Christianists Rising

1.

These Christianists terrify me.  They’re so sure of themselves.  Riding a powerful wave of righteousness, fueled by fear and utterly lacking in self-doubt, they proclaim their truth to the cheering crowds and take the ego rush it gives them as evidence that God is firmly on their side.  He has a plan.

Here in Alabama, you expect to see candidates’ websites listing which church they attend, along with where they were educated, what’s been their job history, who they’re married to and how many adorable children they dote on.  Even progressives running as Democrats are likely as not to mention their Christian faith.  This performative virtue signaling is annoying, but I haven’t ever felt threatened. 

Remember Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, ran for the Republican nomination back in 2008 and again (briefly) in 2016?  He was one of the “friendly” Republicans, affable and funny on the stump and in interviews, played bass in a rock band, easy to get along with.  He made no bones about being a Baptist minister, about the importance to him of his faith, but his public positions on religious freedom, abortion, gay marriage, and taxes were all pretty mainstream Republican.  His outreach to the African-American community seemed genuine and his tolerance of the “gay lifestyle” overshadowed his disapproval of it.  You’d never vote for him, of course, but you could still think of him as a “good guy” – until you dug deeper into his positions and his preaching.  It was in the things he said to his followers when the national media weren’t in the room that his radical devotion to the idea of America as a conservative Christian nation bloomed.

That was the way of Christian evangelical politicians of his day and generation.  They professed tolerance, “loved the sinner, hated the sin”.  It was a religiosity that seemed as if it could exist comfortably within the egalitarian, secular state.  If people like Huckabee craved a more theocratic approach to government, they stayed quiet about it when talking to the wider world.  It was easy to miss that they had so much more in mind than lower taxes on the rich and a threadbare safety net for the poor.  They might complain that so much of what was wrong with America was because of a lack of religion, a turning away from Jesus, but you didn’t think there was much they were actually going to be able to do about it.  There wasn’t any way for them to legislate their morality because we’re a secular nation and we have separation of church and state. Right?

But people like Boebert and Greene are a new level of radical, out there waving the flaming sword (or flaming AK-47 in Boebert’s case) of righteousness.  They’re ignorant of history and have a singular lack of the compassion that we secular humanists naively imagine should be a central component of the worldview of the followers of Jesus.  They’re the hectoring harridans of suburbia, eager to judge, quick to condemn.  No dog whistles for them!  They’re loud, proud, and in your face.  When the Republicans retake the House, McCarthy will make sure they have prominent roles to play.  Trying to restrain them would be far too dangerous – he can’t afford to have them turn on him.

2.

Even if you weren’t religious in the sixties you could see how Christian belief naturally led to progressive action.  Baptist preachers and Catholic priests were among the loudest and most articulate voices in the civil rights movement, the war on poverty, the protests against our imperialistic foreign policy.  In a sermon he gave explaining why he was compelled to protest the Vietnam War, MLK said, “The call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concerns beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. ... I am speaking of that force, which all of the great religions have seen is the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to the ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: ‘Let us love one another, for love is God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.  He that loveth not, knoweth not God...’”  I didn’t share King’s religion, but I believed in that truth.

King’s faith was expansive and inclusive.  He loved his country, but not at the expense of the other peoples of the world.  How narrow and small and crabbed seems the religion of the dedicated Christian Nationalist!  When they speak of religious freedom I’m reminded of Edith Wharton explaining how the Puritans did not come to the New World “seeking money or honors, nor even to conceal a depraved past. They were narrow-minded but honorable, respectable men, most of whom were fairly well-off, and who sacrificed everything – fortune, honor, friends, and well-being – to go and found a colony, beneath inclement skies, on inhospitable lands, peopled by artful and fierce natives, where each would be free to worship God according to the dogma of his sect, as well as to denounce neighbors suspected of worshiping differently.”

MLK’s Christianity was humble, acknowledging doubt.  The Christianity of the contemporary Nationalist is petty and coercive.  It emphasizes the evil in the hearts of human beings and is obsessed with sex.  It seeks order above all other virtues and imagines the nation as a culture of hierarchies where each person has a clearly defined role.  The Christianist explicitly rejects the notion of autonomous human beings seeking individual fulfillment.  Fulfillment comes from doing one’s duty.  The Christianist rejects doubt.

Until recently I viewed those who claimed that this is a Christian nation and must be governed according to Christian principles much as I viewed those who claim that the Civil War was not fought over slavery.  While there are elements of fact underpinning both of these views, their conclusions always struck me as so obviously wrong, simply as a matter of historical fact, and so fundamentally un-American (as I understood America’s aspirations) that I never took them entirely seriously.  I knew that these people were individually dangerous, potentially driven to self-righteous violence, but I never imagined that they might attain positions of power in sufficient numbers to threaten the values that King spoke to and that I believed were shared by the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens.  Now I’m far from sure.

3.

You can tell that the Christianists are gaining confidence.  Greene proudly proclaims herself a Christian Nationalist.  Boebert rejects the separation of church and state to thunderous applause.  The Republican rising stars, with an eye towards the 2024 Presidential race, angle for prime speaking spots at NatCon 3, the signal event of the National Conservative movement, whose statement of principles includes, “The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.”

I don’t know what people like McCarthy, Cruz, Hawley, or DeSantis actually believe.  They seem to be driven primarily by ambition, not by any deep seated evangelical conviction.  Boebert and Greene are true believers, but it’s a shallow belief, not rooted in anything more substantial than angry determination.  If they actually hold to a complex theology it’s not apparent from anything they’ve ever said.

This is true for most of their followers as well.  Their Christianity isn’t deep or sophisticated.  Their basic desires aren’t any different from what most people want – material security, healthy and happy kids, a supportive community.  It’s how they intend to achieve it, along with their rock-solid belief that they know what’s best for everybody, that gets frightening.

The NatCon statement of principles isn’t explicit about what that “moral vision” of Christianity entails, but it’s clear the Christianist prizes order above all things.  I’ve wondered if it’s order in the service of some other goal or just a love of order for it’s own sake, but I think it’s the latter.  They want to know that everything and everyone is where it belongs.  That every person is in their proper place and behaving, um, properly.  Since not everyone (apparently) knows what their proper place is, achieving that blessed order requires control. 

The boots on the ground are the Moms for Liberty, grizzlies in defense of their children and yours, utterly oblivious to irony.  They pledge “to honor the fundamental rights of parents including, but not limited to the right to direct the education, medical care, and moral upbringing of their children.”  They are determined “to defend against government overreach, and secure parental rights at all levels of government.”  In practice, this means controlling school boards in order to insure that only their vision of morality is presented in schools.  "Our adversaries," says Jeff Childers, a Moms For Liberty board member, "it's not just that they don't care about our children. I believe they're actively trying to harm our children."  Since that’s the case, protecting the right of those parents to make what they believe to be the right choices for their kids would be crazy!  They gave up any rights when they became groomers!

4.

The preening politicians busily “owning the libs” may have only a thin veneer of Christian belief, while the Moms angrily shutting down or infiltrating school boards may be primarily focused on the horrors of grade schoolers learning about sex, but the people they are relying on for intellectual backing, guidance and support do have a sophisticated take on an authoritarian brand of Christianity.  They’ve been nurturing it for years.

These National Conservatives have grown impatient with the Bill Buckley brand of conservatism that has been the bedrock of the Republican party for half a century.  Reaganism struck a mighty blow for limited government, but it hasn’t delivered the Christian nation that they were counting on.  It still gave priority to the notion of autonomous people and individual freedom, the right to choose how to live one’s life.  But look at the choices people have made!  People can’t be trusted.  They have to be constrained.

As William A. Galston puts it in his article, “What Is National Conservatism?” those old school conservatives “have paid too much attention to freedom and not enough to virtue. They have fetishized limited government when the times require a stronger government that defends national traditions against cultural revolution, national economic interests against globalization, and national sovereignty against transnational institutions and universal norms.” 

The people at the Trumpian political rallies and the people taking over school boards may think they’re fighting for freedom, but the people in the think tanks doing the writing and developing the resources that those activists are relying on know better.  It’s a very narrow freedom for a very select few. 

When you have that blinding belief in the rightness of your cause, it’s a small step from thinking that those who think differently are misguided to viewing them as evil.  Doctors who perform abortions, librarians who buy books illuminating the struggles of transgender kids, teachers who delve into the racist elements of US history, are the enemy.  Not misguided, they are determined to hurt our children and destroy our country.  Maybe there isn’t a basement in the Comet Pizza building, but that doesn’t mean the Democratic elites aren’t pedophiles. It’s obvious, isn’t it?  They must be stopped.

I hasten to add that true believers on the far left aren’t much different in their simplistic self-righteousness.  They’ll tell you that what the pro-life people really want is only to control and dominate women.  Republican economic policies are developed solely for the purpose of cruelly punishing the poor.  Every Republican is a white supremacist.  They have no empathy, are incapable of caring about other people.  Isn’t it all obvious?  They must be stopped.

Neither fringe can stomach the notion that their adversaries might be people who are genuinely concerned about what’s best for everybody, who love their children and their country, who have complex motivations for what they do.  To see them as fully complex human beings might admit the possibility of doubt, might require questioning that self-righteousness and belief in the justice of the cause.  It’s just not enough to think of them as wrong – much more satisfying to know that they’re evil.

But while I’m disgusted by the cliches and lack of critical thinking by so many on the far left, I am far more alarmed by what I see on the right.  Republicans have always been better at playing the long game and working hard at the state and local level.  Democrats tend to focus all their energies on the national races, which goes a long way toward explaining the dominance of Republicans in state governments.  Now the Christianist element within the Republican party that has been quietly reshaping the judiciary over a couple of decades is in the ascendent, coming fully into the open.  Their legislative roadmap is ready to go, with Florida and Texas showing the way.  Across the country there are candidates for Secretaries of State and local legislatures who are profoundly convinced that they need to determine the outcome of elections in order to save us from the rampant fraud that the Democrats are committing.  In hundreds of cities, the Moms For Liberty are successfully pressuring school boards to eliminate sex education in grade schools and eliminate any hint of “wokeness” from textbooks and library shelves.  They are forthright, if somewhat vague, about their vision of a traditionalist anti-democratic nation, built on the foundation of a very selective reading of the Bible.  But they’re loud, well-funded, very active, and highly motivated to vote.  However the midterms turn out, the movement will come out of it stronger.  The next Republican president might not be a true believer at heart, but they’ll advance the Christianist agenda.  They won’t have a choice.