Introduction

Throughout history – in ancient, medieval, and modern times – European Christians have constructed various categories of otherness: ‘the Jew’, ‘the heretic’, ‘the pagan’, ‘the Mohammedan’, ‘the fanatic’, and so forth. They did so in an effort to construct and project a normative sense of Christianness: ‘it is the Christian thing to…’, ‘Christians believe…’; ‘according to Christian tradition…’. Constructing images of the ‘non‐Christian’ helped to enhance and bolster claims to a normative Christian identity. To know what one is, is to know what one is not; to know what one is not, is to know what one is.

Over time, imaginaries of Christianity’s others were disseminated, reproduced, and adapted according to changing Christian needs and interests. Thus, a quasi‐inexhaustible cultural archive of more than 2,000 years of recurring images, stereotypical categories, invented binaries and normative assumptions, associations and qualifications developed, ready to be tapped by those claiming to represent religious normativity. Following Gloria Wekker, I understand the cultural archive to be ‘located in many things, in the way [European Christians] think, do things, and look at the world, in what we find (sexually) attractive, in how our affective and rational economies are organized and intertwined’; in short, it is ‘a repository of memory’ that affects their heads, hearts, and attitudes (Wekker, 2016, p. 15).1 While its constructed origins are often forgotten – Wekker speaks about amnesia – the effects of this cultural archive endure to this day.

This book explores how Christians imagined ‘non‐Christians’ and how the resulting cultural archive was used and adapted in changing socio‐political contexts. With a specific focus on Western Europe, the book surveys the various processes by which Christianity’s others were named and renamed, categorized, essentialized, and governed by those who embody the Christian norm.2 Taking a longue durée approach, it examines imaginaries of Christianity’s others in various ecclesial, theological, and literary documents; on occasion it also zooms in on the way boundaries between Christians and non‐Christians were ritualized. Special attention, however, goes to legal regulations and disciplinary practices that were put in place to demarcate the borderlines between Christians and non‐Christians. While people do not always comply with the law, and while laws are not always enforced, laws do nevertheless give an impression of how European Christian societies intended to regulate religion and how those deviating from the religious norm were treated. This book also shows how the constructed boundary between Christians conforming to the norm, and those deviating from the projected Christian norm, had real effects on the lives of real people.

The book’s main interest is the relationship between the shifts in Christian normativity on the one hand and the way Christianity’s others were imagined on the other hand. The underlying assumption is that the constructed image of Christianity’s others reflected the contemporary concerns and interests that were held by the Christian majority surrounding them. I will therefore ask: Why this label? Why is this particular categorization being made in this context? For what purpose, and by whom? Why is a boundary being drawn here and not elsewhere (Horrell, 2020)? I ask how the image of the religious other, for example the Jew, Saracen, or pagan, has been crafted. What bodily features, moral characteristics, and behavioural patterns are attributed to these hermeneutical figures? What messages do these stereotypical figures of otherness convey? To what audience is this message addressed and with what purpose? How is religious deviance contrasted to Christian normalcy? What deficits and vices are attributed to Christianity’s others and what does that have to do with Christian self‐understanding in changing circumstances?

I use the term religionization to refer to co‐dependent processes of ‘selfing’ and ‘othering’ that are predicated on religious difference. The notion of religionization is akin to and intersects with notions like ethnicization, gendering, and racialization. All these terms refer to processes of selfing (the construction of an imagined normative identity) and othering (the creation of a deviant and hence illegitimate other) that shape or frame the identity of social groups in a manner that creates a hierarchy between the majority and minoritized groups. Critical scholars have pointed out that (i) race, ethnicity, gender, and religion are all ascribed to social groups in a certain way; (ii) this ascription includes the attribution of norms, behaviours, and roles. Furthermore, (iii) people are divided, categorized, and dealt with based on their racialized, ethnicized, gendered, or religionized identity. In brief, these identities have an impact on social relations, namely on how people engage with one another in their personal life, work context, and political relations. (iv) Moreover, the processes of religionization, gendering, ethnicization, and racialization intersect and reinforce one another. With respect to religionization, I will show that religious adversaries were often sexualized and gendered (Drake, 2013; Knust, 2006; Petersen, 2017). Ethnoreligious reasoning also helped to craft claims to true religion (Buell, 2005; Horrell, 2020). In addition, certain physical or biological characteristics were sometimes added to religionized images of self and other, to the extent that religionization would at times intersect with racialization (Jennings, 2010; Kaplan, 2019; Mayerhofer, 2021; Whitaker, 2013).3 At certain moments in history, religious others were even placed beyond the pale of humanity and were imagined to take on monstrous and bestial characteristics (Strickland, 2003). Certainly, (v) where society is marked by uneven power distribution these processes of selfing and othering facilitate the stratification of society; this means that society is divided and unequal in significant and far‐reaching ways along racialized, gendered, ethnicized, and religionized group lines (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). All these categories – religion, race, gender, and ethnicity – play a key part in the way people organize the world they inhabit; they may be imaginary constructs but they nevertheless have the power to affect people’s lives. To deviate from the norm – whether gendered, ethnicized, racialized, or religionized – comes at a cost. While some are privileged, others are excluded, discriminated against, or oppressed.

1 On the Notion of Religionization

A growing number of scholars are exploring religionization as a topic of interest (Cuthbertson, 2018; Dreßler, 2019; Nye, 2019; Thatamanil, 2020). These scholars draw on critical theory and work in the field of postcolonial and feminist studies, and critical religious and/or secular studies. They assume a social constructivist approach to religion, ‘that recognizes the social reality of distinctions and differentiation with regard to religion, while at the same time being interested in how this reality is being established, thus acknowledging its contingency’ (Dreßler, 2019, p. 5). While there is no precise definition of the term yet, scholars tend to agree that religionization refers to the social construction of what ‘religion’ is. They point out that what is recognized and labelled as ‘religious’ at any given time reflects the ideas or perceptions of dominant societal groups.4 When these ideas or perceptions change, the labels may change as well.

Furthermore, the negotiation of the conceptual boundaries of religion goes hand in hand with the process of drawing the boundaries of non‐religion: circumscribing what religion is implies defining what it is not, and defining who is religious implies defining who is not religious. The notion of religion and its counterpart(s) are co‐constructed and the resulting constructions are context dependent. What counts as religion in our age may not have been recognizable as such in previous historical‐cultural settings, even though precisely that versatility tends to be denied, and religion is often projected as a stable category. To study religionization therefore assumes that one takes an interest in the specific historical‐cultural expressions of such distinctions. Those exploring the topic of religionization must ask who the cultural agents are in the process of religionization. How do they work out what is to be labelled as religion and what does not count as religion. What is at stake for them and how does that play out for others? This book zooms in on Christians, located in Western Europe, and on their role as the main cultural agents of religionization. The question is how did the construction of Christian identity in terms of true religion contribute to the creation and delegitimization of Christianity’s others? If we understand religionization in terms of co‐dependent processes of selfing and othering, can we then conclude that a refigured understanding of Christian normativity also impacts the way Christianity’s others are imagined and invalidated?

Religionization is a...