If we want to gain at least a partial understanding why so many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians have been following Trump, their first step is to read about the authoritarian personality. Certainly, reading about that personality type will not tell us everything that there is to know about why many of us, not including me, have remained faithful to Trump. But it will give us a good introduction.
Why study the authoritarian personality type in order to begin to learn about why many of my fellow believers have been following Trump? We should note that the appeal of fascism and ethnocentrism triggered studies into why the appeal existed. The emergence of leaders like Hitler and Mussolini were key examples of fascism and ethnocentrism. Fromm, from the Frankfurt School started to talk about the appeal of these isms in the 1930s while Adorno co-lead a study on why people responded the way they did. These began the studies of the Authoritarian Personality.
We should note today's emergence of highly authoritarian leaders who demonize their opponents and present themselves as messianic leaders or saviors. We should also note the ethnocentrism that is behind some of the growth in authoritarianism in nations like Hungary, Israel, or Turkey. And so overly strong leaders are not the only fulcrum for authoritarianism. Another source of focus for authoritarianism can be ideology while yet another could be political party. Here, the Soviet Union serves as an example. In any case, the focus of the authoritarian is that there is only savior for the people. That one savior can be an 'I' as in a person or 'We' as in a group. And because that is what is taught, a high degree of conformity to what the savior demands is required as well as a fear and hostility toward those are different.
We should note one of the first weaknesses of what was written about the Authoritarian Personality was that it was skewed against conservatives. That means that only conservatives were cited for this type of personality flaw. But it wasn't too long until the same kind of personality was recognized as being in vogue in "communist"--they were nevertheless anti-Capitalist--nations which should not have been difficult considering leaders like Stalin and Mao. Accurately measuring the presence or degree of authoritarianism in a person was another weakness.
One of the best brief introductions into this type of personality was written by Erich Fromm (click here for the article). In his article, Fromm distinguishes between two kinds of Authoritarian Personalities (leaders are active authoritarians and followers are passive authoritarians), he identifies the traits that they share, and he mentions why people develop this kind of personality. And though there is more to say about the Authoritarian Personality type than what Fromm wrote, his article gives a good overview of the personality type.
But what does all of the above have to do with my fellow religiously conservative Christians and their yearning for a leader like Trump? I can give an answer to that question having been a religiously conservative Christian (a.k.a., flaming fundamentalist) for most of my life. One of the first things we are taught in conservative Christianity is the need to submit to authorities. In fact it seems that we are encouraged to seek authority structures and figures to submit to. Whether you are a child and must submit to your parents and then almost every other adult in your life, or you are a wife and you must submit to your husband, or you are employed and you must submit to your boss, or you are a believer and you must submit to your church's authorities, or you are a citizen and you must submit to the different governing authorities, there seem to always be some kind of authority figure to whom we are told we are dependent on for instructions. In other words, egalitarian relationships are rarely even briefly mentioned.
If you add our need to submit to all of the governing authorities above us to teachings about how the world is divided between us and them, believers and unbelievers, and that those unbelievers will eventually start to persecute us if we believers are being faithful enough, it should not be difficult to see how insular we religiously conservative Christians can become. And by being insular, it means that we prefer to stay in a bubble or echo chamber where many of our leaders have told us to stay so that we are protected from being led astray.
But how did the Republican Party become our political hiding place from the corruption of the world? My speculation tells me that it started with J. Gresham Machen's book, Christianity And Liberalism, where Machen correctly distinguishes between genuine Christianity and liberal theology, the brands liberal and conservative seem to have been generalized to other spheres such as political and economic ideologies and political parties.
We should also note in Machen's case is that that he was unfairly treated to a significant degree. We should also note here that after liberal theology denied the deity of Christ along with the supernatural intervention of God through Christ, acts of mercy and working for justice became a substitute for believing the Gospel. And thus some of Machen's reactions to liberal theology could have easily been spread to liberal politics and liberal ideologies since all of them, like liberal theologians, care about helping people. In addition, Machen held to the traditional values of the South which included some racist views.
Now Machen's political views, except his racist views, still continues in some Reformed circles, what about the rest of the Evangelical world. Here we need to look at the work of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who were able to solder religiously conservative Christianity to political conservatism. And that included a political conservative view of America's history which puts a high value on conservative patriotism and what they view as traditional views of America.
And so how does this tie into the Authoritarian Personality type? When we read Fromm, we see that there are two kinds of Authoritarian Personalities: leaders and followers. Both kinds have become dependent on each other. Authoritarian followers look to attach themselves to bigger than life leaders, political groups, and/or ideas to give themselves a sense of significance and personal connections that they did not have before. For those people, groups, or ideas to be big enough to provide that sense of significance, they must at least be approaching all powerful or all knowing level. And that tells us the kind of thinking that followers most often employ. Followers employ a kind of all-or-nothing thinking by hold to a black-white worldview. And thus those who disagree with our hero/political group/idea, they must be against us because who or what we follow has all of the answers.
Authoritarian leaders depend on a very high degree of allegiance from their followers to give themselves the sense of significance and connection with others that they seek. Without enough people giving the authoritarian leader a high degree of loyalty, the leaders themselves feel vulnerable. However, they cannot afford to appear vulnerable to followers who are expecting larger than life heroes to follow.
Now the descriptions of authoritarian leaders and followers mostly, if not totally, come from Fromm. But what From contrasts with the Authoritarian Personality type shines a spotlight on why us religiously conservative Christians are vulnerable to succumb to the appeal of authoritarianism. The opposite of the Authoritarian Personality is a person whose maturity, love, and reasoning enables them to be independent--btw, Fromm does distinguish between relying on the views of authoritarian leaders, groups, or ideas from relying on experts in a given field. And if you remember how us religiously conservative Christians are constantly being guided to find the right authority figures and structures to submit to in order to protect ourselves from going astray, why we are vulnerable to authoritarian appeals should become obvious now.
Here we should note that when religiously conservative Christians, like Robertson or Falwell, wedded political conservatism, the Republican Party in particular, to the religiously conservative Christianity, they used issues like the pro-life issue. The fact that the religiously conservative Christian view of pro-life reveals how their black-white worldview operates. By exclusively emphasizing the right to life for the unborn, Pro-life has become defined, for my fellow religiously conservative Christians, solely by the abortion issue. Similar to that is today's exclusive emphasis on the family in responding to the LGBT community. That threats to post-born life from toxins in the environment, poverty, war, and certain diseases do not qualify as pro-life issues because the exclusive emphasis is on the abortion issue.
Now we should note that even before us religiously conservative Christians became a political force, just the authoritarianism from our religious lives and how that spilled into our social views has been around since the beginning of our nation. And our penchant for authoritarianism has spread well beyond the current conservative political and ideological boundaries. We can now see authoritarianism in both Democratic liberals and from some Leftists.
Thus, conservatism does not have a monopoly on authoritarianism. However, the more enamored one is with a leader, political party, or ideology, the more vulnerable one becomes to the vile clutches of authoritarianism.
And so, what do we see in Donald Trump and his followers that we did not see before Trump entered the political scene? With Trump we have a self-proclaimed Messianic figure who claims that he is the only one who can solve our problems. Us religiously conservative Christians should have seen red flags of blasphemy and its sub sequential idolatry flying high over his campaign.
But many of us didn't because we preferred not to see those flags. And that was because many of us wanted a Trump like leader to restore order to America whose changes have come too quickly and too disruptive for our comfort. And considering how many of us were taught that America was founded as a Christian nation, these changes were also seen as being unfair and became oppressive in our eyes. And that doesn't count how we see these already intolerable changes as the harbinger of worse things to come.
If you can then imagine the fear, trepidation, and anger many of us, not me though, feel over what has become of the present and what will seem to be our future, you should be able to understand why Trump appeals to so many of us. And that it is reasonable for Trump's persona and leadership so appeals to many of us religiously conservative Christians tells us so much about why Christianity is in decline in our nation. Anger over the present and fear of the future has caused us to choose poorly. In the meantime, real threats to our future, such as climate change, poverty, authoritarian regimes, and nuclear war easily fly in under our radar while the much of the world watches in horror.
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