The Religious Right vs. The Christian Right: a distinction without difference
Moderate Never Trumpers who still hold views that oppress women and queer people planted the seeds for the movement that wants to ostracize them.
In a recent column, David French, a right-wing columnist I have written a lot about, shares two stories of the origins of the Christian Right in the United States. The first story is one Evangelicals, like him, told themselves, “Religious conservatism arose as a force in the United States in response to the hedonism of the sexual revolution, the cultural intolerance of the New Left and the threat of the Soviet Union, an explicitly atheistic, Marxist empire.” He offers the counter narrative, made famous by Randall Balmer, a historian and author of “The Making of Evangelicalism.” French writes, “The competing narrative is substantially different. It placed the rise of the Christian right in a much darker context — as a last-ditch, racist effort to maintain segregation in the South.” Quoting Balmer, he writes, “Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a ‘Catholic issue.’”
The idea French is working with is that there could have been a moral beginning to the Christian right, but it’s been subsumed, if it ever existed, by the power-hungry, divisive, Trumpian right. French knows this well as he has been “cancelled,” so to speak, by that wing of right-wing Christianity. In his view, there are two versions of the Christian right: one compelled by morals and the other by power, at all costs. But for queer people and women, the distinction between the two is negligible.
The Trumpian wing of the religious right has done away with the call for the integrity and morality of political leaders, and now looks strictly for political alignment. Long gone are the calls for morality in leaders, exemplified in the SBC’s Clinton-era declaration: “We urge all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.”
French argues that Trump has even moved away from abortion, for example, as a key issue in his politics (which is hard to believe, seeing as how he continues to take credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade).
Personally, I think Balmer offers a compelling case for the origins of Evangelical politics, and so I believe the origins of the Christian right planted the seeds for the Trumpian takeover of the political bloc.
French is correct in saying that many right-wing Christians oppose Trump, and when they do, are castigated for it. However, I’m not convinced that if someone like Mike Johnson or even J.D. Vance ran under a more polite, more polished, Trump agenda, that French and a host of Never Trumpers would support them. I don’t think French’s objections to Trump amount to the necessary structural change that should be the response to Trump. I think that Never Trumpers just don’t like his irreverent demeanor and posture. I’m not suggesting that Trump’s problems are aesthetic, however. On the contrary, Trump’s sexism and racism, to name just two of his prejudices, precisely fit within the narrative of the Christian right, but they are put off by his tone and language (which is actually appealing to many of his supporters).
The crux of the issue here, in my mind, doesn’t rest on whether French’s fabrication of the origins of the Christian right is correct or whether Randall Balmer’s is. The issue lies in the fact that those two narratives offer us a distinction without difference.
While some members of the moderate Christian right oppose tariffs, for example, or Trump’s draconian immigration policies, or even his flagrant racism, the two moral issues that remain intact in both the moderate wing of the Christian right and its far-right counterpart are abortion and gay marriage. But at the core of those two issues isn’t morality–it is, in fact, bigotry.
I’m not writing to convince you to support gay marriage or abortion. Rather, I’m writing to say that opposition to gay marriage and reproductive rights is not a moral objection, but rather, one rooted in fear and hatred of both women and queer people. While enshrining those rights is a far cry from feminist and queer liberation, opposition to them is indicative of a patriarchal platform that’s too often mistaken for a moral one.
French is not a moderate or moral example of a Christian right-winger. If he opposes abortion and gay marriage, his bigotry is well-represented in the Trumpist segment of the Republican Party. Again, he just doesn’t like Trump's aesthetics (and who could blame him). Put another way, he seems just to be upset with the fact that Trump is saying the quiet part loudly.
The question then isn’t about how the Christian right started, or what’s come of it (French argues that the religious right has consumed the Christian right), but it’s how to stop it. The most important thing to do is for Christians to join a coalition against fascism and oppression. That means, for them, they need to stop pining for a political party or option that doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as an anti-fascist political party that holds a prejudice against women and queer people. The reason that such a thing doesn’t exist is because patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia are part and parcel of a fascist agenda. Perhaps French wishes that was all that was part of the Trumpist agenda, but until he realizes that his views on women and queer people are part of the problem, I think he will be adding fuel to the fire that canceled him.
What’s in order is a political realignment that begins with repentance. I wrote a few weeks ago about how my scorn has softened toward David French as he realizes the mess we are in. But his work (and it’s not just French, but any Never Trumper who actually wants to oppose fascism) is rooted in repenting of his bigoted views and owning that there is no such thing as a moral beginning to a movement that oppresses women and queer people. Until then, French is a weak ally, who lives in the fantasy that he is morally superior to his Trumpist interlocutors. No, David French and the Christian right planted the seeds for Trump, they just don’t like the plants that grew from them. The solution can’t be to simply cut the stems of those plants, but to dig up their roots. French is still rooted in the bigotry that gave us Trump, and he, along with all of his like-minded peers, need to re-root themselves in Jesus’ movement of love, liberation, and freedom.