Such discontent with America’s sway marks a sea change for a movement with roots in opposing communism, long seen as an authoritarian ideology that crushed religious freedom; indeed, many no longer see the US as uniquely positioned to champion “biblical values.” So, as the global political power centers shift toward rising authoritarianism—away from American-style liberal democracy—significant players on the Christian right are gravitating to where the power is.Beginning with the rise of the Christian right during the Cold War, the movement’s leaders mythologized America as a “city on a hill”—a nation with a divine mission to be a beacon of freedom and democracy to the world. In this telling, America’s founding by Christians seeking to escape religious persecution gave it a special status, a nation with the moral authority to act as an exemplar of individual liberty and a defender of democracy and religious freedom against the forces of totalitarianism.As the weekend progressed, it became clear that “Uniting East and West” was not about exporting American-style freedoms and Constitutional protections to the nascent democracies of post-Soviet central and eastern Europe. Instead, it was about Western social conservatives embracing the rising right-wing authoritarianism in Eastern countries.
This growing affection toward autocrats like Orbán is reflected in the World Congress of Family’s recent choices of venues. The Congress once held gatherings in major western European cities like Geneva, Amsterdam, and Madrid. But in recent years, the Congress has increasingly set its sights eastward, even participating in a gathering in Moscow in 2014, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The 2016 conference was held in Tbilisi, Georgia, where organizers promised it would “establish a beachhead in the region” and that “sexual radicals have targeted these countries.” In 2017, it was held in Budapest, a watershed event: Conservative or far-right parties had often played host, but for Orbán to host as a sitting prime minister was something new.In 2018, Orbán cemented his vision of Hungary as a Christian democracy, presenting himself as the political and spiritual leader of “a new constitutional order based on national and Christian foundations.”
Two months after the World Congress of Families meets under Salvini’s auspices in Verona, voters in EU member countries will go to the polls to elect their representatives to the European Parliament, another institution in the sights of the autocratic right. Orbán has urged Hungarians to use the elections as a way to upend the dominance of liberal democratic values within the EU. “The European elite is visibly nervous,” Orbán said in a speech last year calling on Hungarians to put a halt to “the great goal of transforming Europe and moving it toward a post-Christian and post-national era.”Salvini, too, on a recent visit with Poland’s Law and Justice Party, vowed that the two countries “will be the heroes of the new European spring and the renaissance of true European values” and play a pivotal role in breaking the “Germany-France axis.”A turn against the liberal democratic values of the EU is exactly what many on the American Christian right are hoping for. In an essay last year, Carlson, the World Congress founder, scoffed at fears about Orbán’s autocratic rule and the eclipse of Enlightenment values. Instead, Carlson countered, “May it be so!”This article was reported in partnership with Type Investigations, where Sarah Posner is a reporting fellow.Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.Later this month, Salvini himself will continue the World Congress trend started by Orbán when he cohosts the 2019 World Congress of Families in Verona under the theme “The Wind of Change.”