.D. Over the centuries, the church became very powerful, owning land and controlling education and health care. It formed strong political alliances, with many nobles holding top positions within the church.

After the French Revolution succeeded and the monarchy was abolished, the revolutionaries still resented religion for its long relationship with the crown. They saw the church as a source of unfairness in society and wanted to reduce religion’s influence in public life and push their ideas of freedom, fairness and unity.

They nationalized church properties and introduced secularism to create a separation between religious and governmental affairs. Since then, France has maintained laïcité as one of the republic’s core value

The evolution of laïcité in France coincides with significant demographic shifts in the latter half of the 20th century. As France transformed into a diverse nation with various religions and ethnicities, including a significant Muslim population, the interpretation and application of laïcité faced new challenges. With millions migrating from former French colonies in northern and western Africa in search of economic opportunities, France now hosts the largest Muslim community in Europe, comprising about 10% of its population. This demographic change has sparked debates about the role of religion in public life and the extent to which laïcité should accommodate religious diversity.

While laïcité was originally introduced alongside principles such as freedom and equality, as times changed, so did its meaning. Initially, laïcité meant keeping religion separate from the state. Lately, however, it is often interpreted to mean that citizens should refrain from showing their religious identities in public.

This shift has led to bans on religious symbols in public schools and spaces, disproportionately affecting Muslim women who wear veils.

A debate about the Olympics – and beyond

Activists and scholars have argued that today’s laïcité poses a threat to both human rights and religious freedom. In their view, it promotes a narrow view of republican values and national identity, rejecting diversity and unfairly targeting Muslim women who wear headscarves.

Laïcité can be seen as discriminatory because it often treats Christian customs as just part of everyday culture, while it treats visible signs of other religions, such as the hijab worn by some Muslim women, as unacceptable. This means Christian symbols and traditions are more easily accepted, but non-Christian ones are often not allowed.

It is also important to note that Christian traditions focus mostly on beliefs, which are private, while Islamic and Jewish traditions emphasize practices, such as wearing headscarves, that are visible. This means laïcité affects people differently, often more strictly targeting visible signs of non-Christian religion

A 2023 survey showed that almost 80% of French Muslims believed that their country’s secular laws are discriminatory. Research shows that laïcité disproportionately affects Muslim girls from marginalized communities, perpetuating social inequalities. For example, the ban on headscarves in schools forces Muslim girls to choose between their education and their religious beliefs, leading to feelings of exclusion and isolation. This policy can also hinder their academic performance and personal development, limiting their future opportunities.

Banning hijab for players

French Muslim athletes have faced challenges on the field for a long time. For example, in 2023, the French Soccer Federation decided not to adjust meal and practice timings during Ramadan, even though it occurred during a break when there was no competition.

This decision effectively prevented Muslim players from fasting and led to notable departures, such as Lyon midfielder Mahamadou Diawara leaving the France under-19s camp. Other French players, too, left French professional sports. Basketball player Diaba Konate also opted to pursue her career in the United States because of the French ban on wearing the hijab.

In 2004, France prohibited religious symbols in public schools, including the hijab, Jewish yarmulkes, Sikh turbans and large Christian crosses.

The nonprofit Human Rights Watch criticized it as an unjustified restriction on religious practice. In 2010, France extended the ban to face-covering headgear in public places, including the burqa and niqab, which are garments worn by some Muslim women that cover the face and body. Last year, France banned the abaya in schools.

A ban on cultural pluralism?

The hijab debate extends beyond the realm of sports, touching upon broader issues of identity and belonging in multicultural societies. For many Muslim women, the hijab is not just clothing – it is an expression of religious identity and empowerment.

Banning it from the Olympics could be seen as limiting their freedom of expression and denying their right to fully engage in society while staying true to their religious and cultural backgrounds.

France’s ban on religious symbols in official sports activities highlights the struggle to balance religious freedom with national values. This becomes especially complicated in the Olympics, where athletes’ individual expressions clash with their roles as representatives of their countries.

(Armin Langer, Assistant Professor of European Studies, University of Florida. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

 

How a legendary Knights Templar symbol has puzzled and fascinated since the Middle Ages

Warrior-monks crusaded for Christianity throughout medieval Europe. Adding to the ongoing mystery surrounding the military order is their enigmatic seal.

May 30, 2024

By 

Andrew Latham

(The Conversation) — The Knights Templar, a legendary monastic military order forged in the fires of the Crusades, continue to enthrall 21st-century audiences.

From the time of their founding in 1119 C.E. to their dissolution in 1312 C.E., the Templars’ mission was to defend Christian kingdoms in the Holy Land against the various Muslim powers that sought to return the region to Islamic rule. In service of this mission, the order fused two defining institutions of the early Middle Ages: the mounted knight and the pious monk.

At the time, this made the Templars something of a puzzle. How could someone be both a pious monk and a ferocious warrior? The Templars themselves tried to address this question in their symbology, which proved as puzzling as the order itselfre

The Knights Templar were a military order of monks.
From the archive of the British Library via Flickr, CC BY

One of the Templars’ more enigmatic symbols was their wax seal – two knights riding a single horse. In the Middle Ages, people used seals to protect important communications from forgery, acting like a signature. Everyone from individuals to organizations had their own unique seal.

While the images on seals could be relatively simple and straightforward, they sometimes conveyed more subtle messages. The message of the Templars’ seal has always been open to interpretation.

Interpreting the Templar seal

While researching medieval geopolitics and the Third Crusade, I came across several interpretations of the Templar seal.

The most popular ties the shared steed to the Templars’ vow of poverty. While the Order was not literally financially constrained, the symbol likely was meant to demonstrate that the Templars took the vow seriously.

Another draws a connection to the Gospel of Matthew, where one figure represents a knight and the other Jesus Christ. This interpretation stems from a Bible passage where Christ says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them.” The idea is that the two knights on a single horse embody the ever-present companionship of Christ with the Templars who had gathered in his na

As part of a campaign to discredit the Templars, some suggested the two knights symbolized the homosexuality said to be rampant within the order.

Some propose that the two knights represent a duality within the order itself. The single horse could signify the unification of their seemingly contrasting roles as warrior-monk.

The seal’s inscription adds another layer of intrigue. Originally, the inscription read “Sigillum Militum Christi” – Latin for “Seal of the Soldiers of Christ.” In the mid-13th century, the order’s 19th grand master changed the inscription to “Sigillum Militum Xpisti,” replacing the Latin word for Christ with the Greek. Some scholars argue that using the Greek letters “XP” instead of the Latin “CHR” was intended to invoke Emperor Constantine’s vision at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E. His victory allowed him to end the official persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.

Constantine is said to have had a divine vision while preparing for battle.
School of Raphael/Wikimedia Commons

Multiple meanings

While the exact meaning of the seal remains a riddle, there is little doubt it served as a powerful symbol of the knights’ commitment to their ideals.

The seal’s many interpretations resonate with different audiences. For some, it represents Christian soldiery and unwavering brotherhood. For others, it evokes the enigmatic nature of the Templars. And for others, it suggests corruption and sexual misconduct.

The seal serves as a window into the Knights Templar’s identity and impact on medieval Christian history. It is a symbol likely to continue to spark curiosity for centuries to come.

(Andrew Latham, Professor of Political Science, Macalester College. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

LATER DURING THE TEMPLARS INQUISITION THEY WOULD BE ACCUSSED OF HOMOSEXUALITY WITH REFERENCE TO THE IMAGE OF THE TWO POOR BROTHERS

The EU Parliament's Strengths, Weaknesses, and Unrealized Potential


ON MAY 30, 2024
By Guest Contributor - Opinion

Dick Roche 


In the 45 years since the 1st direct elections, the European Parliament has been transformed from an appointed multilingual talking shop to a directly elected assembly. It is also a significantly larger assembly. The Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, and most significantly the Lisbon Treaty all enhanced its role. But ahead of the 10th election next month, former Irish Minister for Europe Dick Roche spoke at an EU Reporter event at the Brussels Press Club, warning that having significant legislative and executive oversight powers is one thing how it harnesses those powers is, however, another matter. Concerns that arise in both areas need to be addressed by the 10th Parliament

.
Dick Roche speaking at the Brussels Press Club


The Bureaucratization of the Parliament: More Powerful, Less Legitimate

In May 2009 the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) published a working document with the provocative title “The European Parliament - More powerful, less legitimate?”

The study reviewed the position of the parliament going into its 7th mandate. It concluded that the European Parliament had handled the increase in its membership very well.

It took the view that the disruption that some feared from the rapid expansion of the Parliament did not happen that EU expansion and the various treaty changes made the work of the Parliament “more intricate”, that the Parliament had “gained within the institutional triangle of EU institutions” and that “if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified this trend will be considerably reinforced.”



The study closed with a concern regarding the Parliament’s capacity to capture the public’s interest and a warning that failing to do so would put its “institutional raison d’étre as the democratic pillar of the European Union” – in jeopardy.”

The Lisbon Treaty was ratified and came into effect on 1 December 2009 enhancing the role of the Parliament, changing the balance between consultation and co-decision, extending co-decision to agriculture, fisheries, energy, immigration, structural funds, and intellectual property, areas where Parliament previously had to be consulted, and created new areas where co-decision would apply.

Bureaucratization

CEPS noted that as the work of the Parliament extended and became more intricate the Parliament became more dependent on its committees, increasingly decisions were taken within the Parliament’s committees rather than in Plenary debates, with many decisions taken after only one reading in the Parliament. Post the Lisbon Treaty changes that process accelerated.

In today’s EU Parliament, the primary scrutinization of the legislative proposals received from the Commission takes place in committees. When a legislative proposal is passed to a committee a rapporteur - selected by a complicated ‘points system’ that reflects the size of the political groups in the Parliament - drafts a response that ultimately goes to the Parliament for approval. The political groups appoint ‘shadow rapporteurs’ to ensure their views are represented. The results of the Committee's deliberations in, the form of a resolution and amendments, move to plenary sessions where they are debated and voted on.

In addition to the work done in the Parliamentary Committees, interinstitutional discussions between the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission play a key role in the process. Meetings known as trilogues seek to establish a provisional agreement between the Council and the Parliament with the Commission “mediating” between the co-legislators to help ‘iron out differences. The Parliament is represented by the chair, rapporteur, and shadow rapporteurs of the Committee handling the draft legislation.

In purely administrative terms these arrangements make sense. They allow a diverse range of legislative work to be processed at any one time. They allow differences to be ironed out and compromises to be reached. This enables the Parliament to effectively pass proposals ‘on the nod’. The work has already been done before the plenary votes.

Administrative efficiency however comes with a series of downsides. While the debates of the Parliament and of its Committees are in public much of the detailed work of hammering out agreement is conducted away from the public view. Only a handful of MEPs are involved to any significant degree. Much of the process is opaque.

CEPS cautioned that the ‘bureaucratization’ of the legislative process undermines the Parliament’s role as a public forum and centre for debate and highlighted two potential problems.

First, as the composition of an individual committee may not be representative of the full Parliament, the decisions that come out of a committee will not always reflect the range of opinions and concerns in the parliament as a whole on any particular issue.

Second, when the plenary adopts a set of legislative proposals based on a compromise pre-negotiated in committee there is little chance of a real debate.

Truncating the level of open debate limits the chance of capturing public attention for the work in which the Parliament is engaged. What the public cannot see it does not appreciate.

The arrangements also mean that there is less chance of reflecting the full range of experience of MEPs and incorporating the concerns, aspirations, and wishes of the millions of EU citizens they represent in the legislation that passes the parliament’s scrutiny.

The opaqueness of the process also feeds into cynicism and suspicion about the Parliament.

All of this supports the CEPS concern that “in times of skepticism about further EU integration and growing voter apathy about European elections” the bureaucratization of the legislative “could be detrimental to the parliament and to European integration in the long run.”

Those observations made in May 2009 still apply in May 2024.

Relinquishing Control.

In addition to its role as a co-legislator, the EU Parliament is charged with the task of supervising the work of the Commission and other EU bodies.

The treaties provide that Parliament approves the appointment of the Commission President, approves and the European Commission, can censure the Commission and ultimately dismiss it.

The Commission is required to submit reports to the Parliament including an annual report on EU activities and the EU budget. The Commission President gives an annual State of the Union address to the Parliament.

The Commission can also be requested by the Parliament to initiate new policies; whether it chooses to do so is a matter for the Commission.

While this looks impressive on paper the amount of day-to-day control exercised by the Parliament over the Commission is limited. That control is further diminished by striking passivity towards the Commission. This point is demonstrated by the Parliament’s curious approach to Parliamentary Questions (PQs).

PQs are widely regarded as a device to hold governments and executive agencies to account on day-to-day issues. While other Parliaments robustly defend their PQ systems that is not the case with the EU Parliament.

Over the last decade, there has been an active attempt to suppress the PQ system in the EU parliament.

Three categories of parliamentary questions are taken in the EU Parliament: questions for oral answer with debate, oral questions taken in Question Time, and questions for written answer.

Questions for ‘oral answer with debate’ are dealt with in the Parliament’s plenary sessions. These questions must be submitted by a Parliament Committee, a political group, or by 40 MEPs.

Question time, so often the focus of public attention in national Parliaments is, in the case of the EU Parliament, a very constrained affair. A maximum of 90 minutes during Parliament plenary sessions is allocated to question time. During each question time PQs on “one or more specific horizontal themes” are taken. The themes on which questions will be taken are determined one month in advance of the part-session by the Parliament’s Conference of Presidents.

The text of oral questions that are cleared to go on the agenda must be given to the Commission at least one week before the sitting of the Parliament on which they are to be taken. For questions to the Council, the notice period is three weeks.

MEPs who are selected to participate in oral question time, have one minute to put their questions and are given 30 seconds for a supplementary question arising on the Commission’s response. The Commission has two minutes to reply to the question and a further two minutes to respond to any supplementary question.

The vast majority of questions handled in the EU Parliament are questions for written response.

Written questions may be placed by an individual or a group of MEPs. Questions are subject to screening within the Parliament itself before being submitted to the Commission for processing. MEPs may not raise issues on which “the Commission has already informed Parliament” on the subject matter of the question.

Members of the European Parliament are allowed to submit a maximum of 20 parliamentary questions, written or oral, over a “rolling three-month period”. One PQ per month may be designated for ‘priority’ answer Priority questions are supposed to be answered within three weeks. Non-priority questions are supposed to be answered in six weeks.

Slow and Slipshod Responses

While the submission of PQs is subject to a series of limitations, arrangements governing how the Commission deals with PQs are lax to the point of being virtually non-existent.

Replies to “priority questions” are supposed to be given within three weeks. This deadline is honoured in the breach than the observance, particularly where the subject matter is ‘embarrassing’ for the Commission.

A priority question submitted by four MEPs in July 2022 on the sensitive issue of text messages between Commission President von der Leyen Commission and the CEO of Pfizer was not answered until March 2023.

A priority question about suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement submitted by two Irish MEPs in November 2023 did not receive a response for almost six months.

Non-priority written questions are supposed to be answered in six weeks. It was recently calculated that as many as ninety percent of all such PQs are answered late.

In addition to a casual approach to meeting the deadlines for delivering responses to PQs, the Commission adopts a laissez-faire response to the content of replies. PQ responses are criticized as dodging the issues raised, as perfunctory, incomplete, misleading, dismissive, not infrequently bordering on disrespectful, and occasionally simply false.

All of these points were demonstrated in the Commission’s responses to a series of PQs lodged by MEPs from across the political spectrum concerning a report produced in March 2023 by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, EIOPA discussed recently in an article in EU Reporter 

[ https://www.eureporter.co/world/romania/2024/01/25/keeping-the-european-parliament-in-the-dark-about-eiopa/

Between March 2023 and February 2024, the Commission answered twelve questions related to EIOPA. Other questions are understood to have been discouraged during the ‘vetting process’ on the basis that the issue had already been dealt with.

Virtually all the replies given on the issue failed to meet the six-week deadline. All the responses given could be described as inadequate. Links cited by the Commission in some of the PQ replies led to documents that were either ‘access denied’ or had key paragraphs redacted. Access to the EIOPA report itself was denied. The replies given were defensive, evasive, or both.

There can be little doubt that the tenor and content of the PQ responses given would not be tolerated in any national parliament.

Having fielded questions for months, the Commission confessed that it had not seen the EIOPA report. Replying to a question as to how it referenced concerns expressed in a report, that it had not seen, the Commission suggested that “it could be inferred that EIOPA” had concerns in the case. The details of those concerns or their basis were not communicated in any of the answers.

It is hard to imagine members of any national parliament having been stonewalled for months on questions about an executive agency accepting a response that a key report had not seen without some pushback.

A complaint was made to the Ombudsman about the Commission’s handling of PQs in this case. This got nowhere. The Ombudsman took the view that the way the Commission handles PQs is a political rather than an administrative matter and, therefore, not be the subject of an examination by the Ombudsman's office. In short, the Commission could prevaricate, mislead, or even lie in responding to a Parliamentary question and the Ombudsman could not examine the case.

The Decline of PQs

There has been a marked decline in the number of PQs in the EU Parliament over the last decade. That decline has been particularly steep during the mandate of the outgoing Parliament.

The number of PQs dealt with in the EU Parliament peaked at just under 15,500 in 2015. Through the mandates of the 8th and 9th Parliaments, the number of questions dealt with dropped precipitously. In 2023 only 3,703 questions were answered in the European Parliament.

In the four years 2020 to 2023, just under 20,500 Parliamentary Questions were dealt with in by the European Parliament. By way of comparison, between February 2020 and November 2023 over 200,000 parliamentary questions were dealt with in the Dail Eireann, the Irish Parliament.

Remarkably, the dramatic decline in PQs in the EU Parliament has attracted little public attention. More remarkably still it has not been the subject of any pushback in the EU Parliament itself.

While the extraordinary passivity within the EU Parliament to the decline of the PQ as a device for assuring executive answerability is striking, even more remarkable is the fact that part of the driving force for ‘killing off’ parliamentary questions has come from within the EU Parliament itself.

The Draft Rules of Procedure circulated in 2014 contained a reference to maintaining the overall volume of questions within “reasonable limits.”

An internal memo produced in the Parliament at the same time by a highly respected senior staff member of the parliament stressed the need to “reduce access” in some MEP activities, submitting written questions amongst them.

In April 2015 a parliamentary question tabled by a S&D Member who served as a shadow rapporteur on the 2016 EU budget referenced the fact that “the number of written questions submitted by MEPs to the Commission is constantly on the rise” and suggested that “the flood of written questions must be a huge burden on the Commission”. Rather bizarrely, the MEP recorded that he had “managed to persuade the main political groups to reach a consensus on the matter” of reducing the number of parliamentary questions. [ https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-8-2015-006180_EN.html].

Responding to the PQ Commissioner Timmermans referenced the “great importance” that the Commission attached to “the Parliament’s right of democratic scrutiny”. The Commissioner also referred to the “ever-increasing number of questions (some 13,100 in 2013, 10,800 in 2014, an election year and 6,000 in the first four months of 2015) does entail considerable costs for the Commission.”

Mr Timmermans put the cost per question in 2015 at €490 per PQ. He explained that because the Commission operated “on the basis of the principle of collegiality” the reply to each written question had to go “through a process of attribution, drafting, validation, inter-service coordination, collegiate endorsement, and finally translation.”

Based on each question costing €490 to answer the 15,489 questions tabled that year, would cost over €7.5 million a not inconsiderable figure but a small fraction of the cost of running the Commission.

The Democratic Cost.

The 2009 CEPS paper concluded that if the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified the Parliament would gain further ground within “the institutional triangle of EU institutions”.

Thanks to the Irish Referendum of 2 October 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified. It came into effect in December 2009.

As mentioned at the outset, the CEPS paper cautioned that if the Parliament - having gained ground with the ratification of the Lisbon - failed to capture the public’s interest at the same time its institutional raison d’être as the democratic pillar of the European Union would be in jeopardy.

Almost fifteen years after the Lisbon Treaty came into effect the dynamic between the Commission and the Parliament remains firmly tilted towards the former.

The process of bureaucratization within the Parliament has continued apace as has the evisceration of the Parliament’s capacity to call the Commission to account.

A neutered Parliament comes with a significant cost. All seven EU Parliament elections between 1984 and 2014 saw a decline in voter turnout.

When the first direct elections were held in 1979 the turnout of voters was 63%. Turnout dropped in each of the following seven elections bottoming out at under 43% in 2014. In 2019 that rose to almost 51%. While significant, the 2019 increase in turnout still meant that over 49% of voters did not cast their vote.

The Spring 2023 Eurobarometer recorded voters’ interest in European elections as limited. Only half of those polled believed that voting in EU parliament elections mattered, two-thirds believed that voting in national elections mattered. The Spring 2024 Eurobarometer provided more optimistic figures reporting that 71% of voters across the EU said that they are likely to vote in this June’s elections. If anythingapproaching that number turns out it will be a truly remarkable turnaround. We will know in just two weeks.

Europe faces a series of challenges over the next five years, the mandate of the incoming Parliament. If the EU is to preach about democracy it should be seen to practice it. A strong and vibrant European Parliament representing the diversity that is Europe will be an important message for European citizens and for the wider world.

Dick Roche is a former Irish Minister for European Affairs. In that role, he played a decisive role in the Irish referendum that ratified the Lisbon Treaty.