Macron’s Judeo-Christian framing obscures Europe’s colonial legacy and secular pluralism in Pope Francis’s visit
Original framing: “Macron invokes Europe’s Judeo-Christian foundation as Leo visits - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The Judeo-Christian framing obscures centuries of Christian complicity in European colonialism, from the transatlantic slave trade to the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. The Crusades, the Reconquista, and the Inquisition were not aberrations but structural expressions of a religious ideology that justified conquest and cultural domination. Macron’s rhetoric harks back to this legacy, where faith is weaponized to legitimize political power while ignoring the systemic violence it enabled. Historical parallels, such as the role of the Church in supporting fascist regimes in 20th-century Europe, further expose the dangers of conflating state and religious authority.
Macron’s invocation of Europe’s Judeo-Christian roots is not a neutral appeal to tradition but a strategic maneuver to consolidate power by excluding pluralistic and secular voices while obscuring the continent’s colonial past.
This framing serves to legitimize a declining political order by tying it to an idealized, monolithic identity that ignores the realities of demographic change, Indigenous resilience, and the global rejection of religious nationalism. The trickster’s gaze reveals the absurdity of this narrative: a leader who claims to uphold Christian values while cutting social welfare and enforcing secular laws is exposed as a hypocrite, using sacred language to mask secular failures. To move forward, Europe must embrace a decolonized, pluralistic identity—one that learns from Indigenous land-based cosmologies, the artistic critiques of marginalized communities, and the secular models of nations like Estonia. The solution lies not in reviving a mythic past but in building a future where identity is defined by shared values of justice, ecological stewardship, and inclusive citizenship, rather than inherited dogma.