Politics and religion are two arenas where people tend to categorize others as either “them” or “us,” tribal behavior in other words. Depending on what is at stake, these intergroup interactions can become nasty and even lead to violence. Political contentions can lead to compromises providing a state of truce between the various parties. Religious contentions tend to be more difficult to resolve since they can include issues of salvation and perhaps a perception of the will of God. The most incendiary situations are those in which groups have aligned their religious motivations with political goals. A belief that the hand of God is at work makes compromise all but impossible and can justify any means to attain a political goal. The result is often death and destruction.
Tim Alberta spends much of his book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, considering the intersection of politics and religion among his class of white American evangelicals. This is a religious category dedicated to promoting right-wing Republican candidates. It is common for these people to support a Christian-based society influenced by specific biblical interpretations. This development has been referred to as Christian nationalism, but since the movement is inherently undemocratic and encourages autocracy, Christian fascism is the more appropriate label.
Alberta presents Russia under Vladimir Putin as an example of a Christian fascist state. He provides the viewpoint of Cyril Hovorun in describing how secular political goals were advanced by collaboration with a power-hungry religious leadership.
“An Orthodox monk, Hovorun spent a decade in Moscow as the theological aide-de-camp to Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and the second most powerful man in Russia.”
The secular political goal of Putin was to begin by reestablishing the former Soviet Union and become the dominant political and military power in Eurasia. In so doing, he would make the world safe for fascism, which he believed to be the natural order of the human species.
“As the historian Mara Kozelsky observed, ‘Orthodox Christian nationalism has been on the rise in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union,’ the by-product of a state desperate to rediscover legitimacy in the eyes of a chastened and aimless populace. Hovorun remembers being alarmed in 2007 when Vladimir Putin announced at a global security forum his desire to recreate the old Soviet empire. What concerned him even more was how, around that same time, the Kremlin began deploying obtrusive language around the restoration of ‘traditional values.’ It seemed clear that the strategy of Russia’s government—in partnership, Hovorun began to suspect, with Patriarch Kirill and the Orthodox Church—was to create a spiritual rationale for policies that might otherwise prove unpopular.”
“When Russia passed a 2013 law banning ‘propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships,’ it was evident that Putin, in contrast to leaders of the liberalizing and secularizing West, was successfully depicting himself as a global champion of religious and cultural fundamentalism.”
This invoking of protections for “traditional values” made Putin popular with conservative religious groups, particularly those in the US. Hovorun would leave Russia before the inevitable steps of Putin’s plan could be implemented. It would begin with the invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“This blatant violation of international law—as well as the bloody campaign that ensued in the Donbas, a disputed region of eastern Ukraine—was made palatable to the Russian people thanks to Moscow’s rhetoric of divine destiny. Gone was any pretense of institutional independence for the Orthodox Church. Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill were now operating in tandem.”
“By the time Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin had perfected a propaganda that casts nationalistic aggression in terms of cultural defense, geopolitical conquest in terms of religious obligation…The Russian people were convinced, Hovorun said, that they were fighting a ‘sacred war’ to liberate Ukraine from secularists, apostates, even Nazis. And though much of the heavy lifting was done by Patriarch Kirill—who told Russian troops mobilizing toward Ukraine to ‘remember that if you lay down your life for your country, you will be with God’—history would record a new canon being authored by Russia’s president.”
There are lessons to be learned from this intersection of politics and religion.
“Russia wasn’t merely using Christianity to endorse its ambitions. Russia was using Christianity to define its enemies. It was the kind of identitarian programming that presaged some of history’s greatest crimes—and, in the case of Russia’s butchery in Ukraine, it would not have been possible without the blessing of the Church.”
The butchery includes, among other things, torture, rape, mass murder of civilians, and cultural genocide; such is the involvement of Christianity in politics.
“When you have a special mission from God, then you are not bound by moral norms,’ Hovorun said. ‘You are free to do whatever your mission requires you to do’.”
Alberta’s ultimate interest was in the future of Christian nationalism within his evangelical community. Discussions led to this comment.
“Hovorun fought a smirk while describing how Putin manipulated his countrymen into buying a revisionist ‘founding myth’ of their nation, his goal being to ‘Make Russia Great Again’.”
The American white evangelicals have long followed Putin’s progress and have set the stage for a similar move. The myth of America as being formed as a Christian nation has long been accepted by many. That theme has even been expanded to include a presumed covenant between God and America, similar to that God had with the ancient Israelites. Alberta provides the perspective of Chris Winans, a pastor friend.
“’At its root, we’re talking about idolatry. America has become an idol to some of these people,’ Winans said. ‘If you believe that God is in covenant with America, then you believe—and I’ve heard lots of people say this explicitly—that we’re a new Israel. You believe that the sorts of promises made to Israel are applicable to this country; you view America as a covenant that needs to be protected. You have to fight for America as if salvation itself hangs in the balance. At that point, you understand yourself as an American first and most fundamentally. And that is a terrible misunderstanding of who we’re called to be’.”
When Putin began his full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the religious right demonstrated that their allegiance was more with Putin than with their own country.
“…Tucker Carlson, at the time still the top-rated Fox News personality, spent the first year of the war defending Putin’s honor, downplaying his savagery, and describing America’s aid to Ukraine as a secular ‘jihad’ aimed at toppling ‘an orthodox Christian country with traditional values.’ (He was joined in this effort by far-right American lawmakers, such as Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who ranted on Carlson’s show about ‘this war against Russia in Ukraine.’) Carlson’s program was played in a loop on Russian state television to reinforce the Kremlin’s talking points.”
The situation in the United States is quite different from that in Russia. The desire for religious involvement, and hopefully control, in political matters is already strong. There is a significant body of religious fascists in the United States just waiting for a messiah-like figure, another Putin perhaps, to arrive and lead them in forming the Christian fascist nation they believe is their God-given destiny. The person who showed up was Donald Trump.
Fortunately for the world, Donald Trump was incompetent and more interested in frequent adulation sessions than revolution. But now he is surrounded by a host of ambitious revolutionaries who think they can use Trump to gain power and then maintain it. Alberta provides a warning about the no-longer-Christian religious right, a major component of those power seekers.
“Something was happening on the religious right, something more menacing and extreme than anything that preceded it. This was no longer about winning elections and preserving the culture. This was about destroying enemies and dominating the country by any means necessary. There was no rhetoric too appalling, no alliance too shady, no biblical application too sacrilegious.”
Trump did send out a message assuring these people that if elected he would see they got what they want and they wouldn’t have to bother voting ever again. Hopefully, he will not have the opportunity to produce this revolution.
Eventually, a competent demagogue may appear
and then we are in real trouble.
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