Politics & Power Quote by Kjell Magne Bondevik

Bondevik’s line lands with the quiet authority of someone who has watched moral language get conscripted into campaigns. “Unfortunately” isn’t decoration; it’s a calibrated sigh from a statesman who knows that the most powerful civic emotions are also the most pliable. By pairing religion with patriotism, he links two sources of legitimacy that can bypass scrutiny: faith claims the soul, patriotism claims the flag. Both can make disagreement look like heresy.

The verb choice matters. “Misuse” implies there is a proper use - religion and patriotism aren’t condemned, they’re put on notice. That’s a classic centrist move with sharp edges: defend the value while warning that its symbolic capital is easily laundered into political advantage. The subtext is less about theology than about gatekeeping power. When politicians wrap themselves in sacred language or national loyalty, they aren’t just arguing policy; they’re trying to set the terms of who counts as “us.”

Bondevik, a Norwegian Christian Democrat and former prime minister, speaks from a context where public faith exists but tends to be institutionally tempered, and where postwar Europe has a long memory of what happens when national identity becomes sanctified. The quote reads like an anti-populist vaccine: a reminder that appeals to God and country are rhetorically efficient precisely because they shortcut nuance. It’s not a plea to privatize belief; it’s a warning to citizens to notice when reverence is being weaponized as permission.