© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi � �. ��63/9789004353060_00� Translating Catechisms, Translating Cultures An Introduction Antje Flüchter In the light of the current political debate regarding refugees from the Middle East in the European Union, Christianity is being more discussed and is claimed as being a European characteristic and a European value than it has been in recent decades.1 The term ‘Christian occident’ has become a discursive weapon and an important cornerstone for constructing European identity.2 This is even more astonishing because, from its very beginning, Christendom was a global, and certainly not a European, religion. Founded in the Middle East, Christianity spread to the East as well as to the West.3 Therefore, against the backdrop of claims of a homogenised, and specifically European or Western, Christianity, it is more than relevant to historicise Christianity and its Europeanness and to analyse Christian diversity as it is the aim of this book. Using the example of early modern evangelisation, we want to unearth the transcultural dimensions of Christianity, which were (and still are) often con- cealed under the narratives of cultural and religious purity, but are nevertheless * I am very grateful to Rouven Wirbser for his comments on this paper and for his constructive criticism. I also want to thank Anna Dönecke for being such a great help in the edition of this volume. 1  Bernd Wagner, for example, describes the ethnising charging of Christianity in recent years, referring to Arne Breivig in Norway, Heinz Christian Stracher in Austria, and most of all PEGIDA in Germany as well as to the German Defence Leage. Christendom thus became again a central category in the process of constructing Europeanness or Germandom Bernd Wagner, “Beobachtungen zum Rechtsradikalismus und ‘Volkstumsidentitäten’,” Journal Exit- Deutschland: Zeitschrift für Deradikalisierung und demokratische Kultur 2 (2016): most of all: 82–6, 104–5. Cf. also Wolfgang Knöbl, Matthias Koenig, and Willfried Spohn, “Europäisierung, multiple Modernitäten und kollektive Identitäten – Religion, Nation und Ethnizität in einem erweiterten Europa,” Forschungsprojekt. Hannover: VolkswagenStiftung (2008): [https://www. uni-goettingen.de/de/97415.html, 20.2.2016]. 2  Cf. the attempts to arianise Jesus in the 19th and 20th century which may still be relevant, cf. Wolfgang Fenske, Wie Jesus zum “Arier” wurde: Auswirkungen der Entjudaisierung Christi im 19. und zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005). Simon Ditchfield traced such an ethnicisation and territorialisation even back to Gregory VII (1073–85), Simon Ditchfield, “Decentering the Catholic Reformation: Papacy and Peoples in the Early Modern World,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 101 (2010): 187. 3  It is part of the Western master narrative of a European Christianity to forget all the Eastern variations of Christianity, cf. about the many Eastern Christianities: Ibid. 9789004336001_Fluchter and Wirbser_text_proof-02.indb 3 8/8/2017 4:15:54 PM