Most researchers agree that the Bible has had an enormous impact on European culture. But it has not really been established how Christian ideas exerted such a strong influence.

“I’m taking a closer look at how our ideas about Christianity influence current views of Europe. In some respects we’ve forgotten how much biblical texts have influenced our thinking. So it’s important to show how they have been interpreted and by whom if we’re to understand how the various interpretations affect the modern world,” Strømmen says. 

We can view the Bible in different ways – as a collection of holy texts used by the church, but also as an archive of texts that have played an important part in our culture, albeit not necessarily in a religious sense.

Dividing line between church and state

Western European countries are increasingly seen as secular, even if Christianity is admitted to have had a formative influence on these countries. Many thinkers have stated in fact that the attempt to separate religion from politics can itself be traced back to the Bible.

Strømmen gives multiple examples of passages that have been interpreted as supporting the separation of politics and religion. In the New Testament, for instance, Jesus speaks of “giving Caesar what is his and God what is his”. Another example is a verse from Paul in which he says that “everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities….for the authorities that exist have been established by God.”

“But in Jesus’ time our views of state and church didn’t exist – nor did the word ‘religion’. In an historical sense, Jesus would neither have understood nor supported the idea of keeping religion and politics separate. This is a very modern concept, so it is of great interest to study its origin,” says Strømmen.

Further impetus for the research comes from the disparity between our views of Islam and of Christianity. Having Christian beliefs in a secular society is not considered strange. But the Koran is seen as being opposed to secular societies.

“When we make this claim we are uncritically repeating a given interpretation of the texts that doesn’t really have much to do with what is actually written.”

It may therefore be important to revisit the texts, albeit primarily to see how they have been interpreted, not how they were originally worded. 

“To date there hasn’t been a major study examining the relationship between interpretations of the Bible and the emerging idea of a secular Europe. Most researchers focus on the oldest versions of biblical texts, whereas I prefer to highlight our modern interpretations and the impact they have had.”

Even the UN declaration of human rights is sometimes said to be rooted in a certain part of the Old Testament, viz., Verse 27 in the first chapter of Genesis, where it says that “God created man in his own image”.

“But this view, too, is the result of interpretation. We need to reconsider how these interpretations have come about, and what impact they have had.”

Legitimizing right-wing extremism

Her interest in tracing ideas to textual interpretations began after the terrorist atrocities in Norway in 2011. When she analyzed Breivik’s manifesto she found multiple instances of passages from the Bible being used to legitimize extreme right-wing views and the atrocities themselves.

“It’s been more than ten years since those acts of terrorism, and Islamophobia has only grown stronger, along with a desire to create a Christian Europe. The more widespread these ideas become, the more important it is to ascertain their origin,” Strømmen explains.

The research team she is building at Lund University has a pronounced interdisciplinary approach, encompassing political science, history and cultural studies. She also hopes to include researchers with expert knowledge of Islam in order to create comparative understandings of the Bible and the Koran.

“Some say that Islam can have no place in a Christian secular Europe, which is extremely problematic. This is a view that rests on interpreting the Bible and the Koran in a certain kind of way, something we must question very critically.”

Over the longer term she wants to contribute to broadening the subject of bible studies to include a wider range of approaches. At present we talk of religion almost exclusively as a problem. She elaborates:

“We need to be more aware of how important the Bible has been in the development of our European society. This means we need more researchers to show how texts from the Bible and different interpretations of those texts form the basis for views that we see expressed in everything from advertisements and popular culture to politics, philosophy and law,” Strømmen says.

Strømmen was based at the University of Chichester in the U.K. from 2015 to 2022, and having been awarded a Wallenberg Academy Fellow grant, she is now moving to Lund University.

“Like many other researchers in the humanities, I have usually worked on my own. Thanks to the grant I have received, I will now be able to lead and work in a team. It’s a great responsibility and privilege to have the opportunity to inspire and encourage younger researchers.”

Text Magnus Trogen Pahlén
Translation Maxwell Arding
Photo Åsa Wallin