The Responsibility of Theological Educators in Our Religio-Political Crisis

Many Christians in the US (and, elsewhere, actually) are demonstrating an attraction to a dangerous authoritarian and reactionary “Christian” politics that poses a grave threat to democracy. Our democratic backsliding is being fueled by Christians who should know better, and who are abandoning pro-democratic Christian traditions that are centuries old in favor of the illusory appeal of authoritarian Christian strongmen. 

Theological educators have the responsibility to describe what is going on, situate it historically and theologically, and resist it in our teaching, praxis, and scholarship. 

The modern democratic tradition of which we are inheritors has both religious and Enlightenment roots. 

The religious piece came first. Under theocratic Christian governments, adherents of dissenting religious movements were harassed, imprisoned, and often cruelly executed. Some of the earliest voices arguing for limits on state power, a voice for the people in their government, and recognition of individual and minority rights, including religious liberty, were religious dissenters, such as early Baptists in the 17th century. They argued for such protections not just for themselves and other Christians but for all people. 

Church historians have the training to tell this story, and need to do so thoroughly and accurately. 

Enlightenment arguments for democracy came a bit later, but they addressed the same problems that religious dissenters were addressing. They also called for an approach to government that moved away from throne/altar regimes that governed from the top down and instead envisioned government as a compact (indeed, a covenant) created by the people themselves. They also argued for limits on state power and an environment of religious toleration. 

Theologians and ethicists, as well as church historians, have the training to tell this part of the story.

As we watch democracy being threatened today, it is good to be reminded of what a tremendous achievement it was for people to wrestle control of government away from their Christian rulers, not just monarchs and emperors but popes and clerics. Most of us are surely glad to be living now rather than in an earlier time in which church and state authorities together dictated what people must believe, where they must worship, and how they must behave. 

Historical study, however, reveals that there were always cries of outrage from the losing side in the democratic revolutions that swept the world – notably the former holders of religious/political power. Their reflexive opposition to the changes that displaced them often morphed into an unyielding anti-modern, anti-liberal, anti-pluralist, and anti-democratic reactionary posture. A place to see this is in statements from the Vatican in the 19th century. This reactionary Catholic posture only officially ended with Vatican II, and as we see at this very moment, not all Catholic leaders are on board even now. 

Church historians would do well to feature not just the story of progressive change but also traditionalist reaction to it from the dawn of modernity. 

The Christian support for the reactionary Trump, including for his authoritarianism, is connected to this longstanding pattern. I call this phenomenon authoritarian reactionary Christian politics. It is marked by a fierce negative reaction to cultural changes believed to transgress the religious and moral traditions of formerly dominant Christian groups. 

Often the reaction goes beyond concerns that can be grounded rather obviously in the religious tradition, like family or sex, and moves to a reactionary posture on matters of race and immigration on which Christianity has resources for an inclusive posture that reactionaries ignore or abandon. 

Here ethicists need to weigh in, emphasizing core moral norms of our tradition, such as dignity, love, and justice. 

When religious groups in democratic societies are authoritarian and reactionary in their inner life, this is a problem only for those adherents who do not like it. But this reactionary authoritarianism becomes acutely relevant to everyone else in their society if and when they begin withdrawing their support from democracy because they are frustrated with its results. 

We are witnessing an authoritarian reactionary Christian movement seeking to undertake a religious counterrevolution to pretty much every liberalizing, pluralizing, democratizing social change that has happened in our nation since the 1960s. Despite his godless amorality, Donald Trump has been its avatar. 

Many see the problem. What do we do about it? We need to begin by calling things by their right name. I think authoritarian reactionary Christianity is the right name. While the recovery of a conservative Christian white-male-led nation (e.g., what is today called “Christian nationalism”) is for many the goal, reactionary hysteria is the motivation and anti-democratic authoritarianism the means. 

Here, theological educators of various types need to critically engage the discussion of Christian nationalism and alternative diagnostic categories that attempt to do what H. Richard Niebuhr called the first task of Christian ethics – describe reality accurately. 

We need to clearly distinguish between reactionary strategies that remain within the bounds of democracy and those that transgress them. Jerry Falwell was one thing; the Proud Boys are another. One played within the rules of democracy; the other arrived at the Capitol on 1/6/21 armed for war. 

Concerned citizens need to pay attention to the basics of democracy in a way most of us have never bothered to. We need to know what distinguishes a democratic government from an authoritarian one, and democratic politicians from those who threaten democracy. Here Christian social ethicists will take the lead. 

And we need to go back to school on our own best traditions. For Christians, that includes our own very old history of supporting democracy in Christian terms. 

That includes those Christian traditions that have argued strongly against Christianity as a domineering and imperious religious-majority project and have practiced democratic congregational rule. 

It includes versions of covenantal theology that have taught us to think of public life not as a dynastic project or as individualistic libertarianism, but as a sacred compact made by equals to advance the common good of all. 

And all of us need to listen closely to the dissenting Christian pro-democratic voices and traditions, including Indigenous, Black, Latino/a, Asian/Asian-American, and others. The illusions fostered by White Christianity have not fooled these voices. The scholars emerging from these communities are playing an indispensable role in leading theological education in this moment. 

This is a five-alarm fire. The next three years will determine whether our democracy will survive. Theological educators need to rise to the challenge.