Kierkegaard’s Lesson on Religious Conformism vs. the Current Mainstream Environmentalism

Abstract

This paper aims to show how Kierkegaard’s attack upon Christendom still works today to contrast current forms of conformism disguised under the appearance of new secular religions. I will start with considering Kierkegaard’s concept of conformism as a form of despair. As such, conformism is incompatible with Christianity, as well as with the development of a true Self. Secondly, I will focus on the current religious scene in Western Europe. While Christianity has become a minority in society, new secular religions have arisen and, along with them, new compelling narratives. Mainstream environmentalism appears to be one of these. Finally, I will try to show how Kierkegaard’s arguments against Christendom can be also applied to environmental propaganda.

1. Introduction

This paper is made up of three parts. In the first I will argue that, according to Kierkegaard, both becoming a Self and becoming a Christian are incompatible with conformism, since the latter is a form of despair, illustrated by Anti-Climacus in Sickness unto death (1849) as finitude’s despair. In other terms, no conformism (including its negative form, the so called non-conformist conformism) is compatible with becoming a true Self. Even more, no ethical, or ethical–religious choice can follow from conformism or the work of propaganda. I will also argue that Kierkegaard’s call for responsibility on the side of the single individual goes hand in hand with his attack against Christendom, which was the mainstream religious narrative during his time.

In the second part, I will try to test if, and to what extent, Kierkegaard’s attack against Christendom can be of some relevance to the current religious scene, which is, of course, quite different from the one in which Kierkegaard lived. I will show that in today’s secularised society the rejection of traditional religious beliefs and practices has created a vacuum, filled by new forms of secular religion. Many unexpected intellectuals have recognised in mainstream environmentalism the traits of such a secular religion.

In the third part, I will try to show how Kierkegaard’s arguments against religious conformism of his time can still be valid for contrasting with today’s mainstream environmentalism.

The aim of this paper is neither to examine the ecological question, nor to consider what is good in Christianity and what is wrong in Christendom compared to what is good in authentic ecologism regarding mainstream ecologism, and not even to put Kierkegaard in relation to the ecological issue. (For those interested in this specific topic, see Isak Winkel Holm, Kierkegaard and Climate Catastrophe. Learning to Live on a Damaged Planet, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2023.) Here, I am only dealing with mainstream religious or similar-to-religion narratives which actually prevent the individual becoming a Self. Speaking in general terms, what mainstream Christianity and mainstream ecologism have in common is (a) they are both mainstream phenomena which promote conformism; (b) they hide economic interests behind a strong ethical–religious ideal, and (c) they pursue their goals by using the power of numbers and propaganda to manipulate imagination and gain consensus among people.

2. Part One: Kierkegaard on Conformism

2.1. Conformism as a Threat to Becoming a Self and to Becoming Christian

In Robert Lee Perkins’ opinion, Kierkegaard was a “radical Christian thinker” [1]. Following the Socratic example, the now-famous Dane strived all his life to introduce Christianity into Christendom [2]. His entire work was devoted to clarifying the requirements of Christian faith, rediscovering its original meaning as preserved in the New Testament. Kierkegaard was also a lively religious polemicist. In the name of human honesty, he contested hypocrisy and religious conformism, attacked the mixing of Church and State and rejected the idea that Christianity can feel “comfortable” in the secular world. In this section, I will try to clarify Kierkegaard’s stand against conformism. I will show that, according to Kierkegaard, conformism is a form of despair, namely the despair “to lack Infinitude” [SUD 33]; Christianity rejects conformism, as any other authentic religious path; to be Christian requires “following” rather than “imitation”.

With his work, Kierkegaard attempted to stimulate his fellow Danes in developing subjectivity and inwardness. Becoming a Self is, in fact, the main task everyone is called to accomplish during his lifetime. In Sickness unto death, Anti-Climacus defines the true Self in the following terms: “The self is the conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude that relates itself to itself, whose task is to become itself, which can be done only through the relationship to God” [SUD 29–30]. Moreover, becoming fully oneself entails also becoming a Christian, or at least recognising it as a task.

In Kierkegaard’s pneumatology, despair consists basically in a misrelation between the Self and itself and between the Self and God. Anti-Climacus distinguishes various forms of despair. Among those forms regarding the constituents of the synthesis, the pseudonym considers first despair as defined by finitude/infinitude. Infinitude’s despair is to lack finitude, while finitude’s despair is to lack infinitude. This latter occurs when the person permits himself to be tricked out of himself by “the others” [SUD 33].

Surrounded by hordes of men, absorbed in all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world—such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too hazardous to be himself and far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, a mass man [SUD 33–34].

Kierkegaard denounces conformism as a serious threat to Christianity and, even more, to every individual who wants to become a true Self. In fact, to become oneself the individual must “be ground into shape”, but not “to be ground down smooth” for fear of other human beings [Menneskefrygt]. When the single individual loses his shape, he becomes as smooth as a “rolling stone” or as a “circulating coin”, that is, he lives at ease in this world, praised by everyone, but he is actually in despair. From this it follows that Kierkegaard attacked conformism qua conformism, and not simply Christendom as a certain widespread inconsistent way of living Christianity in XIX century Denmark. (See J. Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Analysis of the Forms of Despair and Alienation, in Id., Hegel’s Century. Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2021, pp. 179–204.)

Christianity is as far from conformism as faith is far from despair. Christianity requires following, rather than imitation. Kierkegaard speaks about “reduplication” as a fundamental condition in ethics and in Christian life. Reduplication is to be what you say. However, reduplication is not imitation. In his entire work, Kierkegaard largely favours the term Efterfølgelse to Efterligning. The former derives from a verb of movement meaning “to follow”, the latter meaning—from the old Norse root “líkr, glíkr”—"what has the same shape, what is conformed” [3]. Christianity is a path to walk rather than a model to conform, or, to put it in Latin words, Christianity requires sequela and not imitatio. For example, in Fear and Trembling (1843), Johannes de Silentio warns against the risk of taking Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac à la lettre, simply repeating what the Father of faith performed: “But just suppose that someone listening is a man who suffers from sleeplessness— then the most terrifying, the most profound, tragic, and comic misunderstanding is very close at hand. He goes home, he wants to do just as Abraham did, for the son, after all, is the best” [FT 28].

Kierkegaard asserted that one is an authentic self only when he attains authentic Christian faith, grounded in Christ, the paradoxical God-man. But I do not think that Kierkegaard’s assumption implies, on his part, religious conformism or religious exclusivism. I rather see in it the deep passionate trust that every religious man must have in his own religion, as a unique (for himself/herself), although not exclusive, instrument of salvation.

With this regard, I want to draw attention to a famous passage from the Postscript (1846), in which Johannes Climacus warns us against thinking about Christianity as being the only way to become in touch with Truth:

If someone who lives in the midst’ of Christianity enters, with knowledge of the true idea of God, the house of God, the house of the true God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting upon the image of an idol—where, then, is there more truth? The one prays in truth to God although he is worshiping an idol; the other prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshiping an idol [CUP 1 201].

On the one hand, the simple “true idea of God” does not guarantee the fulfilment of the Self. To become in touch with Truth is a matter of “how”, of inner disposition, rather than a matter of “what”. Subjective truth rejects conformism, since the relationship between the individual and Truth is one to one. Subjective Truth can be accessed only individually, like the narrow gate in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt: 7, 13). As such, subjective Truth cannot be communicated in a direct way, and requires appropriation on the part of the subject. In conformism, instead, the individual does not relate himself to the Truth, but to what “others” hold for truth. Of course, Kierkegaard calls “Paradox” the ultimate revelation of Christian Truth, but each Christian has his single way of experiencing it, and for people who are not Christian this can occur under different names. On the other hand, Kierkegaard distrusted the mass conversions to Christianity at the time of the Apostles, when people become Christians even three hundred at a time. He believed, instead, that Socrates—the pagan Socrates, who never heard about the Gospel in his earthly life—had a chance to become a Christian after his death, thanks to his innate honesty. “True, he [Socrates] was no Christian, that I know, although I also definitely remain convinced that he has become one” [PV 54].

2.2. Conformism as an Individual and Social Issue

Since Kierkegaard pointed the finger at the falsification of Christianity carried out by the Lutheran State Church, the religious scene has profoundly changed in Western Europe. Religion no longer contributes to conformism on a wide scale. The opposite is rather true. Nowadays, religion has become marginal, when it is not a controversial issue. Dominant paradigms are all a-religious, if not outright antireligious. Religion is generally perceived as a divisive factor and a reason for conflict between civilisations, rather than an element that facilitates mutual understanding, coexistence and cooperation between groups or single individuals [4]. (See also The State-Sanctioned Marginalization of Christians in Western Europe, Briefing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Washington, DC, USA, 2012.)

We could say, then, that Kierkegaard’s criticism against official Christianity was fully successful. What he hoped for in his time has finally come true. The clergy no longer occupies a prominent position in the secular world. Churches and religious communities in Western Europe have been experiencing a crisis of vocations without precedent in history. Christians have once again become a minority in society and their views in matters of education, marriage, and abortion, to quote just a few, are minority opinions. A regime of separation between State and Church has been fully established.

However, there are at least a couple of good reasons to believe that Kierkegaard would not have laid down his arms even when the conformism he faced turned into today’s antireligious conformism:

(a)

Conformism is a “qualitative”, not a quantitative, phenomenon, to put it in Kierkegaardian terms. It basically depends on the misrelation of the subject towards himself and towards God. As such, it can be detected in majoritarian as well as in minoritarian groups. It is even enough for a single “mass man” to have conformism. This is the reason why Kierkegaard tried first to make the single individual responsible for himself and his choices. From this, it follows that the simple fact that religion has become a minority in society does not mean that minoritarian religious groups are preserved from conformism.

(b)

Conformism is an extremely elusive phenomenon. What is peculiar about it is presenting itself as fighting for the just cause against the rest of the world, while it is in fact, mainstream and largely supported. As a general rule to detect conformism, I would suggest the following: when we strongly oppose a phenomenon and we stigmatise it publicly, when we put it under taboo—to use an expression dear to ethnography—perhaps a phenomenon that has been widely supported once before, every time this occurs, we can be certain that in the meantime a new platform of consensus has been established and a new conformism has arisen. To coin a phrase: we fight yesterday’s conformism to legitimise today’s.

In an interview with L’Europeo, on 26 December 1974, Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)—one of the most talented Italian poets and thinkers of the past century, a keen observer and critic of massification and consumerist society—spoke about “the fascism of the antifascists”: “Today, an archaeological form of antifascism exists which is, after all, a good pretext for obtaining a real badge of antifascism. It is an easy antifascism whose target is an archaic fascism that no longer exists and which will never exist again. […] This is why a large part of today’s antifascism, or at least a large part of what is called antifascism, is either naive and stupid or specious and in bad faith: because it fights or pretends to fight a dead and buried archaeological phenomenon, that possibly no longer scares anyone. It is, in short, an antifascism of convenience” [5]. Similarly, any criticism of religion supported by Kierkegaard’s example—providing it is taken à la lettre and totally decontextualised—can offer a perfect alibi to establish a new secular religion or the last updated version of conformism. Let us glance once more at Pasolini: “The real intolerance is that of the consumer society, of the permissiveness granted from above, wanted from top-down, which is the true, the worst, the most subtle, the most ruthless form of intolerance. Because it is intolerance disguised as tolerance. Because it is not true. Because it is revocable whenever the power feels the need. Because it is the real fascism from which antifascism then comes to the fore: useless, hypocritical, substantially pleasing to the regime” ([5], pp. 78–79) (both the translations are mine).

Probably, facing today’s prevailing conformism, Kierkegaard would have shrugged, resigned to what he knew to be a “biological” truth: “man is a gregarious animal” (Aristotle, Politics, I, 1235 a, my translation); he is part of a herd, and his survival largely depends on his ability to integrate himself into the group to which he belongs. Like any other gregarious animal, the human being implements mechanisms aiming at favouring his acceptance within the group. Despite the loss of the tail, during his evolution man has not renounced this attitude and, in the last few centuries, technological advances in mass media have done nothing but amplify this “original sin”.

Certainly, a world in which Christianity is rejected is perfectly consistent with the New Testament, but so too is the condemnation of the world. So, today, mainstream conformism is perhaps less scandalous than the one that Kierkegaard had to tackle, but for sure not less dangerous. I believe then he never would have abandoned his battle against conformism, because conformism threatens the human being in as much as it prevents him from becoming an individual, and becoming an individual appears to Kierkegaard precisely as the sine qua non for spirit to arise.

At this point, we have to pay attention to the fact that to have conformism “the others”, “the crowd” are always presupposed. A single individual can become a mass man, even when he is physically isolated, provided he is connected with “the others” through mainstream narratives, which compel him to conform to the general trend. The golden rule of conformism sounds as follows: “provide for always being on the right side”. And its scholium goes: “But how do we know which is the right side? That’s easy to say. Where all the other people are, that is the right side”. Conformism appears thus as a double-sided phenomenon, so to speak, since it is the result both of the single individual’s failure in asserting his point of view and the mainstream narrative’s compelling power in creating “the public”, “the crowd”, “the others” through manipulation, levelling and propaganda. Kierkegaard was fully aware of the “quantitative” aspects involved in religious conformism, as much as he was of the “qualitative” ones. He, who wrote that “the human being is a born hypocrite” [M 135], wrote also that “We human beings continually need ‘the others,’ the crowd; we die, despair, if we are not safeguarded by being in the crowd, are not of the same opinion as the crowd, etc.” [M 184]. And he added that “the crowd is untruth” [PV 108]. (See Howard N. Tuttle, The Crowd is Untruth: The Existential Critique of Mass Society in the Thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Ortega y Gasset (American University Studies), Peter Lang, Bern 2004.)

Despite the fact that conformism threatens each individual, whether or not he (or she) is part of a majority, Kierkegaard was sensitive to the social scale of the mystification that Christendom put in place. He took into account the extent of the phenomenon, being aware of the power that numbers exercise over the imagination. In addition, among the means of persuasion employed by the religious establishment he also denounced the supposed knowledge of the Lutheran pastors as masters of Christianity and Bible experts, and their authoritative role as public officials licensed by the State.

Kierkegaard recognised that mainstream religious narrative had a major role in the perversion of Christianity [6]. Thus, on a closer view, conformism did not appear to him as purely a matter of “how” on the part of the individual, but also as the result of a strategy of underhanded coercion on a broader scale. I just quote a few passages to remark on Kierkegaard’s consciousness of the extent of the problem at issue.

The reason it is not seen [that Christianity is not the Christianity of the New Testament] is that the great majority of people are prevented by all kinds of optical-illusion artifices from being able to look without bias, and the reason is that the state has installed 1000 officeholders who have much difficulty in seeing without bias, because for them the issue of Christianity also comes to stand as a pecuniary matter [M 52].

Kierkegaard repeatedly emphasised that Christendom exerted enchanting effects on consciences, producing “mirages” and “collective hallucinations”, especially because it was spread by thousands of state-paid repeaters.

What is found there is not Christianity, but an enormous illusion [Sandsebedrag], and people are not pagans, but are made blissfully happy in the delusion [Indbildning] that they are Christians. If Christianity is to be introduced here, then first and foremost the illusion must be removed [M 107].

Moreover, Kierkegaard contested that an ethical–religious existential choice could be grounded on extensive propaganda and other “quantitative” means. For this reason, he also opposed the Bible Society of Denmark, which was committed to spreading wide the Holy Bible all around the Danish Realm, in order to evangelise the entire population living in the most remote corners of the country [7].

Ultimately, if conformism merely resolves into a “private”, or “qualitative” question between the Self and itself and Self and God, Kierkegaard would have never attacked the religious establishment of his time, accusing it of being responsible of the fact that “from generation to generation Christians by the millions are handed over to eternity’s inspection” [M 29] (the emphases are mine).

In the following pages, I will try to put to test the idea that Kierkegaard’s thinking against conformism and mainstream narratives did not come to an end along with the world he criticised, and it can still be described today in all its deconstructive power, providing that it be reconsidered it in the light of the profound changes that have occurred in the span of the last two hundred and fifty years. To put it in Kierkegaardian terms, we are dealing here not simply with an historical fact but with an historical truth, meaning that Kierkegaard’s polemic attitude against bishop Mynster and his successor Martensen is still inspiring because it demonstrates an exemplary value. In fact, as Kierkegaard has clearly pointed out, the relationship with truth is always a relationship of contemporaneity.

3. Part Two: On Environmentalism as the Mainstream Secular Religion of Our Time

Kierkegaard’s original aim was to fight against religious conformism. Despite the fact that the religious background in which he lived has profoundly changed during the past centuries, and religion has ceased to be a dominant narrative, at least in Western Europe, conformism is still in good health. (See Repar, P. Decision and the Existential Turn; Kierkegaard Circle/KUD Apocalypsa: Toronto, Slovenia; Ljubljana, ON, Canada, 2016; see also Koteska, J. Kierkegaard on Consummerism; Kierkegaard Circle/KUD Apokalipsa: Toronto, Slovenia; Ljubljana, ON, Canada, 2016.) The decline of traditional religions, followed by the decline of the ideologies of the twentieth century, communism above all, has created a religious vacuum that needs to be filled with new paradigms equally persuasive and capable of consensus. Now, the fact that the new dominant paradigms gather public opinion around issues that have nothing to do with concepts such as creation, transcendence, God, sacrifice, redemption, resurrection of the flesh, etc.—that are, to put it briefly, detached from Christianity and other traditional creeds—does not mean that they are completely devoid of religious implications. On the contrary, the mainstream narratives of our age emanate an aura of sacredness and their imperatives offer the same compelling power as religious ideas. Mainstream environmentalism provides an excellent example of a new secular religion. (Since there is no room here for an extended discussion about secularism and “secular” religion, I reference Charles Taylor’s magisterial A Secular Age, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2018.)

In modernisation process, the rejection of traditional religious beliefs and practices has created a vacuum. In this context, some people have expected environmentalism fill in this vacuum. This expectation has carried it to a position of new secular religion. Although it is progressively taking the social form of a religion and fulfilling some of the individual needs associated with religion, describing environmentalism as a religion is not equivalent to saying that it is an established religion [8].

Carl Reinhold Bråkenhjelm (University of Uppsala) claims that it is not by chance that even in Sweden—a country where Christianity has disappeared from public life in recent years—ecologism has become a “civil religion” [9]. Many intellectuals, among them a number of reputed men of science, such as the Nobel Prize winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever and the great American physicist of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Freeman Dyson (1923–2020), have denounced the pseudo-religious character assumed by extremist ecologism. Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the principal secular religion [10].

The French economist Rémy Prud’homme (University of Paris XII), spoke about ecologism as a “new religion” “with its doctrine, its catechism, its pontiffs, its clergymen, its processions, its Jesuits, and now even its saints” [11]. Newspaper headlines from all over the world, offer to make sense of all of it. “Saint Greta spreads the climate gospel” (Wall Street Journal) [12], “Greta Thunberg, the first saint of the environmental religion” (Telegraph) [13], “Greta, religious icon of the year” (Australian Herald Sun) [14].

This surge of irrationality finds its reason for existence in different causes. “All the ideologies are disappearing. Communism has disappeared, Christianity is in serious crisis, in Laudato si’ the Pope almost invokes a new religion. There is a need for religion in rich societies. There’s a cultural void, and environmentalism fills it”. Prud’homme adds: “There is a deep sense of guilt in the West, while in China, India, and elsewhere, this affliction does not exist. Rich Western societies feel guilty about being rich. It’s masochism, we must repent about what we are” [11].

Indeed, the sense of guilt plays a fundamental role in religious narratives. Bruno Ballardini, one of the most accredited marketing and communication experts in Italy, has stated: “it has been demonstrated that the most powerful leverage capable of influencing human behaviour is the sense of guilt”. Ballardini assumes that the Christian Church invented marketing and experimented with all of its techniques for over two thousand years. Addressing an unnamed cardinal of the Catholic Church, Ballardini declares:

You have built the “motivation for the choice” on this, creating a strong sense of guilt towards the one who sacrificed his life to save us from original sin. So to speak, you communicated to potential customers that you had opened a “line of credit” for them by offering salvation first. And we are talking about a “good” that is by no means superfluous. All of this, in addition to providing a sufficiently strong motivation, has created a form of moral debt towards Jesus and whoever represents him. This is why I maintain that Paolo di Tarsus was the first and greatest marketing manager in history [15].

The managing director of Libération, the leading daily newspaper for the left in France, Denis Olivennes, stressed a parallel between ecologism and puritanism, speaking no less than of “puritanism without God”. As in religious puritanism, we also find in ecologism:

The idea of original sin that causes you to be born guilty. In this case, it is the mercantile, sexist, racist, polluting society from which you must free yourself in order to rediscover your moral purity. Because it’s not a matter of gradually continuing to improve the situation. The idea is not to solve the problems, but to excommunicate the guilty.

Ecologism “has its apostles, its saints or its preachers who, like Greta, denounces sinners and invoke redemption” [16].

Brendan O’Neill, director of the magazine Spiked, is of the same opinion:

It’s millenarianism […]. What differs the green cult from ancient religions is very important: it does not offer any reward or transcendence for our sacrifice. Great religions have required a lot from us, but they have promised even more: an eternal life of love and abundance. The miserable and misanthropic green movement does not promise anything but that we live less, we travel less, WE discuss less and that there is not any other reward other than reducing the human imprint [17].

Michael Shellenberger, named by Time magazine Hero of the Environment in February 2016, stigmatises “environmental moralism according to which we should live like people in poor countries live”, thereby raising a problem tightly connected with different themes: ethical, historical, political, which herein cannot be taken into account. In short, ecologists “want to make climate an apocalyptic threat”. Schellenberger’s criticism offers new elements to pursue the religious analysis of ecologism: “At the beginning, there was Al Gore who was like Moses. Now we have Jeanne D’Arc, i.e., Greta Thunberg leading this religious war” [18].

Note the fascinating aspect of this storytelling that occurs inside the Swedish Church—but perhaps also inside other Churches—and note the existence of those who have welcomed a certain superficial environmentalism. On 1 December 2018, the local parish of Limhamn (Limhamns kyrka) in the city of Malmö in southern Sweden sent the following tweet: “Announcement! Jesus of Nazareth has now assigned one of his successors, namely Greta Thunberg”. The bishop of Lund was invited to express his opinion, commenting in negative terms regarding the way the parish of Limhamn was utilising Twitter (the current platform X): “If you assign somebody as your successor, you have to expect that it can be perceived as though you are going to resign. Therefore, it is no surprise that some have interpreted Limhamn’s tweet about Jesus assigning a successor as though one is leaving Jesus”. However, this argument is based on purely semantic criticism, and it does not seem to question the choice of placing the second person of the Holy Trinity side by side with the icon of the environmental movement. Eventually, when the former Archbishop Antje Jackelén was asked about the tweet in an interview with the newspaper Arbetet she responded that the word “follower” could have been better, but in the newspaper Expressen (28 September 2019), she states that Greta Thunberg has a lot in common with the prophets of the Old Testament: “It is remarkable what she has accomplished globally. I consider her prophetic, not unlike the prophets of the Old Testament who were deeply committed and persistent in their cause” [19].

To conclude this quick review of religious nuances of ecology I want to recall that Thunberg has been included in a digital tool for teaching religion to pupils in Swedish elementary schools. In addition to Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and other religious figures, students are provided with a deeper understanding of Greta’s thoughts and accomplishments [20].

4. Part Three: Today’s Mainstream Environmental Conformism Seen through Kierkegaard’s Lens

Following Mircea Eliade’s idea of the “camouflage of the sacred”, we would observe that, despite the fact that the process of secularisation or desacralisation has fully run its course, never has the sacred truly disappeared from this world. It has rather hidden itself under secular appearances. Within this hermeneutical framework, the Romanian historian of religions recommended to proceed with a sort of “demystification in reverse”, that is, the desacralisation of the “secular” or “a-religious” narratives of our time, by pointing out their true religious charge:

In our case, we have to attempt a demystification in reverse; that is to say, we have to “demystify” the apparently profane worlds and languages of literature, plastic arts, and cinema in order to disclose their “sacred” elements, although it is, of course, an ignored, camouflaged, or degraded “sacred” [21].

The more human beings refuse to openly recognise the sacred as a fundamental aspect of their being, the more this latter takes its revenge, so to speak, assuming the strangest and most unimaginable forms. For this reason, it could happen that the sacred (sacer), which previously belonged to certain members of society (sacerdos) and acts (sacrificia), or was located in specific places (sacraria) and objects (sacra) “evaporated” and went on to “sacralise” the most various aspects of human life, randomly: nature, love, science, etc. So, we have reached the point where belonging to a church has been assimilated to belonging to a community of individuals who share the same sexual preferences [22], substitute an ethical plant-based diet for fasting [23], and have replaced God with science in the general perception—to the extent that more and more often one comes across people who seemingly and without any humorous intent claim to believe in science [24].

On his part, René Guénon, exponent of the Philosophia perennis, offered cautionary remarks about the consequences regarding the ubiquity of the sacred:

[I]t is not a religion in the proper sense of the word, but it is what pretends to take its place, and what better deserves to be called “counter-religion”. […] If Westerners had kept the religious sense of their ancestors, would they not avoid using on every occasion such phrases as “religion of the patriotism”, “religion of science”, “religion of duty”, and others of the same kind [25].

Be it a “camouflaged” religion or a “counter-religion” today’s “green religion” shows various analogies with the mainstream Christianity of Kierkegaard’s time. I will focus on the following points:

(a) Kierkegaard fought religious conformism and denounced the aberrant situation of a religion claiming to be a “hated, abandoned, persecuted, and cursed to suffer in this world” minority, while actually it was an “admired, applauded, honored” majority [M 22]. Like the Lutheran pastors of Kierkegaard’s time, eco-activists describe themselves as an oppressed minority, even if, in fact they possess effective means of communication and enjoy the support of the ruling classes and large sectors of markets and industries, which recognise in the environmental storytelling the possibility of enormously increasing their profits. Radical environmental activists put in place forms of struggle (such as non-authorised manifestations, sit-ins, strikes) or awareness strategies (for example, symbolic acts of “vandalism” against works of art protected by glass in museums) which have historically belonged to minorities fighting for rights, simulating grass-roots campaigns, to be recognised by public opinion on the side of the oppressed. Paradoxically, civil disobedience is encouraged today, and not infrequently performed by members of the upper classes, who make human rights and ecologism instruments of oppression and prior censorship, to the detriment of the population. The poster child of environmentalism perfectly embodies this aspect. Greta made her appearance on the world stage at the age of fifteen. She was a child, a female, and from the age of thirteen she was diagnosed with autism. During the 2019 UN conference on climate change, Greta blamed the world’s ruling class (“How dare you …?”). It was an advertising stunt of certain success. When the disparity of forces between two opponents is extreme—going back to the biblical times of David and Goliat—public opinion always tends to sympathise with the “weakest”.

(b) Environmental propaganda hides an economic interest. In his latest polemical writings, Kierkegaard denounced the inconsistency of the Lutheran Church and the hypocrisy of the clergy. First, speaking of bishop Mynster, Kierkegaard invites the reader to “consider the outcome of his life” [M 23]. When he died, the bishop was memorialised by Professor Hans Lassen Martensen as “an authentic truth-witness” [M 3]. His life was inspired, in fact, by a worldly wisdom which prevented him from what Christian faith requires: “suffering for the doctrine” [JFY 169], “suffering for the truth” [M 289]. Kierkegaard warned his fellow countrymen that pastors were “cannibals”, “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, who steal “by making capital of their [those glorious ones] lives” and thus they deceive “the simple person, the masses of people who do not have the capacity to see through the pastor’s trafficking, that he is demonstrating the truth of Christianity and at the same time refuting it” [M 325]. Kierkegaard pointed out that pastors have a “pecuniary interest” [M 96] in evangelisation, since they “are to live on Christianity” [M 97], “to earn their livelihoods in this manner” [M 153].

These same arguments can be used no less effectively to point out the paradoxical duplicity of environmental propaganda. It is of no matter here if those self-professed environmentalists’ lifestyles do not match the ideals declared, but it is of matter to those companies and brand products that enthusiastically support mainstream green propaganda, as if their first aim were to save the planet from destruction; but, in fact, they expect to gain a market share for their sustainable eco-friendly items. This paradox results in a simple “play-environmentalism”, to paraphrase Kierkegaard.

What does it mean to play? It means to counterfeit, to mimic a danger where there is no danger, and in such a way that the more art one applies to it the more deceptively one can pretend that there there were danger. This is the way soldiers play at war on the parade grounds; there is no danger, but one pretends as if there were, and the art consists of making everything deceptive, just as if it were a matter of life and death [M 133].

These expressions originally refer to pastors playing with Christianity, but I think they could also target a certain environmentalism-based catastrophic attitude spreading panic among people in order to speculate on it.

(c) Far from promoting an ethical attitude towards nature, mainstream environmental propaganda makes any ethical choice simply impossible, asking individuals only to do what the “times demand” they do. Today, environmentalism passes for being the incarnation of the Spirit of the time. It is a top-down, one-way teleological paradigm that embodies what someone has called the “progressivist superego” [26].

In this respect, Kierkegaard proves to be a valid antidote as well. Together with Hegelianism, he rejected all other worldly–historical paradigms that prevent the individual from exercising choice and responsibility. He contested the claim of his generation to orient their actions in the world on the basis of a world-historical idea of morality rather than on the basis of individual ethics, that is, ethics on a human scale: “the present generation, already in its own lifetime, wants to discover its world-historical moral idea and to act on that basis” [CUP 1 144].

In the mainstream environmental narrative, the choice is not contemplated, because it is urgent to implement interventions to counteract climate change (“the Earth is burning”). In fact, any option other than the one they have is presented as equivalent to abandoning the planet to its fate (“There is no planet B” which reads: there is no other way than this). What the people are expected to do is, indeed, not to make a choice, but rather to follow instructions and slogans (shower less, drive electric, go vegan etc.) [27]. However, when choice is eliminated, ethics is eliminated as well. As Kierkegaard argued, ethics is an individual matter, absolutely incompatible with the “crowd”, “the mass”, “the mob”, “the world-historical tumult”.

Wherever there is anything extraordinary or valuable to be seen, there is sure to be a jostling crowd, but the owner carefully arranges things so that only one at a time is allowed to come in. The jostling crowd, the mass, the mob, the world-historical tumult remains outside. And the Deity certainly does possess what is the most precious of all, but also knows how to safeguard himself in a way entirely different from all earthly supervision, knows in an entirely different way how to prevent anyone from slipping in world-historically, objectively, and scholarly-scientifically by utilising the jostling crowd [CUP 1 67].

(d) Today, environmentalism promotes a new way of conformism among young people, exercising moral suasion and cultural blackmail towards those who do not follow the same stream “like a school of fish”. It is not by chance, I believe, that some of those self-professed spontaneous, grass-root movements supporting environmental propaganda and other progressivist mobilisations are proudly named after types of fish, such as “sardines” (Italy) and “herrings” (Finland). It is curious to note that the image of “the whole shoal of round-herrings” [den hele Stime af Omgangs-Sild] comes straight from Kierkegaard’s Journal to mock the conformism and fake the respectability of the upper-class Copenhageners, people who ignore what intellectual honesty is and have no idea of what it means to be isolated from the herd, “when everyone turns their backs on you” [DD: 32].

Power-holders have always considered young people the privileged object of manipulation, especially when it was time to greatly accelerate history and bring about epochal transitions. Suffice here to recall the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, when Mao Zedong called on young people to “bombard the headquarters” and proclaimed that “to rebel is justified”. The Cultural Revolution exemplifies a top-down revolution in which young people served as a masse of manoeuvres for commanding the return of Mao. Apparently more spontaneous were the protests of 1968 in France and Italy, even though these movements could have hardly been successful if they had lacked the compliance of the political forces in government. Kierkegaard pointed out that young people are the most inclined to submit to cultural fashions and dominant narratives: “The youth’s admiration, his enthusiasm, and his limitless confidence in Hegel are precisely the satire on Hegel” [CUP 1 311]. Young people’s enthusiasm is acritical, and results in the end in a parody of the idea which they follow, like those young environmentalists who collect dozens of water-bottles to avoid plastic consumption.

(e) Among the strategies of thought control for environmental purposes, we can count daily cultural blackmail, prior censorship and delegitimization of the opponents. The French economist Prud’homme complained that “like every totalitarianism, ecologism is based on inquisition. Anyone who does not agree with them is considered a villain who threatens the survival of humankind” [11]. When the French intellectual Michael Onfray dared to criticise Greta Thunberg and her followers, he was labelled with “handiphobia”, “misogyny”, and “obscurantism” [28]. Kierkegaard suffered a similar retaliation when he decided to end his “armed neutrality” to reveal the inconsistency of his countrymen in matters of religion. During Kierkegaard’s attack against official Christianity, Dean Victor Bloch hoped to have Kierkegaard “ecclesiastically punished” [M 56] with excommunication.

Kierkegaard was a non-aligned intellectual who contrasted the Golden Age Mainstream. As Bruce Kirmmse has pointed out, “not only was he convinced that the Danish Church (whether it was called the ‘State Church’ or the ‘People’s Church’) was an un-Christian deception, he was also equally convinced that this deception owed its continued survival to the leading ‘coteries’ of the Golden Age” [29]. Not by chance, “Mynster was named a first-class member of the inner circle of the Golden Age” ([29], p. 119).

These were the big guns of the conservative mainstream of the Golden Age: in the first generation, the poet Oehenschläger and the theologian Mynster; and in the second generation, the poet Heiberg and the theologian Martensen ([29], p. 122).

Kierkegaard refused the hegemony of Hegelianism and distanced himself from the dominant cultural environment represented by the Heiberg’s circle, whose intellectual milieu Joackim Garff described as self-referential, and especially after the Heiberg–Martensen alliance “if possible, even narrower, than it already was, indeed almost mafia-like” [30]. According to Kierkegaard “they constituted nothing less than a self-satisfied mutual admiration society, which found it convenient to call upon the name of Christianity” ([29], p. 122). They would have taken revenge on him when the Corsair affair erupted and Kierkegaard became the target of a fierce satire.

We move towards the conclusion. What made the preaching of the Lutheran pastors in Kierkegaard’s time successful is what makes today’s mainstream environmental propaganda also successful:

(a) It puts pressure on the self-preservation and propagation of the species (instinctual-based preaching), it is reassuring and requires no commitment on the part of the listener (easy to be Christian); the same can be said of environmental propaganda, in as much as environmental catastrophism appeals to the same instinct of survival (saving the planet) and offers solutions at your fingertips in terms of a commercially environmental-friendly way of life (to buy green).

(b) It provides human beings with a way to be gregarious (we are all Christians), just like mainstream environmentalism, which is more and more viral and pervasive (we are all green).

(c) Preachers are public officials, and they are invested with supposed knowledge by the public audience, no matter whether or not these are consistent with their proclamations (principle of authority); similarly, green propaganda is supported by massive information campaigns whose power of persuasion mainly lies in the supposed knowledge of institutions and special endorsers “recruited from the most varied fields: Nobel Prize winners, astronauts, virologists, experts of all sorts, know-it-all peculiar children, and other icons of the actual Intelligentsia” [31].

5. Conclusions

To conclude: according to Kierkegaard, conformism is a sickness of the Self, as far as it prevents the Self from becoming itself. No spirit can arise as long as the individual “finds it too hazardous to be himself and far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, a mass man” [SUD 34]. Neither ethical choice nor authentic religiousness are compatible with conformism. Christianity is as far from conformism as becoming a true Self is far from despair. When Christianity invites the single individual to live according to the model, it is always a matter of following [Efterfølgelse], rather than imitating [Efterligning]. Conformism basically consists in the misrelation between the Self and itself and the Self and God. This means that conformism affects human beings, regardless of whether or not they belong to majority and minority groups. However, Kierkegaard recognised the power of numbers on the imagination, and attacked the mainstream narratives responsible for collective hallucinations.

In today’s Western European civilisation, the decline of traditional religions has created a religious vacuum that is filled with new paradigms which are equally persuasive and capable of consensus. Mainstream environmentalism appears to many as a new secular religion, with an extraordinary compelling power, due to the mingling of propaganda, sense of guilt, millenarism, inquisition and other traits associated with established religion.

Like the Lutheran pastors of Kierkegaard’s time, eco-activists describe themselves as an oppressed minority, even if they benefit from extraordinary media coverage and are supported by the ruling classes and large sectors of the markets and industries. Environmental propaganda hides an economic interest and promotes new ways of conformism among young people, exercising moral suasion and cultural blackmail towards those who do not follow the same stream “like a school of fish”. In the end, far from promoting an ethical attitude towards nature, mainstream environmental propaganda makes any ethical choice simply impossible.

Ultimately, it seems reasonable to answer positively the question whether or not Kierkegaard’s thought can still be considered a point of reference in today’s religious scene. The scalpel Kierkegaard used to cut the infected wound of Christendom, is still sharp, and demonstrates an unexpected effectiveness in dealing with the ulcers of a society that likes to define itself as free and emancipated, but which has never been as desperately conformist as the current one.