Restoring the Natural Order – The Antifeminist Strategies of the Christian Agenda Europe Network

Attacks on feminism, LGBTIQ+-activism, gender research, and equality policies by Christian actors are on the rise globally (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017; Strube et al., 2021). In Europe, Christian groups have started using a twin-track strategy, consisting on the one hand of grassroots mobilisations like petitions or citizens’ initiatives and, on the other hand, of a political strategy to expand their influence in the field of policy-making (Datta, 2018; 2021). This is evidenced not only by legal changes, for example, stricter anti-abortion laws in Poland, but also by anti-gay and anti-queer mobilisations like Manif Pour Tous in France or Demo für alle in Germany in the past few years. Christian actors have created their professional NGOs and networks to increase their influence on political developments across regional and national borders on a trans- and supranational (European) level. To add to the rather scarce research on the European dimension of antifeminist movements (but see Mos 2018), this paper will analyse the programmatic and strategies of the antifeminist network Agenda Europe as detailed in the strategy paper Restoring the Natural Order (RTNO). Using frame analysis as our starting point, we analyse the construction of problems, constructions of blame, and victimhood and the solutions proposed to understand the normative convictions and worldviews underpinning Christian conservative anti-feminism. Specifically, we want to question and hopefully add nuance to observing a secularisation of these discourses (Kuhar 2015; Datta 2018).