President Harry Truman had strict orders for Billy Graham: no press. Truman had invited Graham to the White House. But he was reserved, even suspicious, of the young fundamentalist evangelist.
A year earlier, Graham had stirred up Los Angeles and the nation with his widely publicized revival in 1949. After the meeting, Truman’s suspicions seemed to be confirmed when Graham staged a photograph on the White House lawn. Some might call it optics. Truman thought so.
Graham would have to wait until the Eisenhower administration to receive another White House invite. But for the fundamentalists who had been quietly building networks and institutions between the Wars, the photograph was powerful proof of their collective cultural ascendancy. America was once again, it seemed, warming to their influence. Was the photo mere optics, or a spiritual awakening? Who was to say? It depended on the reality you inhabited.
White Evangelicalism: Democracy’s Moral Contractor
One way of theologically interpreting White evangelicalism in the United States is as America’s moral contractor. This makes sense of all the strategies that have come to characterize (and theologically defend) White evangelicalism. From the pursuit of political power, massive publishing and media enterprises, or the propogating of a nostalgic historical origin story for a “Christian Nation” — White Evangelicalism has long sought, and in some cases assumed, the contract to be democracy’s moral provider as God’s will.
The paranoid tension between the demands of (White) America and the Kingdom defines White evangelicalism theologically and ethically.
Today, the preferred strategy for “cultural influence” or “ascendancy” looks a lot like celebrity, which
defines as “social power without proximity.” These optics and abstractions of celebrity connect the evangelicalism of 1950 to the evangelicalism of today. Few probably remember the Billy Graham prayer photo-op from 1950. But now, we have celebrity pastors and politicians. The two came colliding in the Bible prop photo-op from 2020.We all remember Trump’s clearing of protestors for a photo-op in front of St. John’s with a Bible.
I remember sitting in a room of pastors (back then, a pastor myself) and witnessed the room express relief at the sight of the photo. (Sidenote: Christian nationalism doesn’t just manifest itself in rally-attending, election denying radicals, but also in otherwise “respectable” cultural Christianity.) I was shocked by the reaction, but not surprised. In the end, it depended on what reality shaped your imagination.
Now, just 3 years after the St. John’s photo-op, Trump doesn’t have to clear protestors anymore. He can quite literally type words into a search bar and post the image himself. On the brink of a possible indictment, Trump did just that on his Truth social app, posting an AI-generated image of himself, praying.
The “Creation” of Reality
Looking at the image, its easy to draw comparisons to Christ praying before his arrest. The passion of the Don, evangelical propaganda. We find ourselves living not just in a collision of realities, but also in their endless creation. This implicates how the church talks about and bears witness to the reality of God as determinative not just for the church, but the cosmos.
While I loath culture war comparisons between our moment and German National Socialism (they are historically and morally irresponsible) I do think the Nazi Minister (and master) of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, would be jealous. But new communication technologies always disrupt the transfer of ideas, sometimes amplifying conflict. Take this from historian Jon Meacham in And There Was Light, writing about the politics of proslavery and abolitionism leading up to the Civl War:
“The energized movement for immediate abolition in the 1830’s came amid a revolution in communications. In 1830 it is estimated there were 906 newspapers in the United States, 100 of which were published daily. In 1840, the number of publications had risen by 74% to 1,577—and dailies had doubled to 209. More efficient printing presses and readier distribution made national conversation possible. The introduction of the telegraph would further collapse the great distances that had so defined the country and the world. The opinions of the editor in Massachusetts or the preacher in New York could now reach the planter in South Carolina, the enslaved person in Georgia, the governor in Illinois, of the anxious, free black person in Ohio. It was unifying in the sense of creating a common political and cultural sphere. It was divisive in that Massachusetts or New York could challenge and indict the accepted realities of life in South Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, and Ohio.”
Today, we no longer deal with the collision of realities kept apart by mere distance. Our present moment is characterized by the endless creation of realities against other realities, almost ex nihilo. This invokes a permanent state of crisis in society.
And our stories are trying to negotiate it for us. Every major franchise, from Marvel to Star Wars, is toying with the multi-verse. In the absence of any origin or destiny, we are left in the vacuum of the now. The post-truth world is not so much a denial of “facts” as it is the promising of power to create new “facts”.
We’re all practitioners of a neoliberal “constructive nihilism” (how’s that for a paradox?). One which replaces memory for myth to serve the moment. It manifests in churches as well as broader culture. What matters is the immediate. Trump’s AI prayer is a reality which corresponds to MAGA imagination.
In this moment, we must see conspiracy theories, “fake news”, and AI-generated propaganda not just as denying reality but determining it. Stanley Hauerwas rightly points out that memory is a moral exercise. But the practice of memory implicates ontology and teleology, origins and destiny, alpha and omega. The refusal to remember is form of faithlessness. But that’s exactly what we do as we create our realities.
The Theological Paranoia of White Evangelicalism
I’ve spent the better part of the last three years engaged in theological research on the red-pilled reality of conspiracy theories and evangelicalism. What I’ve found is that the inherited theological imagination of white evangelicals is best characterized as sort of theological paranoia. A split mind, racialized and radicalized. Yes, Christian nationalism is bound up in that. I define CN as the confusion of identities, the equation of “white” with “Christian” and “Christian” with “American”.
But the theological paranoia of White evangelicalism is more than Christian nationalism. It also plays host to un-interrogated ideological commitments which amplify logics of scarcity, violence, and anxiety. It is fueled by primal cultural anxieties and fears of the other. It’s an imagination bound up in theological Whiteness. But most significantly, it is one which fuels an effort to actualize itself in concrete world, resolving the tension of its own paranoia.
The fact that AI-generated content is permanent feature of our digital “infostructure” only amplifies the likelihood of its misuse. This only highlights the pressing need for the church to curate fresh theological speech on metanoia (repentance) which displaces its own paranoia. This sort of discernment is more than simply recognizing what images are AI-generated or not. It is a theological imagination which has yet to be fully integrated into the life of the church.
What I am most curious about is what particular strains of evangelical belief have led to this. You say you’ve investigated so I’m betting you have a good idea. What do I recognize is that my own tribe within Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, appears particularly susceptible. The ReAwaken America tour, for instance, was held either exclusively or nearly exclusively in Pentecostal churches.
My own tribe seems also more into the trappings of Christian Nationalism, including weird American flags and false intertwining, such as America being a “Christian” nation. There is a certain strain promoting the founding fathers to nearly God’s level of inerrancy and the Constitution to a holy book.
How did we get here? I have theories but I don’t know. It is dismaying and disheartening and surely a reason young people are walking away from church.
Thank you for writing this. I hope you share more on the topic soon.