Chaplains of Authoritarianism
Reflections and Updates
I’m thrilled to be back writing here at Homeward Dispatches after retreating to finish my upcoming book on evangelical Christianity and conspiracy theory in America.
The book is based on my PhD research and brings to light the untold history of conspiracy theory across evangelical history, along with how to find our way back to simplicity and honesty. At some points in writing, I felt the book became more than treatise, its got some manifesto in it, too. A book forged by (and for) our moment of crisis.
This is because ours is a time of disreality, a state of endlessly customizable but ultimately conflicting realities. The book names this state, and negotiates a way back through the ruins.
Disreality primes us to fall for the illusion of certainty and coherence offered by the authoritarian, whose totality appears to many as security and certainty. But this certainty comes at the cost of our humanity.
Which brings me to where we find ourselves right now. We are enduring a blitzkrieg of executive orders, with the speed, scale, and questionable legality fueling a constitutional crisis.
Of course, this is intentional. Every spectacle—ASMR videos of deportations, a photoshoot with an administration official posing in front of concentration camps in El Salvador—each a play from the authoritarian playbook, each expressing a growing totality that destroys human dignity, as it always has.
We are immersed in propaganda designed to legitimize the next transgression of democratic norms, deployed with blinding speed from every angle, destroying a past to control the future.
But where does it leave us?
For one, much of the focus these last 24 hours has been on Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and his record setting speech-in-protest on the Senate floor. I was struck by his interaction with my own Senator here in Virginia, Tim Kaine, on the gospel of Matthew and Jesus’ mentioning of the “signs of the times.”
It reminded me: the danger & error of Christian nationalism has never been about relating the Christian faith to public life, to our common problems. Even in this relating, there’s going to be disagreement and deliberation over the Scripture, there will be a wrestling of faith. For one, Jesus’ “signs of the times” cannot be so directly applied to the state of democracy, but that’s another point. The sharper point is the danger of Christian nationalism does not emerge from the claim that faith is private and so must say/do nothing in public.
The danger of Christian nationalism has always been its totality, its sole claim to seize government as the birth right of a certain kind of Christian. Christian nationalism collapses church into state, and coerces citizens into a partisan totality that it falsely equates with Christian communion.
This danger is why the interactions with Sen. Booker and Sen. Kaine, Sen. Coon, and others re: the Scripture are so helpful. They remind us that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized, “we no longer read the Bible against ourselves, we read the Bible only for ourselves.”
While politics plays out on the Senate floor, I’m also reminded that the politics of the church must go on, in their own way.
is right when he reminded his readers recently that we need politics in church, but not partisanship.This means the churches can not live as prisoners of fate, resigned to whatever happens to be or fail to be in the right now. This sort of fate presents as a specific temptation, and that is to try and provide for ourselves. Embracing the rogue word of Trump is to betray what Jesus’ endured in the wilderness, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of the Father.”
In this time of disreality, churches in America must resist the role fate thrusts upon us, the role of chaplains for authoritarianism. This isn’t a slight to chaplaincy; I am one. It’s a way of naming the supporting role Christian community can (and tragically has) played in sanctioning totalitarianism by sacralizing authoritarian power and personalities.
Of course, we can hardly deny (and only admit) that many of the churches have staked out this role, have sought it for generations, and now occupy it through networks of partisan Christian influence coupled with material interests. All that’s left to be done is thrusting this role upon others, claiming allying with and wielding this power is the only way to survive and incidentally the only way to be Christian.
But then there’s the Cross. Then there’s the powerlessness in which God reveals himself to be powerful over the evil or political terror, over human sin, over death, over hell. As chaplains to authoritarianism, the churches become intoxicated with the power to crucify and betray this power of the Crucified One.
These contradictory paths of power demand a choice.
And this is precisely why the churches cannot allow “both-sides-ism” to prevail among us as a sort of tacit survival strategy to navigate and negotiate authoritarian personalities and politics.
Sympathy with authoritarianism does not only occur in churches and Christian communities where a partisan totality is loudly proclaimed from the pulpit. Passive collaboration with authoritarianism occurs also where the slogan “we don’t talk politics here” commands a sort of pious silence, one whose primary service is in the institution’s economic interests.
The churches must reject the role of chaplains for authoritarianism by beginning to confess—again—that man does not live by bread alone, by the rogue words of authoritarians, but by every word that proceeds from the Father.
I do not think Christian faith cultivates a piety that disavows politics as something dirty. I do think Christian faith cultivates a resistance to partisan totalities, especially the kind that offer permission to the church to become something other than what it is.
Between this “yes” and “no” we discover from God the church’s politics, a way of life as witness. It is a politics that contributes to human society without being determined by that society’s story. It is always on offer for our shared, common public life, but never one that “lords it over” one another. This is what Jesus commanded.
I’m reminded of German pastor Ernst Käsemann who reflected back on the failures of German Christians in their time. He lamented that the churches did not truly enter into common solidarity with the world. Radical individuals did, but not churches.
This is our time. There is no neat historical analogy to any other moment. We only have a faith that makes us responsible, now. And we know this because no one who prays “your kingdom come” can stick their head in the sand or play both sides in the hope that nothing will be asked of us. Such hope is fear in a mask, and betrays a faith which has already overcome the world, its terror and its totality.
Updates:
Book News — I’ve submitted the first draft for my book on evangelicalism and conspiracy theory to my brilliant editor at HarperOne, Stephanie Duncan Smith, whose work you should check out at
.I’m proud of what the book turned out to be. I think in some respects. Times have changed, too. We’re well past talking about conspiracy theory, alone. The crisis has metastasized into something other.
If you want to be the first to hear news about the launch team, upcoming events, cover reveals, etc stay tuned to this space. I’ll be announcing things here before anywhere else.
“The Certainty Summit” — I enjoyed this great piece from Liz Charlotte Grant over at the Empathy List on the drafting of the Chicago Statement, a key US evangelical statement on the idea of “biblical inerrancy.”
Sojourners Piece on Hell — I have a new reflection piece called “Holy Saturday in a Hellish World” out with Sojourners magazine this month. In it, I examine some of the ways "hell talk” is being used in our politics, and the ways talk about hell has been fractured apart from the Christian story.
When the Wolves Came Podcast — Give this podcast a listen on evangelicals resisting extremism, from
and . It features the pastoral experience of a good friend, as a way to talk about the multi-faceted threat(s) of extremism from within evangelicalism. I was happy to share a bit of my own experience, too.
" politics that contributes to human society without being determined by that society’s story." YES!