When Authoritarianism Feels Familiar

White male power unchecked by accountability.

This is what white evangelicals have normalized and sacralized in their churches and families. For decades.

This is the very water that white evangelicals swim in. So, of course, it feels familiar to them.

It also feels like what is good. Why? Because evangelicals have long rationalized this authoritarian patriarchal ordering of society as being “God’s will.”

Evangelical support for the Trump regime is part of the same pattern.

Win Mcnamee (Getty Images)

What we’re seeing is not merely a toxic masculinity but a lawless masculinity.

But white evangelicals have been immersed in this way of thinking for so long that they don’t see it as either lawless or toxic; it’s just what feels normal.

This is basically a consequence of their theology, which is inherently undemocratic. (Never forget that the largest evangelical faith group, the Southern Baptist Convention, was literally founded as a legitimization for slavery.)

White evangelicalism is built on a system of hierarchies. People are inculcated in the belief that, to please God, they must conform to their assigned role in a divinely mandated system of authority and submission.

And that system places white male conservative Christians at the top. The insidious effects infiltrate all aspects of white evangelical culture, often operating even below the level of consciousness.

Everyone may be equal “in God’s eyes” – or so they may proclaim – but for all practical purposes, some people are clearly more equal than others.

This is the evangelical system, as it has long been, and it’s a system that fosters bullying, abuse and unaccountability.

When you start from a position of believing that God ordains some people should hold power over other people, for no reason other than their gender or the color of their skin, then it is inherently a system of oppression and subjugation.

But, according to most evangelicals’ earnest belief, this is exactly the kind of system that God demands.

And now, white evangelicals are no longer content with ordering their churches and families around that patriarchal, authoritarian system; they want the entire nation to be ordered that way.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Within white evangelicalism, people are so inured to the impunity of white males that they will even turn a blind eye to pastors who sexually abuse kids and congregants.

Evangelicals have demonstrated this again and again and again. New clergy abuse coverup cases emerge in the news on a near-daily basis, and that’s just the ones we see.

The pattern has become entirely predictable. White males are at the top of the hierarchy – and especially those who stand in pulpits – so they operate without guardrails.

The overwhelming evangelical support for Trumpism is part of the same pattern.

It’s an authoritarian regime, and the vast majority of evangelicals are comfortable with that.

They don’t sense any threat from this home-grown authoritarianism. To the contrary, it feels familiar and comfortable. It’s the same cozy blanket they’ve wrapped themselves in for decades in their churches and families.

But for those of us who have experienced the abuses and unaccountable impunity of white evangelicalism, the authoritarianism of the Trump regime feels like a déjà vu horror.

There’s a familiarity but it’s far from comfortable.

For decades, we’ve screamed about the endless coverups of child sex abuse in white evangelical spaces, and the institutionalized impunity of clergy sex abusers & their cronies. Now, all of what we see in Trumpian spaces is sickeningly similar and unsurprising.

Long before Trumpism, many of us could have told you of this malignancy within white evangelicalism – the authoritarianism, the impunity, the narcissism, the bullying, the mobbing, the predation, the cruelty.

We’ve seen it. We’ve lived it.

But countless numbers of us escaped from the constraints of white evangelical authoritarianism. There were costs, but our lives are infinitely the better.

May we all find freedom, too – and safety – from the authoritarian awfulness of the Trump regime.

May we all find ways to resist and to persist in truth-telling.

May we find again a spirit of common good and beloved community.

In solidarity.

For a more personal picture of this hierarchical culture, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.