The Power Worshippers

by Katherine Stewart

  ADF International has had some success in shaping public conversation on certain key issues. In 2017 a debate over end-of-life care for Charlie Gard, a child in a vegetative state, dominated the English media for several months. The framing of discussion, centered on the value of human life at its most vulnerable, was highly reminiscent of the debate that took hold around Terri Schiavo, which stormed through American politics in the early 2000s. Behind the scenes in both cases, the Alliance Defending Freedom was instrumental in launching and orchestrating the flurry of activity.

  The Alliance Defending Freedom joins with other right-wing groups in weaponizing the idea of “free speech.” In England, until quite recently, there was little public protest at women’s reproductive health clinics. But as antiabortion groups in the UK increase their visibility, protesters are becoming more aggressive and direct in their tactics. In 2018 a reproductive care clinic in Ealing, West London, was compelled to erect a “safe zone,” also called an “exclusion zone,” to protect clients from threats and intimidation. In England, that was a first. Opponents lost no time in casting the safety zone as discrimination against their right to free speech.41

  Joining the Alliance Defending Freedom in the global expansion are a host of other right-wing, ultrareligious advocacy groups with a global reach. They include the National Organization for Marriage, the International Organization for the Family, and Family Watch International. These U.S.-based groups are increasingly finding common cause with religious nationalist groups around the world, and they have begun to formalize their alliances through a variety of international organizations.

  According to the Brussels-based policy and advocacy consultant Elena Zacharenko, there are hundreds of organizations pushing an ultraconservative agenda in courts and legislative tribunals across the European continent. Lobbying organizations include the European Center for Law and Justice (an international arm of the American Center for Law and Justice), which is active at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and at the European Parliament in Brussels. Other key organizations include European Dignity Watch, World Youth Alliance Europe, Fédération Pro Europa Christiana, and Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which is devoted to “pushing back the tide of radical secularism” and has been closely affiliated with Steve Bannon.42 The organizations support and sustain political careers for those who share their goals. And, as in the U.S., their agenda is kept alive thanks to a flood of cash from conservative religious hierarchies and wealthy individuals.

  “It is the same individuals involved in many of the (seemingly) different organizations, which creates an impression of many different movements supporting this agenda from the grassroots, while this is not necessarily the case,” says Zacharenko. But over time, she points out, “the agenda has very much taken on a life of its own, and has unfortunately been adopted by some ‘mainstream’ politicians—in Poland, Hungary, Italy, Brazil, Croatia and elsewhere. It is therefore not something forcibly kept alive by a small number of radicals, but has entered and been embraced by some sections of the electorate.”

  Such groups have a solid toehold in eastern Europe, where persistent economic challenges, combined with falling birth rates, have contributed to existential questions about the very nature of nationhood. The most obvious signs of influence often appear on the familiar turf of the culture wars. In Poland the antiabortion cause was taken up by an organization of conservative lawyers, the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, whose president is legal scholar Aleksander Stepkowski. Abortion is already prohibited in Poland in most instances, but exceptions are in place for rape and incest, for gross fetal abnormality, and to preserve the life of the mother. Ordo Iuris and its allies have tried to push through a new law that dispenses with some of those exceptions and would add sweeping and punitive language to the existing prohibitions.43

  “Although a relative newcomer to the conservative Polish scene, Ordo Iuris has very quickly emerged as the leading organization advancing a drastically retrograde agenda ranging from a complete abortion ban to decriminalizing some forms of domestic abuse,” says Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual & Reproductive Rights. “They are also very ambitious in reaching the highest levels of the Polish government and courts, and it would seem have plans to influence the EU and the UN.”44

  Efforts to impose further restrictions on abortion gave rise to massive protests. But the demonstrations, known as the “coat hanger rebellion,”45 did little to derail the effort, which has the support of a small but vocal number of politicians as well as the backing of the Catholic hierarchies and appears to be part of a broader effort to change the culture. In 2018, new textbooks were introduced in Polish schools that present contraception as “dangerous” to women’s health. And the proceedings only enhanced the stature of Stepkowski, the Polish legal scholar. On February 20, 2019, Poland’s president appointed Stepkowski as a judge of the supreme court, which would make him the second Ordo Iuris activist already on the highest court of Poland. In 2019, CitizenGo launched a massive campaign in Poland to battle efforts to liberalize antiabortion law, spreading their message through billboards, mailings, and screenings of antiabortion films.

  Europe’s current spate of conservative activism and legislation, which appears to reverse the trend toward universal human rights, is not a result of spontaneous uprisings from ordinary citizens fed up with “the gays.” In fact, this activism reflects an ongoing, well-funded, highly coordinated effort by multiple groups across states and even continents to roll back those rights in the EU and beyond.

  American-origin groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom have been instrumental in shaping the emerging global movement toward reactionary religious nationalism. But there is another country that has played an exceptional role in the process, and that is Russia.

  As on so many other fronts, Paul Weyrich got there first. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Weyrich took a keen interest in Russian politics and religion.46 He was among the first to grasp the potential for an alliance with religious conservatives in Russia and Eastern Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr. Weyrich made multiple trips to Russia, eventually becoming a strong supporter of closer relations. As president of the Krieble Institute, a unit of another organization he cofounded called the Free Congress Foundation, Weyrich also supported democracy movements in eastern Europe, fostering political engagement and promoting the establishment of small businesses. In Hungary, he formed a partnership with Laszlo Pasztor. After serving a prison sentence for his activities with a pro-Nazi party, Pasztor made his way to the United States and took a key role in establishing the ethnic outreach arm of the Republican National Committee.47 “The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society,” Weyrich said.48

  All told, Weyrich made more than a dozen trips to Russia and eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of communism. At the time of his death in 2008, even as he was riding high on a wave of plutocratic money in the United States, he was writing and speaking frequently in defense of Russia and facilitating visits between U.S. conservatives and Russian political leaders.49

  Soon more Republicans began to experience a similar, extraordinary change of heart about their onetime enemy of all enemies. Around the time that Weyrich was first making contact with Russia, Brian Brown was growing up in the mainstream American world where the communist Soviet Union stood for the axis of all evil. But Brown’s views on Russia changed as he rose the ranks of the religious right. A leading opponent of marriage equality, he began to meet Russians at international conferences on family issues. He found many kindred spirits. As cofounder and, later, president of the National Organization for Marriage, along with membership in the Council for National Policy and other right-wing interest groups, Brown visited Moscow four times in as many years. During one of his trips, in 2013, he testified before the Duma as Russia adopted a series of anti-LGBT laws.

  “W
hat I realized was that there was a great change happening in the former Soviet Union,” Brown told the Washington Post. “There was a real push to re-instill Christian values in the public square.”50

  As the Republican nomination battle intensified, the burgeoning alliance between Russians and U.S. conservatives came into focus. The growing dialogue among international (often Russian or Russia-connected) political figures and members of the American right came at the same time that the Russian government stepped up efforts to cultivate and influence far-right groups in Europe. Russian oligarchs, having effectively deployed religious nationalism to gain control over their own population, readily grasped that it could be used to shape events in other countries, too. “Pro-family” politics, which purports to aid families but is in its largest part aimed at suppressing women’s autonomy and LGBT rights, they understood, is an effective tool in uniting and mobilizing religious nationalists everywhere, which is in turn an excellent way to destabilize the Western alliance and advance Russia’s geopolitical interests.

  In short, Russian leaders see America’s Christian right as a tremendously useful vehicle for influencing American politics and government in a manner favorable to Russian interests. Maria Butina, the Russian woman charged in 2018 with “acting as an agent of a foreign government,” certainly understood the utility of the movement. When she set about “to establish a back channel of communication” with American politicians, it was not at all surprising that she would do so at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Alexey Komov’s dual interest in America’s Christian homeschooling movement and faith-based film industry would appear to fit the pattern.

  Russian leaders’ evident interest in manipulating America’s Christian nationalists for their own purposes did little to discourage those nationalists from clamoring for still more Russian involvement in American affairs. In the run-up to the 2016 election, the passion for Russian family values among America’s religious extremists grew still more ardent. In 2013, Bryan Fischer, then a spokesman for the American Family Association, called Mr. Putin a “lion of Christianity.” In 2014, Franklin Graham defended Mr. Putin for his efforts “to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda” even as he lamented that Americans have “abdicated our moral leadership.” In December 2015, Mr. Graham met privately with Mr. Putin for forty-five minutes. And in March 2019, with the apparent blessing of Vice President Mike Pence—or so Graham says—Graham traveled to Russia to meet with a number of Russian religious and political leaders, such as Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill and Vyacheslav Volodin, a Kremlin official sanctioned by the U.S. government since 2014 for his role in Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. According to the social media account of one Russian official, the tête-à-tête was for the purpose of strengthening relationships between the U.S. Congress and the Duma.

  On his own Facebook account on March 3, 2019, Graham obliquely dismissed to the Mueller investigation, writing, “#Collusion? I’m in Russia right now—Moscow to be exact—and I’m meeting with the Russian churches on how we can share with more young people about faith in Jesus Christ! That’s not ‘collusion’ but it is collaboration for the sake of souls. #GoodNews.”

  The Christian nationalists’ affection for Mr. Putin and all things Russian goes much deeper than a tactical alliance aimed at saving souls and defeating “homosexuals” and “gender ideology.” At the core of the attraction lies a shared political vision. America’s Christian nationalists have not overlooked Putin’s authoritarian style of government; they have embraced it as an ideal. During the 2016 presidential campaign Mike Pence hailed Mr. Putin as “a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.”51 The Christian nationalists haven’t shied away from the fusion of church and state that characterizes Putin’s regime. On the contrary, it appears they want to emulate it. They love Russia, it seems, because they hate America and its form of secular, constitutional democracy.

  When Russians undertook a direct attack on American democracy in 2016 with the clear aims of electing Donald Trump as president and undermining Americans’ trust in their system of government, Christian nationalist leaders did more than join Trump in the spurious cries of “No collusion.” They joined him in denying that there ever was an attack. They cheered him on as he obstructed efforts to investigate the attack. And then they joined him in attacking Democrats, the FBI, the “fake media,” the “deep state,” and everyone else who suggested that investigating and countering an attack on America was a good idea.

  It seems sadly fitting that so many of the self-anointed patriots of America’s Christian nationalist movement should have found themselves working with foreign powers intent on undermining our national security, our social fabric, the integrity of our elections, and the future of American democracy. This is a movement that never accepted the promise of America. It never believed that a republic could be founded on a universal ideal of equality, not on a particular creed, or that it might seek out reasoned answers to humanity’s challenges rather than enforce old dogmas. It never subscribed to the nation’s original unofficial motto, E Pluribus Unum, that out of many, we could become one. From the beginning, its aim was to redeem the nation by crushing the pluralistic heart of our country. The day when it will have the power to do so is fast approaching.

  EPILOGUE

  The rise of the religious right should be cause for alarm among all who care about the future of democracy in America. Yet it should not be the cause of despair. If Christian nationalism is a pathology rooted in America’s past, as I have argued, so, too, may the cure draw in important ways from our history. Overcoming this kind of reactionary and authoritarian movement isn’t just something Americans can do; it is what has made Americans what we are.

  In this book I have focused on the organizations and the people behind the movement. What I have necessarily left out are the many Americans who are mobilizing to confront the threat. When right-wing ideologues have sought to disenfranchise voters, to pervert the meaning of freedom of conscience and freedom of speech, to target the rights of specific communities, and to defend criminal actions by their enablers, Americans have organized to meet the challenge.

  While it is true that a sector of the media has essentially been enlisted in a propaganda campaign to stoke up nationalist impulses—working with far-right platforms as mouthpieces for disinformation and hate—there are many others that are working hard to bring the truth to light. The reason why Christian nationalist groups complain about government so loudly is that government often does intervene on the side of freedom; it was the government, after all, that went down to defend Black schoolchildren, the so-called Little Rock Nine, in Arkansas’s infamous desegregation case. Similarly, when members of the movement attack those Christians who reject a theology of domination and inequality, it is because they know that a different embrace of Christianity undermines their empty claims of moral authority.

  In addition, there are many legal advocacy groups committed to protecting individual rights, freedom of speech and conscience, and the separation of church and state, working in opposition to right-wing legal advocacy groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom. These organizations may not have as much money to devote to the cause, but their efforts are critical. Other organizations are devoted to promoting civic engagement, defending voting rights, and fostering access to comprehensive reproductive health care, scientific literacy and historical accuracy in schools, and the pursuit of justice in other arenas. Many faith groups are involved in seeking to restore the rights of the undefended and disenfranchised. All these groups and individuals working on different lines are advancing democracy against the claims of the radical right, and these are the Americans that inspire me. There are innumerable avenues of involvement, and they represent democracy in action. I believe they have the power to succeed, because they follow in the footsteps of those who have done so in the past.

  The biggest fraud of Chri
stian nationalism—that the United States was founded as a Christian nation—is also the movement’s source of its greatest weakness. The mythologizers of Christian nationalism have hurled every distortion they can find at America’s founders because they know that those same founders secured a truth that is fatal to their cause. The “wall of separation between Church & State” is not a latter-day fiction concocted by secular liberals, as Christian nationalists would have us believe. It is a phrase put to paper by Thomas Jefferson to describe a principle that was written into the Constitution and carved into history as a core achievement of the American Revolution. It is a principle understood by subsequent generations as essential to securing the lasting peace and prosperity of America’s irreducibly pluralistic society. If we want to defend against Christian nationalists’ distorted notion of “religious liberty,” we don’t need to find a new principle. We just need to reclaim the genuine religious freedom that our founders established and that most of our citizens cherish.

  Today’s movement leaders have declared a new holy war against America’s ethnically and religiously diverse democracy. Yet the vision of a nation founded upon hierarchies enshrined in purportedly biblical law remains now, as it was with the Confederacy and Jim Crow, the foundation of a weak society, not a strong one. If we want to guard against demagogues and theocrats who wish to “redeem” America, we don’t need a new theory of American democracy. We just need to recover and restore the vision of a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal.

  Many leaders of the Christian right like to dress up in red, white, and blue and announce themselves as true patriots. But they are the same people who seek to pervert our institutions, betray our international alliances and make friends with despots, degrade the public discourse, treat the Constitution as a subcategory of their holy texts, demean whole segments of the population, foist their authoritarian creed upon other people’s children, and celebrate the elevation of a “king” to the presidency who has made a sport out of violating democratic laws and norms. We don’t need lessons on patriotism from Christian nationalists. We need to challenge them in the name of the nation we actually have—a pluralistic, democratic nation—where no one is above the law and the laws are meant to be made by the people and their representatives in accordance with the Constitution.