In the early 21st century, a profound and paradoxical transformation is reshaping the global religious landscape. At the very moment when secularisation theories predicted religion’s gradual retreat into the private sphere, faith has re-emerged as a potent, often disruptive public force.
However, this resurgence is not characterised by the humble piety of personal salvation or the social justice ethos of the 20th century. Instead, we are witnessing the dramatic ascendancy of the religious right wing – a political project that fuses theological conservatism with nationalist, authoritarian and identitarian politics.
This movement, which spans from the US and Brazil to Hungary and Poland, seeks not merely to influence power but to wield it, framing its agenda as a divine mandate for cultural restoration. In the shadow of this cross-crowned nationalism, a critical question arises: what space remains for liberation theology, a tradition that once mobilised the global poor to see their emancipation as God’s work? In a world veering towards authoritarianism, does this theology of the oppressed still hold prospects, or is its flame being systematically extinguished?
The anatomy of ascendancy
The rise of the religious right is not a spontaneous revival; it is a deliberate and strategic political project. Its power lies in its ability to recast religion from a system of belief into a marker of identity, a tribal banner in an increasingly fragmented culture war.
The contemporary right has masterfully transformed religion into “identity”, divorcing it from intricate theological debates and re-engineering it as a cultural and political signifier. This identity is defined by what it believes, but more powerfully by what it opposes: secularism, globalism, gender ideology and the erosion of traditional values.
This identitarian faith finds its most potent expression in the phenomenon of religious nationalism. A 2025 Pew Research Center study reveals that in countries like India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the US, significant portions of the population believe their national identity is intrinsically tied to their religious affiliation. This fusion is the bedrock of the religious right’s ideology. It sacralises the nation state, portraying it as a chosen entity with a divine destiny.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán explicitly champions “Christian democracy” not as a call to social gospel, but as a bulwark against Muslim migration and liberal cosmopolitanism. Similarly, the Christian right in Europe is no longer a fringe element but a mainstream political force, with parties like Germany’s AfD and France’s National Rally leveraging Christian symbolism to define European identity against a perceived “Islamic invasion”.
The religious right thrives on a narrative of crisis – a sense that the faithful are under siege from a corrupt and predatory secular elite. This narrative creates a demand for strong leaders who promise to restore order, protect the tribe and reclaim a lost golden age. The complex, deliberative processes of liberal democracy are portrayed as weak and corrupt, unable to confront the existential threats facing the nation. In their place, the strongman leader emerges, often styling himself as a divinely appointed protector.
From Jair Bolsonaro’s alignment with Brazilian Pentecostals, to Vladimir Putin’s positioning as the defender of global Christendom against Western decadence, the alliance between charismatic authoritarianism and religious conservatism has proven to be a formidable political engine.
Crucially, this form of faith is often stripped of its prophetic, self-critical dimension. The God of the religious right is frequently a God of law, order and punishment, not the God of mercy and justice who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52). The focus shifts from personal piety and social ethics to public dominance and cultural control.
The question of why Christianity is often connected with the right finds its answer here: because the right offers a politics of restoration and power that resonates deeply with communities feeling culturally displaced and threatened by rapid social change.
A counter-tradition of emancipation
In stark contrast to the top-down, identitarian project of the religious right stands liberation theology. Born in the slums and base communities of Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, it represented a radical rereading of the Christian gospel through the eyes of the poor.
Its foundational text was lived experience; its method was a “hermeneutic of suspicion” that questioned how traditional theology had been used to justify the status quo. It required a reading of the Bible from the perspective of a “preferential option for the poor”.
Liberation theology insisted that salvation was a holistic process of liberation from all that dehumanises – including structural sin embodied in poverty, oppression and violence. It drew heavily on Marxist social analysis to understand the mechanisms of economic exploitation, arguing that to love one’s neighbour required a fundamental transformation of unjust social structures.
Liberation theology’s power lay in its grassroots, emancipatory praxis. It was a theology not just to be studied, but to be lived and acted upon.
It empowered laypeople, fostered base ecclesial communities where the poor could read and interpret scripture for themselves, and inspired countless priests and nuns to stand in solidarity with marginalised communities, often at the cost of their lives.
Prospects for liberation theology
To declare liberation theology dead would be a profound mistake. As the World Council of Churches has stated, it is “alive and well”, but its forms and frontiers have shifted. Its prospects lie in its remarkable capacity for adaptation and its enduring theological core.
First, its focus has expanded beyond its original Latin American and economic context. New “liberation theologies” have emerged, applying its core methodology – a preferential option for the marginalised and a critique of oppressive power – to different struggles. Feminist theology, black theology, Dalit theology in India and Indigenous theologies are all direct descendants of the liberationist impulse.
They analyse the structures of patriarchy, racism and caste with the same critical tools their forebears applied to class. In an authoritarian world where these identities are often targeted, they provide a powerful language of spiritual resistance.
Second, liberation theology is finding new life at the intersections of the eco-crisis and migration. “Eco-theology” draws directly on its tradition to critique an economic system that exploits both the poor and the planet, framing ecological destruction as a structural sin.
Similarly, the global refugee crisis has prompted a “theology of migration”, which sees Christ in the displaced and the stateless, challenging the nativist and closed-border policies championed by the religious right. These new fronts demonstrate the tradition’s dynamism and its continued relevance to the defining crises of our time.
Finally, in the face of direct political repression, the praxis of liberation theology has often retreated from mass political movements into the stubborn, resilient work of building “kingdom communities” at the local level.
In favelas, refugee camps and oppressed minority communities, the work of base communities continues – feeding the hungry, educating the illiterate and fostering a critical awareness that maintains the embers of hope and resistance. This is a long-game strategy focusing on forming human beings who can imagine a world beyond the authoritarian present.
The ascendancy of the religious right represents a formidable and alarming convergence of faith, power and identity. It offers a seductive but ultimately impoverished vision of religion as a cudgel for cultural domination, a theology that sacralises the state and sanctifies the strong. In its shadow, the prospects for liberation theology seem dim.
Yet, the very factors that make the current moment so dangerous are also what make liberation theology’s message so necessary. Its critique of idolatrous power, its unwavering solidarity with the crucified peoples of today and its vision of a God who liberates rather than oppresses stand as a permanent prophetic judgement against the alliance of the cross and the crown.
The religious right may have won significant political battles, capturing states and shaping ideologies, but it has not captured the entirety of the gospel. The future of liberation theology lies in the persistent, often hidden work of resistance and community-building. Its flame flickers in grassroots shelters, in ecological restoration projects and in the quiet courage of those who still believe that faith, when true to its emancipatory roots, must always stand with the oppressed. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
