Gender as Authoritarian Infrastructure: On the Instrumentalization of Christianity in Europe

This paper examines how Europe’s position as the world’s most consolidated multi-state liberal-democratic space has made it a central site of contestation for contemporary authoritarian projects, in which gender politics function as a key political lever. It argues that conflicts over “gender ideology” are not clashes between religious traditions or denominations but are driven by right-wing political actors who deliberately forge strategic connections with specific Christian milieus. The analysis is explicitly concerned with a comparatively small yet highly organized and influential constellation of actors that instrumentalizes Christianity as a cultural and political resource rather than as a system of belief. Empirically, the paper draws on material from transnational anti-gender networks, most notably the World Congress of Families, as well as EU-level policy interventions, strategic documents, and public statements. It traces how Evangelical, Catholic, and various Orthodox actors are linked across denominational and national boundaries through political mobilization rather than shared theology. Gender functions as a strategic bridge into Christianity: by framing gender equality, sexual rights, and feminist politics as existential threats to a “Christian civilization,” right-wing agitators translate authoritarian agendas into morally authoritative narratives. These narratives seek to mobilize not only religious actors but also secular or weakly affiliated individuals who seek external moral authority to legitimize exclusionary and illiberal political positions as part of their nationalist worldview. The paper situates European anti-gender mobilizations within transnational authoritarian constellations shaped by developments in both Russia and the United States. In Putin’s Russia, anti-gender rhetoric has long served as a core element of state ideology and as a means of positioning liberal Europe as civilizationally degenerate. In the United States, Republican political actors have explicitly articulated ambitions to support “patriotic” movements abroad, treating Europe as a key arena in a broader struggle over liberal democracy. Europe thus emerges not as an authoritarian space, but as a strategically invested democratic arena: precisely because of its comparatively strong institutional commitments to human rights, gender equality, and pluralism, it has become a focal point for efforts to reconfigure liberal norms from within. Theoretically, the study integrates feminist democratic theory, research on anti-gender movements, and political culture-oriented analyses of religion and democracy. It argues that gender conflicts function as an infrastructure through which democratic norms are contested, exclusionary policies normalized, and authoritarian tendencies rendered politically plausible. By foregrounding gender as the key interface between right-wing politics and Christianity, the paper illuminates how Europe’s democratic resilience is tested by transnational religious-political alliances rather than by confessional conflict. This contribution speaks directly to debates on religion, gender, populism, and democratic resilience by showing how political actors instrumentalize Christianity to contest the ideological foundations of contemporary European democracies.