Review of David Gushee's Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies
Part One
David P. Gushee
Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023.
This is the first of a two-part review of Gushee’s book on evangelicals and authoritarian reactionary Christianity.
Another book on Christian Nationalism?
There is a whole industry of books rallying against Christian Nationalism and Gushee’s volume is another addition to the pile, albeit one that deserves a read as it makes some compelling points.
David Gushee’s objective is to defend liberal democracy against Christian Nationalists who intend to erode or eviscerate democracy in order to restore America to a former glorious time of White Christian hegemony.[1] His aim is to confront a growing penchant for theocratic nationalism head-on by deploying the tools and testimony of the Christian tradition.
For Gushee, democracy is popular sovereignty, constrained by constitutional rights for minorities, that results in the “wise self-rule of a people without the collapse into mob tyranny, faction, irrationality, or self-destruction.”[2]
He considers “Authoritarian Reactionary Christianity” (ARC) a better term than “Christian Nationalism” because he sees white evangelicals engaged in a reaction to cultural, demographic, and legal changes in America; changes which motivate a white evangelical constituency to attempt to bend the arc of history backward towards Christian hegemony by anti-democratic and despotic means.
What I found particularly compelling even moving was his chapter on Trump and ARC because we see Gushee’s anger that “a president threatened democracy itself”[3] as well as lament that the people who he once thought were his people had so easily set aside democracy and decency to attain a short-cut to political supremacy.
Equally commendable is Gushee’s advocacy of the Baptist and Black democratic traditions which he sees as Christian alternatives to the malevolence and mendacity of ARC.
Gushee is optimistic that America’s democratic tradition is a promise waiting to be fully realized rather than an irredeemable “white-male-plutocrat ethnocracy.” He shows too that contending for liberal democracy is “worthy of the efforts of followers of Jesus.”[4]
I say, “Amen!” However …
How “Liberal” Is a “Liberal Democracy”?
There are aspects of Gushee’s argument that deserve qualification or criticism. I’d argue that Gushee needed more on the limitations of liberal democracy and to better appreciate its diverse expressions.
(1) Gushee seems to have a Fukuyamian naivete that liberal democracy is the system for human civilization.
He acknowledges the imperfections of liberal democracy but does little to assuage critics who could point to democracy’s preference for individual expressive liberties over collective economic liberation, its attachment to plutocratic global capitalism, manipulation by the military-industrial complexes, and the proclivities towards legislative inertia and social fragmentation. I say that as someone who regards liberal democracy as a Christian project, indeed, as Christendom 2.0.[5]
The fact is that one needs to be honest about the limitations and failures of liberal democracy if we are to advocate for its practice and perfection. Gushee does this in part, but a more warts-and-all assessment of liberal democracy should preface his criticisms of ARC.
(2) Gushee has very definite ideas about liberalism and democracy that need to be challenged.
For a start, Gushee has a very low bar for what counts as illiberal. The problem is that he doesn’t define liberalism per se and never broaches the diversity within liberalism on contested issues about abortion, LGBTIQ+ rights, or immigration. He implies that any limitation on abortion (third trimester?), any limitation on LGBTI+ rights (polyamorous marriage?), and any limitation on immigration (open borders?) is illiberal. On these metrics, every US government from Reagan to Obama would be illiberal. Further, illiberalism on some aspect does not equate to authoritarian anti-democracy. For instance, Denmark now has some of the toughest immigration laws in Europe, but the Danes don’t make Gushee’s list of anti-democratic countries in Europe![6]
Gushee has a lot to say on Poland and Hungary as Christian versions of ARC, and he’s not completely wrong on that score. But I would argue contra Gushee that Poland and Hungary are not anti-democratic, but they are illiberal by rejecting the progressive sexual mores and the pro-immigration policies of the EU. In the same way that India and Türkiye are abandoning flirtations with liberalism and secularism to (re)establish themselves as religious-based civilizations, so too Poland and Hungary have been attempting to reinforce their national identity as religious-based civilizations, as Christian societies. The result to some observers is an illiberal ethos – “illiberal” in the sense of resisting mass immigration, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and abortion access – but this is not naked despotism.
It should be observed that Poland’s conservative ruling party Law and Justice lost power in a peaceful 2023 election, despite winning the most votes of any party, with a peaceful transition of power to a new government albeit with much horse trading to form a new coalition.
Hungary under Viktor Orbán is a concern, Hungary is neither a transparent democracy nor a dictatorship. It is hard to get a fair assessment of Hungary since reporting on it is skewed by efforts to portray it as either the Shangri-la of conservativism or else as the boogeyman of progressives.
True, homophobic slurs by right-wing politicians and conservative biases in state-owned media are a problem in Poland and Hungary … just as anti-semitism among left-wing politicians and progressive biases in state-owned media in Canada and Australia are a problem.
The Christian civilization model of Hungarian and Polish conservatives are certainly open to critique for their illiberalism (one I partly share), but it is disingenuous to call them anti-democratic, and it does not directly correspond to the anti-democratic escapades of the American religious right.
Prior to 2010 everyone knew and accepted that Hungary and Poland were “Catholic” or “Christian” countries. Yet more recently the EU has found this religious dimension to their national cultures intolerable and has taken punitive actions against both countries.
What About Left-Wing Authoritarianism?
Gushee is almost exclusively concerned with anti-democratic antics and activities among Christian Nationalists and glosses over the authoritarian impulses of the political left.
He offers a robust definition of political authoritarianism and acknowledges that in theory it can come from either the right or the left. But, following Anne Applebaum, he sees such authoritarianism really only as a problem from the right and taking the form of “authoritative reactionary Christian politics.” He refuses to accept a “simple symmetry or parallelism between liberal and conservative authoritarianism.”[7] Here I would strongly demur. Consider a few examples:
(1) President Trump’s election result denialism and attempt to prevent the 2020 election from being certified by Vice President Mike Pence was prefigured in 2016 by Democratic efforts in the US Senate to prevent Vice President Joe Biden from certifying the election of Donald Trump as president. In addition, Democratic spokespersons and the progressive media drove the narrative that the 2016 result was illegitimate because Russia “stole” the election. Now, to be fair, the 2016 Democratic certification objections were political theatre whereas the Republican attempt in 2021 to prevent certification was an attempted coup. Also, Russian interference was real even if not the actual reason for Clinton’s loss,[8] whereas Trump’s loss was real and denied on the basis of conspiracy theories and absurd fictions.
I am aware of the rejoinder of both-side-ism and not-morally-equivalent, yet the political and media discourses across 2016-2021 demonstrate that both sides exhibited anti-democratic attitudes and cast aspersions on the legitimacy of democratic processes. Trump and the Republicans merely took it to a pernicious level.
(2) In various places in the world, democracy is under threat from autocratic left-wing governments. Gushee’s book pays no attention to authoritarian regimes in Myanmar, Hong Kong, Venezuela, and the Solomon Islands where democratic systems have either been eroded or brutally dismantled.
Even in Australia, religious freedom is under duress, the most telling instance is the Australian Capital Territory’s recent hostile seizure of Calvary Hospital from a Catholic order. Legislation was rushed and included license for the police to use “reasonable force” should Catholics protest the seizure. The alleged reason for the seizure was a rationalization of health services in the territory, but the real motive was the refusal of Calvary Hospital to perform abortions and euthanasia. The removal of the cross from Calvary Hospital was a scene reminiscent of something from Beijing, yet it was happening in Canberra, Australia’s capital city.[9]
Moving to Europe, after the United Kingdom voted in favour of BREXIT, European MP Guy Verhofstadt urged the British Liberal Democrats to support a European empire as an alternative to the democratic system that had resulted in BREXIT.[10] If one remembers that the German word for “empire” is reich, that Verhofstadt called the British “Liberal Democrats” to reject the democratic result of the BREXIT vote, then British, Hungarian, Greek, and Polish reservations about the EU should elicit some sympathy.
Nota Bene: Gushee is not simply a Europhile, he’s a Eurodoxologist, with strong beliefs in the EU’s impeccability in policy and unquestionable sovereignty over Europe. He seriously needs to listen to some thoughtful Euro-sceptics. For some of us – I’m a dual UK and Aussie citizen - the EU behaves like the shell company of a James Bond villain operated by debauched technocratic nihilists.
Gushee is no fan of Brazillian ex-president Jair Bosonaro who admittedly fits the ARC label, but we should mention that Bosonaro’s successor, left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has provided at least tacit support for Russia in the current conflict with Ukraine. The good guys are not always on the left!
Gushee views the rest of the world very much through the lenses of his own left-right US political context which I found profoundly frustrating because the realities are far more complex than his political binary allows.
On Wednesday, I’ll examine Gushee on populism, his refusal to engage economic issues, I’ll object to his secular revolution vs. religious counter-revolution model, before closing with some qualified appreciative remarks of his work.
[1] There is now a plethora of books on this topic, among them, Michael F. Bird, Religious Freedom in a Secular Age: A Christian Case for Liberty, Equality and Secular Government (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022); Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022); Paul D. Miller, The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022); Marcia Pally, White Evangelicals and Right-Wing Populism: How Did We Get Here? (London: Routledge, 2022).
[2] Gushee, Defending Democracy, pp. 10-11.
[3] Gushee, Defending Democracy, p. 135.
[4] Gushee, Defending Democracy, p. 175.
[5] See Michael F. Bird and N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2024), chap. 4. Gushee, Defending Democracy, pp. 148-60, seems to agree in part.
[6] Farhiya Khalid and Nikolaj Houmann Mortensen, “Denmark set to keep anti-immigrant policy regardless of vote,” Al Jazeera 25 Oct 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/10/25/denmark-set-to-keep-anti-migrant-policy-regardless-of-vote-result. Accessed 25 Nov 2023.
[7] Gushee, Defending Democracy, pp. 31-34. I think Gushee could be swayed into better appreciating this push-back as he does admit how “resolutely secular forces” are just as “scornful” and “just as committed to winner-take-all politics” which is “a dangerous brew, inimical to the success of democracy” (p. 83), the dangers of an “administrative state” that imposes liberalism with a heavy hand combined with the risk of top-down “left-liberal orthodoxy” (p. 152), and “The danger of both left- and right-wing authoritarianism was written in the blood of millions in the twentieth century” (p. 161).
[8] Russia certainly interfered in the election on social media and by leaking information about Hillary Clinton, however, the reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss for my mind had nothing to do with Russia. Rather, Clinton lost the presidential election because: (1) The “Clinton brand” had been tarnished since the 1990s; (2) Clinton was going to do nothing to stop US jobs from going overseas; (3) Clinton was perceived as very Hawkish on foreign policy after the USA was tired of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; and (4) Clinton played identity politics very hard and not only alienated but demonized the white working class who make up a significant part of the voting constituency.
[9] “Dissenting report by Opposition Senators,” Parliament of Australia. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/ACTSelf-Government2023/Report/Dissenting_report_by_Opposition_Senators. Accessed 25 Nov 2023.
[10] Ben Johnson, “Only an ‘EU’ Empire Can Secure Liberty: EU Leader,” Acton Institute. 16 Sept 2019. https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2019/09/16/only-eu-empire-can-secure-liberty-eu-leader. Accessed 20 Aug 2022.