Is God a Dictator? Examining the Relationship Between Christianity and Authoritarianism with Dr. David Gushee

As Donald Trump solidifies his grip on the evangelical right in the United States, we are left to wonder: How is it conceivable that a faith predicated on love and compassion could veer towards authoritarianism? We're grappling with this disquieting reality as we delve into the substantive connection between Christianity, especially American evangelical Christianity, and the drift towards authoritarian leadership. Join me and my distinguished guest, Dr. David Gushee, a renowned university professor and Christian ethicist, and author of the recent book Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies, as we navigate this complex discourse.

In our conversation, we unearth the historical intersections of Christianity and democracy, discussing how faith traditions have, and can still, bolster egalitarian and compassionate societal values. We also examine the disconcerting tendency of some Christians to align with authoritarian figures, contrary to their faith's core principles. The influence of homeschooling and Christian schools in perpetuating non-democratic ideologies and the potential threat this trend poses to the faith and democracy are among the compelling topics we tackle.

We wrap up with a hopeful note, highlighting the potential of Christianity to catalyze a more inclusive and compassionate society. Dr. Gushee offers enlightening insights on the dormant democratic essence within Christianity, waiting to be rekindled. We end by challenging the current state of Christianity and envisaging a future where democracy reflects our shared values rather than being merely a political system. Listen in for an engaging, enlightening conversation that will leave you rethinking the ties between faith, politics, and society - and your role in saving the the country from its Christian enemies.

Recommended:
Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies - David Gushee
Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The Chosen - Chaim Potok

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Transcript

Dr. Gushee: 0:00

I also show in the book the unhappy discovery that in the contemporary Christian right-wing precincts, sometimes Catholic, sometimes Protestant, non-democratic or at least non-liberal democratic versions of politics are being taught in homeschool and Christian school and church environments, and have been for a while. So we actually have an incubator of non-democratic whether it's Puritan or medieval Catholic or Christian strongman kinds of ideas being taught to young people in homeschool and Christian school environments. So there is a dissenting community within the US that is teaching its children something other than what we came up with here in 1776 and 1789. And some of these folks are being elected as legislators and certainly pastoring churches.

Shawn: 0:56

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. Evangelicalism, a dynamic force within Christianity, has at times found itself entangled with political ideologies that seem worlds apart from the teachings of love and compassion found in the Bible. One of those times is now. We are living through a perilous time in which considerable parts of American evangelical Christianity have taken a troubling path towards authoritarianism, and for some of us maybe most of us there is a dynamic at play here that seems dissonant. This authoritarian drift within Christianity doesn't align with our understanding of a humble and graceful God. This embrace of a top-down strongman political leadership, what some call Christian nationalism stands in conflict with rich historical intersections between Christian ethics and democratic principles of equality, justice and human dignity, and so this authoritarian drift raises troubling questions. How do we make sense of it, given Jesus' own warnings about earthly powers and calls to care for the poor and the marginalized and the vulnerable? Shouldn't Christianity help redeem communities rather than divide them through extremism? How does a faith that preaches humility, love and servitude find itself aligned with political ideologies that lean towards authority, control and exclusivity? And how, in God's name no pun intended do Christians end up with a religious leader like Donald Trump? Christianity at its core carries seeds of democratic ideals, and there is a thriving alternative thread of pro-democratic Christian scholarship in action Thinkers like Walter Rauschenbush, martin Luther King Jr and Pope Francis, who ground human dignity and co-creation of a just world in sacred texts and theology.

Shawn: 2:48

Today I'm talking to one such thinker, dr David Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University and chair of Christian social ethics at Free University Amsterdam. He's also a pastor and a Christian ethicist. He's written and edited over 28 books and over 175 other publications. His most recent book, defending Democracy from its Christian enemies, is, to my mind, an essential read for anyone seeking to understand not only why Christianity is so vulnerable to authoritarian overtures and impulse, but also how Christianity has a rich tradition of democracy and what that could look like in action today. So in this conversation we talk about this authoritarian threat from Christianity, how some evangelicals have embraced authoritarianism, and simultaneously we'll also discuss how Christianity could actually harbor a tradition that aligns with the principles of democracy, and we'll navigate through the historical currents that have shaped evangelicalism, examining the factors that have led to the sometimes uncomfortable alliance between certain segments of the evangelical community and authoritarian figures like Vladimir Putin of Russia, Viktor Orban of Hungary, jair Bolsonaro, brazil and Donald Trump, and we talk about how much evangelical culture has come to reflect authoritarian traits in its movement concentrated power, demonization of enemies, claims to exclusive moral authority and loyalty demanded to a singular leader, tendencies that run counter to many Christians' own professed ethics.

Shawn: 4:22

I went into this conversation skeptical that democracy can be reflected in today's Christianity, given its history, its structure, its current role in global politics and governing. But I don't know. Could it be that the essence of democracy is not foreign to Christianity, but lies dormant in its history, and it's just waiting to be rediscovered? If so, then we have no time to waste. So if you liked this episode, or any episode, please give it a like on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, dr Gushee. Thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Gushee: 5:10

I am glad to be with you, Shawn. I'm doing good today. I hope you are as well.

Shawn: 5:14

I am as well, thank you, thank you. So over the past handful of years I've been watching what's happening with Christian faith, kind of as an outsider, so a bit removed, and as we'll talk about. I've been both surprised and not surprised at things like the embrace of violence in pursuit of preferred social and policy outcomes. In some corners, the acceptance of people like Donald Trump is effectively I don't know if you would agree with this characterization, but almost as like a religious leader and then the leaning into authoritarianism, and not benevolent authoritarianism, but angry and vengeful and to some degree spiteful. And recently I read your book Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies and I think it's really thoughtful. It's an insider view, I think, of how Christianity got to this place and almost a scientific analysis of how it could happen in the first place. So I'm excited to have you here to help it all make sense.

Dr. Gushee: 6:03

Well, thank you for reading the book. That's obviously what any author wants is for people to read and take seriously what you're doing, so I appreciate it.

Shawn: 6:12

So let's start by I want to place you in the environment to get a better understanding of who you are and why, for better or worse, you've picked this fight. So you've said in your lectures and also in the book that you're often dismissed by the Christian community as just being a religious man of the left. So that's one space to occupy in the Christian world. It's an entirely different space to be in to say essentially what you argue in the book that democracy needs to be defended from its Christian enemies. That's a challenge to Christianity. So I'm wondering, as a religious person, how do you get to this place and how comfortable are traditional Christian spaces for you these days?

Dr. Gushee: 6:47

Well, I have definitely not given up my Christian identity and commitment. I am an ordained minister. I am in church every week. I teach at a Christian seminary. I've got Christianity all over me and in me. I've been a Christian for 45 years. I still am. I think that what we're dealing with here is a permutation of Christianity on the authoritarian right-wing side. That is disastrous. This is an internal fight that you might say that I'm picking or that has come to me that I didn't look for. It's an internal fight within American Christianity but, as you know from reading the book, within other parts of the world too, about how Christianity is to be understood, especially when it comes to the public arena. There are some traditional Christian spaces that I would not be at all comfortable with ultra-conservative Catholicism, ultra-conservative political evangelicalism or whatever. I think it's this bastardized version of Christianity that is the outlier. I think I'm within the mainstream of Christianity and I'm not going to give up that space.

Shawn: 8:01

When you say you're in the mainstream. This is something that I wrestle with because I'm not like I said, I'm not practicing and I'm not an insider. The information that I get is largely via media, like the news as to what's happening with Christianity. I really wrestle with how much of this is just laser focus on a small segment, maybe a loud segment, of Christianity. How much of this is I have a sneaking suspicion where you're going to go with this, because you've written a book about it how much of this is actually a serious threat, not just to democracy, as you mentioned in the book, but also to mainstream Christianity?

Dr. Gushee: 8:41

I think that there's a certain kind of culture that is especially susceptible to a hard-right, authoritarian turn. I'm talking about national culture, to start off. That is a culture in which a certain strand of Christianity has historically dominated and is now losing ground, that could be, or perceives itself to be, losing ground, that is losing adherence, losing cultural influence, losing political influence and power, losing its own, to put it more bluntly, losing its own children and grandchildren. It could be in Russia with the Orthodox, or it could be in Poland with the Catholics, or it could be in the US with mainly evangelical Protestants.

Dr. Gushee: 9:30

In that environment, sometimes Christians prove susceptible to hysteria and panic and to demagoguery around the idea that the left or the liberals are attacking Christians and traditional Christian values and traditional Christian people, and that democracy maybe is no longer trustworthy as a political system in which conservative and traditional Christians can live at peace or safely or with the level of social control that they would like to have. I think it's aggrieved Christians, in a context in which they're losing numbers and influence, that would be historically Christian cultures, especially in Europe and the US, that are vulnerable to this kind of trajectory. Yes, I believe that it tends to be very dangerous in politics, but also to be very unhealthy as an expression of Christianity. As a Christian pastor and ethicist, I care about that just as much as I care about the political. Though this book is mainly focused on the political implications, I think that what this kind of right-wing hysteria and authoritarianism does to Christianity internally is also very destructive.

Shawn: 10:47

There's this question that I've had kind of rattling around in my head for a while, which is trying to draw the distinction between an evolution of Christianity into this space. I want to talk a little bit. It's been characterized as Christian nationalism and you take a little bit of unbridge with that. But before we get there, so there's this characterization that Christianity has evolved, or maybe this is a more raw expression of Christianity that we're seeing. But I also wonder if in some way the reverse is true, and that's folks that have traditionally been Christian are actually moving out of traditionally Christian spaces. So I suppose that's one question, if that's a possibility. And then two could we argue that this variant or version of Christianity on the march is actually anti-Christian?

Dr. Gushee: 11:40

Well, it's the problem of the no true Scotsman right.

Dr. Gushee: 11:45

Well, no true Christian could embrace what I call authoritarian, reactionary and anti-democratic politics and authoritarian, reactionary, xenophobic, sometimes racist, sexist Christianity.

Dr. Gushee: 12:00

Now I would say it's not what I think is consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus, it's not what I would ever think is the best version of Christianity, but I can't say that it's unrecognizable in terms of, sadly, the historic practice of Christianity and, as you probably well know, many people leave Christianity along the way because they are so appalled by the wrongs that Christians have done through the centuries, whether it's anti-Semitism in the Holocaust and the roots of the Holocaust, or slavery or whatever it might be.

Dr. Gushee: 12:40

I think that broadly one could say that authoritarianism, patriarchy, xenophobia, racism, the blessing of the mistreatment of non-white peoples, this is part of the colonial legacy of Christianity. It's part of the North American and South American legacy of Christianity, that is, christendom exported around the world in colonization and slavery and the destruction of indigenous populations and so on. So this is a toxin that is in the tradition but that, as an ethicist I argue should never have been in the tradition. It was a wrong turn 400 years ago. 500 years ago we should have learned our lessons. It should not be returning to things that we should know better and that the history should tell us, and that our own faith should tell us is not what Christianity should be about.

Shawn: 13:37

I mentioned Christian nationalism and you alluded to a term that you've coined, which is authoritarian, reactionary Christianity. I think on the face of it these might seem like interchangeable terms to use to describe the contemporary Christian movement, but you argue in the book that authoritarian, reactionary Christianity is probably a more apt description of the movement today than Christian nationalism. I suppose, just to level set for the listener, can you explain the difference between the two and why the distinction is important?

Dr. Gushee: 14:09

Yeah, now, this is not a hill that I will really die on, but I do think that my term illuminates some aspects of this reality that the term Christian nationalism obscures just a bit. So the recent use of the term Christian nationalism, as far as I can tell, comes from sociology and from the work of, for example, sam Perry and Andrew Whitehead and Phil Gorski, who have been. Especially in the Perry and Whitehead book Taking America Back for God, they picked up the term Christian nationalism and the way they define it I read as essentially conservative white Christians who yearn for a Christian nation organized along the lines of patriarchy and white supremacy and so on. So I think the better term that even in and they even use this in their book that what people are looking for is a Christian nation and what they mean by that is a certain kind of backward looking, patriarchal, racist kind of white supremacist thing that they're calling Christian. I don't like the use of the word nationalism for that, because in ethics we use the word nationalism to describe kind of patriotism on steroids, often violent, hyper-patriotic, hyper-nationalist our country is the best, other countries are inferior, we're free to trample on other countries, and so nationalism is a term of art in ethics. That's been around for a while and I prefer for it to be reserved for that use, and I don't think that Christian nationalism is currently being used really as talking about the same thing. That's one reason why I find the confusion of the terms maybe not very helpful. I would say this I say the problem is authoritarian, reactionary Christianity, so reactionary is maybe a place to start.

Dr. Gushee: 16:08

I think that the kind of Christians and I know these Christians, I've been around them for decades the kind of Christians we're talking about here, operate viscerally from a fiercely negative reaction to just about every social change that has happened in our country or in the West since about 1960. And so go back to your history classes and think about everything that has happened. I tell people, whether it's the prayer in schools, decision of 1962, the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, sexual revolution, the gay rights movement, large-scale immigration from non-European countries, you name it right All of these changes. And even you can put in there well, you definitely need to put in there the Roe v Wade in 1973 and the division in the country of the Vietnam War, kind of shattering any cultural consensus that America was good and that our military was good and our government was trustworthy.

Dr. Gushee: 17:05

But on the Christian side, what there has been is a conservative Christian side, a negative reaction to all of these changes, just the changes described as secularism or secular humanism or godless humanism. Now, different pieces of it would be wokeness or whatever various ways of saying that the culture has lost its mind. It's lost its bearings morally and religiously. God has been rejected, traditional morality has been rejected, and now we're being persecuted. And now, I think here's where democracy comes in. I think that conservative Christians who felt this way about these social changes initially embarked on a kind of a traditional missionary strategy like the way we will take America back for God is by evangelizing the country, and that didn't succeed. And then in the 70s, the people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and all of them said, okay, well, what we need is to get a partnership going with the Republican Party, and this was the Christian right strategy. But that was a democratic strategy. Right, we win elections, we get our person elected.

Dr. Gushee: 18:16

Trump introduced a more open authoritarianism into the mainstream and then everything about the way he conducted the presidency and certainly what happened after November of 2020 introduced and, you might say, legitimized a turn towards anti-democratic authoritarianism, even insurrectionism, as we saw on January 6th, more open talk of violence, more open talk of disregarding democracy or even reconsidering democracy altogether. But I think the driver is a reactionary negative to negativity towards everything that has happened since the 60s and a turn towards authoritarianism as the solution. Democracy isn't working necessarily. I mean, what is democracy giving us? It's giving us Barack Obama and it's giving us Roe versus Wade and it's giving us some school boards that teach our children lies and all of that. And so I think that the more democracies results are seen as disastrous, the more democracy itself begins to be questioned. But I do think you cannot dismiss the role of the singular individual, donald Trump, in helping to authorize and legitimate anti-democratic means.

Shawn: 19:31

I think one of the things that maybe non-Christians struggle with when it comes to Donald Trump is he just seems so antithetical to a general understanding of Christianity, and maybe this is true for Christians as well that are maybe head scratching on this a bit, but maybe not. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or explanations that could help somebody, I suppose like myself, right Like a non-Christian understand how somebody like Donald Trump can come to be essentially a religious leader in the Christian movement, given his history, his behavior, the way he talks about people, how he even feels about Christians.

Dr. Gushee: 20:11

Well, there's a more and less radical way to describe what a moral disaster this is. Okay, so let me try it this way. A slightly less radical way to describe what a moral disaster this is for Christians is something like this, and this is pretty much the take that I offer in my book that Trump's radicalism, his authoritarianism and his verbal siding with traditional Christians. I will fight for you. I am your representative, I will accomplish your goals". All of that was encouraging to people who have felt like they're backpedaling in relation to cultural changes that they dislike. And so he's essentially saying you don't have to like me, you don't have to believe that I'm a Christian. He never made much of an effort to pretend, you know, but I will give you what you want. I am your guy. If you're mainly about racial reaction, I'll certainly give you that. If you're mainly about patriarchy and restoring the strong male dominant figure, I'll give you that. If you're mainly about economic distress because your jobs have been shipped overseas, I'll give you that. If you're mainly about abortion, I'll give you a reversal over Overses Wade. He didn't ever do much on the LGBT front. That wasn't really his issue, but he had people around him who did. And if you're mainly upset about immigration, I'll be anti-immigrant. I'll give you that and tighten the borders and all that. You don't have to like me, you just have to know that I will be the best person to give you your goals.

Dr. Gushee: 21:46

So it's transactional, which is the definition of Trump, but it's also here's a rescuer that we've been needing, and he's tougher than George W Bush, tougher than Ronald Reagan, tougher than John McCain or Mitt Romney. He really will fight for us, and so he must be God's person in some mysterious way. And then you can come with biblical parallels like Cyrus or something. But the more radical interpretation is that some of the right-wing precincts of American Christianity had already become, or always were, toxically racist and xenophobic and masculinist and homophobic and crude, and ends justify the means immoral, so that Trump is not a violation of Christian values or ethos of a certain part of the population. He actually embodies it.

Dr. Gushee: 22:46

This is a little bit more what Kristen Dumay did in her book Jesus and John Wayne, talking about the very disturbing possibility that, for example, trump's sexism and casual talk about sexual assault and authoritarianism and anti-democratic all that, that there were already strands of conservative Christianity that were already really kind of operating that way and so in that vein he would not really be a violation of Christian values. Sadly, he would reflect a certain already toxified version of Christianity and that's incredibly distressing. But I think there's a lot of truth to it and she gives lots of examples in her book. So anybody who's listening to this should. If they haven't, they need to read her book Jesus and John Wayne. But I lean in my book especially on the idea that here's a guy who will finally deliver. Other people made promises, but this guy will deliver and in many ways he did.

Shawn: 23:43

And I think that gets at the heart of utilizing authoritarianism as a means to an end. Essentially, I can sympathize, then, with Trump as being that figure, how he, I suppose, then can comfortably sit in that space. But I do want to talk a little bit about authoritarianism and democracy and Christianity, which is really the heart of what you're writing about. Because, full disclosure, I'm not particularly surprised that any movement could be susceptible to authoritarianism as a means to an end, because it's essentially a quick way to get what you want without having to deal with compromise or negotiation. So I could just imagine in any space where authoritarianism is a potential means to an end. So I'm not entirely surprised that we're seeing that in Christianity. But one of the things that I've kind of, I guess, opined about and I mean a little uncomfortable doing so, primarily because I don't want to paint with such a broad brush but is this idea that religion generally not just Christianity, but religion generally just seems to me as if it is predisposed to authoritarianism, primarily because of the structure of religion most religions right in which there's one overarching deity, god or Allah, and essentially they establish what the tenets of life are, how we should live, what's expected of us.

Shawn: 25:02

And then what type of punishment comes from disobedience, and often you know, spoiler alert it's like maiming or death yeah, spoiler alert. And they demand like total loyalty and obedience. So to me it seems clear that people in religious households are socialized into an authoritarian form of government, and then I've always wondered how these same folks square living in a democratic society, which is another huge part of their life, how do they separate those two things and accept both of them? And this is I bring this up because this is something that you kind of squarely address in defending democracy from its Christian enemies. But you argue that Christians should actually be disposed toward democracy and not authoritarianism, which doesn't strike me as entirely obvious. So can you explain your thinking?

Dr. Gushee: 25:50

Yeah, oh, there's so much here and I love it that you have your finger on one of the most subtle issues and the most important. So let's talk about authoritarianism and religion. Let's take the historic Abrahamic religions of Judaism, christianity and Islam. They are ancient religions, they come from the ancient world and I argue in the book that, born long before democracy, was a widespread concept or practice emphasizing loyalty, absolute loyalty and service to the one true God. There is authoritarian potential at least in all three of these religions. And then I can find my discussion mainly the Christianity, because it's my tradition. I think that there are biblical resources for more egalitarian, democratic, consultative, covenantal all terms that I use in the book. There are resources for all of that in the Bible itself and in the Christian tradition, but that it's fair to say that until the early modern period, in European Christendom especially, and then in the colonizing environments, authoritarian politics and authoritarian religion dominated and often were partnered Right, they went together.

Dr. Gushee: 27:07

I think the Reformation made church-state partnerships harder to sustain because religious pluralism began to spread all through Europe and to sustain a authoritarian, monolithic church-state partnership increasingly required killing heretics, dissidents and heretics, and there had been some of that obviously earlier, but the Reformation made this a problem that never went away. And then, as the Reformation splintered itself and you had all kinds of different groups, religious uniformity and authoritarian state control over religion became harder and harder to sustain and the bloodshed and mayhem associated with state religious authoritarianism became increasingly problematic and you began to get voices, and I highlight the Baptists. There were others in England and elsewhere saying you know, maybe the state should not be in the religion business and maybe the state's wing should be clipped a little bit, maybe we need to have limited state with less power, including over the realm of conscience. And you have the birth of an early religious argument for human rights, for limited government and for democracy. And this is 17th century, but there are a lot of centuries before that. So what I argue in the book is that there was a religious case being made for democracy by the 17th century, if not earlier, and that the appeal spread gradually. Meanwhile you had secular or more secular philosophers like John Locke and so on, making arguments for thinking of government as emerging from the ground up, from the people, as opposed to coming from the top down, from God, or from the ruler, the monarch. And so it's both. It's the combination of religious and secular ideas that gives us the preconditions for democratic government with religious liberty, which is the miracle of the American experiment in the late 18th century.

Dr. Gushee: 29:10

So gradually, many, many Christians began to democratize their thinking about government, that democracy was actually better than monarchy, or then autocracy, that religion could be fine. Christianity could do well in conditions of religious liberty, maybe more of a free market of religions as opposed to state dominated religious control. And so what I'm saying is the authoritarian politics and religion began to give way to a new way of thinking, at least about politics and sometimes also about religion, but that the authoritarianism in the tradition never completely disappeared and it was always available to be mobilized in situations of crisis, as some people think this is. But also I show in the book that large chunks of dominant Christian communities had a really hard time coming to terms with democracy. The foot-dragging about accepting democracy all over Europe you can see it in France, you can see it in Germany, you can see it elsewhere had a lot of Christians involved, because they didn't like democracy, they didn't like the implications of pluralism and freedom of conscience and so on, and so Christians were at the heart of anti-democratic movements all the way into the 20th century and you can also show how the Vatican really didn't come to terms with democracy until Vatican II in the 1960s.

Dr. Gushee: 30:35

I also show in the book the unhappy discovery that in the contemporary Christian right-wing precincts, sometimes Catholic, sometimes Protestant, non-democratic or at least non-liberal democratic versions of politics are being taught in homeschool and Christian school and church environments, and have been for a while. So we actually have an incubator of non-democratic whether it's Puritan or medieval Catholic or Christian strongman kinds of ideas being taught to young people in homeschool and Christian school environments. So there is a dissenting community within the US that is teaching its children something other than what we came up with here in 1776 and 1789. And some of these folks are being elected as legislators and certainly pastoring churches. That's a long answer to your question, but I hope it's helpful that the authoritarianism is always there to be drawn upon. The pre-democratic versions of Christian politics are always available to be drawn upon and they are being drawn upon explicitly by thought leaders and not just by demagogues today.

Shawn: 31:42

So I want to have a conversation, but I think the only way that I can do this, where I'm going is to make this really binary and extreme, so having two extreme polls to it and one is the very authoritarian kind of right-wing extremist vision for Christianity, and then on one end and then the other being, you know, somehow Christianity, you know embracing democracy and you know, being organic, and from the people up I mean organic to some degree, right.

Shawn: 32:13

And so having these two polls and I want to be sympathetic, I want to try to see this through the far right conservative vision, because I guess I want to be sympathetic to an argument that at some point you have tent poles and you have values, and if democracy means that you're going to trample those core kind of values, then what is the point of your religion?

Shawn: 32:36

To begin with, right, to make it, you know, really stark. If a core value of our tradition is that women cannot be ordained right, or women cannot minister Right, but there's a democratic movement to allow women to minister, I guess I am sympathetic to an argument that the goalposts have moved so much that you are outside of some perhaps core value of your religion, and that is something to take issue with right, and so I'm just trying to imagine, if it's possible, that some conservatives, you know and I want to talk a little bit about Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House in a bit but as his world or as his religious worldview comes into focus, you know, we start to see what, for maybe secularists or non-Christians, seems like a very extreme version of Christianity. How do they square what I think is an existential threat to their religion if they allow democracy to continue to influence the tradition?

Dr. Gushee: 33:33

Well, in the US environment we have, you might say, a pressure release valve in the religious liberty protections of the First Amendment and we have a Supreme Court, in its current makeup, that is very vigilant you might say hyper-vigilant about protecting those religious liberty standards. And so the fact that let's say, maybe to reframe the question just a bit you have a broadly feminist understanding of that patriarchy is bad and women's equality is good, and in the general culture as well as in law, we're going to have gender equality Okay. Meanwhile you have religious subcultures that believe that God's plan is that only men should lead, say, churches. That's not a problem for people in those religious subcultures as long as the state is not attempting to mandate that they're going to have to have female clergy. And our religious liberty protections are so strong that the state would never mandate that the Catholic Church or a conservative Baptist church should be required to have women as pastors. That's left to the churches. So I think it's only when it becomes an existential threat, only if the state begins to mandate things in the family life and in the church life religious traditionalists that they consider to be utterly abhorrent.

Dr. Gushee: 34:59

But the broader issue raised by your question is still there. It is uncomfortable to be a religious minority and to find oneself surrounded by a general cultural ethos that you disagree with and you feel pressured and you also feel they also feel fearful that they're going to lose their children and grandchildren to culture, insofar as culture is teaching values that they don't agree with. And that helps to explain, among other things, the effort to create cultural expressions in the conservative religious community that reinforce traditional values like alternative music and movies and educational arrangements, as well as critique of cultural paradigms that they don't like and, yeah, maybe critique of democracy insofar as a certain group feels that democracy continues to produce outcomes that they don't like. But in general, what I have seen until recently is, as long as the courts are protecting the rights of religious minorities, including traditionalist Christians, to do their churches and family life the way that they believe in, that is sufficient and it's in keeping with American tradition and law.

Dr. Gushee: 36:15

What I think I'm seeing on the right right now is a group that is grasping for more than that. It's not just that we want the courts to protect our minority religious community rights. We might just want somebody to come in and enforce our vision culture wide, if we can manage to find somebody who will do that. Or you might say the use of political power to enforce a religious minority vision on an entire state or an entire country. That's different. That's religious authoritarianism, and I do think we're seeing some expressions of that, like some of the legislation that is being passed in the conservative states has that tinge to it.

Shawn: 36:57

Yeah, One of the things that I'm really struggling with is trying to imagine what it is, that this flavor or this variant of Christianity that seems to be taking hold. And again, I mentioned to Mike Johnson and he could be a good template for what I'm talking about as far as a world vision. I'm having a hard time imagining or picturing what that world looks like, but it feels very threatening, and I don't know that the people that are at the forefront of this at least the political religious movement, so I guess now I would count Mike Johnson, but also Donald Trump and others I don't know that they're really painting that picture either, so it seems really nebulous and I can't get a sense of what it is that they want they want the world to look like. Do you have any sense?

Dr. Gushee: 37:46

I think there would be varying visions, but I can see pieces of it in some of the things that I've read and some of the things I've heard. There are people who would like to officially declare the United States a Christian nation and would like to, either through constitutional amendment or even just repeated presidential declarations, essentially undo the separation of church and state and the disestablishment of religion. They feel that we need, that we're morally adrift and we need a moral center, and that moral center is this group's version of Christianity. There's Catholic versions of this and Protestant versions of this, but there's also a coalition to advance some of it. Then there's a moral vision that believes that certain cultural changes are such a clear violation of God's will or God's law that they should be reversed if possible, and the two that I think would have the broadest support still to this day would be abortion access and the acceptance of homosexuality. So I actually think that there are plenty of people on the religious right who would be happy to decree an end to abortion access and an end to equal rights for LGBT people or certainly anything like gay marriage, and the same thing with the transgender situation. I think there are plenty of people on the right who believe that that's just a disaster, that the movement towards gender, appropriate medical care and keeping with what people are experiencing, that that whole thing should be reversed, and these are some of the things that there've already been steps taken in state at the state level to do on abortion and transgender. There was I think it was the education secretary in Oklahoma who was essentially making similar noises related to school curriculum. So essentially acknowledge that Christianity is the dominant religion or should be the dominant religion of the American people.

Dr. Gushee: 39:50

Reverse cultural changes that are seen to be egregiously in violation of either natural law or biblical teaching, permit religious diversity and moral diversity only in a subordinated position.

Dr. Gushee: 40:04

The race piece of it is more muted, but there would be some on the ethno-nationalist right that would shut down all immigration and attempt to change demographic trends so as to restore a clear white majority and white dominant group in America. That is harder for people to justify on religious grounds, but I think it's part of what we're seeing on the right. As for women and women's roles, there are plenty of millions of Americans who are not at all sure that women should have authority over men in any context family, church, business or politics. I don't know that there's enough of a groundswell of that view that that would be an object of litigation or of legislation or decree if one had that kind of power. But anyway, I'm trying to give you the world that the really hard-right Christians are dreaming of Something like a Christian republic, slash autocracy, in which patriarchy and white supremacy and gender diversity and sexual orientation diversity are. All of that is set back into order as these people see proper order.

Shawn: 41:21

Yeah, you know, I think prior to this didn't start with Trump, right, but I think prior to the election in 2015 and then Trump's presidency, I think it was easy for, I guess, the majority of society to look at these types of arguments being made from some corners of the Christian tradition as being fringe, kind of crazy, nothing to worry about, right.

Shawn: 41:48

And now I look back and I wonder if we've been sleepwalking to some degree, because then with Trump's election, I think people also dismissed that a bit as, like, this is just one crazy guy. He'll have his hopefully one term, maybe at worst two terms. He's not actually a religious person that can maintain this right, so like he'll come and go, he'll have done some damage. And then now here we are with the new speaker of the house being Mike Johnson, who fully embraces a lot of this vision that you just outlined, right, and he's like second in line to the presidency and I think on some of it it's like how did we get here? And I worry that we're still sleepwalking, but I also don't wanna give it more weight than it deserves. So I guess my question is is this a formidable step forward in the Christian movement in the attempt to vanquish American democracy? Or is this just an anomaly, something that maybe has just happened, that will pass? What are your thoughts?

Dr. Gushee: 42:43

There is a Christian far right like this all over Europe and kind of a just to do a comparison for a second, a quasi-Christian kind of ethno Christian far right addition or element of it as well, which is as much as anything about xenophobia and anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim in Europe, but the percentage of the population is smaller there because you don't have as many self-identified Christians in places like France or even Great Britain. If you have a Christian far right, that's 7% of the population. That's one thing, right. If you have a Christian far right, that's 27% of the population or 32% of the population or 35%, then you're talking about a formidable force. In a straight up vote for any office where it's two candidates and one person represents that vision and there's an appealing enough candidate who represents the alternative vision, usually the other side will win. We saw that in 2022 and I talked about some of those candidates in my book people like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who ran for governor and was beaten badly, or Carrie Lake in Arizona, who lost in the governor's race. There's not a majority of Americans who want this vision, but there is a substantial minority and some of the dynamics of our politics, especially in the deep, deep South, the red state subculture, especially with gerrymandering. Our politics is generating a lot of these figures right now. They can win in localities that are filled with this vibe. They can win in states in which this is a dominant vision. Only our partisanship would make somebody of this vision even a possible winning candidate for president, and only our messed up electoral college would make it possible for somebody like this to get elected. Because of the way the votes are distributed right, there's not a majority here, but you don't have to have a majority. If you have 35% true believers and 14% who are willing to go along because they prefer this side so much to the other side, you might get victories for this group. So that's what I'm saying. It's a real threat.

Dr. Gushee: 45:00

I do think that the Christian right in America Catholic and Protestant is radicalizing, but as it radicalizes in general, it loses market share, including its own kids, and the loss of market share is interpreted as part of the demonic plot against God and God's will. In other words, the more we lose, the more we must have demonic enemies against us, and so, in other words, there's a radicalization spiral going on. There are polite versions of this. I think Mike Johnson is a polite version of right-wing Christianity. There's less polite versions of it, it comes in all flavors, but this vision, I think the big picture just to have people listen to, is this country has lost its way, has lost God, has lost traditional morality.

Dr. Gushee: 45:47

It's ruining our culture. Democracy is implicated in it. We need to win the culture back, by democratic means if possible, by non-democratic means if necessary and splitting the difference where we can. And this is where people like Victor Orban or whatever in Hungary are. They present a paradigm. You don't have to explicitly overturn democracy. You can just kind of snip it away bit by bit if you can hold power long enough and know what to do. So you don't have to have an insurrection. Insurrection is a raw tool compared to put your people in power for 20 years and see what they can do to dismantle the quote unquote administrative state, or what we would say are the checks and balances professional civil service, independent judiciary, free press, stuff like that.

Shawn: 46:31

You know what I'm having a this is kind of a side note I'm having such a hard time Doing is just people talk about post democracy or after democracy in the United States, or backsliding or, you know, the rise of authoritarianism. What I think I, along with most other people, can't picture is what that actually looks like, what our lives look like in that type of a scenario. Those are like the straws that I'm grasping at and it just I don't know.

Dr. Gushee: 46:56

It just seems like it's scarier and scarier if you look at Hungary, for example, I have a chapter on Hungary in the book. Yeah, victor Orban has been in power there in his second round, I think it's about 12 years now. Very skillful politician, a demagogue, who Plays on the Christian civilization and its threats thing. Putin, of course, did the same thing and does the same thing in Russia. He by all accounts of the of the Democratic NGOs and the observers, he has managed to manipulate what's left of democracy there so he can't lose. So what it could look like, for example, universities that are no longer allowed to teach like women's studies or LGBT inclusion Could look like that K through 12 as well. It could look like manipulation of immigration law to to do mass deportations. That's already being discussed by the Trump people. It could look like dismantling of diversity, equity inclusion initiatives in government and Corporate sector. It certainly would look like sharp clampdowns on abortion wherever that's possible, and I wouldn't be surprised to see gay marriage cases coming back to the Supreme Court. To reconsider Obergefell from 2015 picture, a determined opposition that believes that all of those things are required to make America great again. But also with, with Orban, the manipulating of the media so that dissenting opinions are harder to find or to sustain the weakening of the NGO sector through government harassment, the weakening of independent judiciary so that checks and balances are gradually weakened, and Grotesque manipulation of the electoral system so that, even if you have a majority in some areas opposed to these kinds of changes, jerry mandering, extreme gerrymandering and other kinds of things makes it impossible for them to win. That has been done in Hungary.

Dr. Gushee: 48:53

Now the good news in Poland is that is that such efforts were attempted With some success in the last number of years, but that it appears that enough democracy survived there to vote the rascals out and they're gonna have a different kind of government in Poland. So I hope that our checks and balances and our NGO sector are Vibrant. Tradition of a free press and an outraged populace that would not too easily succumb to having their freedoms taken away. Would you know? Also the tradition of the independent military that stays out of out of domestic politics? One would hope that all of this would help to sustain our democracy, but the thing that really upsets me, s, is I feel like we dodged a bullet in 2020.

Dr. Gushee: 49:40

It was pretty close. Yeah, if Mike Pence had been a different kind of character we might have had. We might have had something very different happen in January. Or if those rioters had gotten to some of these politicians and killed them, we could have had a state of emergency declared or something we did a bullet. How is it that we haven't learned anything and that four years later, we're facing it again? That's just excruciating to have to face, and that there's a sufficient constituency for this vision that, despite everything, we face this threat one more time? Okay, final question ready for it.

Shawn: 50:11

Yeah, what's something interesting You've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately.

Dr. Gushee: 50:16

I Find escape from the things we've been talking about really, really important. I Can't live with this material every moment, so sports are Something that I enjoy. I'm a big Atlanta Braves fan. They they broke our hearts again this year, but there's always next year. I Enjoy reading classic novels, and so we have a book club and we meet with a group of friends every month, and so that's that's good. Our most recent book was the chosen by Chaim potak. Okay, yeah, so we read that again. That's a delight. And hanging out with my grandchildren. So novels, sports and grandchildren are a big safety valve and a great joy for me. And you know, I Ask. I might say I commend to all of our listeners that they, that they have spaces of self-care. I do think we all need to be, you know, exercise democratic citizenship with all of our hearts in the next year, but meanwhile, take care of yourself.

Shawn: 51:21

Dr Gussie, thanks for taking the time to be here and for the conversation. I've really enjoyed it.

Dr. Gushee: 51:26

It's been a delight. Like I said, Shawn, thank you for the informed nature of your questions and and I hope that this conversation is helpful to a lot of people.

Shawn: 51:39

Dr Gushee revealed that there is scriptural grounding for, and Christian traditions of, equality, accountability and people having a voice and co-creating the world they wish to see, and so I want to return to this alternative vision of a just world Embedded within the faith, one aligned with Jesus's radical message orienting us to community Empowerment and the tearing down of human hierarchies, one that stands in contrast to the authoritarian, reactionary Christianity or Christian nationalism that is perverting our democracy and Subjugating our people today. The Christian civic tradition we must revive recognizes that no one group has a monopoly on truth or moral virtue. It calls for humility about claims to power and lifting the lowly. This is a democratic faith that trusts in the capacity of ordinary people to take part in moral decisions and self-governance. It sees the Holy Spirit and divine guidance as being found in people themselves rather than only traditional authority structures. Authoritarian impulses will always lurk within human societies and institutions, but Christianity at its best can orient us towards empowerment rather than control, respect for difference rather than demonization, and illuminating injustice rather than shadow.

Shawn: 52:55

I Want to reiterate dr Gushee's invitation that all of us, and especially people of faith, search our traditions for the tools to build communities marked by compassion, moral dissent against cruelty and a belief that we all have gifts to offer in making change. If Christianity hopes to redeem rather than divide our culture, it must radically re ground itself in these democratic, egalitarian ethos reflected by Christ and too often forgotten or perverted today. So let's embrace the call to action that arises from this conversation. Let shared values of kindness, empathy and inclusivity, inspired by Christian ideals, be the guiding light that steers us towards a future where democracy is not just a political system but a reflection of our commitment to love our neighbors as ourselves. All right, as always, check back soon for another episode of deep dive chat. Soon, folks.