“Happy Holy Week!” — as no one but Donald J Trump would say. “Let’s Make America Pray Again!”
If you thought there would ever come a time when evangelical Christians might draw the line at the Orange Herod’s antics, surely “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” for $59.99 a pop might have qualified. But apparently not, as we have come to accept. He’s getting a cut, of course — not that that would trouble Joel Osteen and his “prosperity Christians.” And Trump’s pitch is the familiar melange of lies and graft: “All Americans need a Bible in their home and I have [pause to acknowledge lie] many. It’s my favorite book” of all the countless books he has never read. For added value, it includes a “handwritten chorus to ‘God Bless the USA’ by Lee Greenwood,” alongside a copy of the US Constitution. As if the Almighty is a Republican.
This was the same week that Trump took to Truth Social to tell the world about a text he said he had just been sent: “Received this morning — Beautiful, thank you! ‘It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you. But have you seen this verse …? Psalm 109: 3-8: ‘They have also surrounded me with words of hatred/And fought against without a cause.” So Trump’s fraud trial is seen by one of his supporters as the contemporary equivalent of the passion of Jesus Christ. “I’m praying this over you daily. Thank you again for taking the arrows intended for us.” This last trope seems to equate the prosecution of Trump for fraud with Jesus’ atonement for the sins of the world.
When I first wrote about “Christianism,” I saw it as a politicized version of Christianity, a form of theocratically-motivated illiberalism. It still is, of course, and now the guiding philosophy of, for example, the Heritage Foundation. And the fusion of religion and politics is a potent and volatile thing, as the Founders well understood. Hence my concern about George W Bush’s desire to place a prohibition on gay marriage as an amendment to the very Constitution of the United States.
But the current iteration — a new intensification — is more radical. It’s an explicit fusion of a particular strand of Christianity with the identity of the entire country and the transformation of a secular politician into an anointed instrument of God’s will. It makes voting an act of religious faithfulness, not democratic deliberation.
The absurdity of Trump of all people as an emblem of Christianity, a faith his entire life mocks, matters not. In fact, it’s a test of faith that you see how mysterious the ways of the Almighty are. The best we can hope for is my old friend Rod Dreher’s response to Trump’s gold-ribboned Bible — appropriately revolted, but politically undeterred:
As gross as this is, it must be remembered that Joe Biden stands for abortion on demand, and the right of children to be mutilated for the sake of becoming another sex. What Trump does above is tasteless, and maybe even sacrilegious. But what Biden stands for is, from an orthodox Christian point of view, evil.
And there you have it. The constant refusal of mainstream and online conservatives to break from the ever-crazier fringes to their right is an exact mirror of the cowardly toleration of the woke fanatics on the center-left. But while the left now draws on the energies of the new religion of neoracism, the right still has the depth and range of Christianity to plunder, use and abuse its opponents with. And as the extremes strengthen, it was only a matter of time, I suppose, before the Trump right embraced old-school anti-Semitism, just as the woke left has now adopted the new-school anti-Semitism of neoracism.
The departure of Candace Owens from Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire is not just a minor media story. It marks a rapid curdling on the extreme right. Owens has responded to the Gaza War with familiar tropes of a Jewish cabal calling the shots, and in the heat of online battle she deployed the term “Christ is King,” a reference to a minor part of Christian doctrine and a Catholic feast day. Andrew Klavan, another online conservative, called this out as an anti-Semitic dog-whistle — and before you knew it, X was aflame with #ChristIsKing and crude Jew hatred, led by Trump’s former dinner companion, the execrable Nick Fuentes. One of the ramparts of neoconservatism was the shift in the 1980s to refer to the “Judeo-Christian tradition” with respect to the West — a way to mute any tensions between evangelical Christians and Jewish intellectuals. It was always a bit of a sham — Jesus was either the Messiah or he wasn’t — but it worked in that Bill-Kristol-style, principle-free, whatever-gets-us-elected way.
It turns out, however, that these kinds of incoherent alliances only function in a chill era of liberal democracy, where we leave the jugular alone. But once the populist devils are unleashed, and there is never any cost to moving ever-rightward or ever-leftward, the old hatreds emerge. And what we’re seeing with what’s left of American Christianity on the right is a very Weimar thing: in an era of demographic ethnic insecurity and perceived cultural marginalization, as more people see their country under the control of sinister forces arrayed against them (the Deep State, the woke elites, the foreign policy Blob), the religion rooted in an abdication of worldly power becomes obsessed with wielding it ruthlessly — just for self-defense, mind you!
When I studied Weimar in college, I was genuinely shocked to discover the existence of the Deutsche Christen — German protestants who sought to synthesize the Gospels with Nazism and worship of the Führer. No, I’m not saying this is the same as contemporary American Christianism. But I am saying that the abuse of Christianity to shore up a political faction behind a charismatic leader in a populist, extremist era is not a new thing in history. It’s actually critical to Putin’s nationalist and imperialist project as well.
The nationalism and racialism inherent in Christianism is, of course, profoundly blasphemous. But if you can persuade enough people that their very existence as a culture is at stake, which Trump has successfully done, then the blasphemy becomes part of the point, proof of your dedication to the cause. Watching all this rapidly unfold on Elon Musk’s X — which now shows me endless loops of racial crime videos and ever more graphs of racial IQ bell curves — is like watching the right radicalize and polarize itself in real time. The fervor here is as intense as that of the woke, because it is rooted in misplaced religious zeal.
Tragically, liberal Christianity has in far too many places become incapable of countering this with simple theological orthodoxy. It has itself become something of a social justice cult almost as politicized and partisan as the right. And yet this week of all weeks, and this Friday of all Fridays, we are invited to understand the deeper spiritual power that comes with the renunciation of earthly power. The longer I’ve lived, the more I have begun to grasp how this authentically Christian understanding of the limits of worldly power is a kind of bulwark for a free society, a guardrail against the foolish certainties of Christianist right and left, and a guarantee of some kind of spiritual humility and social peace.
I pray this week that this tradition survives this awful era, as it has done in some of the more hideous episodes of the past. But I have rarely felt less hope behind that prayer. Or sensed so much darkness coming toward us.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click hereto read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my thoughts on Joe Lieberman’s legacy on Israel; a talk with Danny Finkelstein about the horrors of WWII and his family of survivors; a fantastic reader thread (and a few dissents) over people blasting loud music in public; seven notable quotes from the week in news; 22 pieces on Substack we enjoyed on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of scraggly dudes blowing off steam; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
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New On The Dishcast: Daniel Finkelstein
Danny is a journalist, politician and old friend. Formerly an adviser to Prime Minister John Major, he was appointed to the House of Lords in 2013. He’s a former executive editor of The Times of London and is still there as a weekly political columnist. He’s also a director of Chelsea Football Club. Danny’s latest book is Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family (the title in the UK is way, way better: Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad). It’s an astonishingly well-researched thriller of a story.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — comparing the horrors of the Soviets and the Nazis, and whether Anne Frank would have been a Justin Bieber fan. That link also takes you to a bunch of commentary on last week’s episode with Richard Dawkins, as well as a long series of anecdotes of people blasting loud noise in public. A classic reader thread.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Neil J. Young on his history of the gay right, Eli Lake on Israel and foreign affairs, Adam Moss on the artistic process, Johann Hari on weight-loss drugs, Bill Maher on everything, George Will on Trump and conservatism, and Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The Gaza Strip on October 10, 2023. (Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
There are fewer greater tributes to the legacy of Joe Lieberman, the late Senator, than the Gallup poll this week that showed American public opinion now tilting decisively — 55 vs 36 percent — against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. A whopping 75 percent of Democrats are now opposed, alongside 60 percent of Independents.
(Read the rest of that 700-word piece here, for paid subscribers)
Dissents Of The Week
A reader digs deeper into the murder story that led my piece on loud-music offenders:
I searched for more on the story, because I used to live in the Bronx, and I also have major sensitivity to other people’s music/speakerphones. The Bronx man who was murdered, Tyquan Pleasant, was a young black father trying to get his neighbor to turn down her music at 1 AM, so that his baby could sleep. Shaun Pyles, a trans woman neighbor, stabbed him in the back after Pleasant first called 311 and then crossed the hallway to complain in person.
Oy. I withdraw the “Free Shaun Pyles!” joke.
Another dissent is here, and it begins, “I would like to encourage you to examine your highly critical, over-the-top, critique of younger people.” For many hilarious and passionate assents to my piece on compulsory, Bluetoothed public music, head over to the pod page. It’s lit! Check it out.
And as always, keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the special election in Alabama, the New York Shitty subway, and the continued corruption of the SAT. Below is one example, followed by a few new substacks:
Jason Linkins argues that Dems “should be happy that the legal system won’t save them” from Trump.
The Borowitz Report has a new home on Substack, as does Peter Singer. Discover ‘stacks around the world using this globe.
You can also browse all the substacks we follow and read on a regular basis here — a combination of our favorite writers and new ones we’re checking out. It’s a blogroll of sorts. If you have any recommendations for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the contest). Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Here’s a sneak peek of an entry:
I guessed Mexico last week (very wrong!) and I’m sticking with it this week. I feel like more of a super-sloth than a super-sleuth. Tinacos (water tanks) on the roofs, the climate, islands off the coast, all suggest the Yucatan to me. So, Cancún, Mexico it is.
Combining my Mexico theme with your recent rescue-dog theme, here in Bend, Oregon, we have adopted, rescued Mexican dogs enjoying themselves all over the city (including my dog) thanks to the local, wonderful Street Dog Hero organization. SDH also rescues dogs from the Warm Springs Reservation north of Bend, and from elsewhere. Look at these amazing dogs that are up for adoption now.
