Hill of Crosses (photograph from the personal archive of G. Žukauskienė)
I consider myself a believer, and I experience with deep pain the (conscious or unconscious) identification of many Christians with nationalist or other reactionary ideologies. In this article, I will not focus on the most prominent manifestations of this religious and political conglomerate, which are most visibly represented in media coverage from the White House. Instead, I pose the question: „How did this happen?!”
How did it come to be that Christian communities, rather than engaging in reflection on how to better internalize and bear witness to God’s love and mercy for all people, succumb to political manipulations that divide even these communities themselves? How can Christian faith become so permeable to ideology?
Let us reflect on this question. I will use anthropological, philosophical, and religious history approaches in order to identify the reasons for this permeability, as well as to consider ways of strengthening resilience.
The evolutionary origins of religion and its significance for humanity
Let us begin from a broad perspective – that of evolution. The French paleontologist and anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan, a scholar of human development from prehistory to the present, asserts that religiosity, like aesthetic sensibility, is a consequence of human evolution. According to him, two fundamental characteristics define human evolutionary development: manual (hand-based) and verbal (mouth-based) technicity. These adaptations, together with anatomical changes in the human body, were driven by shifts in locomotion. Once the face was liberated from the functions of seeking and processing food, and the forelimbs from locomotion, a structural specialization emerged for language and tool production.
The result of physiological evolution is the modern human population, composed of individuals whose physical attributes differ little from those of people who lived thirty thousand years ago. However, there is also an ethnic evolution that has transformed humanity into what may be called an exteriorized body, the characteristics of which are rapidly changing across the globe. Religion, like art, occupies a significant place within this “external body”: it is here that individuals discover their dependence on a symbolic system essential for cultivating a sense of uniqueness and meaning – elements on which the continuity and renewal of society depend.
Leroi-Gourhan considers religion and art to be closely related and complementary domains, differing only in the proportions of individual freedom versus communal belonging they allow. Thus, religion plays a vital role in both spatial and social integration of human beings. Importantly, such integration must be understood not as a prison, but as a refuge of human freedom.
Leroi-Gourhan draws attention to the distinction between the humanization – or socialization – of time and space, which is characteristic of tradition and enacted through movement and rhythmic patterns, and technical rationalization, which is stripped of symbolism. And yet, it is precisely in symbolism that individuals find resources for both group belonging and personal freedom.
It is the separation of art and religion, Leroi-Gourhan argues, that has created a highly favorable condition for the establishment of rationalization processes. According to him, this separation is a relatively recent product of the evolution of the social organism. ”Isolating the religious from the aesthetic spheres prevents the disruption of vital rhythms and puts the individual in a situation favorable to the smooth running of the sociotechnical mechanism.”
Technical rhythm lacks imagination – it humanizes raw material but not human behavior. In other words, the domain associated with the liberation of the hand operates with material resources, whereas the domain linked to the liberation of the mouth – which guarantees social continuity – operates with symbolic resources, such as language. Religion belongs to this latter domain.
I will conclude the “evolutionary” part with a powerful quote from philosopher Bernard Stiegler regarding the origins of spirituality:
“At the end of the process of mobilization, which is also that of ‘liberation,’ and with liberation becoming ‘exteriorization,’615 a particular type of cortical organization of the brain appears on the scene by which evolution takes on ‘an extra-organic sense.’ Is the sense ‘spirit’?”
An anthropological approach thus reminds ones of the origins and significance of religion for humanity. Leroi-Gourhan links the symbolic domain – to which religion belongs – with the continuity of the social body: of human relationships and culture. This approach also highlights the erosion of the symbolic domain, which paves the way for the dominance of rationalization and mechanization processes. Such a trend may be seen as a threat to the survival of our species, for it is precisely the symbolic domain that serves as a repository of resources for those capacities that make us human: the sense of personal uniqueness, thought, memory, imagination, freedom, coexistence, creative and meaningful action.
How is this connected to permeability to ideology? In anthropological terms, spirituality is inseparable from human freedom, and religion serves as the medium through which spirituality finds expression. When the needs of contemporary believers begin to align with those propagated by ideological agents, it is an unmistakable sign of the sociotechnical mechanism taking hold. Technical rationalization – devoid of imagination and symbol systems open to free interpretation – was once applied to the humanization of raw material. Today, it is increasingly used to “process” human beings and their behavior. The erosion of the symbolic sphere of life (to which the separation of aesthetic and religious domains has significantly contributed) has led to a situation in which religious communities are increasingly becoming the „raw material” for ideological systems.
The ascendancy of religious rationalism
According to André Leroi-Gourhan, religion and art are forms of expression through which human beings seek to find their place within the cosmos. These practices do not aim to become intellectual enterprises. This is not to suggest that they do not provoke reflection or inspire intellectual activity – the vast corpus of religious and artistic treatises attests to the contrary. Rather, they operate through symbolic systems that nourish and give meaning to human experience, though they cannot be fully reduced to those experiences or to any single narrative.
To say that something occurred which should not have happened would not be entirely accurate either. As I write this text, it is Good Friday. This evening I will attend a service organized by communities rooted in Anabaptist tradition. I will go with the intent of confronting my own mortality, of contemplating who I am, what matters to me, what matters to humanity, and what kind of behavior and thought can be deemed “worthy” in the face of life’s impermanence and uniqueness. Although I will listen to a sermon (and we will sit in rows as in a lecture – Protestant influence), and although I will be critically evaluating it in my mind, this will still constitute a dialogue – with texts, people, symbols, and traditions. A dialogue that enables me to continue living – to freely and creatively choose to belong (which is not the same as to identify) and to act in a chosen direction.
In religious practice, I as an individual encounter the memory of my species’ “external body,” a memory that can only be transmitted through symbols that have withstood the test of time. These symbols would be dead if they were not dynamic – alive in shared practice and alive in the human dialogue: interpersonal, intergenerational, and between history and the present. This memory humanizes my actions and those of others, making them more resistant to the tendencies of mechanization. Yet, it is evident that the religious sphere is facing tremendous pressures – there is a concerted effort to assign it a „purpose,” to render it „efficient,” as has occurred with other remaining refuges of human freedom.
The rationalization of religion is not a new phenomenon. The French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, in his essay The Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field, associates this process with a detachment from lived practice. How did religion, once intertwined with art, come to be primarily an intellectual or even ideological activity?
Following Durkheim, Bourdieu sees the formation of a relatively autonomous religious field – and the accompanying drive to moralize and systematize religious beliefs and practices – as a necessary adaptation to technological, economic, and social transformations in society. The emergence and development of cities, particularly the progression of the division of labor and the separation of intellectual from physical work, resulted in the emancipation of consciousness. Bourdieu cites Marx saying that:
“Division of labor only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labor appears. From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on, consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of ‘pure’ theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc.”
The previously discussed “liberated” spheres of the hand and mouth were both connected to bodily activity and gave rise to the contemplation of specific practices. In other words, body and consciousness were united in action. Now, it can be witnessed through the emancipation of consciousness – the detachment from practical engagement – which leads to the subjugation of symbolic domains to “rational” ends. These domains, originally intended to create and sustain social relations, are now repurposed by emancipated religiosity to serve its own ends, most often those aligned with preserving the status quo of existing social structures. Why? Because doing so preserves the status of religion itself as an “autonomous” actor.
Bourdieu analyzes the dynamics of religious rationalization, emphasizing the role of economic conditions and the emergence of clergy education. He illustrates how religion tends to perform ideological, practical, and political functions – or, in his terms, how it serves to absolutize and legitimize what is essentially relative and arbitrary. Arguing that there is a structural correspondence between social (power structures) structures and psychic structures, and that this correspondence operates through symbolic systems – such as language, religion, and art – Bourdieu demonstrates how the newly “autonomous” religion imposes hidden principles that one perceives of the world, particularly the social world. It achieves this through a system of practices and representations whose structure, “objectively based on the principle of political division, presents itself as a natural and supernatural cosmic structure.”
In other words, once it becomes an autonomous field, religion itself begins to act as a political agent. Through its discourse and practice, it mediates and naturalizes the dominant social order. Beyond the logical and sociological constraints defined by material conditions of spatial existence, religion adds a symbolic layer of sanction. Bourdieu writes:
“The most specific contribution of the church (and more generally of religion) to the conservation of the symbolic order consists less in the transmutation of mysticism into order than in the transmutation of logic into order. It makes the political order submit to this by the mere fact of the unification of the different orders. The effect of the absolutization of the relative and the legitimation of the arbitrary is produced not only by establishing a correspondence between the cosmological hierarchy and the social or ecclesiastical hierarchy but also and above all by imposing a hierarchical way of thinking that ‘naturalizes’ […] the relations of order by recognizing the existence of privileged points in cosmic space just as in political space.”
This is religious alchemy: in the practical realm, it transforms necessity into virtue, social constraints into logical imperatives, and class struggles into religious wars. In a class-divided society, Bourdieu explains, the structure of religious representations and practices belonging to different groups or classes contributes to the reinforcement, sanctification, and reproduction of social order – that is, the established structure of group and class relations. The system of representations and practices enhances its mystificatory power by producing a semblance of unity, concealing radically divergent interpretations of existential questions beneath a minimum of shared dogmas and rituals. Cosmological topologies, Bourdieu insists, are always naturalized political topologies. He reminds that religious professionals must necessarily obscure the political interests underlying their struggles, as their symbolic efficacy in these struggles depends on it.
Thus, whenever we hear of “natural” orders justified through religion, ones are dealing with a religious field that has become autonomous and its representatives. It is precisely this separation from the everyday challenges of ordinary people that enables religious elites to “evaluate” others’ lives and moralize, all while obscuring or evading scrutiny of their own roles and aims – along with those of the religious field itself.
Bourdieu’s philosophical approach reveals the circumstances and dynamics underlying the rise of religious rationalism. As a result, religious discourse becomes autonomous – no longer dependent on the lives of the faithful or even on the practices of belief. His analysis reveals a disjunction between practice and religious knowledge. This disconnection creates the conditions for permeability to ideology. After all, how can one distinguish between different discourses when none of them are grounded in lived experience? And where will this disconnection lead?
Bourdieu revealed the religious field as a politically invested actor. The political entanglement of religious actors – even when obscured, even if done in service of their institution – can contribute to believers’ openness to political ideologies. When the religious field is not politically neutral, it is unsurprising that the faithful act as executors of scripts imposed by political agents.
How did this happen?
The phenomenon of discourse becoming detached from practice, as described by Bourdieu, is further developed by the French cultural theorist, historian, and theologian Michel de Certeau. (As will be shown shortly, however, de Certeau still leaves open the possibility of faith persisting even under such harsh conditions.) Thus, the question emerges: how did the religious field become so permeable to the manipulations of political power, and where should faith be sought in the present time?
De Certeau associates the problem with discourse and identifies it as a rupture between that which is spoken but no longer true, and that which is experienced but can no longer be spoken. He illustrates this tension through the biblical story of Job – when Job, afflicted by suffering and misfortune, is visited by „friends” who attempt to “console” him with “truths” that bear no meaning within the context of his lived pain. In this narrative, we witness the emptiness of knowledge: what is said may be true, but it is worthless – void of relevance to the immediate situation.
In the past, according to de Certeau, the Church „organized the soil” in which social and cultural guarantees made it possible to live within the field of truth. Even if spatial identity was never essential to Christian experience (as the institution merely lends social objectivity to faith), it was within this cultivated soil that individuals discovered both the possibilities and necessities of action. Today, however, Christianity has become, much like majestic ruins whose stones are taken to construct new buildings, a repository of vocabulary, symbols, signs, and practices. Everyone uses them in their own way, and ecclesiastical authority can no longer regulate their dissemination or impose a fixed interpretative meaning.
Society appropriates these symbolic fragments to construct religious subjectivities in the grand theater of mass media or to craft a shared and persuasive discourse of “values.” What cannot be repurposed in this way is labeled as “superstition,” while that which serves the dominant order is elevated to the status of conviction.”
In other words, the Church has lost control over its rationalist discourse, which is now exploited by other interested parties. De Certeau compellingly describes the processes through which the “stones” of religion are dismantled and redeployed for alternative purposes, leading to a condition in which “faith is exhausted.” “Or at least,” he notes, “it takes refuge in the areas of the media and leisure activities. It goes on vacation; but even then it does not cease to be an object captured and processed by advertising, commerce, and fashion.”
The symbolic materials of Christian religion are appropriated by political discourses that mobilize believers into action. This exhaustion of faith results in profound alienation, further exacerbated by people’s alienation from physical labor – a consequence of exploitation. In this context, it is no longer practice that inspires creative thought and transformative engagement, but rather discourse that organizes actors in such a way that their actions confirm the “credibility” of that very discourse.
Religious “values” thus nourish political discourses that seek to compel behavior according to their will. The discourse produces practitioners. It must be inscribed into reality, and the only means of doing so is through human action – because human action is reality. From this point forward, to compel belief means to compel action – specifically, action as dictated by political discourse.
Thus, religion, which ought to be a space for the search for uniqueness and inspiration for meaningful action – through the provision of universal symbols – becomes, through identification with dominant discourses, a mechanism of conditioning and a constraint on freedom. Instead of encouraging believers to explore, through their own lives, what is good and what, in today’s world, resonates with the life and teaching of Jesus, they are urged simply to be “doers of the word” – understood in the narrowest sense, as a pre-processed and politically shaped discourse or legalistic code.
“Give me your body and I will give you meaning, I will make you a name and a word in my discourse;” <…> “to finally pass from this opaque and dispersed flesh, from this exorbitant and troubled life, to the limpidness of a word, to become a fragment of language, a single name, that can be read and quoted by others.”
Christian faith, as faith in the Living God, must resist this imperative to embody lifelessness.
The third, de Certeau’s religious historical approach to the history of religion identifies a more advanced stage of the detachment between discourse and practice, wherein a discourse that pretends to be religious no longer corresponds in any meaningful way to the lives of believers – yet it nevertheless seeks to “employ” them to serve the interests of other actors. This approach explains the current crisis of faith, but it also raises the question: what might a way forward look like?
In seeking answers to this question, it is crucial to keep in mind all three theoretical approaches discussed so far, as each has offered insights into the nature and purpose of religion, the transformations driven by economic conditions, and the current state of religious life. Together, they help explain why Christian faith has become so vulnerable to ideological infiltration. (At the beginning of this essay, I referenced nationalism as one such ideology, but others may also seek to parasitize communities in crisis.)
Thus, these theoretical frameworks not only help identify this permeability but may also, when considered together, illuminate how it might be addressed. I will explore this further through the thought of Michel de Certeau, as his work applies the insights of the previously discussed anthropological and philosophical approaches directly to the contemporary Christian context. It appears that rationalist discourse fails to harness – and political discourse fails to mobilize – what could be considered the essence of religion, and particularly of Christian faith. After all, that which fertilizes the unfolding of originality cannot be reduced to a tool of normalization.
So where is faith hiding now?
De Certeau is captivated by analyzing the composition of faith precisely because people tend to fabricate it artificially. In attempting to mobilize the energy of faith, they disregard its essential axis – the unused core of faith – that resides “hidden beyond the signs,” an invisible alterity upon which faith rests. Consequently, even when faith appears depleted, with convictions “scattered in all directions” and seemingly divorced from “reality” (as the discourse of the Christian “values” pond suggests), the act of faith embarks on journeys toward alterity. Faith grants a space for human being – human existence. It is the condition for journeying and the capacity to risk, which, according to de Certeau, defines the religious person.
De Certeau’s reflections on faith must be understood as inquiries into what remains when one resists the entrapments of law or normative discourse. Opposing the shift toward discourse – from “this opaque and dispersed body, from this excessive and anxious life” – principally involves embracing one’s bodily experience and one’s history, even though these inevitably lack the coherence or meaning that normative or political discourse might offer.
For de Certeau, faith stands in direct opposition to normative law or discourse. Instead of commodifying human bodies as actors in its theater, faith transforms the authentic experience of each person into an opportunity for dialogue – with the Other, with God. The possibility of hearing the Other’s voice is inseparable from being embodied. (This aligns with the fundamental tenet of theology of the body.) Thus, on one hand, the encounter between human and divine always occurs on human ground. On the other hand, de Certeau treats the very Incarnation – the foundation of Christianity – as God’s entry into earthly, human experience, and then His retreat, making room for the fulfillment of diverse experiences in existence. This requires no external foundation or meaning beyond existence itself in its openness. In other words, God steps aside to grant space to humanity. No externally imposed discourse can occupy this space. Faith follows the path of the Incarnation, leading toward embracing human existence and relinquishing the human constructs of identity and power, in favor of intimacy with the Creator – the great Being, the source of life, Life itself.
“If there is a need to seek God somewhere, it is not in a paradise, in a nebula or in an exteriority in relation to history, but on the contrary in the daily life of the human relationship or of the technical task, or of chance or of encounters between desire and pain. This is where there is a relationship to God.”
From de Certeau’s thoughts about faith, it is understood that he presents faith as a quest for God “where the human question resides.” (For de Certeau, existential questions are questions of “self-discovery.”) Yet, emphasizing the correlation between faith and embodied existence does not resolve the question of the faith community. Where should one seek it? Here, two critical categories in de Certeau’s thought concerning religious life must be addressed: gesture and place.
De Certeau writes:
“In its particularity, religious life comprises, I believe, two complementary elements. On the one hand, it is a gesture; on the other hand, it is a place. The gesture is to leave, and we’re never done. The place is a community practice, an active sharing, the establishment of a “doing together”, and this too is always to be repeated.”
De Certeau focuses on modes of human being, not merely on traces of activity that may obscure the modes of being themselves. He shows that faith should not be identified with doctrinal correctness, social utility, or moral achievement – but must be defined by the very act of faith itself. However, the act of faith has both individual and communal dimensions, and gesture and place signify these dimensions.
Regarding religious life, the gesture signifies departure:
“To leave means to break with the siege to begin to move forward, to take one more step to move forward, not to rely on the support of well-guaranteed words to confront them or lead them to a practice, not to confuse faith with so the solidity of established institutions, preferring the poverty of travel to the opulence of apologetics or installations. Today, the promise of “vows” is a gesture of departure; it consists in crossing a threshold, and in taking this very gesture as a way of life, as something that will have to be constantly redone, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, on other days and in other ways.”
The gesture of departure denotes a continual state of movement, encompassing existence – not merely its residue – and persistently relinquishing that residue in order to approach the otherness of present being (both its temporal mutability and relational perspective). “But this is possible only together, in communal practice,” de Certeau cautions. This is because “the departure leads elsewhere, towards the unlimited, infinite space opened up by the experience of faith; but it only has reality in face-to-face contact, in exchange and sharing.”
De Certeau underscores the need to restore the gesture within communal practice, grounded in this co-creation of truth and shared commitment to believe.
Each act of departure, de Certeau asserts, changes, expands, and renews this place, which nevertheless remains a reference and a challenge to a truth that belongs to no one person in particular. That is why “there is no longer any place here for the individualism which grants to a single man the privilege of defining the truth by becoming the owner, the hermit or the tyrant of the group.” There is no religious Truth with a capital “T” that can be designated. “It can only be shared. It shares itself,” de Certeau states.
Sharing, then, is the act of faith – rooted in the very Incarnation of Divinity and the granting of space to humanity. As previously mentioned, God grants space for the fulfillment of diverse human experiences in existence. Encountering God now occurs through immersing oneself in the experiences of others, acknowledging and engaging with them, and experiencing community in the act of faith. It is important to remember that faith – and the act of faith – not motivated by external incentives, cannot be instrumentalized. Sharing has no other purpose than to encounter the other – to hear the other, to give to the other, to be with the other. “The others are our true journey.” Sharing is granting space to another. The place of this practice is the community – or, more precisely, the practice of sharing within the community is place.
In this article, I raised the question of the permeability of Christian faith to ideology and, employing anthropological, philosophical, and religious-historical approaches, identified the underlying causes. I began with the evolutionary origins of “spirituality,” highlighting the close connection between religious practices and the cultivation and maintenance of human uniqueness and interpersonal relationships. In questioning why we have distanced ourselves from this, I examined socio-economic transformations driven by conditions that led to the division of labor, manifested in the separation of physical and intellectual work, and ultimately the establishment of autonomy among distinct disciplines and fields. The separation of religion and art further paved the way for the ascendancy of technical rationalism, which, formerly directed towards the humanization of material resources, is now applied to the “processing” of human relations and behavior.
Field autonomy, however, does not imply political neutrality: the “liberation” of religious discourse from its ties to the lived realities of people has empowered actors within the religious field to subordinate religious symbolism to rationalist discourse and employ it for the control of individuals, thereby preserving the dominant social order and their own status quo. Unfortunately, over time this discourse, estranged from practice, becomes entangled with political and ideological discourses. Often alienated from their labor and bodies due to exploitation or adverse life conditions, people – already habituated to the discipline of religious rationalist discourse – readily accept discourses emanating from the political field. In doing so, they inadvertently serve as proof of the “credibility” of these discourses. However, the “values” masquerading as religious have no real connection to the lived experience of those who consider themselves believers, nor to their existential questions or search for meaning. This ultimately leads only to fragmentation and despair.
Having identified the reasons for this permeability, the question arises: how can the combined anthropological, philosophical, and religious-historical approaches help to erect barriers against such permeability? The answer is straightforward – the very act of faith, as illuminated by these approaches, functions as a barrier. The act of faith itself cannot be instrumentalized for other purposes. One may exploit the energy of faith, words, or even practices, but not the act of faith itself, which emerges in experience and moves toward the Other. It is a continual repetition of gestures of departure and sharing, which primarily safeguards against an instrumental attitude and behavior toward others. Yet it is precisely such instrumentalization that ideology’s propagators apply to believers.
Current divisions over “religious” questions and manipulations in the name of God do not prove that “spirituality” – the authentic relationship with oneself, others, and God – has no place in the world. Even today, religious practices, specifically those of the Christian faith, ought to serve as a safeguard for these concerns, especially if they focus on maintaining a non-dominant, anti-power relational space through practices of sharing. Certainly, the desire to exploit these for other ends or for personal gain has always existed and will continue to exist. However, it must be understood that what is subordinated ceases to be “spiritual” in its anthropological purpose. Moreover, what is subordinated fundamentally contradicts the Gospel of Jesus, which centers on the relationship of love toward God and neighbor as the basis for action in the world.
We live in a society characterized by individualism, antagonistic toward norms, in which people continually seek meaning in various spheres that remain at least partially open to their creativity. Religious creativity is no exception. Therefore, religious tyrants attempting to subordinate believing communities to their own interpretations or political aims should be resisted – ideally by ignoring them. At the same time, not all believers should be conflated with these corrupt abusers of power in the name of God. From De Certeau’s perspective, the church as an institution is both the practical foundation of action and a discursive utopia, but also a community that “must continually reinvent itself in new forms of loyalty; it is a community of concrete believers who forge their own world of faith.” In a space increasingly homogenized by the spread of technocratic rationality, such creativity becomes ever more difficult – especially within institutional frameworks. Yet the corruption or collapse of institutions, leading to the autonomy of practices and paths of meaning, need not be seen as a threat to the survival of faith. On the contrary, it may help believers to shed pretenses and return to authenticity – the poverty of the journey; to see and then accept their wounded, disordered lives and transform them into places of encounter with the Other.
From the discussion presented in this article, it appears that Christian faith should be capable of meeting contemporary challenges. The acts of departure and sharing that constitute religious life do not require stable ground and can occur even amid division. It is likely they may even generate new signs – words, practices, and expressions appropriate for the faithful communities of our time. Let us seek creative ways to practice faith – ways that respect and celebrate the diversity of human experiences in communion with God. For the encounter with God takes place in our concrete bodily (physio-psycho-social) life experience. May no powers masquerading as gods – whether bearing human or institutional names, or nameless – obstruct this encounter.
Dr. Gilija Žukauskienė is a theologian and philosopher of movement, and an activist