I don't plan to make a habit of this--commenting on the politics of the day--anymore, but I did start with Jung on the hysteria of Nazi Germany latching on to a magnetic hysteric. Jung implies that the eruptions of the unconscious are fairly frequent in mass society, and I admit I still don't understand what's going on--maybe mass delusion and hysteria are the default positions for mass civilization.
In my last post I postponed consideration of the church as a cultural counterweight to mass hysteria, as Jung proposed, and I haven't read further in Jung's writings to work out more exactly what he meant. But though it may make intuitive sense, that seems to be quite the opposite of what's happening now. The culture is being pushed to hysteria by the loudest voices claiming religion as their central belief.
On this I defer to a contemporary experts, constitutional separation of church and state watchdog Rachel Laser and author Katherine Stewart, in conversation with Dahlia Lithwick at Slate. It's also a podcast, and the introductory article itself is illuminating. I've added bold to some sections below.
From the podcast:
Katherine Stewart: "Let’s talk about what Christian nationalism is and what it isn’t. Christian nationalism is not a religion—it’s not Christianity. I think of it as a mindset, and also a machine. The mindset is this ideology, the idea of America as essentially a Christian theocracy or a Christian nation whose laws should be based on the Bible, and a very reactionary reading of the Bible. It’s also a political movement that exploits religion in this organized quest for power. As a political movement, it is leadership-driven and it’s organization-driven. It has this deeply networked organizational infrastructure that is really the key to its power. There has been five decades of investment in this infrastructure, and it’s the leaders of this network who are really calling the shots."
Dahlia mentions some of the prominent players in Congress (like House Speaker Mike Johnson) and of course a certain candidate for President and his possible vp nominees, but she asks specifically about influence on the courts. (Another Slate article warns we very well could see a number of Supreme Court decisions this month that reflect the hegemony of far right and Christian nationalist ideas on the Court.)
Laser and Stewart trace the political history, beginning in the 1980s, of a patient legal strategy to "sideline and in some cases obliterate" the Constitutional prohibition against the establishment of a national religion. Besides gaining more taxpayer money for explicitly religious institutions, these efforts focused on abortion.
Stewart talks in more detail about their successful efforts to complicate and ban abortion, with ambitions to limit birth control and criminalize medical efforts to save women having miscarriages. In doing so, they've actually gotten their particular language into the law. Then Stewart talks more about tactics, and this is especially illuminating:
"In the last 15 years, the rhetoric of violence has become more extreme... the calls for dominion, the calls for total domination, have become louder and more explicit. And part of that is a consequence of the rise of a spirit-warrior style of religion..."
Stewart traces the "theology" of the righteous taking over the "Seven Mountains" of culture, which include government, media, education and business. Adherents of "Seven Mountain Dominion" include not only evangelical Christian nationalists but professed Catholics like Mike Flynn and Roger Stone, and one would guess, several of the Catholics on the Supreme Court, notably Samuel Alito.
Outsiders don't understand the meaning of the "Appeal to Heaven" flag that flew over an Alito home, and that's displayed at Speaker Johnson's office. "So when they fly it, they’ve reinterpreted it as taking a stand for the idea of America as a Christian theocratic nation rather than a pluralistic democracy. They see it as a call for profound, and even violent, revolution."
Laser adds: "PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute] did a poll on Christian nationalists, and they found Christian nationalists are about twice as likely as the rest of us to believe in political violence. That’s what we saw on Jan. 6 with the parading “Appeal to Heaven” flags that were at the insurrection. I think another important point to make here is the authoritarian nature of this Christian nationalist movement. This movement is rooted in the belief that America is a country given to European Christians, and that our laws and policies must reflect the same. If you believe that, you are antidemocratic, because democracy is rooted in equality. So the end goal of this Christian nationalist movement has to be the toppling of democracy to achieve their goal."
There is little question about what hysteric this movement follows, especially when "the former president screens a video called “God Made Trump” at his rallies..."
This may seem to be a mostly political exercise by cynical politicians and their consultants, whether or not they are true believers. That's obviously part of it--can anybody really believe Trump is motivated by faith? But leaders need followers, and Stewart says that established churches, their leaders and congregations are involved:
"Another feature of this movement that is often overlooked is the pastor networks like Watchmen on the Wall and Church United, or groups like Faith Wins, that draw together and then mobilize tens of thousands of conservative or conservative-leaning pastors as movement leaders. If you can get the pastors, you can get their congregations. Often pastors are the most trusted voices in their congregations."
Of course escaping theocratic rule was a major reason those Europeans came to America, though quite often they were escaping rule by theocrats other than their own. The ambitions of this theocracy-in-process is also reminiscent of how the Catholic Church ruled in Europe when it was the only Christian game in town and even monarchs feared opposing it, because the Church's word was the word of God, anything else was heresy, with beheading and burning at the stake not infrequent consequences for the slightest perceived deviations. The divine right of kings, on the comeback trail!
Today in America we already have everyday banning of thousands of books in public schools, due almost exclusively to these Christian nationalist activists, however they disguise themselves without really fooling anyone. And of course we have laws beyond abortion bans, governing medical care of women based on their theology, again disguised without fooling anyone.
This Christian right dominion movement is fueled by what has traditionally been called religious fervor and righteousness, but in this context it seems another form of mass hysteria. Though these experts don't discuss it, that hysteria may extend to a different kind of denial of climate distortion: the notion (which surfaces after major disasters) that hurricanes, floods, fires, etc. and other climate distortion effects are God's punishment for the paramount sins as defined by the reactionary right (abortion, "diversity" etc.) and that the only way to prevent these effects is to follow the Christian Nationalist program. There are variations of this kind of belief in many religious traditions.
So perhaps it is not religious institutions but the institutions of the American civil religion as embodied in the Constitution that is our counterweight. Laser may be promoting her own organization with her final comment, but it pertains:
" The antidote to Christian nationalism is the separation of church and state, because it refuses to let Christian privilege into the law, it refuses to let conservative Christianity be the guiding principle in America. It insists that America keep to its promises that are embedded in our Constitution, of religious freedom as a basic human right. And that’s why Christian nationalists have gone after the separation of church and state, and that’s why their allies at the Supreme Court are on a crusade to eradicate church–state separation—because they are in lockstep with a movement that must get rid of church–state separation in order to accomplish its goals."
