Eye-catching election placards are popping up across the Europe Union. They appear overnight in public squares and in front of train stations, along the Autobahn and the Champs-Élysées and lots of lesser-known rues, strassen, and calles.
With vibrant colours and daring slogans, each guarantees to make a difference within the European Parliament, if only passersby will vote for his or her party within the upcoming election.
“Make Europe strong,” says one.
“Make it occur,” urges one other.
And there’s a recent slogan for a recent party in Spain: “United in values, guided by faith.”
The sign asks people to vote for Fe, Infancia, Educación, y Libertad (Faith, Childhood, Education, and Liberty) or FIEL, a recent, explicitly evangelical Christian party. The party’s candidate for the European parliament may not actually appear on ballots in June, though. Before Juan José Cortés can stand for election, FIEL needs 15,000 signatures by May 12.
“We are at a vital moment,” party president Salvador Martí wrote in a recent campaign letter. “Your signature is important in order that we will proceed within the battle, and in order that together we will work for a greater future for all.”
Martí acknowledges that is an uphill battle. Many experts say it’s principally inconceivable to construct a recent party from scratch out of a tiny religious minority. Evangelicals make up about 2 percent of the Spanish population. There are lower than 5,000 evangelical congregations in the entire country, even with the recent increase in evangelical immigrants.
“We don’t want to accept the obstacles that say that it is just not possible to construct a celebration built by residents such as you and me in Spain,” Martí wrote in April.
The once-every-five-year election presents a strategic opportunity for evangelicals in search of to have more influence on European politics.
The European Union’s 447 million residents in 27 countries have the possibility to vote from June 6 to 9, electing 720 politicians to the parliament in Brussels. Those leaders, sitting within the EU’s only directly elected legislative body, will provide democratic oversight to the European government. They will pass laws and approve budgets, along with the council of appointed representatives of member countries, and steer the EU into the longer term.
Evangelical parties like FIEL can have a probability in 2024 to make some gains, resulting from general discontent with the long-established ruling parties. But they’ll need to cut through disinformation, reach generally disinterested voters, and jockey for position amid a spread of parties hoping to capitalize on that discontent.
At the moment, polls suggest Europe’s far-right parties—including Alternative for Germany in Germany, National Rally in France, and Vox in Spain—are winning over voters dissatisfied with the established order.
The center-left and center-right parties which have historically dominated since World War II will probably win enough seats to form a governing coalition. But the present president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen of Germany, said her party in Brussels might need to contemplate working with these far-right groups. Left-leaning members of the present coalition say that might be unacceptable.
Amid the fray, Christian candidates—evangelicals amongst them—try to affix multi-party groups and to win seats in order that they will have an effect. In the last election in 2019, for instance, three members of the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM) won seats: Bert-Jan Ruissen, from a conservative Calvinist party within the Netherlands; Peter van Dalen from the centrist Christian Union within the Netherlands; and Helmut Geuking, a Greek Catholic, who is a component of the social conservative Family Party of Germany. Cristian Terjeș, from the Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party in Romania, became the ECPM’s fourth representative within the European Parliament the next yr.
The ECPM’s general director, Maarten van de Fliert, said the 22 separate parties that make up the ECPM all want to advertise their Christian values in EU politics. What that appears like, though, can vary rather a lot from country to country, party to party, and denomination to denomination.
“All these different denominations and all different interpretations of doing Christian politics also reflects the colourful diversity of the Christian faith and of the Lord God,” Van de Fliert told CT. “How the parties need to implement those Christian views varies very much, along the road of church denominations.”
Van de Fliert couldn’t say whether any of the ECPM politicians are evangelicals, though. The distinction didn’t make sense to him.
“It doesn’t work like that in Europe,” he said.
Arie de Pater, who represents the European Evangelical Alliance (EEA) in Brussels, said there are about 20 million evangelicals in Europe, but they don’t have a single political identity and aren’t unified, in all their different political contexts, around any one-party program.
The EEA is non-partisan but lobbies to advance biblical beliefs and values on the European level. De Pater said the organization has traditionally focused on freedom of belief, freedom of expression, policies that strengthen families, and politics that protect life by limiting abortion and assisted suicide. In this election, de Pater said, many evangelicals represented by the EEA have also expressed concerns about humanitarian aid for asylum seekers and the possible future dangers of artificial intelligence.
The EEA also does numerous work encouraging evangelical involvement in EU politics.
“We want to point out people the importance of the parliament and the upcoming elections,” de Pater said. “The parliament will shape the longer term of the European Union for the subsequent five years, if not longer. It’s necessary we engage the talk.”
In other words, de Pater said the EEA desires to “draw people into Europe.”
FIEL, nonetheless, wants to vary the best way Europe works. Similar to other populist parties, FIEL hopes to attract support from Spaniards frustrated with politics as usual in Brussels.
“Europe is at a key moment in a fierce battle where policies based on lies are confronted with policies based on truth,” Martí told CT, “and where attempts are being made to bury the Christian principles of Europe.”
Martí is a police officer within the northern city of Logroño who achieved some media notoriety just a few years ago because of this of his educational project, “Alexia Enséñanos,” which seeks to guard children from possible abuses, and the opposite leaders of FIEL have gathered educators, lawyers, political scientists, social employees, and pastors with deep Christian convictions, who all share common concerns. Some of the concerns are familiar evangelical issues, like protecting the sanctity of human life and spiritual freedom. But the leaders are also talking about “uncontrolled immigration, poverty, and social disintegration,” in line with a FIEL party statement.
The issue that galvanized Martí and others to found the party is public schools. FIEL proposes granting parents “the power to set limits to varsities” and guaranteeing them the correct to be “informed and consulted on the activities by which their children will participate.” They would also prefer to eliminate “the promotion of inclusive language at school material” and to vary sex education in order that it “doesn’t destroy innocence.”
FIEL shares some agenda items with the rising right-wing party Vox, which supports “traditional values” and opposes what it calls Spain’s “progressive dictatorship.” Vox wants parents to have the ability to opt their children out of mandatory classes if the instruction goes against their values.
Martí said he agrees with a few of what Vox wants and that there are evangelical brothers in that party “doing their bit to bring change to Spain,” but he also said FIEL is different. It’s distinctly religious and distinctly evangelical.
“Our first responsibility is to be faithful to God and to the principles of the Bible, to not partisan interests, not even our own,” Martí said.
As of mid-May, nonetheless, the party only had about half the signatures needed to get on the ballot. And among the nation’s evangelicals haven’t even heard of FIEL and its slogan, “United in values, guided by faith.”
Diego Huelva, a 41-year-old evangelical living on the outskirts of Seville, said he was surprised to listen to that a Spanish evangelical party would even try and stand for elections. Huelva said evangelicals in Spain have generally not been fascinated with working in politics due to their experience of repression under the Francisco Franco dictatorship.
Recently, nonetheless, Huelva has seen a rise in additional outspoken evangelicals from Latin America who’re fascinated with joining the political fray.
“They include different perspectives on politics, and feel called to participate more actively,” he said. “The more they change into integrated here in Europe, the more they’ll try to shape European politics.”
That’s the longer term, though. In 2024, the prospects for an explicitly evangelical party in Spain seem very thin.
“Getting those signatures could be an enormous success,” Huelva said. “Getting someone elected to parliament could be a miracle.”
