Introduction

When, on 5 July 2021, during the violent counter-rally by right-wing radical groups, the state demonstratively displayed inaction, [1] it signaled a new stage in the state’s alliance with the Church and with right-wing radical groups. Whereas in recent years the “fear of LGBT propaganda” and the defense of family and tradition formed part of ecclesiastical discourse, from 2021 onward this all moved from the pulpit to the government rostrum and ultimately crystallized into official political discourse. Over time, anti-gender rhetoric and the war/peace narrative, among other themes, have come to occupy a central place in the ruling party’s pre-election campaign. Since we regard anti-gender rhetoric as part of the ruling party’s populist politics and, more broadly, as a symptom of a populist turn in Georgia, the religious semantics of the political language discussed in this article will be analyzed in the context of how populist politics is produced. In this respect, 2024 was not only an election year, but also the culminating moment of political crisis in contemporary Georgia.[2]  

When examining this period, we must take into account the global socio-political developments that directly or indirectly affect Georgia: the Russia–Ukraine war, the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the strengthening of so-called illiberal democratic states, and democratic backsliding with an authoritarian turn in Eastern European countries. [3] In Orthodox countries, another important factor comes into play - the Kremlin’s “politics of morality” and the Russian Orthodox Church’s propaganda about defending traditional values.[4] As Kristina Stoeckl notes, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state play a major role in the global culture wars, particularly in shaping discourse on gender and reproductive rights and on religious freedom.[5] Over the past thirty years, the Russian Orthodox Church has managed to produce bodies of knowledge and to influence the dynamics and strategies of right-wing Christian groups. [6] For Georgia, these developments are not merely an international backdrop but factors that directly affect the country’s domestic political and social situation. As noted, 2024 was a year of crisis in Georgia. The country saw a second wave of a pro-European and pro-democratic protest movement, triggered by the re-introduction and adoption of the so-called “Russian law.” [7] Similar laws have been adopted, or attempts have been made to adopt them, in other illiberal democracies, and they represent one of the symptoms of the authoritarian turn in post-socialist countries. Researchers argue that this process also marks the beginning of de-Europeanization, which initially appeared discursively in the statements of political leaders. [8] Behind the façade of pro-European declarations, the government elite-particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified anti-European rhetoric, in which the anti-LGBT theme occupied a significant place.[9] Thus, the years 2021 and 2022 should be regarded as a turning point, both for de-Europeanization and for the populist shift. In this context, 2024 stands as the culminating period of radical reconfiguration of the political field.[10] In Georgian political discourse, religious semantics plays a central role, especially as political language has become increasingly populist. At first glance, this seems to be a logical continuation of the form of relations between politics and religion established in post-Soviet Georgia: the closeness of the state and the Church, the demonstration of loyalty to the Church and the Patriarch by ruling forces in pursuit of political legitimacy, and the display of the importance of religion and the Church during political crises. [11] And yet, the current situation reveals more complex and relatively new contours in the relationship between these two actors of power than the familiar issues of the Church–state controversial closeness and the well-known challenges of secularism.

In this study, we follow two conceptual lines; The first concerns the relationship between the Church and the state during the pre-election period, that is, a time of political crisis, connected to active protests and political movements in the context of massive electoral fraud, the construction of aggressive authoritarianism, and a shift in the country’s strategic foreign policy direction.The second line focuses on the rapid adoption of right-wing populism by the once center-left party, Georgian Dream. Through these two perspectives, we aim to understand what new trends the period of crisis reveals in the relationship between the state and the Church, and what the emergence of religious semantics in governmental political narratives shows us. Specifically, we examine the place that religion and religious symbols occupy in pre-election populist political discourse as tools for voter mobilization, and how religious rhetoric is connected with other populist narratives to create a moral dichotomy.

In the study, the politicization of traditions, moral issues, and themes of religion is discussed not so much within the paradigm of secularism, but rather as an attempt by the ruling party to appropriate right-wing populist discourse on the path toward building an authoritarian regime. The article also analyzes the political views of the Georgian Orthodox Church during the pre-election period and its possible synchronization with the governmental political narrative.

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