A majority of British and European Union nationals want Europe to preserve its Christian culture and worry about illegal immigration, polling suggests.
Research conducted by the Századvég Foundation, a conservative political think-tank based in Hungary, showed that 56 per cent of people in the United Kingdom and the 27 member-states of the European Union believe that Europe should preserve its Christian culture and traditions, compared to 34 per cent who think it should promote a secular culture that moves away from secular traditions.
Results were broadly similar across multiple groupings of countries, with “post-socialist countries” being most in favour of preserving Christian heritage, at 65 per cent, and southern European countries least in favour, at 53 per cent — an interesting phenomenon, giving the aggressive secular agenda of the post-socialist countries’ former leftist regimes and the historically Catholic culture of southern Europe.
“Christian identity is still an important marker in Western Europe, even among those who rarely attend church,” observed Dr Zoltán Kovács, international spokesman for the Hungarian government, which has described its governing model as “Christian democracy”.
Kovács added that the “decline in traditional religiosity” observed in countries like Britain “does not imply that religion and the values it represents are no longer important to Europeans”, arguing that religion remains “a social marker [that] continues to shape identity and form a religious culture that, regardless of the intensity of religious practice, shapes the majority of Europeans’ thinking.”
The Századvég Foundation also found an overwhelming majority of Europeans — 78 per cent — are concerned by illegal immigration, as the continent undergoes a silent migrant crisis.
The level of concern is high even in multicultural countries considered to be generally pro-immigration, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden, where the proportion of concerned residents stands at 78 per cent, 75 per cent, and 78 per cent, respectively — higher, in fact, than in relatively homogenous countries with strong border policies, like Poland, where the figure is 72 per cent.
Dr Kovács suggested a link between Europeans’ views on the continent’s Christian heritage and concern over illegal immigration, suggesting that the latter was putting “pressure” on their shared “cultural core”.
“Europe is connected through a common understanding of our world, shaped by centuries of shared history, culture and religion. But the leftist elite of Brussels, with their globalized, overwhelmingly secularized, pro-migration worldview, dismisses the common heritage that makes us who we are,” he accused.