“The role of Christians today is to be close to power and use that position wisely”—Slovak Historian Samuel Trizuljak – The European Conservative

Samuel Trizuljak
Álvaro Peñas
“There are millions of people interested in ‘right-wing culture,’ but they have nothing to do with conservatism.”
“The next Chilean government must put an end to all agreements with the UN in order to fully regain sovereignty.”
Dr. Samuel Trizuljak is a commentator, historian, and member of the board of the Ladislav Hanus Fellowship. He focuses on the history of political thought and Catholicism in Central Europe in the 20th century. His academic studies are published in journals such as Pamäť národa, Litikon, Central European Journal of Contemporary Religion, and Dějiny–Teorie–Kritika. He regularly publishes in the magazine Verbum. He is also the author of Higher and Deeper Education: 33 Tips For Christian Students in Bratislava, Oxford, or Anywhere Else, published in September 2021.
The Ladislav Hanus Institute exists to promote the Christian worldview in public life of Slovakia and, by extension, of Europe. Our institute was recently established as a spin-off from a longer established institution, the Ladislav Hanus Fellowship. The fellowship, in existence for more than twenty years now, is the largest association of Catholic students and young professionals in Slovakia and counts several hundred members. Over the years, the fellowship gave rise to many civic-minded initiatives of our members, initiatives which sought to bring the Christian worldview into politics, culture, law and media.We believe that the wisdom of Christian intellectual tradition has everything to offer to our societies, whether in politics, business or culture. In this context, we see ourselves as an incubator of sorts, working at the level of civil society. That’s why we are also not affiliated with any particular political party.
We strive to bring the Christian voice into the main debates of our time through a variety of projects. Our flagship programme is a multi-genre cultural festival called Hanus Days. It is organized in three editions across Slovakia in the cities of Bratislava, Košice, and Ružomberok each year. We also run a quarterly print revue similar to The European Conservative, called Verbum, a conservative social media platform called Cultura and also, an evening classes programme for young students and professionals in Bratislava, introducing the participants into the Christian intellectual tradition. In recent years, we have organized the Conservative Summit for political leaders and Conservative Law Conference for allies in the field of law.
Yes, Ladislav Hanus, was a Catholic priest and philosopher in the mid-20th century Slovakia. He is best known for a brief work called A Treatise on the Virtue of Culturedness. In this work, he exhorts fellow Slovak Catholic intellectuals to focus not on political and economic problems, but on the formation of character of the Slovak citizens, and in particular, the habitual appreciation of the moral and cultural heritage of the Christian tradition. To Hanus, the foundation of renewal in any nation must start by fostering the virtues, classically understood. This is an insight now popular and well-known thanks to the revival of the field of virtue ethics with the work of figures such as Alasdair MacIntyre. With these insights, Hanus was very much ahead of his time and stays relevant today.
This was the most successful edition of the Conservative Summit so far. The summit brought together more than 30 speakers from 15 countries and the overall attendance rose above 250 participants, our best numbers so far. But to speak about more than just numbers, the summit showed that something good, so to speak, is brewing in the Slovak conservative movement. When conservatism in Central Europe is being spoken of internationally, it is often the Poles and the Hungarians being discussed and throwing punches. I think the growing status of the summit is a sign that the Slovak conservative movement—at the level of civil society, which is where Ladislav Hanus Institute operates—wants to make itself heard and felt on the international scene too.
What shows the strength of the growing conservative movement in Slovakia is that the Summit as well as its organizer, the Ladislav Hanus Institute is in effect a grassroots effort, with little or no support from the state. The Slovak population and a significant part of Slovak civil society, compared to Western societies, is still appreciative of its Christian roots and is overwhelmingly socially conservative on a selection of issues. The summit, as a grassroots effort, helps to channel and grow this momentum. As a result, the Slovak political elite has to respect the conservative inclinations of the Slovak population. This creates the context in which amazing successes like the recent Slovak constitutional amendment can occur.
I think this is reflective of the general goals of the Ladislav Hanus Institute. Our worldview is best described as Christian conservatism, better than any other type of conservatism. Rooted in the small “o” orthodox Christian intellectual tradition, common to Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Christians, and drawing on both faith and reason, theology and philosophy, we believe there are some issues which are non-negotiable. Put shortly, these are the anthropological matters of human dignity, such as protecting life from conception to natural death, understanding marriage as a union of man and woman, defending religious freedom and freedom of conscience. And there are other matters, matters where people of good will can politically disagree—such as evaluating the causes and solutions to the terrible ongoing crisis and war in the Ukraine or working out the details of fiscal policy. As partners and participants at the summit and our other events, we welcome anyone who is willing to cooperate on the non-negotiables, which includes politicians from ECR, Patriots, EPP,  in the past ECPM [the European Christian Political Movement] as well. At the same time, we seek to create platforms where important existing disagreements can be discussed with mutual respect and from a Christian perspective. You might say we try to bring the Gospel into political debates with whoever is willing to sit down, talk, and listen.
It is peculiar and complicated. I will speak again from our perspective as a Christian civil society organization. In the political spectrum, the conservative Right in Slovakia is being squeezed between two major political alternatives. The first is, broadly, progressive liberalism, represented by the leading opposition party Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia). This alternative is unacceptable because like elsewhere across the West, its ideology, deep down, is an aggressive form of secularism, taking on an almost pseudo-religious form. As such, it is increasingly ‘jealous’ of its main competitor—Christianity—and frequently anticlerical.
The second, and the strongest political force in Slovakia, is Robert Fico’s party Smer—Sociálna Demokracia (Direction-Social Democracy). In recent years, Fico has reinvented his party as an anti-progressive sovereignist force against unregulated migration, wokeism, and unconditional support of Ukraine. Fico does not consider his party to be right-wing. However, given the current shift of left-wing parties towards progressivism, he finds himself close to right-wing pragmatic politicians such as Orban and Babiš.
Yes, although Fico is not a conservative in any integral sense, the recent constitutional amendment reaffirming national sovereignty in cultural-ethical matters and constitutionally enshrining a package of key socially conservative causes (e.g., surrogacy ban, only two genders recognized and defined biologically, right of parental oversight in sexual education), is partly to his credit.
The second part of the credit goes to conservative Right, by which I mean politicians from Kresťansko-demokratické hnutie (Christian Democratic Movement), Kresťanská únia (Christian Union) and some (former) members of Slovensko (Slovakia), an anti-corruption party. This brings me back to your initial question. For years now, this segment has struggled to break out of the false dichotomy presented by both Fico and progressives, both of which present all electoral battles as an either or option between Fico and progressivism. The ideal for us, of course, would be if the socially conservative Christian Right played a stronger role. Our hope as an institute operating at the level of civic society is that events like the Conservative Summit can contribute to that by offering inspiration and building the grassroots. Whether the Christian Right ultimately succeeds politically as a “third way” is primarily the role of those seeking political office and remains to be seen.
Our business is primarily not second guessing political shifts, but in reminding whoever seeks political power that good governance must take inspiration from the best of Western intellectual tradition, which to us, broadly, is the principles of natural law and of Catholic social teaching. A house built on sand is an unstable house. Our mission is to remind all of the political elite of that. We of course live in an era, where serious practising Christians form only a minority of a society, and that is true even in Slovakia, where levels of religious practice are higher than elsewhere across the West. We are not blind to reality and understand that comprehensively Christian parties are unlikely to form a leading political force like they did in post-war Europe in the best days of Christian Democracy. But we believe that Christians, thanks to the timeless insights of our tradition regarding the human condition, are in some ways the best analysts of reality and can play crucial roles politically at momentous moments in history, in times of changes. Arguably, we are living through such a time today, when we are entering a new multipolar era and the international order is being redefined. European as well as Slovak history is full of examples when Christians, as a creative minority, played a critical role at a critical time.
So I do not know if we will see a shift to the right, the kind of right that I would be fully happy with. Some years ago, the Harvard legal scholar and Catholic convert Adrian Vermeule wrote an interesting essay in the American Affairs journal the thesis of which can be described as the ‘Joseph Option,’ in contrast to the ‘Benedict Option’ coined by Rod Dreher. The role of Christians today is like that of Old Testament Joseph in Egypt, to be close to the center of power and to use that position wisely for the betterment of all. That is the role that we want to see Christians in Slovakia to be ready to play.
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