Mike Johnson at a press conference surrounded by House Republicans who had just elected him Speaker. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
A long time ago now, toward the end of the Bush era, I wrote a book called The Conservative Soul. Reeling from big-government, neoconservative, war-mongering, torture-loving Cheneyism, I tried to sketch out the essence of an actual conservative sensibility and politics: one of skepticism, limited government and an acceptance of human imperfection.
My point was that this conservative tradition had been lost in America, in so far as it had ever been found, because it had been hijacked by religious and political fundamentalism. I saw the fundamentalist psyche — rigid, abstract, authoritarian — as integral to the GOP in the Bush years and beyond, a phenomenon that, if sustained, would render liberal democracy practically moribund. It was less about the policy details, which change over time, than an entire worldview.
And the intellectual right effectively dismissed the book. The Wall Street Journaldidn’t even bother reviewing it. The New York Post said I “can’t go for long without circling back to gay issues”; John Derbyshire implied the same, even though there’s very little of that subject in the book. Jonah Goldberg mocked it as shrill piffle. I was just a gay man pissed off by the religious right, and I’d allowed that to cloud my thinking. Here is David Brooks, echoing the conservative consensus in 2006:
If I hadn’t been reviewing this book, I wouldn’t have finished it. I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn’t know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith.
As any number of historians, sociologists and pollsters can tell you, the evangelical Protestants who now exercise a major influence on the Republican Party are an infinitely diverse and contradictory group, and their relationship to these hyperpartisans is extremely ambivalent.
Well, we all get things wrong from time to time. And with the elevation of hardcore Christianist Mike Johnson to the Speakership in a Trump-dominated party, I think we can safely say that David’s dismissal of Christianism hasn’t exactly aged well. The idea that members of the religious right form an “infinitely diverse and contradictory group” and were in no way “hyperpartisan” is now clearly absurd. Christianism, in fact, turned out to be the central pillar of Trump’s success, with white evangelicals giving unprecedented and near-universal support — 84 percent — to a shameless, disgusting pagan, because and only because he swore to smite their enemies.
In fact, there is solid evidence that White Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than White Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020. … Trump’s electoral performance among White evangelicals was even stronger in 2020 than in 2016, partially due to increased support among White voters who described themselves as evangelicals throughout this period.
The fusion of Trump and Christianism is an unveiling of a sort — proof of principle that, in its core, Christianism is not religious but political, a reactionary cult susceptible to authoritarian preachers. And Christianism is to the American right what critical theory is to the American left: a reductionist, totalizing creed that “others” half the country, and deeply misreads the genius of the American project.
Christianism starts, as critical theory does, by attacking the core of the Founding: in particular, its Enlightenment defense of universal reason, and its revolutionary removal of religion from the state. Mike Johnson’s guru, pseudo-historian David Barton, claims that the Founders were just like evangelicals today, and intended the government at all levels to enforce “Christian values” — primarily, it seems, with respect to the private lives of others. As Pete Wehner notes, “If you listen to Johnson speak on the ‘so-called separation of Church and state’ and claim that ‘the Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around,’ you will hear echoes of Barton.” Thomas Jefferson and Jerry Falwell were just peas in a pod, Mike Johnson believes. And he’s now second in line for the presidency.
Christianism is a way to think about politics without actually thinking. Johnson expressed this beautifully last week: “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’” But this tells us nothing, of course. The Bible demands interpretation in almost every sentence and almost every word; it contains universes of moral thought and thesauri of ambiguous words in a different ancient language; it has no clear blueprint for contemporary American politics, period. Yet Johnson uses it as an absolute authority to back up any policy he might support. As the Church Lady used to say, “How conveeenient.”
The submission to (male) authority is often integral to fundamentalism, which is why it isn’t actually surprising that self-professed Christians came to support a man who cultivates greed, gluttony, pride, lust, envy, sloth and anger more assiduously than Satan. Trump was an authority figure, period. He was a patriarch. He was the patriarch of their tribe. And he was in power, which meant that God put him there. After which nothing needs to be said. So of course if the patriarch says the election is rigged, you believe him.
And of course you do what you can to make sure that God’s will be done — by attempting to overturn the election results if necessary. “This is a very weighty decision. All of us have prayed for God’s discernment. I know I’ve prayed for each of you individually,” Johnson said during a closed-door meeting on January 5, 2021, urging his fellow Republicans to join him in opposing the results.
Christianism is a just-so story, with no deep moral conflicts. Material wealth does not pose a moral challenge, for example, as it has done for Christians for millennia. For Christianists, it’s merely proof that God has blessed you and you deserve it. Johnson said right after being elected: “I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear: that God is the one that raises up those in authority. And I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment.” That means that Trump was blessed by God, and not just by the Electoral College in 2016. And because he was blessed by God, it was impossible that Biden beat him fairly in 2020.
This absolutist mindset is, I think, under-appreciated in assessing the Republican threat to liberal democracy. In a fascinating Substack post, Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO, sees a direct link between fundamentalist Christianity and denial of election results in 2020:
More than three-quarters of those representing the most evangelical districts are election deniers, compared to just half of those in the remaining districts. Fully three-quarters of the deniers in the caucus hail from evangelical districts.
And since the Tea Party, the turnover in primary challenges in these evangelical districts has been historic — a RINO-shredding machine. No wonder there were crosses being carried on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. The insurrectionists were merely following God’s will. And Trump’s legal team was filled with the faithful.
Tom Edsall shows the skew that has turned American politics into something of a religious war: “When House districts are ranked by the percentage of voters who are white evangelicals, the top quintile is represented by 81 Republicans and 6 Democrats and the second quintile by 68 Republicans and 19 Democrats.” Podhorzer notes that
the overwhelming majority of the Republican House Caucus (70%) represents the Most Evangelical districts (top two quintiles). Thus, we can see that a group that represents less than 15% of the US population commands 70% of the districts comprising the majority party in the House of Representatives.
And almost all those districts are safe as houses. When you add Christianism to gerrymandering, you get a caucus that has no incentive to do anything but perform for the cable shows. And we’ve gotten a generation of Congressmen and women with fewer relevant skills in law or business, and far less experience in politics than in previous eras. (Johnson has the least congressional experience of any Speaker since 1883.) This is not a caucus interested in actually doing anything.
Hence the vacuity, the performance art, and the stunts for the cable shows: these Palinite populists know little else. Lauren Boebert, the three-year congresswoman most famous for groping a dude at a Beetlejuice concert, was right next to Johnson at his press conference, mugging for the camera and booing away questions of election denialism. She once told a congregation she’s “tired of this separation-of-church-and-state junk. … The church is supposed to direct the government.”
Oh, and gay sex. Always with the gay sex. Of all the troubles in the world, and all the sins, and all the suffering, Christianists seem interested primarily in what a minuscule percentage of the adult population do in their bedrooms. I guess I’m flattered by the attention, but this is not the expression of religious conviction so much as the manifestation of a neurotic pathology.
I don’t know how we best break the grip of the fundamentalist psyche on the right. It’s a deep human tendency — to give over control to a patriarch or a holy book rather than engage in the difficult process of democratic interaction with others, compromise, and common ground. And the phenomenon has been given new life by a charismatic con-man in Donald Trump, preternaturally able to corral the cultural fears and anxieties of those with brittle, politicized faith.
What I do know is that, unchecked, this kind of fundamentalism is a recipe not for civil peace but for civil conflict. It hasn’t gone away, even if its actual policy prescriptions are unpopular, even if it represents only a fraction of Americans, as wokeness does. It’s a mindset, a worldview, as deep in the human psyche as the racial tribalism now endemic on the left. It controls one of our two major parties. And in so far as it has assigned all decisions to one man, Donald Trump, it is capable of supporting the overturning of an election — or anything else, for that matter, that the patriarch wants. Johnson is a reminder of that.
There will be even less of a check on Trump’s second term in office than on his first.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a lively chat with Pamela Paul on a wide variety of topics; a ton of your tough dissents over Israel, including my lengthy replies; a half-dozen notable quotes from the week in news; 15 pieces on Substack we recommend this week; an MHB from SNL; an autumnal view from a Pennsylvania campus; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a sunny new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
A subscriber writes:
Your column on Israel having no good choices was the one from which I have learned the most, and when it mattered most. I have been reading you for a very long time. Decades more than years. The atrocities of October 7th enraged me — most of all as a father — though I have no connection with Israel. So I was ready to endorse almost anything in response. Your column on the need to hold to our own values and to tolerate the most vile viewpoints, as long as they involve only words and not deeds, made me stop, think and moderate my own position. So, thank you.
New On The Dishcast: Pamela Paul
Pamela is a journalist. For nine years she was the editor of The New York Times Book Review, where she also hosted a weekly podcast, and she’s now a columnist for the Opinion section of the Times, where she writes about culture, ideas, society, language and politics. She’s the author of eight books, most recently 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet. We had a fun chat about a whole host of topics.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips with Pamela — on how computers are killing off deep reading, and the growing rate of anorexia among girls. That link also takes you to commentary on last week’s episode with David Brooks, plus a lot more in the ongoing reader thread over Israel.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Leonhardt on his new book about the American Dream, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira on Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, Cat Bohannon on Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, Matthew Crawford, and McKay Coppins. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
“The only thing more pathetic than lefties ripping up posters highlighting Hamas’ child hostages is righties filming it and trying to get the lefties fired from their jobs.” You simply make that astoundingly problematic statement and move on. Let’s look at it.
As you acknowledge, in addition to murder, torture and rape, Hamas also kidnapped well over 200 people to keep as hostages. Some of them are so young they need to have their diapers changed. Some are so old they are in wheelchairs and need medication. Some had their limbs blown off and were taken on motorcycles to Gaza without medical care or anesthesia. I’m sure you’ve seen the expression of sheer terror on that girl who was taken off on a motorcycle from the rave while her helpless boyfriend watched.
The posters of these people keep them present in the community. They remind people that the victims may still be alive and need to be returned. What could possibly be objectionable about that?
You uncharacteristically fail to explore what the “lefties” are saying when “ripping up posters of Hamas’ … victims.” How can that even be a thing? All I can think of is that they either don’t want these victims of Hamas’ monstrous acts to be top of mind because it’s bad PR for their cause — they don’t want Israel to have any sympathy — or it’s because they want to show their hatred of Israelis (i.e. Jews). Either way, ripping up these posters is one of the most morally abominable actions I can imagine. And in the videos I have seen, the perpetrators are generally 20-something imbeciles with a smirk.
So, is it really true that filming these little shits tearing down posters is actually less bad — that’s what you said — than outing them in the hope that society will impose some sanction for their depraved actions? No — no way, and I don’t think you really think so either. And I don’t see why they are entitled to behave this way anonymously. If they want to take a public stand by ripping up a notice that is publicly posted, then I suppose they can, but they aren’t entitled to do it in secret and not be subject to the moral judgments of society.
I find the 20-something poster-rippers deeply repellent, near-perfect representations of their dumb, illiberal, neurotic generation. All they know is how to shut speech down; they see the pictures of hostages as damaging to their cause, and remove them by force because that’s what authoritarian leftists do. Constructing an argument is intolerable emotional labor when you already know you are on the right side of history. That’s why an editor of the Harvard Law Review is an anti-Semitic street thug. (Next up: the MacArthur Award, surely.) So they have no response to those challenging them as they destroy the evidence of Hamas barbarism, apart from “Fuck you, bitch,” in the elegant words of one woke asshole.
I have no problem filming these morons or exposing them. They’re in public, and can be exposed and shamed. What I oppose is trying to get them fired from their jobs. That’s the cancel culture move.
Read more dissents here, and many more on this week’s pod page — and both links include my lengthy replies, for paid subscribers. More on the pro-Hamas protesters from this reader:
I also abhor cancel culture, but there are no absolutes. If someone called a black person the N-word and said they should be lynched — shouldn’t that person be shamed? And if their employer found out, they would absolutely fire that person. The vast majority of people would agree with that firing. Wouldn’t you?
So I 100% agree with Jamie Kirchick; for too long, there’s been no societal cost to being antisemitic when there is a cost to being racist or homophobic. When people are calling out antisemites who are celebrating the deaths of Jews, tearing down posters of the kidnapped Israelis or championing Hamas, YES those people should face societal consequences. But NO, they should not face retribution by the government because it’s a First Amendment right.
Lastly, a quick note:
Well, I agree with your latest column, and I greatly decry Bezalel Smotrich’s power and influence in the Israeli government, but your assertion that he is “the most influential man in Netanyahu’s cabinet” is utterly factually wrong, and therefore worthy of correction. Even before the war, Netanyahu avoided calling security cabinet meetings precisely to freeze out Smotrich. Now, Smotrich is pointedly NOT in the war cabinet.
I take the point. I exaggerated. But Smotrich was still instrumental in withholding aid to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank this week — a pretty important policy decision — until he was overruled last night.
As always, please 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 deepening Mideast war, acupuncture, and restoring a play-based childhood. Below are a few examples:
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. Solving last week’s mystery of the orange man is a sleuth from Clinton, CT:
Looks like I picked a helluva week to go on vacation and give up sleuthing. Frankly, we were so busy on vacation, I barely had time to take a gander at the View. Though when I did (on Wednesday afternoon), I recognized it immediately as, essentially “The Open Space” and the Left Arm of Grand Traverse Bay. From there, hailing from (mostly) Michigan and visiting TC at least a couple-hundred times, the hotel would have been a five-minute find.
I feel bad, now, as I would at least have been able to offer enough insights into the town to double the length of your VFYW column. So, in lieu of that, allow me to at least offer this “solve” to the mystery of the orange man that our wine geek in San Francisco was curious about. No, not that Orange Man; this orange man:
(Well, not quite him; this one is installed on the roof of the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey, Michigan, about an hour away from TC.)
He is one of roughly 100 such sculptures adorning the rooftops and other locations mostly in and around Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, which John Sauve has installed as his “Man in the City” Project. He explains his motivations:
To activate the skyline, and encourage people to look around. In the process of looking and finding, one re-assesses one’s own position in the world and becomes aware of one’s scale within the very fabric of the city. The ‘Man in the City’ project creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations — alienation, ambition, anonymity, and fame.
