Thoughts on an American Christian theocracy

A recent comment chided me for putting too much emphasis on America's radical right Christian nationalist (CN) wealth and power movement. The CN movement is anti-democracy, pro-tyranny politics packaged in faux Christianity. The commenter made a good point:

Germaine Germaine, you DO realize white Christian nationalism is actually on a sharp DECLINE, as is all church attendance. The more it declines, the more they will BLEAT and try by whatever means to stay relevant. But as all church doctrines, the end WILL COME. Those who recognize the end is coming will become more extreme (witness Putin and his war against Ukraine) but in the end it won't matter, they are DOOMED.

My response was:

Yes, I do know that church attendance is dropping and demographic changes are shifting away from the CN movement. That constitutes an existential threat to CN wealth and power. That is what makes the CN movement a brutal, enraged, vicious animal that is fighting for its very life.

Why do you think the radical right has gone all in on subverting the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court? This is the last gasp of the CN movement's attempt at forever power, wealth and a hyper-radical, morally and financially corrupt Christian fundamentalist theocracy. If they fail now, they know they may never get another chance.

But that only scratches the surface of thinking about the CN movement and tyranny more broadly.

There is solid research that shows a tendency among humans and societies to support some form of tyranny. That kind of mindset is present in all societies. If I recall right, the authoritarian mindset tends to constitute ~30-60% of a nation's population.

A near-final 2022 draft of a 2023 research paper entitled, Professed Democracy Support and Openness to Politically Congenial Authoritarian Actions within the American Public, comments:

Elites degrade democracy in part because of incentives that arise from public opinion. We report pre-registered and exploratory tests of which Americans are most likely to support democracy-degrading action, focusing on three distinct democracy attitudes assessed in a large demographically representative sample five weeks before the 2020 election. Professed opposition to democracy was relatively rare and most common among citizens who felt disengaged with politics. But a different pattern of findings emerged for attitudes toward (1) flagrant, politically congenial authoritarian policy action and (2) election subversion framed with a pro-democracy justification. These anti-democratic attitudes were relatively common, related to cultural conservatism among both Republicans and Democrats, and – consistent with an “involved-but-ignorant” hypothesis – highest among those who combined strong political interest with low political sophistication.

“We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.” --- Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, and Tuberville, January 2, 2021

As risks to American democracy have become more apparent, scholars have increasingly focused attention on attitudes toward democracy within the American public (Bartels, 2020; Drutman, Goldman, & Diamond, 2020; Zechmeister, 2018). The precise role that public attitudes play in the maintenance of democracy is a matter of debate. However, mass democracy attitudes can influence the incentives that elites face, and shortcomings in the public’s ability to serve as a check on undemocratic behavior would seem to constitute a liability for democracy (Graham & Svolik, 2020). Furthermore, anti-democratic sentiment may motivate or promote sympathy for political violence directed at opponents or those carrying out democratic processes (Kalmoe & Mason, 2022; Sullivan, Piereson, & Marcus, 1983). These types of concerns are no longer just theoretical in the United States, and the nature of anti-democratic sentiment therefore seems to be a matter of pressing normative importance.  

But efforts to understand the prevalence and implications of anti-democratic sentiment quickly run into a complication: there are different kinds of democracy-related attitudes and their distributions, correlates, and normative implications are likely to vary. For instance, substantial majorities of Americans profess support for a democratic system of government (Drutman et al., 2020). But it is well known that some Americans who profess support for democracy simultaneously report being open to authoritarian actions (Voeten, 2017), sometimes rather flagrant ones (Zechmeister, 2018). What is more, support for authoritarian actions rises to even higher levels when these actions are cued as instrumental to favored goals within the context of current political conflict (Bartels, 2020; Drutman et al., 2020; Malka & Lelkes, 2017; McCoy, Simonovitz, & Littvay, 2020). Indeed, vulnerabilities to American democracy seem to stem less from a weak commitment to the concept of democracy than from an openness to authoritarian actions carried out by favored political leaders to achieve specific goals in a polarized context (McCoy, Rahman, & Somer, 2018; Svolik, 2019). Moreover, elites may justify these actions as necessary for preserving democracy, as our epigraph illustrates, thereby harnessing abstract commitment to “democracy” for the goal of degrading democratic institutions and norms. 

Finally, we find that the link between political engagement and democracy-related attitudes is more complicated than previously assumed. Specifically, involvement with politics was a relatively strong predictor of professed democracy support, but not of politically congenial authoritarian actions or election subversion. Most intriguingly, the data were consistent with an involved-but-ignorant explanation of support for authoritarian actions and election subversion. That is, the Americans most likely to support such democracy degradation were those who combined low political knowledge with high subjective political involvement, a finding that was consistent across Republicans and Democrats. Strong involvement with politics may be favorable for giving lip service to democracy but may also energize support for politically congenial anti-democratic behavior among those who are unsophisticated.

So, yes, there are social and demographic trends that point to a weakening of the CN movement. That terrible fact is what infuses the CN wealth and power movement with urgency and focus. That is what gives rise to brutal, morally untethered tactics, e.g., endless outrageous lies and slanders. It fights for its life. All means and tactics are fair game because God's sacred ends justify all immoral and brutal means. 

The CN fight for life includes tactics like passing voter suppression laws, passing election subversion laws, gerrymandering the hell out of state legislature and House of Representatives voting districts, packing federal courts with radicalized theocratic-authoritarian capitalist extremists, and acting in concert with the other ideology that dominates the radical right Republican Party, namely brass knuckles, government and regulations hating capitalism.   

The point here is simple: American democracy and civil liberties can fall to a minority or minorities who cooperate to establish their own form of a tyranny of the minority.

Now I feel better. I just needed to get that off my chest. 😘