Far (and not so far) Right Uses of the Bible in Contemporary Politics

CEMES & CSGN Spring 2026 Lecture Series talk with Senior Lecturer Hannah M. Strømmen, Lund University.

Discussant: Associate Professor, Georg Wink, University of Copenhagen. 

The Bible seems to have made a comeback in Western politics. At the same time many political references to the Bible on social media, in speeches, and rallies, seem superficial, even banal. How can we make sense of such references? In this talk I address trends in contemporary political Bible-use that range from extreme endorsements of violence to mainstream claims about Christian culture. I suggest that two very different kinds of Bible-use are prevalent amongst far right and more mainstream right ideologues, one that harnesses the violence in biblical texts and the other that capitalizes on the status of the Bible as a civilizational artefact. The selectivity and seemingly superficial nature of these receptions is not only not a problem for their political impact, but is part of their affective power.

Speaker bio

Hannah M. Strømmen is Associate Professor in Bible, Politics, and Culture at Lund University in Sweden. She is the author of Biblical Animality after Jacques Derrida (2018), The Claim to Christianity: Responding to the Far Right (2020, co-written with Ulrich Schmiedel), and The Bibles of the Far Right (2024). She is a Wallenberg Academy Fellow, currently leading the "Scripture and Secularism" project.

About the series

The Spring 2026 Lecture Series focus on the topic 'The European Far Right in a Transnational Perspective'. The series is organised by Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES) and Centre for the Study of Global Nationalisms (CSGN).