Faith, money and power - the global network attacking liberal values

Under the slogans of defending faith, traditional family, life and national sovereignty, an increasingly well-funded and influential transnational network has formed, in which religious organizations, foundations, lawyers, politicians, institutes, digital platforms and activists from the US, Russia and Europe transfer money, campaign methods, legal arguments and legislative models to undermine European liberal values, according to an analysis published by the daily Der Standard.

The phenomenon is described by the cited source as an increasingly strong connection of Christian nationalists "from the Balkans to the USA", produced against the background of the fight against liberalism, LGBT rights, abortion, secularism and the separation of state and church. The starting point of the analysis is the Podmaine Monastery in Montenegro and Abbot Rafailo Boljevic, a very popular cleric, who links the Orthodox religious identity to the Serbian nation and to the "Covenant of Kosovo”, the myth according to which the Serbs who fell in the Battle of the Blackbird Plain in 1389 would have chosen the heavenly kingdom instead of earthly survival. In this interpretation, the nation is no longer just a political or cultural community, but one invested with a sacred mission, and religious affiliation becomes a criterion of national authenticity.

Journalists from Der Standard show that this fusion of religion and nation is not new in the Balkans, but what is new is its connection to a global political movement. For example, it is well known that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic increasingly adopts the MAGA vocabulary, speaks of protecting Christianity and the traditional family, attacks "woke-ism” and presents Donald Trump as the most popular American politician in Belgrade and beyond. In Hungary, former Prime Minister Viktor Orban turned the defense of "Christian civilization” into an official doctrine of government. In Croatia, Catholic symbols, ethnic nationalism and the memory of the 1990s war came together around the singer Marko Perkovic Thompson, whose concert in Zagreb on July 5, 2025, sold more than 450,000 tickets, according to the Croatian police, and 6,523 police officers were mobilized. For followers, the demonstration represented a celebration of faith and patriotism; for critics, a normalization of symbols related to the Ustasha regime and ethnic nationalism.

The phenomenon would also have an important geopolitical component. In addition to American organizations, Russian actors would have been pursuing the mobilization of the European Christian right for a long time, with the aim of weakening the liberal rule of law and its institutions. The cited source claims that behind the cultural war there is a consistent financial infrastructure. The report "The Next Wave: How Religious Extremism Is Reclaiming Power", published in 2025 by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights - EPF, tracked the financing of 275 actors involved in European campaigns against abortion, gender equality and LGBT rights. According to the report, they mobilized $ 1.18 billion between 2019 and 2023, more than half of the money coming from 28 European states, followed by Russia and American organizations. At least $ 171 million would come from public funds, including national budgets and sources related to the European Union. Russian actors are credited with $211.9 million, and the American Christian right reportedly invests approximately $22 million annually in Europe.

According to Der Standard, Neil Datta, director of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, describes the phenomenon as a coordinated offensive and considers the use of religious conservatism a "geopolitical weapon.” According to his data, almost $190 million has flowed from Russia to Europe to support Christian nationalist agendas. The funds are said to have links to Russian oligarchs Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeev. Yakunin's organization is said to be behind the "Sanctity of Motherhood” forum, which has been held in Belgrade on several occasions. The overall goal attributed to these networks is to nullify some of the achievements of the Enlightenment, undermine the separation of church and state, and impose a certain religious morality on society as a whole.

The above figures should be read with caution, however, as the report does not measure "Christian nationalism” exclusively, but a broader ideological space, labeled by its authors as "anti-gender” and "anti-rights”. The same pool includes religious NGOs, anti-abortion organizations, groups that challenge same-sex marriage, legal institutes, charities and populist parties.

Not every conservative Christian is nationalist, extremist or authoritarian, as opposition to abortion does not demonstrate automatically adhere to a theocratic project. The line is crossed when the freedom of a community to practice its religion turns into the claim that the state imposes the doctrine of that community on the entire society, including citizens of other faiths or no religion.

• The Christian Western State, the idea promoted by the Trump Administration

In the United States, this concept entered the government apparatus with the return of Donald Trump to the White House. On February 6, 2025, the American president established, within the Department of Justice, the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, a structure led by the attorney general and made up of representatives of the main federal departments. Its declared mission is to eliminate the alleged anti-Christian instrumentalization of the government. A day later, the White House Faith Office was created, and on May 1, 2025, the Religious Liberty Commission appeared, tasked with analyzing threats to religious freedom and proposing expanded protections for believers. Presidential executive orders signed by Donald Trump present these institutions as guarantees against discrimination, but critics of the White House administration see in them the risk of moving from equal protection of religions to privileging a particular interpretation of Christianity.

The social base exists. A study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) published in February 2026 and based on more than 22,000 interviews conducted in 2025 shows that 11% of Americans can be considered followers of Christian nationalism, and 21% sympathizers. Almost a third of the adult population thus fully or partially accepts the current's theses, with the proportion exceeding 50% in Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. The PRRI research uses a broader definition than the Pew Research Center, which identified only 6% of religious nationalists in the US. To fall into the Pew category, the respondent must simultaneously believe that a genuine American must be a Christian, that the president must share his or her religion, that the Bible must influence laws, and that religious text must prevail over the will of the people. Even by this strict definition, the United States is an exception among wealthy Western democracies, with Germany and Sweden reporting below 1%, according to Pew Research.

• BOR, the institution that could play a major role in Romania

Romania does not feature prominently in the Pew research, as it was not included in the sample of 36 countries surveyed, and recent public information does not allow for the attribution of financial flows comparable to those documented for Hungary, Russia, or American organizations. However, there are favorable conditions for the emergence of a similar discourse: the historical association between Orthodoxy and national identity, the high level of trust in the Church, the political instrumentalization of the traditional family, and the use of religious themes in the discourse of some sovereignist formations. These elements do not automatically demonstrate the existence of a theocratic project, but they introduce Romania into the same international competition for the definition of "Christian civilization”.

The inauguration of the National Cathedral paintings in October 2025 illustrated this overlap between religion, state, and identity. The cathedral, financed largely with public money and described by the Romanian Orthodox Church as a symbol of national identity, had cost over 270 million euros by then, according to an Associated Press estimate. The presence of the main leaders of the state at the ceremony confirmed the central place given to Orthodoxy in the public representation of the nation, without this meaning, in itself, Christian nationalism.

Romania is not yet at the center of this conservative international, but neither is it outside of it: the available documents and investigations show the existence of direct American funding for Romanian anti-abortion organizations and centers, as well as the involvement of American structures in the campaign to amend the Constitution, while, on the Russian side, participation in international networks, contacts and ideological convergence can be proven, but not, for now, direct financial transfers comparable to those documented in other European states.

American influence in Romania is not just a hypothesis built by associating similar discourses.

• Christian associations, financed by Americans, participating in events held in Moscow

A report published in April 2025 by Human Rights Watch documents the financing, support and training of Romanian organizations and counseling centers for the "pregnancy crisis" by Christian anti-abortion structures in the United States. The PRO VITA Bucharest Association recognizes, according to the report, the role of American activists in the development of pre-abortion and post-abortion counseling in Bucharest hospitals since the 1990s. The Darul Vieţii organization, led by priest Ioan Chişărău, is affiliated with and funded by Human Life International, an American Catholic organization that campaigns against abortion. In September 2022, Heartbeat International, a large Christian anti-abortion network in the US, organized a conference in Bucharest for activists and operators of centers for pregnant women, offering them training and networking opportunities. The same report shows that American organizations helped establish or support Romanian centers with money, training, consulting, materials, and access to international networks.

This is not just an import of ideas, but the transfer of a model of action built in the US: centers that present themselves as providers of support for women in difficulty, but whose declared goal is to continue the pregnancy and discourage abortion. Services can include counseling, material assistance, ultrasounds, temporary housing, and support for mothers. Controversy arises when these centers do not clearly disclose their orientation, provide contested medical information, or present abortion as a cause of cancer, infertility, depression, or suicide, without the support of scientific consensus.

A Scena9 investigation, published seven years ago, showed that, at the end of the last decade, over 30 such centers were operating in our country, many of them founded by American neo-Protestant missionaries or Romanian citizens established in the USA. The Pro Vita Clinic Foundation in Cluj was allegedly established with the support of Pregnancy Resource Center International and Global Partners, the latter organization being led by Mike Menning, a former Republican senator in Minnesota. The Jochebed Centers were created by American missionary Sharon Herrera and financed in the early years by donors from the USA. Heartbeat International was among the partners of the "Unexpected Pregnancy” hotline, associated with PRO VITA Bucharest and PRO VITA Iaşi.

We note that PRO VITA Bucharest participated in September 2014 at the forum "Large Family and the Future of Humanity”, organized in Moscow and opened by Patriarch Kirill. Among the participants were representatives of CitizenGO, LifeSiteNews, Christian Broadcasting Network, Personhood, Family Watch International and other anti-abortion and "pro-family” organizations from the USA and Europe. The event was linked to the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and the "Sanctity of Motherhood” program, associated with the family of the former head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, one of the oligarchs mentioned in European reports on the financing of ultraconservative networks. PRO VITA then presented the meeting as a demonstration of Russia's concern for promoting the family and pro-life policies. This proves an ideological and institutional connection with Russia, but one cannot speak of financing from it, in the absence of contracts, financial statements, tax returns or bank documents to attest to this.

Instead, Russian ideological influence is visible in the notion that the liberal West seeks to destroy the family, relativize biological sex, eliminate religion from public life, and replace nations with an identityless mass. The Kremlin has transformed this narrative into a geopolitical weapon through which Russia presents itself as the defender of authentic Christianity against a decadent West. In the Balkans, the message is based on Orthodox and Slavic solidarity; in Romania, where the pro-Western geopolitical orientation is stronger, the same themes circulate without their source always being recognized and without their followers necessarily being pro-Russian. The paradox of this movement is that the organizations that proclaim national sovereignty and denounce the intervention of international institutions are themselves part of an international network. They contest "Brussels interference,” but receive legal expertise from the U.S., participate in congresses organized in Moscow, Budapest, or Warsaw, import American campaign models, and use the same formulas about "natural family,” "gender ideology,” "minority dictatorship,” and "Christian civilization.” Their nationalism is transnational, and sovereignism is promoted through global infrastructures. And our country offers fertile ground not because Romanians have suddenly become followers of a theocracy, but because the state has abandoned essential areas. The thousands of pages that have appeared on Facebook and TikTok in the last two years, which promote Orthodox religious values in our country, but also those related to the Christian family, traditional medicine, or that promote Dacian traditions - pages that were used in the 2024 and 2025 presidential elections to promote Călin Georgescu, George Simion and AUR - are proof that the attack on the Romanian state has begun.