US Christian Nationalist Lobby Group Doubles EU Spending

Lob­by­ing by the Chris­t­ian lob­by group the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom has sig­nif­i­cant­ly inten­si­fied with a dra­mat­ic increase in finan­cial resources tar­get­ing EU pol­i­cy­mak­ing. On June 5, 2025, Politi­co EU report­ed that the Aus­tria-head­quar­tered ADF Inter­na­tion­al dou­bled its Brus­sels lob­by­ing bud­get to over €1.1 mil­lion between July 2023 and June 2024, focus­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act while cel­e­brat­ing the with­draw­al of the EU’s Equal Treat­ment Direc­tive that would have pre­vent­ed dis­crim­i­na­tion based on reli­gion and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. The arti­cle begins:

Get­ting to grips with EU insti­tu­tions them­selves can be com­pli­cat­ed enough before you even begin to con­sid­er the whole lay­er of lob­by­ing infra­struc­ture that exists around the Berlay­mont. The acronym-stacked monikers of every con­sul­tan­cy, indus­try group or asso­ci­a­tion can sound so alike or ambigu­ous that you can often be left smil­ing and nod­ding as you clutch your glass at a net­work­ing recep­tion, look­ing down at your neighbor’s badge only to think: Who the hell am I actu­al­ly talk­ing to? One rule of thumb I’ve come to fol­low: The vaguer the name, the more con­tro­ver­sial the inter­est group. So it seems to be the case with the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, a U.S.-based Chris­t­ian lob­by whose over­seas branch, the Aus­tria-head­quar­t­ed ADF Inter­na­tion­al, is increas­ing­ly pour­ing more cash into activ­i­ties in Brussels.

Read more: https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/politico-eu-influence/the-conservative-christian-lobby-thats-spending-big-in-brussels/

Key Points

• ADF Inter­na­tion­al’s lob­by­ing bud­get jumped from €650,000 to over €1.1 mil­lion annu­al­ly, with the orga­ni­za­tion co-host­ing Euro­pean Par­lia­ment events along­side ECR and Patri­ots for Europe law­mak­ers on dig­i­tal speech issues.
• The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter des­ig­nates ADF as a “hate group” for inter­ven­ing against trans­gen­der rights at the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights, though ADF denies these alle­ga­tions as “lies.”
• ADF cel­e­brat­ed suc­cess­ful­ly lob­by­ing for with­draw­al of the EU’s Equal Treat­ment Direc­tive, claim­ing it would have vio­lat­ed “free­dom of con­science” while crit­ics say it pro­tect­ed peo­ple from discrimination.
• Many sim­i­lar con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions like Poland’s Ordo Iuris exploit trans­paren­cy loop­holes by reg­is­ter­ing as “non-com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions,” avoid­ing dis­clo­sure of their lob­by­ing bud­gets since 2021 rule changes.

Christian Nationalism & the Global National Conservative Alliance

Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, a polit­i­cal the­ol­o­gy assert­ing that nation­al iden­ti­ty and gov­er­nance should pri­or­i­tize Chris­t­ian val­ues and her­itage, has become a cen­tral ide­o­log­i­cal force with­in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance, whose lead­ers envi­sion a broad alliance of faith-based con­ser­v­a­tives to advance tra­di­tion­al­ist agen­das. This alliance, which seeks to over­turn sec­u­lar and pro­gres­sive poli­cies, is increas­ing­ly transna­tion­al, with Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists forg­ing con­nec­tions with Euro­pean and Russ­ian coun­ter­parts and even express­ing admi­ra­tion for regimes like Putin’s Rus­sia, which they view as a defend­er of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion against per­ceived threats from lib­er­al sec­u­lar­ism and globalism.

The move­ment is char­ac­ter­ized by a rejec­tion of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, sup­port for author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers who promise to pro­tect Chris­t­ian hege­mo­ny, and a strate­gic focus on lever­ag­ing state pow­er to enforce tra­di­tion­al social values—a trend vis­i­ble across the US, Europe, and beyond, and increas­ing­ly inter­twined with broad­er anti-woke and anti-glob­al­ist campaigns.

The Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF), found­ed in 1993, plays a cen­tral role in advanc­ing the legal archi­tec­ture of the Amer­i­can right, and its influ­ence stretch­es deep into both the nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments. Though it presents itself as a cham­pi­on of reli­gious lib­er­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, ADF’s legal agen­da aligns close­ly with nation­al conservatism’s broad­er mis­sion to reassert tra­di­tion­al val­ues, nation­al iden­ti­ty, and moral order in pub­lic life. Through high-pro­file lit­i­ga­tion, judi­cial train­ing pro­grams, and close ties to fig­ures like Speak­er Mike John­son and Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley, ADF has helped insti­tu­tion­al­ize a world­view that sees Chris­t­ian val­ues as foun­da­tion­al to Amer­i­can governance.

Its efforts to roll back abor­tion rights, lim­it LGBTQ+ pro­tec­tions, and ele­vate Chris­t­ian reli­gious claims in pub­lic pol­i­cy reflect not just con­ser­v­a­tive jurispru­dence, but a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist vision in which the Unit­ed States is understood—implicitly or explicitly—as a nation divine­ly root­ed in Chris­tian­i­ty. In this way, ADF func­tions as both a legal engine for nation­al con­ser­vatism and a cul­tur­al force advanc­ing a Chris­t­ian-inflect­ed vision of Amer­i­can identity.

Exter­nal References:

1. Under­stand­ing Trump’s Nation­al­ist Con­ser­v­a­tive White Chris­t­ian Agenda

2. Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism | EBSCO Research Starters

3. Video: Yang Schol­ars 2025: Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in Glob­al Perspective

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.