The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 4: Populism and Religion

Continued from Part 3

Comments on Populism and Religion: Why the Twain Will Always Meet by Petr Kratochvíl [1]

In this essay Petr Kratochvíl argues that liberal democracy is under threat from populism, and that populism is linked in various ways with religion, even when it doesn't appear to be. 

He explains that, "By liberalism, I generally understand the large group of theories that are concerned with the limits to the scope of state power and the related defence of individual and collective rights of citizens." I can go along with that. 

But I'm sceptical when he claims that "liberalism is a core element of the hegemony on which the global order is built". I think Samuel Huntington came closer to the truth of that when he ascribed it to: (1) the social and class relations of the West, with the rise of cities and commerce, and the dispersion of power in Western societies between estates, monarchs and secular and religious authorities, and the development of state bureaucracies; (2) the technological invention of the means of ocean navigation for reaching distant peoples and (3) the development of the military capabilities for conquering those peoples. As he put it: "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do".

 Kratochvíl's next point, however, I believe is accurate: that liberal democracy is threatened by populist movements that wish to uncouple liberalism from democracy. They want simple majoritarianism. An example in South Africa, where the Bill of Rights prefaces each clause with "Everyone has the right to....", is populist majoritarians who want it changed to "South African citizens have the right to..."

That was also a feature of Afrikaner Nationalism, which claimed to be based on Christian Nationalism. Within the perceived boundaries of the "Afrikaner nation" it was very democratic, and very illiberal. There were to be no restrictions on the power of parliament (in Afrikaans, "volksraad"="people's council") which was there to exercise the "volkswil" (people's will) unrestricted by any liberal notions like bills of rights. The sovereignty of parliament was almost an article of faith. But Christian Nationalists were also authoritarian, and regarded Christian Nationalism as essentially anti-democratic.

Kratochvíl sees two kinds of links between populism and religion. The first is that religious groups may form an alliance with populists because they share some common aims or values. Religious leaders could therefore encourage their supporters to support populist movements. The second kind of link is deeper, though perhaps less visible -- that a populist movement tends to be a quasi-religious entity. It is marked by a return of the sacred, and the political world is reenchanted. "The populist redemptivism directly or indirectly draws on the chiliastic conviction of the end of time, the coming of the Antichrist and the fight of the just against the hosts of Satan." And also "populist movements are much more frequently built upon the principle of charismatic leadership, verging on a cult, rather than the bureaucratic authority which is typical for mainstream political parties."

Populist movements are also characterised by an emphasis on the return of the natural (common sense) and the return of the past. They hold out the promise of a past golden age, when everything worked, even though the remembered past is often a sanitised version of the actual past.

In thinking about all this I'm reminded of a book I read 60 years ago, The Secular City by Harvey Cox, in which he said:

We should oppose the romantic restoration of the sprites of the forest. It may seem pleasant at first to reinstate the leprechauns, but - as Hitler made all too clear - once the Valkyries return, they will seek a bloodthirsty revenge on those who banished them. We should also be wary of any attempt to resacralize politics. Political leaders and movements should never be granted any sacred significance, and all efforts to use public authority to support traditional religious beliefs or the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism must be resisted.

 Kratochvíl would probably agree with most of it, except the last bit about "the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism". He regards the distinction between sacred and secular as important for liberalism, and suggests "secularism" as one of the positive values promoted by liberalism. Cox, however, made a distinction between secularization on the one hand, which he said was a process that was compatible with, and indeed initiated by the Christian worldview, and secularism on the other, which he said was an ideology with quasi-religious characteristics.

So I see liberal democracy, and the threats to it, somewhat differently from Kratochvíl. I don't see the main threat to it as populism, but rather as authoritarianism, which Kratochvíl doesn't mention. And that threat comes from within as well as from without. The US is often referred to by journalists as "the leader of the Free World" -- I assume that by the "Free World" they mean the liberal-democratic countries of the world -- but recent arbitrary arrests by secret police (the masked members of ICE) and resulting detention without trial show that the US is decidedly unfree and authoritarian.

Of course its current government doesn't claim to be liberal, rather the opposite. I think the UK still regards itself as a liberal democracy, but the recent arrests of people protesting against genocide and charging them with "terrorism" shows that the "liberal democracy" label is no longer securely attached. A few years ago, when the UK parliament was debating detention without trial, most of the UK news media were speaking of advocating detention without trial as "the moral high ground". In the present the UK also has by far the highest number of people who have been prosecuted for things they said online.

I think Kratochvíl has missed a couple of important points here.  I believe that in the Christian faith there is an important difference between authority and authoritarianism, and between tradition and traditionalism, and between secularisation and secularism, and we need to be talking more about those. 

 

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Notes and References 

1. Populism & Religion, in van der Pol et al 2025:17

 

The Comedians

The Comedians by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A group of travellers who meet on a ship sailing from New York to the Caribbean find their lives entwined long after they step ashore in Haiti, under the dictatorial rule of "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his dreaded secret police, the Tonton Macoute.

Brown, the narrator, is a hotelier, returning from an unsuccessful trip to New York attempting to sell the hotel, which he had inherited from his mother. Among his travelling companions are Mr and Mrs Smith, vegetarians hoping to establish a vegetarian centre in Haiti, and "Major" Jones, who turns out to be a con man. The Smiths stay at Brown's hotel, and make it their base for preaching the benefits of vegetarianism.

These expatriates are the comedians of the title, and at many points in the story I was reminded of Jean Genet's play The Balcony, where the setting is a brothel, and the clients are given an opportunity to act out their fantasies. So the comedians play their roles in a society in which everything seems unreal, like a stage set. Over it all hovers the spectral figure of Baron Samedi, the Voodoo lwa of the dead, who functioned (in real life as well as in the novel) as the evil genius of Papa Doc Duvalier.

Brown, who is having an affair with a diplomat's wife, wants to elope with her, but is trapped by, among other things, the corrupt bureaucracy of the authoritarian state, whose ministers tend to disappear when they fall out of favour, and whose bodies disappear even during their funerals.

Graham Greene manages to convey the atmosphere of an authoritarian state well, with the ruthless elimination of those perceived as enemies of the regime. Some of his descriptions of encounters with the Tonton Macoute reminded me of encounters with the South African Security Police 50-60 years ago. and actually contemporary with The Comedians. There are similarities between all authoritarian states, but there are also differences. One of the differences is ideology. Some totalitarian states have an official ideology, such as Communism in the USSR, Nazism in Hitler's Germany, Fascism in Mussolini's Italy. In South Africa the ideology was Apartheid, which grew out of Christian Nationalism. Apartheid didn't begin as an ideology. Under Dr Malan it was an election slogan and a principle to be opposed to that of the previous United Party government. Under J.G. Strijdom it was a policy. It only developed into a fully-fledged ideology under Verwoerd, after which the tendency was simply towards naked power.

In Haiti the progress toward naked power was more rapid and far-reaching, because the ideological roots were weaker. Papa Doc Duvalier doesn't make a personal appearance in The Comedians, but his ministers do, and what is most obvious about them in the book is the insecurity of their positions. They disappear, and their bodies are not found. The comedians of the title are the expatriate characters, but it could just as well be the whole society, the regime and its opponents.

And reading it now, when Donald Trump and his minions are doing a Papa Doc on the USA. makes the story more relevant. There is little ideology, other than a distorted vision of neoliberalism, And the model seems to be that of Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There: "the question is, which is to be master -- that's all." Like the apartheid regime, the Trump regime has the support of Christian Nationalists, but Christian Nationalism is not the ideology of the regime. Perhaps it is that Baron Samedi has migrated to the mainland, and is one of the few immigrants who is not in danger of deportation.
 
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