When atheists vote a party promoting the "Christian identity" of Europe

I focus on the relationship between religion and politics in the German Christian-democratic parties (CDU/CSU) and the AfD. I intend to show that those parties give a central meaning to religion, but for radically different reasons. Christianity implies a social, political and institutional program for the Christian-democratic parties, who want to attract a large spectrum of voters (catch-all parties). For the AfD, Christianity means a cultural fight against the « elites » and an anti-immigrant stance (xenophobic and anti-system stance). My method relies on a comparison of the electoral and general manifestos of the CDU, CSU and the AfD, a study of the debates at the Bundestag and of the internal debates in those parties. My result is that Christianity is related to a broad set of social, cultural and political involvement for the voters of the CDU/CSU, who are socially well integrated and active in various social-religious involvements (legacy of the Christian social ethics). The voters of the AfD are socially more isolated, often located in the former GDR. They are atheists following ideological entrepreneurs, who pretend to defend the “Christian identity” of Europe. For them, Christianity is an identity to be used against Muslims and migration.