We Cannot Resist What We Cannot Name. Authoritarian Reactionary Chritianity Gave Rise to MAGA.

Oh I vain-hope Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein are listening.

News outlets, out of touch with the wild and wooly American religious scene, don’t have the language to describe what brought Donald Trump to power.

Uneasy with God-talk, most call it “Christian Nationalism” when they call it anything. A label that illuminates too little of what’s going on. Today’s defenders of democracy need to know what they are up against. David Gushee names it: Authoritarian Reactionary Christianity.

In the US, conservative Christians (Catholic and Protestant) have been nursing a grudge against democracy for decades. Democracy doesn’t stop all that is woke and broke about America — modern secularism, liberalism, gender and sexual politics, uppity elites, and minority rights movements. A strong leader is needed, democracy be damned. Enter Donald Trump to channel their long-simmering grievances.

SCHOLAR’S MANIFESTO PACKS A PINPOINT PUNCH

With pinpoint accuracy, Gushee traces the role Authoritarian Reactionary Christianity has played in the rise of authoritarian regimes over the last century (France and Germany after WW1) and around the world (Putin’s Russia, Orban’s Hungary, etc.)…