A conservative theologist, Semjen is leader of the Christian Democratic People’s Party, the pseudo-coalition partner of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s governing Fidesz party. In his doctoral thesis, he famously called Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger “the devil”.

He had come to the National University of Public Service, the conference’s Fidesz-friendly venue, brandishing a crucifix with a Kalashnikov bullet embedded in it.

The story goes that the cross absorbed the bullet when Soviet troops fired wantonly on a church in Hungary towards the end of World War II. But it did not crack, just like the faith of Hungarians, he said.

The Budapest Forum for Christian Communicators is an attempt by Orban’s government to portray Hungary as a defender of core European — read Christian — values.

Speakers stressed that both European identity and Christian heritage are at stake. It is time, they said, for Christian journalists to stand up and defend the continent.

Such a message fits well with Orban’s recent efforts to rebrand “illiberalism” as a new Christian democratic movement and lead his Fidesz party back into the fold of the European People’s Party political grouping in the European Parliament after its suspension in March over rule-of-law concerns.

Semjen was in a combative mood as he listed all the times Hungary defended European Christianity — first from the Mongols, then from Turks, later from Nazis and finally from the Soviets, he said.

In an indirect sense, Christianity is persecuted even in Western Europe. It is squeezed out of the public sphere, and our Christian roots were not even included in the Lisbon Treaty. – Zsolt Semjen, Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister

He claimed that when the Turks were negotiating with Hungarians in the 17th Century, elite Ottoman troops known as Janissaries crept into Budapest and slaughtered half the city’s population. When Hungarian aristocrats dined with the Sultan, crosses on top of churches were sneakily replaced with crescents, he said.

“We have four centuries of experience with Islam — the West could not teach us anything,” said Semjen, who would flop a history exam with some of his statements.

Quick fact check: Turkish rule in Hungary started in 1526 and ended in 1699, and it is blatantly not true that Hungary defended European Christianity from the Nazis, who were in fact allies of Hungary in World War II.

But Semjen was just gathering steam. Although attacked by liberal media as a heartless and anti-migrant country, Hungary is still Europe’s defender of Christianity, the most persecuted religion in the world, he said.

“In an indirect sense, Christianity is persecuted even in Western Europe,” he said. “It is squeezed out of the public sphere, and our Christian roots were not even included in the Lisbon Treaty [of the European Union]” — the result, he added, of a Freemason conspiracy.