Evangelical Christianity and politics - the elephant in the room

[Jacob]

Bigot and bigotry works.

[Admiral Yi]

One thought - I wonder if we'll see a return of old school anti-Catholic conspiracism among evangelicals?

The President's a Catholic, the Speaker's a Catholic, the Chief Justice and most of the Supreme Court are Catholics - the Pope's a Jesuit.

I can definitely see scope for things not going how the Trumpy/Q-ish/conspiratorial wing of evangelicalism want it to go and they start joining the dots about a globalist Catholic conspiracy

I think that would be awesome.

There's only three ways the roots of Trumpism are going to be eliminated in this country: angry stupid white people die of old age, they die of Covid, or they learn object lessons from their own contradictions.  Branding Catholics, who constitute the right's intellectual firepower on the court, traitors would be one such contradiction.

[Sheilbh]

So slightly interesting kremlinology in the US Catholic Church.

On inauguration day the US Conference of Bishops issued a statement in the name of their chair Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles (and later backed up by Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco) which was pretty aggressive towards Biden. Over half of it was about abortion and the "pre-eminence" of that issue. The nuncio and the Vatican were apparently very annoyed at this and that the bishops chose to start their relationship with a Catholic President in a hostile way.

Francis's statement was a lot more upbeat on working with Biden.

Then Cardinal Cupich of Chicago tweeted this - which is rare and, in the context of intra-bishop fights, fiery:

Cardinal Cupich
@CardinalBCupich
Today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an ill-considered statement on the day of President Biden's inauguration.
Aside from the fact that there is seemingly no precedent for doing so, the statement, critical of President Biden, came as a surprise to many bishops, who received it just hours before it was released.
The statement was crafted without the involvement of the Administrative Committee, a collegial consultation that is normal course for statements that represent and enjoy the considered endorsement of the American bishops.
The internal institutional failures involved must be addressed, and I look forward to contributing to all efforts to that end, so that, inspired by the Gospel, we can build up the unity of the Church, and together take up the work of healing our nation in this moment of crisis.

In addition a number of bishops started issuing their own statements following Biden's inaurguration including Cupich, Toobin of New Jersey and others. Since then the conference has issued four very positive statements endorsing Biden's executive actions on immigration, DACA, the Paris Agreement and the Muslim ban.

But it's really rare and striking to see a very open clash like this between the wings of the church within the hierarchy and I think part of this is about Biden, but within the hierarchy a bigger part is actually about Francis.

Meanwhile in the "political" wing of Catholicism two podcasting priests in Wisconsin (a heartland for Cardinal Burke's legacy) have been chatting about antifa being responsible for the Capitol riot - obviously there are now calls for their bishop to rein them in. And a bishop from Texas (who spoke at the Jericho March) is contradicting the statements of the Vatican and the other bishops in saying that the vaccines are not morally permissible (and, indeed, evil) because of how they're made - again mainly aimed at Francis but just indicative of these waters.

I saw one comment about Cupich's responses on Twitter from, I assume a rad trad, about how he's just a Francis appointee and how no-one would choose to have Cupich as their bishop. He then suggested that maybe communities should elect their own priests and bishops Americans - can they Catholic?

It reminded me of the Brexiteer on Question Time who in real-time noted that Northern Ireland caused issues for the UK in Brexit, so maybe one solution would be for there to be a united Ireland

[Valmy]

What is evil about how vaccines are made?

[garbon]

What is evil about how vaccines are made?

I'd think use in testing of the aborted fetal cell lines. I recall the Vatican releasing a statement about how that was okay.

[viper37]

What is evil about how vaccines are made?

Because science is evil, duh. Trump itself warned you of the dangers in listening to the evilness of Biden: "He will listen to the scientists!".
In other times, another politician could have said "He will listen to the Devil!" and have the same effect.

[Sheilbh]

A follow up to the common good integralism that Adrian Vermeule wrote about - another example of the very strange waters parts of American conservatism are exploring right now. From The American Conservative:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/waiting-for-our-salazar/

Waiting for Our Salazar
Portugal's 20th-century philosopher-king may be the ideal model of a leader for our times.
January 23, 2021|
Michael Warren Davis

Salazar: The Dictator Who Refused to Die, by Tom Gallagher, (Hurst: 2020), 360 pages.

Nobody wants to talk about António de Oliveira Salazar. The left resent him because he doesn't fit their profile of a right-wing dictator. He despised fascism, which he dismissed as "pagan Caesarism." Likewise, he said Hitler's racism was "essentially pagan, incompatible with the character of our Christian civilization."

Salazar rarely used his secret police to suppress political dissent. When he did, it was limited to the militant communists who tried to blow him up in 1937 as he made his way to church. After the bomb went off, shattering the windows of his car, he dusted himself off and said to his entourage, "Everything is over now. Let's go in for Mass."

Dr. Salazar opposed the Axis Powers' expansionism, beginning with Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. During World War II, he helped victims of the Third Reich escape Nazi-occupied Europe; Casablanca got that much right. He lent material support to the Allies during World War II, and he would have gladly joined the war on their side. Salazar remained neutral only for fear of driving his neighbor, Francisco Franco, into Hitler's arms.

The right, meanwhile, doesn't like to talk about him for fear of being called fascists ourselves. (What nonsense—as if our progressive friends need a reason.) We may hope that Tom Gallagher's new biography of Salazar will break that silence.

Dr. Salazar, as he was always known, was an economist by training. In 1926, a military junta brought an end to the anarchic, anticlerical First Portuguese Republic; the generals asked him to serve as their finance minister. Within his first year, he restored financial stability for the first time in a century, becoming a national hero.

Soon, by popular acclaim, the military appointed him prime minister. Over the next few years, Salazar dismissed several of his cabinet ministers and took their portfolios for himself. Thus did Salazar establish himself as dictator, almost without anyone noticing.

Salazar ruled as a Catholic, and his regime was naturally conservative on social issues. He constantly insisted upon "the intrinsic value of religious truth to the individual and society." His stated goals were to prevent "the perversion of public opinion" and to "safeguard the moral integrity of citizens." He was an integralist, or something very much like it.

Yet he gave few political privileges to the institutional church. He fit the old feudal idea of a Christian king, an officer of the church in his own right. He supported the church's efforts to evangelize the people and serve the poor, but insisted the bishops leave the business of statecraft to him. In fact, he was so disgusted by the "reforms" of the Second Vatican Council that he banned Pope Paul VI from Portugal.

In fiscal matters, Salazar was openly inspired by the social encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius IX. As an economist, he was wary of the fetish for rapid economic growth shared by fascists and communists. His priority was to wean Portugal from its dependence on trade with the United Kingdom while slowly growing the country's industrial base.

Yet he was not a nationalist. It was never Salazar's goal "to make Portugal great again," but simply to ensure the country's imperfect economy worked for the ordinary Portuguese. He espoused a kind of patriotic humility, urging his countrymen to reject delusions of grandeur offered by fascists and communists. He asked them simply to work, quietly and steadily, for the good of the country, as he himself did.

The cornerstone of Salazarism was depoliticization. As the French journalist Raymond Aron observed, "The government of Salazar tries to 'depoliticize' men, that of Hitler or Mussolini to 'politicize' or fanaticize them." Salazar recognized that Portugal's (and Europe's) woes stemmed from an obsession with radical ideologies, and not only fascism or communism. Fundamentally, he blamed the liberalism that had infected Europe during the French Revolution.

He despised mass politics and remained virtually absent from public life. "These good people who cheer me one day, moved by the excitement of the occasion, may rise in rebellion the next day for equally passing reason," Salazar observed. He also scorned political parties, which he believed serve no purpose but to obstruct good government and divide countrymen against one another. "Politics killed administration," he once lamented.

The remedy, in Salazar's view, was to rally the nation around its Christian heritage, keep peace on the Iberian Peninsula, and improve the lot of ordinary Portuguese.

And it worked. When he left after three decades, Portugal was a respected first-world power. Literacy rates had risen from 30 percent to nearly 100 percent. The economy was (modestly) booming. His admirers included such disparate figures as T.S. Eliot, Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, and Dean Acheson, the latter of whom called Salazar "the nearest approach in our time to Plato's philosopher-king." Little wonder that, in 2007, a national poll named Salazar as history's greatest Portuguese.

Looking around our own country, it's increasingly difficult to refute Patrick Deneen's thesis that liberalism has already failed. All the hallmarks are there: overdependence on foreign markets; a stagnant and servile economy; an increasingly polarized left and right; widespread political violence; a loss of faith in our democratic institutions.

Yet Salazar's example offers a different kind of post-liberal order to those offered by left- and right-wing ideologues. Salazarism, if there is such a thing, is a kind of paternalistic traditionalism. Either a weaker or a more "visionary" leader couldn't have spared Portugal the excesses of totalitarianism. Salazar was, in his own way, a moderate.

Summing up the spirit of Salazarism, Gallagher incisively quotes the Israeli conservative thinker Yoram Hazony: "Where a people is incapable of self-discipline, a mild government will only encourage licentiousness and division, hatred and violence, eventually forcing a choice between civil war and tyranny. This means that the best an undisciplined people can hope for is a benevolent autocrat."

Events of the last year may prove Hazony right. If we Americans lack the self-discipline necessary for self-government, if liberalism is off the table, the only alternative to a tyrant like Lenin or Hitler may be a man like Salazar: a paternalistic traditionalist, a philosopher-king.

Michael Warren Davis is the author of the forthcoming book The Reactionary Mind (Regnery, 2021).

[Duque de Bragança]

Salazar was the model of Pétain once.  Pétain did much worse than his teacher admittedly.

Some questionable statements. I don't see Salazar joining the war on the Allied side, except on duress. As for the bad relationship with Paul VI, Paul VI taking sides for the African nationalists eventually, which included atheist marxist-leninists, is a better explanation than Vatican II.
Literacy at 100 % no, though huge progresses were made. Lastly, the modern Portuguese welfare state was mostly initiated by his little known successor Caetano, and the temporary economic boom as well. Encyclopaedia Universaiis (Britannica in France) dates the birth of modern as in contemporary Portugal with him, not Salazar.
As to not being a real fascist e.g no personality cult, no totalitarianism, no expansionism ; that's pretty much accepted, except for the Portuguese left.

Depoliticiisation is spot on though, with the role of football for instance.

[Razgovory]

Salazar rarely used his secret police to suppress political dissent.

This is line jumped out at me.

[The Larch]

I saw that article posted on Twitter recently and it was rightly eviscerated in the comments for the amount of falsehoods it includes. The same author has a similarly barf-inducing article that touches on Franco as well.

If the American religious right is looking for examples to follow amongst the Iberian autocrats of old then it's not really in a good mental place at the moment.

[The Brain]

I still think democracy is a better system than despotism. But then I'm not a conservative.

[Syt]

I saw that article posted on Twitter recently and it was rightly eviscerated in the comments for the amount of falsehoods it includes. The same author has a similarly barf-inducing article that touches on Franco as well.

If the American religious right is looking for examples to follow amongst the Iberian autocrats of old then it's not really in a good mental place at the moment.

Does he have one about the Austrian Ständerepublik? I feel he would love it, too (Christian conservative, anti-socialist; though he would have to explain away their anti-free market capitalist streak). Plus, they have a convenient martyr in Dollfuß, who was killed by Nazis!

[grumbler]

Looking around our own country, it's increasingly difficult to refute Patrick Deneen's thesis that liberalism has already failed.

Whenever I read some pinhead's line like this, i wonder what country they refer to as "our country."  The following descriptions don't match any country on earth.  Maybe their country is in Middle Earth.

[Duque de Bragança]

I saw that article posted on Twitter recently and it was rightly eviscerated in the comments for the amount of falsehoods it includes. The same author has a similarly barf-inducing article that touches on Franco as well.

If the American religious right is looking for examples to follow amongst the Iberian autocrats of old then it's not really in a good mental place at the moment.

Does he have one about the Austrian Ständerepublik? I feel he would love it, too (Christian conservative, anti-socialist; though he would have to explain away their anti-free market capitalist streak). Plus, they have a convenient martyr in Dollfuß, who was killed by Nazis!

Ständestaat is as a matter of fact pretty close to the Salazar corporatist regime (cf the corporativismo principle).

[Sheilbh]

Some questionable statements. I don't see Salazar joining the war on the Allied side, except on duress. As for the bad relationship with Paul VI, Paul VI taking sides for the African nationalists eventually, which included atheist marxist-leninists, is a better explanation than Vatican II.

Yes - though that was part of the transformation of thinking kicked off by Vatican II where the church properly accepted democracy and anti-imperial/colonial views. Your point reminds me of conservative writers now who fulminate against priests (including Francis) who are perceived as taking the side of BLM, which they often characterise as a Marxist-Leninist, atheistic movement.

It also strikes me that Paul VI (following Vatican II) resulted in a huge shift in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community plus ecumenism in general. That is something I've thought about when you look at the right's opposition to "globalists" (famously in Trump's last advert of the 2016 election a word used while images of Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Lloyd Bankfein flashed on the screen).

I think the most interesting line is: "The right, meanwhile, doesn't like to talk about him for fear of being called fascists ourselves. (What nonsense—as if our progressive friends need a reason.) We may hope that Tom Gallagher's new biography of Salazar will break that silence." Which plays on the victim narrative of the right, but also "if we're going to be called fascists, we might as well be fascist." It reminds me of people on the right who said they found it hard to take seriously the criticism of Trump as racist (I think they often changed their tune on this in the last year or so) because "the left" called Mitt Romney racist too.

And there is something to that line of thinking on the left as well - I look at even Joe Biden is getting attacked as a socialist you might as well just be ambitious and try to pass as much as you can.