The Crusade Across the Atlantic – How America’s Christian Right Is Gaining Ground in Europe – An Investigative Report on Networking Meetings Also Involving the CDU

It began quietly – with a flight across the Atlantic, a handshake in a London café, and an invitation no one in Westminster had expected. Nigel Farage, the former architect of Brexit and longtime friend of Donald Trump, suddenly appeared in the U.S. Congress, not as a spectator but as a witness. He spoke out against his own country’s free-speech laws, flanked by lawyers from an organization that had taken an axe to half a century of reproductive rights in the United States.

What had taken shape over years in the shadows has now grown into a powerful network – a transatlantic web of money, faith, and political calculation. The Alliance Defending Freedom, once an American interest group with a legal focus on anti-abortion causes and Christian-fundamentalist concerns, has long since become a political actor seeking – and finding – new partners in Europe. Its ideological compass points firmly to the right: an evangelicalism that sees gender equality as a threat, interprets queer lifestyles as “societal decay,” and views the separation of church and state as a moral misunderstanding.

This organization calls itself Alliance Defending Freedom - ADF - and it has made history in the United States. It was a co-architect of the fall of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that constitutionally protected the right to abortion. Today it is considered the legal spearhead of the Christian Right - strategic, well-connected, and well-funded. And now that Donald Trump is back in the White House, it is on a path of expansion. Its new target: the United Kingdom. In a country where religion traditionally holds little sway over politics and support for abortion rights cuts across party lines, the ADF is working to import a different America - one in which faith, politics, and law become indistinguishable.

In Germany, this worldview finds resonance - particularly within the AfD, whose rhetoric, from the “natural order of the family” to the defense of “Christian values,” echoes the ADF’s agenda. Officially there is no cooperation, yet the lines of overlap are clear, both in personnel and ideology. Through its Vienna-based subsidiary, ADF International, the movement is deeply embedded in the network of European right-wing parties, from PiS in Poland to Fidesz in Hungary - with links to think tanks that exchange strategy papers in Brussels and Budapest and hold joint seminars in Vienna. Names such as CitizenGo, Demo für Alle, and One of Us appear repeatedly: organizations that act as interfaces between religious moral politics and right-wing populist campaign strategy. Their legal advisers, speakers, and lobbyists move regularly between the same conferences, parliaments, and foundations. In Germany, overlaps can be traced in lobbying registers where ADF-affiliated lawyers and AfD-related activists appear side by side - united by a shared goal: to slow social liberalization, to gradually roll back women’s rights and sexual self-determination, to shift political discourse until authority itself is seen as virtue. This agenda is funded in part from the United States, from the same donor circles that enabled Donald Trump’s rise - a network of major donors, evangelical billionaires, and think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, which now view Europe as the next front in the “culture war.” What has already become reality in Poland and Hungary - an alliance of religion, nationalism, and power - is only beginning in Germany, yet the signs are unmistakable. The ADF provides the legal strategy, the AfD the political echo chamber, and together they blur the lines between faith and law until democracy itself becomes negotiable.

In public perception, it was long misrepresented who actually set the tone at the Berlin meetings of the Christian-conservative scene. While US-based MAGA channels or media created the impression that the movement itself had played a leading role, research and participant reports reveal a different picture. In truth, it was ADF International, the European branch of the American Alliance Defending Freedom, that determined the direction - discreetly but deliberately.

According to consistent accounts from several participants, ADF appeared at these networking meetings in Berlin as the legal and ideological engine. Its representatives presented legal opinions, drafted lines of argument, and provided the linguistic architecture with which lawmakers and lobbying groups have since publicly argued against sex education, reproductive rights, and equality policies. Formally, the organization rarely appeared in public: outwardly, church associations, family policy initiatives, or CDU-affiliated working groups bore the responsibility. But substantively, several sources report, it was the ADF’s lawyers who led the discussion.

Typical of the movement’s modus operandi is its behind-the-scenes influence. ADF International did not act as organizer but as invisible metronome - a role that allows it to exert influence while maintaining distance. Thus, the meetings appeared outwardly as internal German debates about ethics and family policy, while the structure of their arguments was based on strategy papers drafted in Vienna and Washington.

The misunderstanding that the MAGA movement itself had co-led these Berlin sessions arose primarily through the uncritical adoption of many social media posts and media reports. In truth, however, the transatlantic connection was more subtle: American ideology provided the blueprint, the ADF supplied the legal foundation, and German actors such as CDU-affiliated initiatives provided the forum where these narratives gained political traction. It is a pattern that repeats itself again and again - power through influence, not visibility. While headlines about alleged MAGA interference circulated, ADF International quietly continued to entrench the moral-political line that is finding growing resonance in Europe.

The method is familiar: not through preaching, but through legal levers, cultural symbolism, and targeted alliances. And with a word that sounds as harmless as it does liberating: Free Speech.

A movement in camouflage

Officially, the ADF presents itself as a nonpartisan human rights organization. Its British spokesman, Paul Sapper, emphasizes that it works “with all major parties.” But the trail leads almost exclusively in one direction - to Reform U.K., the populist party led by Farage, which has surpassed the conservative Tories in polls since Trump’s re-election.

Behind the scenes, the ADF has massively expanded its British branch in recent years: four times as many staff, four times as much money. Meetings with parliamentarians, briefings with Trump-aligned US officials, secret breakfast sessions with representatives of the US State Department - all with one goal: influence.

One example took place in March at the Old Queen Street Café, just a short walk from the British Parliament. At 8:15 a.m., the café opened early - for a confidential meeting between Farage and an envoy of the US government. The ADF had arranged, mediated, and attended the meeting. Topics: abortion, online censorship, the new “buffer zones” around clinics that protect women from harassment.

For the ADF, these zones are not a sanctuary but a symbol of supposed oppression. In its legal filings, it speaks of a “crisis of free speech.” In fact, several of its British clients have been convicted for silently praying outside clinics - cases the ADF now stages strategically to portray an image of a morally persecuted Christianity in the public eye.

The British lever

In a country that treats its secularism almost like a state religion, the influence of American evangelicals may seem implausible at first. But the ADF has learned how to win hearts and headlines: not through dogma, but through discourse.

“What is developing in the United Kingdom is an alliance for free speech,” says Irish lawyer Lorcán Price, who heads the ADF’s strategy in Britain. In interviews he speaks of a “coalition of disillusioned citizens” shaken by “state control” of language and opinion. In reality, this coalition unites disparate groups - anti-abortion activists, libertarian bloggers, conservative Catholics, radical free speech influencers - within a shared vocabulary: freedom.

When asked: “It has taken decades, but now the moment has come. Anyone who wants to prevent this political line from taking hold in the United Kingdom must act now. The designated Prime Minister Liz Truss and her potential cabinet members Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker stand for the same ideology, the same circle of influential think tanks, and the same donors who have shaped conservative politics for years.” (Dr. Russel Jackson, sociologist)

The choice of topics is clever. In a year when Britain is arguing simultaneously about online hate, pro-Palestine protests, and right-wing extremism, “free speech” sounds like a neutral ideal. But beneath the surface, it is about much more: the return of religious norms to the public sphere. The ADF has experience with this strategy. In the United States, it used the fight for free speech as a Trojan horse to anchor religious exemptions in law - such as the right to refuse service to same-sex couples, to deny abortion information, or to discriminate against trans people.

Since 2024, the ADF has been courting Farage’s party directly. At first discreetly, through legal advice, later through joint appearances. Its British breakthrough came when it brought Farage to Washington - as a star witness before the US House Judiciary Committee. There he sat beside Price as both warned of “the dangers of European censorship.” The invitation was no coincidence: it came via the ADF, which conveyed Farage’s interest, contacted the committee, and coordinated the appearance.

For the organization, it was a breakthrough - the British right in the US Congress, flanked by lawyers from the movement that had overturned abortion rights in America. Since then, the ADF has been working on two fronts: in London, it pursues legal cases; in Washington, it supplies the Trump administration with talking points that cast Britain as “hostile to Christian values.” According to multiple sources, it has already submitted dossiers to the US State Department detailing alleged violations of free speech in the United Kingdom.

Farage himself denies any ideological ties. When asked, he said Reform U.K. “talks to all kinds of groups.” That he opposed abortion was “complete nonsense.” Yet his recent speeches tell a different story. In the spring, he called for a parliamentary debate on the 24-week limit - describing it as “utterly absurd.” His words sounded almost identical to the phrasing used by American anti-abortion groups for years to shift the issue gradually - not through an outright ban, but through a steady narrowing of the time limits.

The transatlantic loop

In the United States, Farage now serves as a projection surface for the MAGA movement - a European ally who repeats the rhetoric of Christian nationalism with a British accent. When US Vice President J.D. Vance criticized Britain at the Munich Security Conference in February for allegedly restricting free speech, he referred directly to an ADF client: activist Adam Smith-Connor, who had been convicted for silently praying outside a clinic. In London, the ADF rejoiced: a quote from the White House, millions of views on X, Musk shared the speech - a propaganda moment the organization has perfected.

The statement by ADF International marked another step in a transatlantic campaign that turns the case of Briton Adam Smith-Connor into a symbol of so-called “religious freedom.” In that statement, the ADF boasted of supporting Smith-Connor’s legal defense and announced plans to appeal the ruling in July.

The background: Smith-Connor had been found guilty by a British court in October for silently praying in a “buffer zone” - a protected area around an abortion clinic. The zones were introduced by Parliament to protect patients from harassment. But conservative groups, led by the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom, view them as an attack on free speech.

What drew international attention was the reaction from Washington: US Vice President J.D. Vance accused British authorities of criminalizing Christians for their faith. The ADF immediately amplified his words through its channels - as proof that its cause resonates at the highest political levels of the Trump administration.

Legally, the case is clear, but politically it is highly charged. Human rights organizations point out that the conviction had nothing to do with persecution of faith but with protecting private spaces from ideologically motivated pressure. The ADF, however, uses the case deliberately to stir opposition to abortion laws in Britain and to redefine the term “religious freedom” - not as protection of religious diversity, but as a political tool for enforcing conservative moral views.

Observers see it as a strategic test run: with the Smith-Connor case, the ADF is attempting to export an American narrative - the culture war over religion and the state - to Europe. The White House’s reaction shows that this strategy is working: a local fine case in England became an international political issue within hours.

Since then, it has expanded its reach to British universities and social media. Young activists spread ADF narratives about “Christian discrimination,” while Farage enriches them with phrases like “Judeo-Christian heritage” - wording that forms part of the DNA of America’s Christian Right but has been largely absent from British discourse for decades.

When the US Congress sent a delegation to London in the summer, Farage did not sit in the audience at the central roundtable - he sat on the panel. That too was ADF organization: it had prepared the meeting, briefed the members, selected the speakers. Democrat Jamie Raskin later described the scene: “I had the clear feeling that we were there to help Nigel Farage - to stage him as a hero of free speech.” Officially, the ADF stresses its independence. Unofficially, it operates below the threshold of visibility, as Fiona Bruce, former Conservative MP and longtime contact of the organization, recently put it: “ADF often acts discreetly, under the radar.”

Discreet - and effective. In September, just two days after his appearance in Congress, Farage opened the Reform U.K. party conference in Birmingham. “We are the party of renewal,” he shouted to cheering supporters. The caps read Make Britain Great Again. In his speech he railed against migration, high taxes, and “the government doing everything it can to destroy free speech online.” Not a word about abortion - but plenty about “our Judeo-Christian culture.” While Farage spoke, hundreds gathered in London for the March for Life, organized by one of his ADF-linked clients. The same lawyers who had argued for free speech in Washington delivered speeches here about the right to life. The transatlantic line was complete: what began in America has found a new echo chamber in Europe.

In Britain, abortion rights cannot be overturned by court ruling as in the United States - they are enshrined in law and can only be changed by Parliament. That is precisely why the ADF seeks to shift public sentiment before attacking the statute itself. The pattern is familiar: first freedom, then piety, then law. It would be a mistake to dismiss this movement as a cultural fringe. It is well-organized, internationally connected, strategically patient - and it has already proven in the United States that it can reshape the political climate of entire generations.

Britain is its new testing ground. And Nigel Farage, the man who once left Europe to “free” Britain, has now become the instrument of a movement returning from America to reshape that same country from within.