I’ve written several
novels now that deal with the varieties of American religious fundamentalism. I
come by this preoccupation naturally. Born into a strict Southern Baptist
family, I lived for a time on a religious campground run by relatives who saw themselves in the tradition of biblical prophets. In my early twenties,
I spent a few years as a Pentecostal before I finally left the church for good.
The one key insight I gained through this spiritual journey is that religion’s
main selling point is authority. Life itself is hard and often unfair, and its
chaos ends, for all of us, at the grave. We seek out an authority
to guide us because life is so clearly out of our hands. This is why the world
is full of people (professional as well as amateur) claiming to speak for god,
claiming to own some small (or large) share of god’s authority on everything
from life and death to sex and politics. To put it in stark capitalist terms:
religion offers authority and it offers it cheap.
Of course, religious
authorities have long sought to extend their influence into the political
arena. This is as true in America as anywhere else, yet America has always been
notable for its official skepticism of religious authority. “The separation of
Church and State” is not a phrase in the Constitution; rather it is a unifying
idea that runs through the document, from Article VI to the First Amendment.
This separation, it should be noted, was as religious as it was pragmatic.
While the framers — most of them believers in one stripe of Christianity or
another — feared a government controlled by zealots, they also didn’t want to
see their religion reduced to another pig at the public trough. In the
political realm, they knew, religious authority is reduced to a commodity, just
one of many commodities to be bartered or bought in the circles of influence.
Despite the best
efforts of the founders, however, religious political power has always been a
factor in American life. It was used to justify the genocide of the Native
Americans and helped to condone the bondage of African slaves. It began to ebb in the late 19th century, the first victim of modernity,
its authority usurped by science and art. Since marrying itself to the
Republican party under Reagan, however, religious political power has been on
the rise. Christianity hasn’t always made for the most natural bedfellows with
supply side economics and the military industrial complex, but the marriage has
been mutually beneficial.
What political value
does this religious authority have in the age of Trump? If the recent executive
actions taken by the president barring immigrants of seven Muslim nations from
entering the United States (including the barring of Syrian refugees indefinitely) are any indication,
then the answer appears to be that Christianity’s sad duty in the new order is to
aid and comfort white nationalism. Religious authority gives sanction to a philosophy of "us vs. them", and so as walls go up and doors to entry are barred, American Christianity just becomes another guard at the gate.
This is a tragic turn of events. For years, leaders of
the religious right have been major power players in the Republican party. They
haven’t always gotten their way, but their power has steadily increased since
the 1980s. Nevertheless in 2016 their preferred candidate, Ted Cruz, was
trounced in the Republican primaries by a thrice married casino owner with a
history of sexual assault and business fraud. In the general election, this
same candidate – a man who once bragged that he has never needed to ask for God’s
forgiveness — won the votes of religious constituents overwhelmingly. In some ways, this is baffling. Trump’s swagger and
his narcissism, to say nothing of his lecherousness and materialism, would seem
to make him an anathema to anyone who claims to live by the teachings of
Christ.
But, again, religion’s
main political selling point is authority, and in an age of authoritarianism, religious
authority must rush to catch up. Trump beat them at their own game. He promised
to torture prisoners and target innocent civilians in war zones, explicit war
crimes; he promised to build walls and bar refugees; he promised to abolish an
absolute freedom of religion by banning Muslims from immigrating to America and
by forcing all Muslim citizens to register with the government. He leapfrogged religious
authoritarians not just by promising to act without the constraint of other,
lesser, authorities — like the law, American tradition, and basic common
decency—but by also promising to act without the constraint of the softer
Christian virtues of humility, mercy, and charity. In short, he promised to act
like a man who had never needed to ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness is for
people who make mistakes. Forgiveness is for people who acknowledge a
responsibility to others, an authority beyond themselves.
To be sure, there was some opposition to these neofascist proposals, and to Trump himself, from some
on the religious right. There were tremors of pushback in the halls of Liberty
University and throughout precincts of Mormon America. But it all came to very
little in the end, and now that the religious right has largely capitulated to
Trumpism in theory, we’re seeing how much resistance it will raise against Trumpism
in practice. With Trump’s upsets in the primaries and the election, God-hucksters
like Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell Jr. polished their
brands by attaching themselves to him as publicly as possible. In VP Mike
Pence — a stalwart of Christian politics, whose war on reproductive freedom and
gay rights as governor of Indiana portends bad things — Trump has someone who
can throw red meat to the religious right and speak its language. In all truth,
though, it’s unclear how much work the president will have to do to keep
the peddlers of religious influence satisfied. They’ve already proven they’re
ready to accept the scraps from his table. And for his part, Trump seems to
like the temples as long as they’re plated in gold and run by moneychangers.
