NYT "Trump or No Trump, Religious Authoritarianism Is Here to Stay"

[NRaleighLiberal]

Their unlikely ally may have lost the White House, but Christian nationalists still plan to win the war.

By Katherine Stewart
Ms. Stewart is the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/opinion/trump-religion-authoritarianism.html

Will President-elect Joe Biden’s victory force America’s Christian nationalists to rethink the unholy alliance that powered Donald Trump’s four-year tour as one of the nation’s most dangerous presidents? Don’t count on it.

The 2020 election is proof that religious authoritarianism is here to stay, and the early signs now indicate that the movement seems determined to reinterpret defeat at the top of the ticket as evidence of persecution and of its own righteousness. With or without Mr. Trump, they will remain committed to the illiberal politics that the president has so ably embodied.

As it did in 2016, the early analysis of the 2020 election results often circled around the racial, urban-rural, and income and education divides. But the religion divide tells an equally compelling story. According to preliminary exit polls from Edison Research (the data is necessarily rough at this stage), 28 percent of voters identified as either white evangelical or white born-again Christian, and of these, 76 percent voted for Mr. Trump. If these numbers hold (some other polls put the religious share at a lower number; others put the support for Mr. Trump at a higher number), these results indicate a continuation of support for Mr. Trump from this group.

The core of Mr. Trump’s voting bloc, to be clear, does not come from white evangelicals as such, but from an overlapping group of not necessarily evangelical, and not necessarily white, people who identify at least loosely with Christian nationalism: the idea that the United States is and ought to be a Christian nation governed under a reactionary understanding of Christian values. Unfortunately, data on that cohort is harder to find except in deeply researched work by sociologists like Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry.

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last paragraph

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Christian nationalist response to the 2020 election is that we’ve seen this movie before. The “stolen election” meme won’t bring Mr. Trump back into the Oval Office. But then, the birther narrative never took President Barack Obama out of office, either. The point of conspiratorial narratives and apocalyptic rhetoric is to lay the groundwork for a politics of total obstruction, in preparation for the return of a “legitimate” ruler. The best guess is that religious authoritarianism of the next four years will look a lot like it did in the last four years. We ignore the political implications for our democracy at our peril.



sorry about the pay wall.

This sort of thing pisses me off, and manages to scare the shit out of me too - there is no reasoning with them. They've applied the whole principal of "faith" into worshiping a true golden cow - the hypocrisy is stunning.

[theaocp]

1. Y'all queda is apparently quite seductive.

I just don't get the need to scrape before a father figure. Shame fucked me up, by I don't kowtow before it.

[SheltieLover]

2. Stockholm Syndrome?

They grow up being told they are "guilty," flawed for having been born & needing to be "saved." Also that women are "evil," and that their god created the Earth for humans to do with what they will.

What could go wrong?

[walkingman]

7. Excellent analogy.

[SheltieLover]

21. Thank you.

Since I was very young - 6 to 7 years old - I have been bewildered by how religions manage to brainwash people.

The hypocracy was immediately apparant to me & it is just beyond comprehension how & why people are so eager to unquestioningly follow what other humans set out for illogical (imo) belief systems.

And why any female would go along with belief systems that denegrate all women is completely beyond my comprehension.

[Maeve]

3. Too many worship power

And many have sold their souls for a mess of pottage

[Layzeebeaver]

4. Religion has always been authoritarian

They tell you what to believe, how to pray, how much to give, etc... it’s no wonder these followers are already preconditioned to accept a “dear leader” figure without question.

[octoberlib]

11. Yes authoritarian mindsets plus

authoritarian followers don’t arrive at their policies and beliefs through thought or research, they memorize them from their “leaders” ( parents, pastors, politicians).


John Dean has written about when they first started trying to take over the GOP back in the 1950’s under Eisenhower.

[SheltieLover]

22. Absolutely!

And every single one conveniently demeans women.

[Lars39]

5. Cut to the chase...are these idiots done with their King Cyrus?

[Zorro]

6. Time to review religious tax exemptions

Gotta pay if you wanna play politics.

[Mariana]

8. I hope President Biden will order the IRS to vigorously enforce the Johnson Amendment. nt.

[malaise]

9. They said that about Europe as well

This too will pass

[Thekaspervote]

16. Agree!

[Cosmocat]

18. that is a graveyard you are whistling by

I saw how the religious right wormed it way from the south to Western PA around Pittsburgh in the late 80s/early 90s. Before it was a blueish working class region, and it now it is a an epicenter of right wing scumbaggery.

The last decade or so, I have seen a LOT of what were prior meekish middle age women who were generally friendly types get radicalized into being deranged right wingers, losing their minds over NFL players taking knees, women who I never knew had the first interest in guns now posting hyper 2A gun memes, etc. The one thing that they all have is that they have become redicalized christians.

Not even mentioning abortion.

This is SO not Europe. These people have been sucked in by two extremely powerful forces of personal corruption - that they are the bestest of the best patriots and christians ever and that you, me, and all our other communist scumbag friends are the sum all of all that is evil, and are coming to get them. Pride and victimhood.

[Goodheart]

10. In the long run, I think trump's tenure has been very very bad for fundamentalism.

Young people are, for the most part, not stupid. They see the hypocrisy. They see the evil. They're turning away.

[ooky]

15. Older people too. This isn't my grandfather's Christianity. His church

fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless, healed the sick, and generally tried to address the needs of the community's less fortunate. This Christianity isn't the same thing. Young and old are running from these hate spewing places and the only ones left in the pews are selfish, democracy hating assholes.

[Cosmocat]

19. eh - he actually cemented it

Right wing, "conservative" media has been brainwashing their grey matter to much for decades, and gigging them up to support at record levels the most unchristian human being imaginable for the last half decades has completely distanced them from any bit of reality and decency.

They are more the victim now than ever.

[Goodheart]

23. That's true, but that doesn't mean their numbers are growing.

[Cosmocat]

25. We always see this lag in the "younger generation"

As a late Gen Xer, I can say that our generation had very minimal interest in religion. Lot of people from HS I knew who were not religious at all who are now fairly religious.

A lot of the black kids are now actual christians.

Almost universally, the white kids are the new age chrisofascists. Particularly the girls.

Kids today are more practical than we were, but going by how how my generation the majority of which went from keggers in the woods / preppies to being eager right wing scumbags ...

[stopbush]

12. Call it what it is: Christian authoritarianism. Not "religious."

I don’t see Jews or Muslims or any non-Xian religion pushing religious nationalism.

Just another example of Christianity having privileged status in this country while at the same time smearing all other religions with the shitbrush that is entirely a Xian creation.

[Turin_C3PO]

14. In this country you're right.

Of course there’s Middle Eastern Muslim theocracies. But you’re absolutely right that fundamentalist Christianity is the only religious threat here. The good news is that there’s more and more people every year that leave the church and identify as “no particular religion”.

[tanyev]

13. They keep going to church services and rallies without masks on,

"here to stay" isn't going to last as long as they think.

[Hortensis]

17. They're constantly striving and have had various moments before.

And with that the authoritarianism that has such strong overlap. They're never not with us.

So far their periods of increased power have (always belatedly) created more than enough appalled attention and resistance to stop them and send them packing back to their sanctuaries. Religious extremists are not exactly among our best or brightest and, like Trump, are both scarily ruthless and always their own worst enemies.

[Initech]

20. We'll never unite the country if we don't start flipping churches.

We need our own version of the Southern Strategy - since the old one never has or ever will work in our favor. It's an outdated mindset and needs to be updated for the 21st century.

It's time to bring back former Blue Dog Dem states like Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, and Tennessee. And even work on continuing to flip Texas. We'll probably never flip Alabama or Mississippi.

[Hotler]

24. It's called dominionism. Think Bill Barr and Mike Pence.

Dominionism or Christian sharia (Charia) is an ideology of Totalitarian theocracy. Based on the idea that Christians must not only dominate society, but institute and enforce Old Testament biblical law.

https://www.newsweek.com/bill-barr-most-dangerous-attorney-general-us-history-richard-w-painter-religious-extremism-1479858

https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/william-barr-wants-to-bring-gods-law-to-america

When fascism comes, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.