Bad Faith

Bad Faith: I’ve recently engaged with a shocking documentary called Christian Nationalism’s Holy War on Democracy which explores the intersections of far-right Christian beliefs with contemporary American politics. A considerable part of what the religious right has now become – a movement that has now completely turned away from democracy – is already known to the public and has been reported by mass media.

However, the documentary’s creators search for the genesis of this American phenomenon “Bad Faith”. The most surprising, however, is how the dynamic of the presidential elections at the present time introduces a radically different dimension altogether. In this context, with the prospect of Trump returning to power looming (unlikely and a position I believe most of the liberals I know are very naive), christian nationalism makes much more sense.

There was a sayang to Trump once he stepped into power (2017), he was limited by the other branches of the government together with the law of the land. His overt anti-democratic disposition only emerged by the 2020 elections when for the first time he made the claim that he had legitimately won the elections and that Joe Biden had stolen the elections from him.

Trump has been working towards becoming the president who will be an authoritarian leader and this combination complements well with Christian Nationalism which is the idea that America should be a theocracy where the will of God is higher that of the constitution determined by white Christians.

It is apparent that the Christian Nationalist fascism was the motive force of the insurrection which took place on 6 January, with the insurrectionist riot being a forerunner to their ideologies and even their violence: Incivility towards the US government as a whole, and willingness to resort to violence. M. Moore, the editor of Christianity today considers it that this type of Christianity is ‘Church from growth perspective but for people who are angry. To some, the performance of anger is somehow performance art as though it has depth.

All these popular caricatures of ‘rebels’ in action-movie costumes like many like Trump on that day, were restrained. The US de facto President’s performatve stance explains in detail the idea of how Christian Nationalists have been able to assimilate into society. Christian Nationalists of now have leaped from being one of the supporting cast to finally having a shot at playing the lead in perhaps a sequel, one which is set to be more dangerous.

As history shows, the union between Trump and Christian Nationalism is a powerful one. Progressives are, understandably, obsessed with the contradiction of this alliance – the fact that men and women who claim to follow Jesus Christ would support a sinner and illegal who is the embodiment of what they should be against, such as Trump.

Nevertheless, the contemporary American perspective makes sense of such spousal abuse: that Trump is thought to be a reincarnation of the ancient king Cyrus, the barbarian who always obeyed God’s will and served as a benefit to the nation. Adhering to such opportunistic reasoning, it isn’t necessary for Trump to be a devout Christian; his very indiscretion renders him a player in a wider scheme. The working classes who have always attracted such a base of disillusioned supporters view him quite similarly – as a divine demolition ball who does what he wants and has no restrictions.

But of course, that’s merely a justification. “Bad Faith” illustrates the complexity of the American Republican history in which Trump, like others of the same type before him, has managed to play the Christian Right card to the advantage of both parties.

In 2016, the proposal of abandoning abortion was made by him to those who promised to help him in backing some judges, Now the two are obligated to each other. Like President Reagan before him, Donald Trump was also able to win the elections thanks to the support of the Christian Right in the year 2016. Yet, this time he is offering something that they have always wanted – the complete wreckage of the American way.

The most startling dimension of “Bad Faith” is that while it tries to identify the origins of the Christian Right, the movie illustrates the fact that there is a quite vivid dream of religious rule among the movement’s constituencies almost from the beginning in Bad Faith. Jerry Falwell, who received all the credit as a head of the so-called Moral Majority in the year 1980 when that movement emerged, attracted all the publicity.

(It is a very perverse anomaly of the movement that as televangelists such as Falwell and Pat Robertson and later the likes of Joel Osteen grew richer and more popular, their riches were regarded as substantiation of divine election.) But his contribution still retains significance, despite Falwell becoming a bonafide household name due to the commotions he raised.

The religious conservative who founded the Council for National Policy, a religious coalition that fused Christianity with rightist politics was Paul Weyrich. It was this man who came to the Falwell and Robertson, and collected their backers, creating a political structure that is more than just an assemblage of Christian organizations – it could be called a political machine.

The machine consisted of a network of 72 thousand preachers, it used modern technologies of microtargeting, and its goal was stood to turn the Evangelical Christianity into a politically engaged movement. The G.O.P. became, in the eyes of its adherents, ’God’s own party‘, and the election of Ronald Reagan was perceived by the Evangelicals as the first victory in politics. One is provided with a fragment of Reagan, telling about his plans to ‘make America great again‘ – this is just the beginning of the great range of ideas that were later appropriated by Donald Trump.

Weyrich was in a way a Steve Bannon: an ideological bomb-thrower who sat well behind the curtain. His manifesto is one which advocates for the collapse of the government through means as violent as guerilla warfare. Right from the beginning, he has also been the one suggesting a culture war as well as a civil war, about the future of what America should be, with his manifesto as his battle cry: “Our strategy will be to bleed this culture dry,” “Make no mistake about it: We are talking about Christianizing America,” “We will weaken and destroy the existing institutions.” But only fifteen years ago, all that sounded as if one was listening to the ranting of a lunatic. Now it is the mainstream Republican Party which is the cutting edge.

In the documentary “Bad Faith”, Randall Balmer, the Ivy League historian of American religion who authored the book, ‘Bad Faith,’ makes an interesting argument that there’s a mythology that the Christian Right was first mobilized in 1973 due to Roe v. Wade — but that’s not the case. In 1978, only then did Jerry Falwell deliver his first anti-abortion sermon. For Balmer, what rallied the Christian Right was the 1971 ruling of a lower court that supported desegregation on schools, which maintained that any institution that discriminates or engages in segregation is not by definition a charitable organization and thus does not enjoy tax exemption benefits.

This had incendiary implications. For those like Jerry Falwell, churches were not, and did not want to be, integrated, but they wanted tax-exempt status. This law initiated the anti-government sentiments of the Christian Right, the same way the sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco were the genesis of the proceedings of the alt-right. Furthermore, it sealed the idea focalized throughout the Christian Right, that Christian nationalism and white nationalism contained the same purposive meanings, dear as both meanings contained an original connection to the Ku Klux Klan.

In “Bad Faith,” the authors argue that Christian Nationalism is a false theology of America being created as a ‘Christian nation’ – a claim that has become a mainstay of the Republican Party. It is fair to say that the moral bases of the Founders were drawn from Judeo Christian culture. But that stance does not hold up because the freedom of religion contained in the First Amendment was placed there specifically to counters religious oppression.

It was indeed a revolutionary thought for that era: that the people will decide how – and which – God they will worship. In fact, the more accurate position is that it is the Christian Nationalism that violates not only the constitutional liberties but the freedom of choice itself which is an intrinsic part of the Christian religion. If the belief is placed on you, you cannot be a follower of Christ.

However, that is the world which Christian Nationalists aspire to put into practice. As per the documentary, this segment of the society, or 1/3 of Americans are either movement supporters or sympathizers. If this is accurate then that statistic is quite an alarming one. Though even when these Christian Nationalists think they speak as true believers, their empire is one of greed and sickening corruption.

Paul Weyrich made an alliance with oil and gas tycoons including the Koch brothers in the Reagan era. In return for their backers, his movement would advocate for the abolition of those grievous corporate taxes and regulations. This fits the pattern for Donald Trump who has always used tax giveaways for corporations, populist anger and deregulation as his primary agenda.

And if these Christian Nationalists turn out to be the key coup de mains to sense Trump back into the white house, he will have to pay them millions. How wonderful that their ambitions coincide perfectly at this time: The aim is to hijack and annihilate democracy itself as the greatest cancer that has to be remedied. What we are witnessing is the kissing of death in the fullest sense, and in this example it’s amusing to note whether the most treacherous person is Trump or the insatiable ferocious Christian tyrants he colaboradores with.

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