In this article I explore the way in which popular perceptions of the Bible have become drawn into the ideology of the contemporary far right. By examining the far-right ideology that inspired Anders Behring Breivik’s terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011, I demonstrate how the Bible goes from operating as a foundational corpus for ‘Western culture’, to being employed as a militant mouthpiece calling for violent defence of this culture. Analysing the simultaneous recourse and resistance to Enlightenment interpretations of the Bible in this far-right milieu allows for a better understanding of the connections between dominant discourses about the Bible and more marginal and extreme ideologies.
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Breivik, ‘2083’, pp. 1328-34 (Section 3.149). This section is situated within a larger part entitled ‘Christian Justification of the Struggle’, which is in Book 3, ‘A Declaration of Pre-Emptive War’, of the manifesto.
Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
Yvonne Sherwood, ‘Bush’s Bible as a Liberal Bible (Strange Though That Might Seem)’, Postscripts 2.1 (2006), pp. 47-58. See also her Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 321-329.
Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 5.
James Crossley, Harnessing Chaos: The Bible in English Political Discourse since 1968, (London: T & T Clark, 2nd edn, 2016), p. 12.
Sherwood, ‘Bush’s Bible’, p. 50. Jacques Berlinerblau has convincingly demonstrated that even the most conservative, right-wing ‘Bible thumping’ of candidates in U.S. politics adhere to this general practice, albeit with sometimes different agendas and formulations. References to ‘biblical worldview’ or ‘biblical values’ are relatively common, but pronounced without recourse to argumentation or exegesis. See Jacques Berlinerblau, Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), p. 21. Usage of the Bible in the American political context is thus ‘light not heavy, theatrical not substantive, and rhetorical as opposed to policy oriented’ (Berlinerblau, Thumpin’ It, p. 21).
See Sherwood, ‘Bush’s Bible’, p. 49; Berlinerblau, Thumpin’it, p. 106; J.G. Crossley, ‘What the Bible Really Means: Biblical Literacy in English Political Discourse’, in Katie Edwards (ed.), Rethinking Biblical Literacy (London: T & T Clark, 2015), p. 27.
Robert Spencer, Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2013), p. 186.
Robert Spencer, Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), pp. 64, 109. Of course – setting aside other examples for the moment – Breivik had done precisely that, and done so as an avid follower of Spencer.
Bat Ye’or, Understanding Dhimmitude: Twenty-One Lectures and Talks on the Position of Non-Muslims in Islamic Societies (New York: RVP, 2013).
Ye’or, Understanding Dhimmitude, pp. 126, 219. Ye’or refers to ‘People of the Book’ throughout the book because it is the term used of Christians and Jews under Islamic law (also referred to as ‘dhimmis’). In Islamic law, of course, the status as ‘People of the Book’ signifies the protection rather than the persecution of Christians and Jews.
See Breivik, ‘2083’, pp. 251-60 (Section 1.23: ‘Western vs. Islamic Science and Religion’). Because many of Fjordman’s writings are in the form of blog-posts that have been removed since 2011, I draw here on the passages in Breivik’s manifesto where texts attributed to Fjordman are referenced or cited. Although Fjordman has attempted to distance himself from Breivik, it is useful to analyse the actual interpretations and potential implications of this ideology as taken up by Breivik.
José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 6.
Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 2.
John J. Collins, ‘The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence’ , JBL 122 (2003), pp. 3-21 (3). Collins admits that ‘the devil’ does not have to work very hard to find biblical precedents for the legitimation of violence.
Beal, ‘The White Supremacist Bible and the Phineas Priesthood’, p. 130.
Jan Assman, Religion and Cultural Memory (trans. R. Livingstone; California: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 7-8.
Hugh Pyper, An Unsuitable Book: The Bible as Scandalous Text (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006).
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In this article I explore the way in which popular perceptions of the Bible have become drawn into the ideology of the contemporary far right. By examining the far-right ideology that inspired Anders Behring Breivik’s terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011, I demonstrate how the Bible goes from operating as a foundational corpus for ‘Western culture’, to being employed as a militant mouthpiece calling for violent defence of this culture. Analysing the simultaneous recourse and resistance to Enlightenment interpretations of the Bible in this far-right milieu allows for a better understanding of the connections between dominant discourses about the Bible and more marginal and extreme ideologies.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 333 | 82 | 21 |
Full Text Views | 175 | 5 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 291 | 15 | 0 |