The Threat of Christofascism
Photograph Source: David Geitgey Sierralupe – CC BY 2.0
The U.S. is struggling through a profound socio-political crisis reflecting the deeper global economic and environmental realignments now taking place. The presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump signify a unique expression of the crisis: Harris, moderation and accommodation; Trump, radicalism and selfishness. The election outcome will shape the nation for a decade to come.
One key force in Trump’s campaign is those broadly associated with “Christian nationalism.” Two sociology professors, Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, state:
Simply put, Christian nationalism—an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity* with American civic belonging and participation—is a form of nascent or proto-fascism.
*“Christian” in this sense represents more of an ethno-cultural and political identity that denotes a specific constellation of religious affiliation (evangelical Protestant), cultural values (conservative), race (white), and nationality (American-born citizen).
Going further, they argue:
Our research clearly demonstrates that Christian nationalism actually has little to do with religiousness per se. In fact, when we compare how Christian nationalist ideology and traditional measures of religious commitment (e.g., worship attendance, prayer, sacred text reading) influence Americans’ political attitudes and behaviors, we find they work in the exact opposite direction.
In 1982, Dorothee Sölle’s coined the term “Christofascism” to characterize the authoritarian populism that arises from the mass disenfranchisement inherent to capitalism. In the West, it is not limited to Trump in the U.S., but also to Viktor Orban in Hungary, Andrzej Duda in Poland and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Even Russia’s Vladimir Putin has attempted to co-opt Christian legitimacy to rationalize his authoritarian rule.
In the U.S., Christian nationalist are radicals Christians who share three key beliefs. First and foremost, they believe that America was founded as a white Christian nation by white men who were not only Christians but deeply steeped in the Bible – and the Bible is the word of God. As Timemagazine noted, “The ideal American is generally understood to be a natural-born Anglo Protestant. It is this group who created the U.S., and it is this group who should remain central to its cultural identity and political leadership.”
Second, as the Heritage Society argues, the U.S. of A is not a “democracy” but a “republic” – a republic adhering to the word of God. To this end, some Christian nationalists are part of Convention of States Project that embraces Article V of the Constitution, that distinguishes between two paths for constitutional amendments. One involves the ratification of a proposed amendment by a two-thirds vote in each chamber of Congress and being ratified by three-fourths of states. The second path requires two-thirds of states to pass resolutions calling for a constitutional convention and voting on the amendment. It’s never been used but some Christian nationalists are pursuing it.
Third, Christian nationalism support strong – if not authoritarian — leaders who are not afraid of using violence to enforce “God-given” social hierarchies. Time magazine goes so far as to note that “This includes setting aside the results of free and fair elections to ensure a chosen leader remains in power.”
Not surprising, the rise of Christian nationalism is occurring as religious beliefs in the U.S. is declining and the nation is becoming ever-more secular. A recent Gallup survey found that Americans’ membership in houses of worship dropped below 50 percent for the first time in eight decades. In 2020, 47 percent of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50 percent in 2018 and 70 percent in 1999.
At the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, some of the rioters wore MAGA hats and T-shirts declaring, “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.”
The Christian nationalist movement is one of the most radical tendencies within the (broadly speaking) radical right. Christofascist embrace a set of common belief that an ideal society is based on patriarchy, heterosexuality and pronatalism. These beliefs include: (i) support for ending a woman’s right to vote, the repeal the 19th Amendment; (ii) support for “Heartbeat Acts” that grant citizens the right to sue abortion providers; (iii) support for school vouchers that would funnel taxpayer dollars to private schools, thus undercutting public education; (iv) support for book banning in schools and libraries; and (v) support for the outlawing of pornography which, they claim, leads to a breakdown of morals and to rapes.
In 2023, the Public Religion Research Institute, (PRRI) interviewed more than 22,000 adults as part of its American Values Atlas and found that three in ten Americans qualify as Christian nationalism “Adherents” (10%) and “Sympathizers” (20%). Not surprising, they reported high rates of voting for Trump in 2020.
White Christian nationalists prioritize the issues of immigration and access to guns more so than Hispanic and Black Christian nationalists. Most troubling, a majority of Christian nationalism “Adherents” (54%) and “Sympathizers” (45%) agree that “there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” compared with only 22% of Skeptics and 7% of Rejecters.
One of the most radical tendencies within Christian nationalist movement is the “Dominionists,” as The New York Times reports, that comes from “the passage in Genesis in which man is given ‘dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’”
Another Christian nationalist far-right tendency is the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), an associationformed in the 1990. It has been defined as “an unbiblical religious movement that emphasizes experience over Scripture, mysticism over doctrine, and modern-day ‘apostles’ over the plain text of the Bible.”
Mike Johnson (R-LA), Speaker of the House of the Representatives, is affiliated with NAR. On his first day as Speakers, he declared:
I believe that scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority, he raised up each of you, all of us. And I believe that God has ordained and allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment and time.
And in 2022, he stated “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”
Often forgotten, before Johnson launched his political career, he was a lawyer advising Exodus International. According to CNN, he “partnered with the groups to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens.” The group was founded in 1976 and was a proponent of what was dubbed“ex-gay” conversion movement. It argued that conversion therapy programs, based on religious and counseling methods, could make gay individuals straight.
The Christian nationalist strategy is outlined in the Heritage Society’s “Project 2025,” an authoritarian plan to steer the U.S. toward autocracy. It lays out the Christian right’s agenda in no uncertain terms:
The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights, out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. [p. 4]
Whoever wins the 2024 election, the nation’s deepening socio-political crisis will likely intensify the Christian nationalist call for an autocratic white religious regime to control the country. If Trump wins, this tendency will likely be adhered to through the implementation of Project 2025. If Trump loses, efforts toward secession will likely increase. In either case, failure to address the deepening global economic and environment realignments now reshaping the world will only make it all so much worse.
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