and the royalist style in American politics
The reason people chose an authoritarian for president in 2016 was not economic anxiety, although that was there. And it was not racism, although that was there too.
Robert P. Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) spoke with Chauncey DeVega about the apocalypticism behind White Christian nationalism and the desire to restore “traditional American values.” With violence, if need be. Jones discusses his findings in “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.”
Results of a recent American Values Survey reveal, says Jones (Salon):
Three-quarters of Americans believe that the future of democracy is at stake in the 2024 presidential election. It’s one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on, 84% of Democrats and 77% of Republicans. Now, of course, they mean very different things in terms of their concerns about “democracy.” There is also great pessimism about the country. More Americans than not say that America’s best days are now behind us, which is overwhelmingly coming from Republicans. There is widespread economic anxiety. But the deeper disagreement, coupled with deep divides about the country’s identity. Who are we? Who is the country for? Who counts as a “real American”? These deeper disagreements, rather than policy differences, are driving our partisan divisions.
The new survey’s findings about the rise in support for political violence are particularly troubling. We found that the numbers of Americans who say that “Things have gotten so far off track that true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country” has gone up over the last few years, from 15% to 23%. Those feelings are disproportionately on the right. One in three Republicans believe that as compared to only 13% of Democrats. We also found troubling links between white Christian nationalism and political violence. Among those who believe that America was intended by God to be a promised land for European Christians, nearly four in ten believe they may have to resort to violence to save the country.
Who’s really entitled here?
Although evangelicals, people inclined to believe the world is 6,000 years old and Jesus dictated the Declaration of Independence, may not in fact believe Donald John Trump is God’s man, that’s irrelevant. They are, by and large, all in on Trump because they believe things are so bad that Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffries told a 2015 interviewer he wanted the meanest “son of a you know what” for president: Donald Trump.
Yes, says Jones, when “Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, or Mike Johnson, when they use the word ‘Christian’, it is racially coded” narrowly to mean white evangelical Protestant Christians. But there’s more.
There is a real belief in Apocalypticism among conservative white Christians, specifically, and white conservatives and the right, more broadly. That is very much tied to changing demographics: we are no longer a majority white Christian country, and we were just 20 years ago. That has set off a visceral reaction, and a kind of panic among conservative White Christians in particular. As I document in The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, most white evangelicals sincerely believe that God designated America to be a promised land for white European Christians. That is not a joke to them. If a person sincerely believes such a thing and the country is changing and is not in agreement with that vision, it opens the door to political extremism and violence to secure that outcome. Many conservative White Christians truly believe that they have a divine mandate and entitlement to the country.
The historical record clearly shows that white evangelicals have long had an instrumental, rather than principled, relationship to democracy. As long as there were super majorities of White Christian people in the country, they could pay lip service to the principles of democracy knowing that they had sheer numbers that would guarantee an outcome in their favor. But when democratic processes were unlikely to uphold white Christian power, they historically supported all manner of anti-democratic practices, including white racial terrorism, slavery, segregation, severe voter suppression, and gerrymandering. With the continuing decline of white Christians as a demographic group, these attempts by White conservatives and their allies to undermine democracy are just more obvious and unrestrained, as seen on Jan. 6 for example.
Which is a longwinded way of saying they are hypocrites and phony American patriots. As I’ve argued at length, they are at heart royalists, not patriots. Evangelicals are raised from childhood to bow to a king, Jesus, and to yearn for his return to Earth. Attempting to install an interim surrogate follows from the programming now that their cultural and religious supremacy is threatened.
Consider the decades of political fights leading up to the Civil War as southern states jockeyed for control of the U.S. Senate and the presidency. Loss of control there meant a threat to the South’s slave economy. A mortal threat, in southern planters’ eyes. Mortal enough that when they lost the White House to Abraham Lincoln, they went to guns. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump’s minions rioted and sacked the U.S. Capitol. Guns are not off the table next time they lose.
House Speaker Mike Johnson embodies evangelicals’ ahistorical view, Jones argues:
What they’re actually committed to is a particular outcome where America’s laws and government and society correspond to God’s laws as they see it. That’s the only legitimate outcome for Johnson and other white Christian nationalists. Everything else is illegitimate. They will use the language of democracy and voting if it achieves their ends and goals, but Johnson and the other white Christian nationalists and many other conservatives at present are not committed to those principles and values if they come out on the losing side of a democratic election.
Jones argues that we are focusing too much on evangelicals, the loudest and proudest of Trump’s followers. But the royalist strain is broader:
It’s also worth remembering that it wasn’t just white evangelicals who strongly supported Trump in the last two elections. Trump was supported by mainline white Protestants, the non-evangelicals. They voted six in 10 for Trump in both elections. White Catholics did too by the same percentage. While these white Christian nationalist tendencies are more pronounced among white evangelicals, this is more broadly a white Christian problem.
Well, just as this isn’t your father’s Republican Party, that isn’t the Catholic tradition I learned from Jesuits either, but a tradition dating from feudalism and before. If I may crib from Jesus and Richard Hofstadter, the royalist style in American politics always ye have with you.