Christian nationalism is the enemy

This is one of those topics that politicians have to handle delicately, but which doesn’t require any such discretion at a top 100 political science blog.

JD Vance’s little campaign trip to Hungary — the election that might remove Orban from power is tomorrow — made it all the more clear that the ideological base of the American right wing is Christian nationalism:

Vance appeared at a press conference alongside the prime minister, with the events labeled as a “Day of Friendship.”

“I’m here because of the moral cooperation between our two countries,” Vance said on a stage he shared with Orbán. He said the U.S. and Hungary provided a “defense of Western civilization,” that was founded on “Christian civilization and Christian values.”

Vance said the European Union was responsible for “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference,” in reference to Hungary being downgraded in 2022 from a full democracy to an “elective autocracy.” Orbán has been accused of stifling freedom of the press, along with rampant political corruption.

“The bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They’ve done it because they hate this guy,” Vance said. “They should’ve been following the policies of Orbán. That leadership can provide a model to the continent.”

In a highly unusual move, Vance also appeared at a rally for the prime minister, where he called for his reelection. “We have got to get Viktor Orbán reelected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?” Vance asked the crowd.

Vance also told the crowd to “stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels” and “for Western civilization.”

“Will you stand for freedom, truth, and the God of our fathers? Then, my friends, go to the polls and stand for Viktor Orbán,” Vance said.

The “God of our fathers” is the God of reactionary Christianity, and reactionary Christianity, especially in its current politically weaponized form, is the enemy. This enemy comes in two historically quite distinct flavors — fundamentalist evangelical Protestantism, and revanchist integralist Catholicism — but these two branches of the religion, which for those of you not scoring at home spent a couple or three rather fractious centuries trying to exterminate each other, have a current truce of convenience, given their common enemy, which is secular liberalism.

Secular liberalism and Christian nationalism are not ultimately compatible. Hungary illustrates that as well as any country, and tomorrow’s election is a crucial moment in the battle between two fundamentally opposed world views. You can have a liberal democracy or you can have an illiberal theocracy, and that’s the battle that’s going to keep being fought in American between the Democrats and the Republicans, who, for all the disagreement on various subsidiary questions you can find inside each party, are opposed to each other in that battle, although plenty of “presidents come and go but God is on the throne” Democrats would prefer to believe otherwise.