The Religious Right’s Rise to Power

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Brian Lehrer:

It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. Conventional wisdom would tell us that if the religious right has an agenda, it's a cultural one undergirded by a belief that parts of American society have gone morally and religiously astray. Members of this group are cheering the abortion case before the Supreme Court today, hailing it as evidence that the Culture Wars are far from over, but my next guest says it's wrong to think of much of the religious right simply as a social or cultural movement. She says for those at the top, it's a political movement and the ultimate goal is Christian Nationalist power.

Brian Lehrer:

In her book, The Power Worshipers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, author Katherine Stewart details how she traveled around the country getting to know various Christian conservative leaders who are whipping support and millions of dollars for Trump and his agenda. She calls them Christian Nationalists and argues that their supposedly Christian values always come second to what she sees as their endless quest for power. Katherine Stewart, thank you for joining us. Thank you for coming on today.

Katherine Stewart:

Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer:

What is Christian Nationalism? Can you define that term?

Katherine Stewart:

Sure. Christian Nationalism is a political ideology. It says that what makes the United States distinctive is not our democratic system of governance, our Constitution or our long if imperfect history of assimilating very diverse people in a pluralist society. Instead, its representatives insist that the foundation of legitimate government in the United States is bound up inextricably with a reactionary understanding of a particular religion and it basically says that the United States is founded on the Bible or what some adherents call it biblical worldview. It alleges that we can succeed only if we stayed true to this foundation. Christian Nationalism is also a device for mobilizing and manipulating a large subsection of the American public and for concentrating power into the hands of a new elite.

Brian Lehrer:

You write perhaps the most salient impediment to our understanding of the movement is the notion that Christian Nationalism is a conservative ideology. You wouldn't call it conservative?

Katherine Stewart:

No. It's a radical ideology. I think when we think of the religious right, we imagine it as just one special interest group and the noisy forum of American democracy preoccupied with issues like abortion or same-sex marriage, but Christian Nationalism does not believe in modern pluralistic democracy. Its aim is to create a new type of order, one in which Christian Nationalist leaders along with members of certain approved religions and their political allies will enjoy positions of exceptional political power and privilege and politics, law and society. So it doesn't believe in pluralism. It doesn't believe in quality for all. It really seeks to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded in their particular version of religion.

Brian Lehrer:

You wrote an article that some of our listeners may have seen, an op-ed in the New York Times a few weeks ago called Bill Barr Thinks America Is Going To Hell referring of course to Attorney General William Barr. I want to play a clip from a recent speech he gave at Notre Dame that you cite in the piece.

William Barr:

The campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has coincided and I believe has brought with it immense suffering and misery. And yet the forces of secularism ignoring these tragic results press on with even greater militancy. Among the militant secularists are many so-called Progressives. But where is the progress? We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? What is it that can fill the spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person and what is the system of values that can sustain human social life? The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.

Brian Lehrer:

So listeners, if you just tuned in in the middle of that clip and thought we were playing Franklin Graham, no, that was the Attorney General of the United States. Why did you cite that clip in your piece?

Katherine Stewart:

Well, I think just as in other countries, the first thing that religious nationalism does is to insist that the true or real nation is under an existential threat and if you identify your country's inexplicably bound up with a particular understanding of religious belief, then the source of the threat is so-called secularists. Trump himself calls them variously the far left, the fake media and Democrats, and I think Bill Barr helpfully identified this group as hell bent on organized destruction. He said they're committing an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values. This sort of religious nationalism around the world relies very heavily on a persecution narrative, the idea that the dominant national identity is under threat from an aggressive other. It's a very different understanding of our country than our founders intended.

Brian Lehrer:

Would you compare it in any way to some of the news that's been coming from India about their Hindu nationalism, 80% Hindu country feeling that the majority is under threat?

Katherine Stewart:

It's a really interesting comparison. I think most American Christians as well as members of other religious groups reject the politics of division and conquest that the Trump administration and his most loyal allies represent.

Brian Lehrer:

I'm going to play another clip of Bill Barr from that same speech, which perhaps highlights how he and others like him use the Bible as evidence that certain liberal policies like raising taxes are sacrilege. He criticizes what he calls I think secular religion for teaching a macro morality. He uses the term macro morality, where you can get away with not examining one's private conduct as long as you support political action. Here's a minute more of William Barr and he gives an example of that macro morality that he thinks is wrong.

William Barr:

Something happened recently to crystallize this difference between these competing moral systems. I was attending mass at a parish I did not usually attend in Washington, DC and at the end of mass, the chairman of the Social Justice Committee got up to give his report to the parish and he pointed to the growing homeless problem in DC and explained that more mobile soup kitchens were needed to feed them. This being a Catholic church, I expected him to call for volunteers to go out and provide for this need as volunteers, but instead he recounted all the visits that the committee members had made to the DC government to lobby for higher taxes and more spending to fund mobile soup kitchens.

Brian Lehrer:

That's an astounding clip to me and I guess it's revealing of, would you call it the difference between sort of liberal Christianity and conservative Christianity in this country? If Jesus preached feeding the poor, what Barr is digging in on there is that it's only the responsibility of individuals. It's not the responsibility of society as expressed through our government.

Katherine Stewart:

That's absolutely true. There's so much to unpack here. I think the first thing to note is that this movement has deep roots in opposition to civil rights, the New Deal, and it goes back even further to an opposition to abolition. If you're looking at the mid-century, people like James W. Fifield who was founder of an influential theological movement called Spiritual Mobilization were convinced that only conservative theology could save capitalism. He set him itself against religious liberalism and political liberalism and in defense of religious literalism. He received funding from plutocrats of large organizations like Sun Oil, General Motors and Chrysler. He produced sermons and writings intended to steer people away from labor unions and public assistance programs. Many of the leading movement leaders today and most influential pastors say the same kind of thing. Look, this emphasizes the fact that this is not a culture war.

Katherine Stewart:

This is a political movement. So when they're talking to the rank and file or when they're talking to pastors to try to get them to turn out their congregations to vote a certain way, it's all abortion all the time, right? Or it's all about same-sex marriage. But when movement leaders are talking to one another in the forums that they share and when they're speaking to political leaders, they advocate a wide range of policy positions, economic policy, foreign policy and domestic policy. I've heard some of these leaders say that the flat tax is the only kind of tax that's biblical. They rail against social service programs. One of them, Ralph Drollinger, a very powerful pastor who has a ministry called Capitol Ministries targeting political leaders at the highest level, his Bible study has been attended by at least 11 members of Trump's Cabinet, has said that he believes, he said, I'm going to paraphrase here cause I don't have the quote in front of me.

Katherine Stewart:

He said, the responsibility for the poor lies first with the husband, second with the family if the husband is absent and third with the church. He said nowhere does the Bible say that government or commerce should have a responsibility for the needs of the poor. Again, I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the quote in front of me. Another leading thinker of the movement, David Barton, has basically, and again paraphrasing, I don't have the quote in front of me, he's called social where welfare programs something like slavery to the state. He said something like the state has replaced the role of master for many, referring to actual slavery and said, basically declared this a unbiblical. He said the only solution to poverty is the liberty of the gospel. He is actually speaking about poverty here. So this is a movement that advocates for very wide range of policy positions and that hits home the fact that this really is a political movement that wants power.

Brian Lehrer:

My guest is Katherine Stewart. Her new book is The Power Worshipers: Inside The Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. We can take a few phone calls for her at 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Let's take one now from George in Bensonhurst. George, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling.

George:

Thanks for taking my call. I was just troubled by Barr's use of this phrase and Judeo-Christian as if kind of Jewish and Christian histories and traditions are kind of like one stream. So I wondered if you guys could speak to how the Christian extremist movements that she's discussing like these Jewish institutions and Jewish people as part or ... I don't know because it strikes me as a strikingly antisemitic movement, but I wonder-

Brian Lehrer:

What a great question. Katherine?

Katherine Stewart:

That is a great question. Thanks so much for calling in. I think sometimes the term Judeo-Christian is used to lend the appearance of diversity to the movement. They also frequently cite the Old Testament. In digging into the leading theologians of the movement today and stretching back into its intellectual history, I found a lot of references believe it or not, to references to slavery in the Old Testament. The point is that the movement is really not United by any particular denominational label or theological distinctions. It's a political movement that includes members of a variety of both Protestant and non-Protestant religion and it's united more by their political vision rather than any theological points.

Brian Lehrer:

George, thank you. Please call us again. Here's a little push back I think to how to hear one of those William Barr clips. Abraham in Rockland County. You're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling.

Abraham:

Thank you. I kind of disagree with Ms. Stewart's interpretation, in particular when you mentioned the Judeo-Christian value system. I am to be a Jew and I have nothing to do with Christian politicians. Now, there may be some Christian people who are looking for political power, but the Barr speech doesn't speak to that at all. It speaks to the obvious fact that morality has changed and clearly for the worst. One of the simple things is now go back 50, 60 years ago you didn't see anybody shooting up people because they were jealous of their shoes. Yet today you have the value of life devalued because of the decline of morality and that's totally independent of the politics of it. That's for real.

Brian Lehrer:

Although, Abraham, one certainly could argue that gun violence is actually way down in this country over the last 40 years or so while the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as non-affiliated with religion has gone way up.

Abraham:

That's true, but you do see crime for so, the example I gave. Poor people will shoot people because they're jealous of their shoes. That kind of crime didn't happen. There was always crime and I used gun violence by mistake. That's a whole different topic. I'm talking about the value that people place on life and other traditional values has eroded and it's witnessed in some of the sad things you see today. I don't deny that there may be political movement within the Christian hierarchy, but I think that the Barr speech does not speak to that. And she also mentioned slavery, which is interesting. I think there's a huge era in at least the Old Testament and Jewish view of slavery is that slaves were not what the typical idea of straight property you could do with what you wish. On the contrary. The Talmud says that you have food, you have to feed your slave before you. So Old Testament slavery is not at all the same as this "slavery" that was abolished.

Brian Lehrer:

And not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but I've heard critics say if those passages in the Old Testament like the one that you just cited involve how a master should treat a slave like feeding the slave before yourself, it nevertheless legitimizes the existence of the institution of slavery.

Katherine Stewart:

That's true, and I want to just jump in here if you don't mind. I have read David Barton, one of the leading sort of thinkers and fringe historians of the movement cite the Old Testament view of slavery in order to justify his contempt for religious liberalism, for equal rights, for the idea of the social welfare, the social safety net, and I do think it's really interesting when you bring up the issue of slavery when you're looking at the intellectual tradition of this movement. At the time of the Civil War, most of the powerful denominations of the South either promoted slavery or had at least made their peace with it. Yes, there were many abolitionist theologians that I actually discuss in my book, but they tended to be as Frederick Douglas pointed out, poor and distinctly disempowered within their denominations. And the powerful and wealthy theologians largely either promoted slavery or again made their peace with it.

Katherine Stewart:

They consciously refrain from making any judgment to upset the established order and Frederick Douglas himself observed at the time it was the ministers of high standing who are on the side of slavery. He was absolutely correct about that. But the point we can draw between this conflict between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery theologians is that the pro-slavery theologians emphasized biblical literalism. They set themselves in opposition to both biblical and political liberalism. They promoted this idea of America as an authentically Christian nation with hierarchies that were rooted in the Bible. We see a through line between that type of pro-slavery theology that emphasized this type of what they thought of as order and as really the deepest and most profound type of oppression and the type of biblical literalism idea of hierarchies is ordained in the Bible that we're kind of seeing in some of the Christian Nationalist thinkers today.

Brian Lehrer:

And Abraham, we appreciate your call. Thank you. We're just about out of time. Let me ask you one final question. Since part of your book focuses on 2016 and how this shadow political party as you describe it helped Donald Trump get elected, thinking about their emphasis on personal morality, including what we heard from the Attorney General in one of the clips that we played, how do they get their minds around supporting Donald Trump given his personal behavior?

Katherine Stewart:

It's a really good question. I think some people continue to be baffled how people who call themselves value voters could support a leader like Trump. For some voters there's no doubt a transactional element to their support. They think he'll appoint justices favorable to their positions in the so-called Culture Wars or enact economic policies that are favorable to their pocketbooks. But for some members of the movement, he is a perfect representative of their way of thinking. Many of them see him as a miracle sent straight from Heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord. They can't conceive of a nation of pluralism in which there are many people have different religions and some people don't have any religion and are still doing what's good and kind and treating one another with respect.

Katherine Stewart:

Some of his most loyal allies call him God's candidate. Paula White said it is God who raises up a king. That's how she spoke about the election of Trump. Many of them compare him to biblical figures like King Cyrus. The great things about kings is they don't have to follow the rules. They are the law unto themselves and for a movement that rejects democracy, rejects pluralism and rejects equality, a king looks like what they're really after.

Brian Lehrer:

Katherine Stewart's new book is The Power Worshipers: Inside The Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Thank you so much.

Katherine Stewart:

Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here.

 

 

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