Well, according to a Christian cowboy he certainly would be shooting me!
There was an article in the
January 2021 Premier Christianity magazine by Martyn Whittock, a Church of
England lay minister and historian. He has written books on the subject of the association of American evangelicalism with right-wing politics (Witness wide support for
Donald Trump among US evangelicals for instance). I was therefore very interested in the article he had written,
an article entitled "The Disunited States of America". In the article Whittock explains why he thinks right-wing politics and faith have became so entwined in America.
Below I discuss some of Whittock's ideas.
ONE) Whittock tells us that in 1954 the words
"Under God" were added to the pledge of allegiance. He makes a point similar to that which can be found on Wiki:
Even though the movement behind inserting "under God" into the pledge might have been initiated by a private religious fraternity and even though references to God
appear in previous versions of the pledge, historian Kevin M. Kruse asserts
that this movement was an effort by corporate America to instill in the minds
of the people that capitalism and free enterprise were heavenly blessed. Kruse
acknowledges the insertion of the phrase was influenced by the push-back
against Russian and Chinese atheistic communism during the Cold War, but argues
the longer arc of history shows the conflation of Christianity and capitalism
as a challenge to the New Deal played the larger role.
Here was an early step linking Christianity with capitalism, low taxation, gun rights and the American way, a way which was set over and against communist atheism. These items then naturally became mandated in the Christian right's agenda. For myself I've always traced low taxation and US diffidence toward government regulation back to the very formation of the US in the American revolution, a revolution triggered by the a rejection of colonial taxation and suspicion of a distant central regulator. This history seemed to become ingrained into America culture; as Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problem,
government is the problem. This ethos had the upside of helping economic growth via the market but the downside was an irrational suspicion of central government: Such attitudes do help create a power & influence vacuum which gives an opportunist the chance to step into that vacuum (which may be what Trump has done).
TWO) In the 60s and early 70s there were government moves which were perceived as not favourable to the Christian cultural foundation of America. Viz: The banning of public prayers in schools, regulation of Christian academies, & legalisation of first trimester abortions. Quoting Whittock:
[Evangelicals] felt that Christian values were being overlooked, or caricatured, in the media. Furthermore, they felt that the school system drives a secular agenda. At the same time, the growth in LGBTQ rights challenged the traditional views of marriage and 'acceptable' sexual behaviour..... in short a cultural war began....
With this comment I feel I'm on familiar ground: My understanding of the rise of fundamentalist evangelicalism is that it is a response to the cultural marginalisation of Christianity especially during the 1960s (and into the 1970s) and especially among society's intellectuals who rejected the Christian rationale. In a reactionary move some parts of American evangelicalism became anti-intellectual and anti-science and the symptoms of this are seen in the rise of young earthism (latterly flat earthism) and fideist versions of Christianity that majored in the ecstatic. This was both a protest against the changing social mores and also against intellectual Christianity which was perceived to have failed. It was, I propose, akin to the response of the romantics, as puzzled but naïve Christians tried to regain a sense of sacredness in the creation and reaffirm the ecstatic component of Christian testimony. My understanding here has less to do with historical research than having lived through that time. But according to Whittock, because of conditions peculiar to the US, American evangelicals have also reacted by becoming very politicised and have expressed this via their support of the Republican party, a party which they perceive to be the party of traditional American Christian values.
THREE) Then in 2008, Barack Obama happened, says Whittock: He goes on to say:
The election of a young, intelligent, telegenic and highly articulate social progressive (committed to proactive federal government initiatives) was a sharp reversal of all that the evangelical right had been working on for more than 20 years. The Obama presidency was seen as an existential threat. Then the possibility of a political success for a socially progressive female Washington insider, in the form of Hilary Clinton, caused an upsurge of evangelical activism unparalleled in US history.
FOUR) Then in 2016 "Trump happened": According to Whittock:
It was this that led 81% of white evangelicals voting for Trump....It was a marriage of convenience in which Trump promised everything on the evangelical agenda.....Evangelicals reciprocated with intense support for a man whose personal and political morality - which many feel is at odds with Christianity - was set aside in order to win what they perceived as a battle for the soul of America.
His policy on immigration struck a chord, since polling reveals that 59% of white evangelicals see immigrants as threatening their cultural identity.
For a group traditionally suspicious of government the necessary Covid-19 restrictions were often seen as unwelcome state interference. In the same way, the shutting of churches was easy to present as state restrictions on religious freedom...the wearing if masks we seen as a sign of acceptance of state power. This occurred alongside a fear of economic decline as a result of lockdown, which further resonated with a group whose religious beliefs have long been associated with support for American free enterprise.
....In the aftermath of Trump's defeat, a well known US evangelical confided to me, in an off-the-record assessment, that the majority of evangelicals believe in Trump's narrative of a "stolen " election, a minority are resigned to a Biden presidency, but will keep fighting to change the abortion law; a smaller minority are relieved at Trump's defeat; and huge numbers of young evangelicals are leaving their highly politicised spiritual communities. Clearly for US evangelicals the turbulence is far from over.
***
It was almost as if Trump was stepping into a suit that had been specially tailored for him. The egotistical & cynical Trump exploited this situation to the full. He cynically made friendly overtures toward the crackpot professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the crazy QAnon theorists - he was of course after the votes of their followers. The ultra-far right fascists and white supremacists were emboldened by Trump and crept out of from under their stones and appeared on the streets. Trump wanted their votes too and therefore wasn't vocal in condemning them. Trump talked the language that the right-wing wanted to hear; gun rights, low taxation, private health care, climate change conspiracy, America first etc; These things came onto the evangelical agenda and became almost mandatory adjuncts to their faith. Trump didn't care who or why people voted for him; he just wanted their votes, he wanted power. But underneath it he had complete contempt for the American system. He denigrated that system, its media and its governance with hints of conspiracy theorism and he attempted to bypass it with popularist rallies and social media. The Capitol Hill insurrection was a natural outcome of Trumpism whether he liked it or not.
Trump had a sinister looking affinity & rapport with strong arm dictators like Putin, Kim Jong Un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Mohammed bin Salman. If this was a sign (which think it is) that Trump had the qualities of a crypto-dictator then it is ironic that in some respects he stood for the very opposite of the things those right wing evangelicals elected him for: If allowed to have his way he was the antithesis of individual freedoms and small government. We saw hints of the kind of people Trump attracted when Michael Flynn, one of Trump's side kicks, suggested martial law be imposed to act on Trump's conspiracy theory that the election was rigged and force a re-count in Trump's favour. But the survivor in Trump probably realised that would make America look like a tin-pot military state and blow his cover completely. The revelation of Trump's threatening phone call to a Republican election official telling him to find more votes or else, taken together with the Capitol Hill insurrection looked bad enough as it was!
But the Christian right wing were blind to all this, blinded by their seeing the world through the paranoid spectacles of proto-Conspiracy theorism. For them mild social reforms, liberal attitudes, government initiatives and regulation were seen as the harbingers of a communist plot.
Trump cynically exploited a run down and culturally debased evangelical community just as he had exploited the crackpot conspiracy theorists like Jones and QAnon. In fact there is an overlap between right-wing evangelicals and conspiracy theorism (See here). But many evangelicals, whilst claiming to support freedom of the individual are the very opposite of what they claim to be; their cultural instincts lead them to favour a highly authoritarian fundamentalism with its absolute certainties, demagogic preachers, "anointed" patriarchs and Godfathers who rule almost by divine right. The notion of epistemic humility is utterly alien to them. They have, in fact, strong autocratic instincts; you will sometimes hear that "A church is a theocracy and not a democracy". It is unlikely that they would feel such antipathy toward government if government was in their hands; the tail seeks to wag the dog. Suspicious of government they may be, but I doubt they would be so suspicious if their subliminally dominionist vision came about and they at last held the reigns of power; it would be Rome all over again.
Some right wing evangelicals attempted to excuse their support for a candidate of clearly compromised political and personal morality by likening him to Cyrus or King Jehu, Biblical figures who worked out God's plans in spite of themselves. That right-wing evangelicals drew this parallel is revealing of their autocratic tendencies: Cyrus and Jehu were Middle Eastern despots at the centre of monarchical systems, circumstances hardly paralleled in democratic America. Right wing evangelicalism's subliminally monocratic vision of government was no model for democracy. I felt a certain amount of dubiousness when one citizen supporter of Trump told me that he believed the "Republic was being rebirthed". On the news I heard another Trump supporter saying they wanted Trump to set up a Trump dynasty. So perhaps the "rebirth" was as a monocratic system with a Trump dynasty at its head? In which case it would no longer be a republic!
The much hoped for scenario of the right-wing evangelical imagination found expression in a solid wall of "charismatic prophecies" that wrongly predicted a Trump electoral win**. Well, if there had been a Trump win I can tell them this: According to Tolkien only one hand can wear the ring of absolute power, the one ring to rule them all. That's why we have democracy instead of "Theocracy": Democracy attempts to distribute the power among epistemically and morally flawed humanity and forces them to give public account of themselves to one another. This may lead to untidy, messy and argumentative government, but such a system acknowledges that humanity is flawed, epistemically and morally, so that's to be expected. The fundamentalist kindergarten versions of Christianity abdicate their epistemic responsibilities and look for security & certainty and seek to end argument & debate with what they claim to be channels of unambiguous divine revelation either in the form of so-called "plain readings" of scripture and/or the rule of "anointed" patriarchs.
Relevant Links
The wasting of the evangelical mind
Footnote
** The news from America is that all the influential "charismatic prophets" wrongly predicted a Trump election win. This systematic error is evidence of a systemic problem: One might argue that since we would stop listening to one prophet who got it wrong on many prophecies why should we listen to an ensemble of culturally related prophets all of whom got it wrong on one prophecy? One commentator on the failed Trump prophecies expressed his belief that some of the "prophets" had a good track record and were respected Charismatic patriarchs & therefore still worth listening too. But for me, given the sectarian complexity of evangelical culture, life's far too short to rake through this extensive and varied culture and make such fine tuned distinctions, if indeed they exist as substantive distinctions. I've got better things to do.
ADDENDUM 07/09/21
If the possibility of fundamentalist dominionists being at the head of a Western dictatorship seems farfetched let’s recall that many American Christian fundamentalists are closely linked to Donald Trump the man who:
a) Vowed to “drain the swamp” of America’s well established democratic government,
b) Attempted to by-pass established democratic institutions and set up his alternatives,
c) Hobnobbed with professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and gave credence to the QAnon theorists,
d) Seeded the democratic debate with conspiracy theories,
e) Arguably helped provoke the attack on Capitol Hill,
f) Emboldened race supremacists & fascists, (cf. the Charlottesville rally)
g) Had a rapport with dictators like Russia’s Putin (etc)
h) Attempted to intimidate a republican election official into falsifying the vote count
i) Had an adviser who suggested imposing Trump’s view of the election using military force.
ADDENDUM 09/09/2021
In an address that can be seen here Steve Bannon, one of Trump's pardoned side kicks uses language that almost sounds as if he wants the 2024 US election to be the inauguration of a new dictatorship: He talks of 20k shock troops on standby ready to take over a country they effectively already control.....
If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct
it, then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately .....pre-trained teams ready to jump into federal agencies.... .We’re winning big in 2024 and we need to get ready now.......We control the country. We’ve got to start acting like it. And
one way we’re going to act like it, we’re not going to have 4,000 (shock
troops) ready to go, we’re going to have 20,000 ready to go and we’re going to
pick the 4,000 best and most ready in every single department.
Perhaps it's all just metaphorical election talk. I hope it is, but do people like Bannon talk in metaphors? If the far-right win the 2024 election would they ever again concede an electoral defeat if they think of themselves as controlling the country? Having crawled over the back of Trump could Bannon one day call himself "president"?
News Monitor
On Steve Bannon:
Trump to start social media under his control:
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