Understanding the "Regimevangelical" Phenomenon

The political and social landscape is changing. Churches and their leaders are adapting, but not in the ways you might expect. Let's try to understand the phenomenon of the "regimevangelical."

74. Understanding the "Regimevangelical" Phenomenon

There is a lot of turbulence in the Christian community these days over politics. The political landscape is changing and has been doing so in earnest since Donald Trump made his descent down the elevator on June 16, 2015. Things have not been the same since. Changes were happening beneath the surface before then, but that seems to be the demarcation line when people started to pay attention. Donald Trump shook politics up in ways many of us did not think possible. It was naïve to think he might actually manage to “drain the swamp.” But when he didn’t and couldn’t, it set many of us to work trying to understand why he couldn’t do it. Some of it was on Trump. He drove the left and the democrats into a near frenzy. But he was undisciplined and not prepared for the fight he was about to face. He also revealed something that had, up to this point, largely remained hidden and opaque: the “deep state.” It turns out this was not the fevered imaginations of conspiracy theorists, rather it was an unmasking of the power structures operating behind the scenes in the administrative state. We came to understand where power really lies.

But Trump’s ride down the elevator also exposed and began driving a wedge between the Republican base and the party leadership apparatus, including its think tanks and messaging outlets. He broke the National Review, causing them to take a “Never Trump” stand from which they have not really recovered.

It also did strange things to Christians, especially evangelicals. There were those who jumped into the pool with Trump, those who took a wait and see approach and others who were vehemently opposed to him on moral and character grounds. No one knew what to think and there was no unified Christian message with regards to Trump. It wasn’t just obvious liberal Christians opposing more traditional or conservative Christians. There was division within the ranks of otherwise seemingly conventional orthodox Protestant believers. Neutrality was not really an option.

These dividing lines were further exacerbated by the response, not just from government, but also from the churches, during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. There were those Christians who refused to comply with the lockdowns, the masking and vaccine mandates. Others, who would otherwise consider themselves conservative Christians, were advocating compliance with government diktats, doing so using theological terms and concepts to try to convince people that embracing the mandates were an essential part of loving one’s neighbour. However one feels about Trump, there is no denying today that there are deep divisions among Christians, many of whom would have seemed to be stalwart Christian leaders. Not so much today. So what happened? Can we take a step back and sketch out a theoretical framework to help us understand what has been happening? Just what is a “regimevangelical?” This is a term recently coined by

C.Jay Engel

. We could also use the less specific “regime Christian.” So what is this phenomenon and why is it happening?

To help us build this understanding, let us turn first to the writings of Carl Schmitt, one of the most incisive critics of the liberal democratic order, to draw on a couple of his lesser discussed ideas. The first comes from The Concept of the Political. In every body politic the entity that can demand from you that you will kill or die for it transcends all other associations and societies. This power rises above all others in importance and is what forms the state and state’s power of life and death over the citizenry. In contrast, he argues, the church as a religious institution, cannot demand martyrdom from the Christian community. The church, unlike the state, cannot demand that you die on its behalf. This choice for Christian martyrdom remains a personal choice. This is what separates the church from the government. In specifically theological terms, it is what separates the office of king from the office of priest. The state, by being able to draft the citizenry for military service becomes the ultimate power in the land. Again, this power transcends all other associations and societies, including the church.

Because of this, the church, by virtue of its being primarily a priestly institution, then falls under the protection of the kingly role of the state. Schmitt argues that a dynamic fundamental to the older organic form of politics, the relationship between lord and vassal — and out of which the longstanding tradition of the grounded, organically formed “the rights of an Englishman” are based — is still operative in the political realm. Democratic, supposedly egalitarian, structures try to obscure this reality or erase it entirely, but it nonetheless remains operative. This dynamic is that of protector and protected. You are obligated to serve and obey the one who protects you.

“No form of order, no reasonable legitimacy or legality can exist without protection and obedience.”

And,

“The protego ergo obligo is the cogito ergo sum of the state.”

The long and short of this is that the one who protects you from violence is your master. As an aside, this is the primary logic behind the Second Amendment. If you are able to organize your own protection distinct from the state, it would liberate you from the protection and obedience binary. But there is theory, myth and symbols and there is actuality. In reality, we rely on the state and its ability to protect us, both militarily and in terms of civic policing. In return, we are expected to obey the order created and shaped by the state or face sanctions. These sanctions can range from death, to imprisonment, fines, or just the inability to access the rewards and perquisites which come from obedience to the power which provides protection.

Schmitt argues that,

“It is ludicrous to believe that a defenseless people has nothing but friends.”

The state, as the highest power in society, by virtue of its ability to demand that you die or kill for it, does not leave you in peace without receiving something back from the bargain. That “something” is your tacit support for the regime. This is true for churches as it is for anyone else. A people that is not willing to defend itself is a people not able to maintain itself, says Schmitt.

“A weak people will disappear.”

This is the first piece of the puzzle. The second is the relationship between ideas and power. Because of the power-protection axiom, there is enormous pressure on all aspects of society to conform and adapt their opinions to power. We have these notions of the free exchange of opinions in the unfettered marketplace of ideas. But, by virtue of the working of power and the nature of democratic institutions — even those which are supposedly limited and restrained by a constitutional republic — the marketplace of ideas is largely an illusion.

Two things happen in this regard, argues Schmitt in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. The first is that once the will of the majority is determined, or once a decree is made such as a judicial decision, and this is acquiesced to by the minority, it is necessary that the outvoted will of the minority be ignored because any attempts to hold onto this minority opinion in the realm of public policy causes difficulties. Once a dispute is settled, you are expected to adapt to the new reality and move on. This is the basis of a concept about which I have talked elsewhere, that is, the “first order disagreement.” Even if you bristle against it, once something is decided by the agreed upon mechanisms, the other opinions cease to exist in terms of the body politic.

“The will of the outvoted minority is in truth identical with the will of the majority.”

And,

“In democracy the citizen even agrees to the law that is against his own will.”

This is true at several different levels. Unless you are willing to challenge the protection-obedience axiom, that is, unless you are willing to assert sovereignty and become a self-legitimizing state, while you might complain and agitate, your opinion as the minority is irrelevant and disappears. The most striking example of this in the United States is abortion. Although there has been much activism and discussion in regards to abortion, for the most part, the majority opinion has stood and the minority has largely been ignored. Since the 1970’s, America as a body politic has been pro-abortion. This issue also highlights what is at play in the culture war. The Republican leadership, who need the support of anti-abortion Christians, often talk about reaching a settlement on this issue so that the issue can be taken “off the table” so that they can get meaningful reform done in other areas. What the party leadership is in essence saying is that their voters need to find a way to conform to the majority opinion. It is a recognition and an acceptance that the minority understands that they are only allowed certain disagreements permitted to them by the majority. A group that continually refuses to accept this majority opinion but strives to work within the system, unfortunately has already tacitly admitted that have accepted the majority opinion and have bent themselves to power.

I am sure that a lot of people will push back and argue that they have never stopped fighting, they have never stopped disagreeing, they have never stopped advocating for abortion restrictions and laws to curtail abortions or stop the practice entirely and are working to get changes on the court and so forth. There is no denying that there is lot of activity going on. But, by letting the decision stand and choosing to work within the system, this is an act of submission to power and to the rules established by power. You have already compromised yourself to power by letting the current governing structure set the rules by which you are allowed to dissent. Your activism is never supposed to actually change the status quo established by the ruling majority, but merely give you the sense that you still holding onto your opposing minority opinion. It is largely a way for them to let you blow off steam. It allows you to take the high ground and feel a sense of moral superiority without this actually changing the policies of regime. By supporting the system, you are allowing your will to become that of the majority, while maintaining the illusion of opposition.

What would real opposition look like? It would threaten the power-protection binary. You would have to cast aside entirely the current ruling majority. The issue of abortion is striking because wars have been fought over less. And even the language of “pro-life” itself protects the advocates from having to go to the lengths necessary to bring actual change, that is, everything up to and including civil war. A “pro-life” advocate is forbidden from advocating violence and the taking of life, thus preventing themselves from mounting an actual opposition that would displace the current ruling majority. It also undermines any reasonable arguments for capital punishment. This is how subtle the adaptations to power work. On the one hand you maintain a language of opposition while at the same time warding off any real substantive action on the issue.

For those who are skeptical that thought and opinion will adapt themselves to power, ask yourself, “Why there is a secret vote?” We know the answer to this question. The vote is secret because if it were not, there would be enormous pressure placed upon people to vote a certain way. Now, no matter what pressure you feel, you can step into the privacy of the voting booth and know that in this space you can think the way you want. This is the foundation for anonymous writing and opinion. When the public is divided in their opinion, it is quite possible that the voice of the one person is correct, is true, is the best path forward, and that the majority is wrong. In a fully open society there is enormous pressure on that minority to conform to the majority, at least in part, if not entirely. An open vote is always a form of pressure from the majority upon the minority for silence. This is the point of opinion polling. We are told that a majority of people are in favour of abortion or of gay marriage or that we need to raise property taxes and the mere reporting of this “fact” — which is itself a manufactured thing, a form of propaganda — is meant to pressure the minority to give up and accept the will of the majority.

“The minority might express the true will of the people; the people can be deceived, and one has long been familiar with the techniques of propaganda and the manipulation of public opinion.”

In the “regimevangelical” phenomenon, we are seeing the coming together of these two forces, the protection-obedience axiom and the natural adaptation of ideas to power. The way that it works is that people will feel pressure to accommodate their thinking to the powers that govern the people. They will pick these pressures up mimetically. It never has to be openly spoken about. People sense where the power to shape opinion is coming from, and they will bend and adjust, they will elide or gloss over, they will de-emphasize, they will use the same terms but fill them with different meaning, or they will outright sell out. It is important to understand that this is not a new thing, a new phenomenon. America is a unique place in this regard because religion, in particular Protestant Christianity, is deeply woven into the fabric of the national consciousness. Many of the early settlers came precisely for the opportunity to practice their faith in ways they felt were faithful to their own understanding of the Christian faith.

As the colonies matured and transformed into a nation, I believe that this sense stayed with them through this process. The institutions they planned and built were meant, at least in part, to protect this ability to worship without hindrance. We can debate, and will likely never settle the discussion, the degree to which the constitutional framework was rooted in an organic cultural understanding of the obligations, privileges and rights worked out in practice and enshrined in common law, versus a more abstracted, rationalist and universalist understanding of these same ideas. There is enough mixture of the two that arguments can be made both ways. Religion was not the only issue on the table. The business interests of the colonies also played a large role. But the big picture here is that we must see that in American political consciousness, the state was, and is, seen as playing an integral role in protecting the religious freedoms of the people. The protection-obedience axiom was both operative and intentional from the outset. But in an era where those interests were closely aligned, the degrees of religious accommodation to the state was small.

Part of the issue is one of scale. Early in American history, the reach and scope of the American state was limited, often on purpose. This allowed, throughout much of the country’s history, people to worship and practice their Christian faith much in the way they saw fit because most of the pressures were local and social in nature. But this began to change with industrialization in the period following the Civil War, with Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the second great wave of immigration. Then with the two World Wars, the Depression and the New Deal, much in America changed with it. But what remained is the attachment to the idea that “the system” still largely worked in harmony with the culture to protect the interests of Christians. This is important to understand, in terms of the protection-obedience axiom. Christians in America haven’t generally seen their interests as something separate from the nation’s identity and as working in harmony with its core power structures.

As a result of the protection-obedience axiom and the general pull of power to shape ideas, American Christianity adapted itself to the power that protected it. This happened over time and slowly, generally imperceptibly. You can see it in certain adaptations. You will commonly find that many traditional Christians are very committed laisse faire economics and the general goodness of an economic market that is as free from regulation as possible. The idea that you would subordinate economic and business concerns to strict biblical moral and theological teachings is not really a thing. In fact, capitalism is often seen as the Christian way of doing business, as opposed to those godless communists and socialists. When was the last time you heard a “conservative” Christian speaking out against the practice of charging interest, the dangers of being ambitious in your career, the notion of a just price or a just wage and an employer’s moral commitment to both his employees and the community? How often have you heard the idea that you have a “God given right to bear arms?” I am supportive of the idea that the citizen be able to protect themselves for the reasons we have talked about above, but trying to say that the Bible tells us to own guns, is, shall we say, a bit of a stretch. Even the idea of “abstract” or “universal” rights is something not really Biblical. And those who place the Constitution almost on par with scripture don’t so because it is written in the Bible. Many Christians cling to the idea that personal freedom of choice and personal autonomy are sacrosanct and that the rights of the individual are the foundation of society. People must embrace the gospel freely through persuasion, or not at all. This will offend some, but they do so because they have grown up in a context where Christian teaching and sentiment has adapted itself to power as a demonstration of loyalty to the power which protects them. We are just scratching the surface. Books could be written analyzing and teasing this all out. These adaptations just happened over a long enough period of time, and are generally so ubiquitous among all conservative evangelicals, that it is hard for people to see and sort out the many ways in which American Christianity has subordinated itself to the system that they believe protects their ability to worship in the way they choose.

Up until recently, the governing powers of America have largely been friendly, neutral or showed benign neglect to the churches. As long as people showed up to vote and then more or less let the leadership class do their thing, everyone seemed content with the arrangement. But then, as Aaron Renn has ably laid out, the world began to shift and this has left many Christians very discombobulated. The power structures shifted from a positive understanding of the Christian faith, to a neutral understanding and now to a negative one in which Christianity is viewed with hostility. This creates confusion within the Christian community. There are those who are doubling down on the old American order. We must commit to the formal structures of the system because they will protect us. We must revive and renew our strong Constitutional legacy. Its all there in the founding documents. We just need to clean out the bad actors and reinvigorate our ailing institutions. The trust is placed in these older forms of American governance for the protection of the church. These folks get very upset when others tell them that the era of the Founding is over and the documents, the ideas and the institutions are done. They have been co-opted. The culture that supported that old order is no longer here. What is written on paper cannot protect you.

But things are changing and many Christians are adapting to the new power structures and arrangements. Some are doing it openly, embracing the sexual revolution, racial identity politics and mass immigration and other ideas. Their professions of allegiance to power are so clumsy and obvious that one wonders why they even bother to keep the forms of the Christian faith at all? Others, though, are adapting with much greater subtlety and sophistication. Some still openly support the regime agenda, but they make serious efforts justify it using theology and Biblical interpretations. Even so, they are obvious shows of allegiance to power. And then, there are those who are much more subtle, who really can maintain all the forms and language of traditional orthodoxy, but they bend nonetheless. They may not go all the way in condoning homosexuality, but will try to find half-way positions which seem be signalling to the new power dynamics that they are safe and can be trusted on the “biggies” of race, immigration and sexuality. Because we are dealing with a power structure that is hostile to Christianity, even when it is done with a degree of sophistication, it sets off alarm bells. But we need to understand that what is happening is that two-fold dynamic of protection and obedience and the natural way that power bends ideas to itself. We are watching in real time the churches accommodating themselves to the power dynamics. The protection-obedience axiom is at work.

What is the alternative? This is going to be a hard pill for many American Christians to swallow, but we are in a situation similar to that which gave rise to Augustine’s City of God. Believers in his day were shocked by the sacking of Rome. Augustine made the argument that Christians do not find their hope in the continuance of Rome, but in the City of God. Empires rise and empires fall. It sucks to live in a time when an empire is falling. But here we are. What this means is coming to the realization that the great hope of the settlers of the New World is crumbling before us, that they could build an enduring social and political order that would allow them the room to practice their Christian faith in peace and safety.

What does this mean? It means breaking from the protection-obedience binary. The American forms of government as they are no longer protect Christians who wish to worship God faithfully according to scripture and in harmony with tradition. To receive the protection of the state, you will have to adapt Christianity to power, hollowing and emptying it out. The implication of this is that the Christian community in America is going to have to develop a political consciousness of its own, separate from the American forms and institutions of power. The Christian community will need to learn to see itself as a Christian nation living within the borders of America. It will have to claim its own sovereignty. It will have learn to protect itself.

You might be thinking, this does not sound much like church. This is not the role of the church. It is not the role of the institution. But the church as institution is not the same thing as the church that is the people of God. This people is a nation unto itself. And it has long been recognized that within the people of God there exists three main roles. There is the priestly role of teaching, instruction, the ministry of the sacraments, and the ministry of grace and reconciliation with God. This is the role of the church. It is a priestly organization within the broader people of God. There is also the kingly role which involves the administration of justice, including the punishment of crime, the political affairs of the people and seeing to the protection of the people. These two roles are generally seen as working side by side and hand in hand for the common good of the Christian society. In our case, this is no longer majoritarian. We represent a distinct and sizable minority. But as long as we as the Christian community look to the American political system and regime to protect our ability to worship unmolested, we will be expected by the regime to adapt our faith to its agenda as it sees fit. This is the price that is paid by the ones who must rely on the American regime to protect them. If a people is afraid of the risks of politics, says Schmitt, then another power will become their protector and will rule over them. In this new context, if Christians wish to remain faithful they need to develop a sense of themselves as a people that is distinct from the idea of “America,” and if they wish to survive as a people who worship faithfully they will have to grapple with the protection-obedience axiom. They can no longer pass off the role of king, the roll of protector, to the American state, assuming that it will protect their ability to faithfully practice their faith.

This then brings us full circle to things that we spoke about earlier in this piece. The state exists as the highest power because it can ask you to die or to kill for it. As the community of believers gains its own political consciousness living within a land where there is a pre-existing political order with its own protection and obedience axiom, refusing to bend to that power places the people in a precarious situation. They cannot assume the regime will be friendly. In fact, in the case of America, we know that it is not. The church, as an organization, though, cannot ask its people to die for it. If it were to do so, it would cease to be a church and would become political. Many sense this and thus pull back from forming a true political consciousness, worrying about what it will do the church as institution. They know that if the church were to do this it would be abandoning the priestly for the kingly. People themselves can choose the path of martyrdom, but the church cannot demand it of the people of God. Again, if it were to do so, it would be making a political demand upon its members. It would cease to be “church.”

What this means is that if the people of God are going to discover a political consciousness, a sense of identity, it must be done separate from the institution of the church. Men would have to see a calling, a vocation from God, for the kingly office within the people of God. Stepping into this role on behalf of the people of God means also stepping into the role of protection and the administration of law and justice. It may be that people will continue to allow themselves to be martyred for the faith, but it may also be that some will be organized under leaders with a “kingly” calling to protect the lives of believers, ensuring their ability to worship. They will die and kill to protect the ability of other believers to practice their faith with integrity.

This frightens many in part because presently this role has been passed off to a state apparatus that was, until recently, friendly to the people of God. Yes, we had to make certain accommodations in thinking and teaching to this order, but on the whole, it didn’t seem threatening. This idea of the Christian community developing a genuine political consciousness scares the willies out of a lot of people. This is largely because we have had the luxury of operating largely only in one mode, that of the priestly. Does this represent a threat to the people of God? Yes. Political power in a sinful world is corrupting. This brings us to the third role in a healthy Christian community, that of the “prophet.”

The prophetic role involves calling both the priests and the princes to account for how they administer their God-given role in the community of believers. It means speaking “truth to power” as the saying goes. The prophet speaks at great risk because he lacks the protection of political power. Over and over again we read how poorly the prophets of God are received. This is one of the main critiques Jesus had of the people: their treatment of the prophets. I don’t expect that to change much in a world where sin is still present. Knowing that there is a God-given mechanism for calling leaders to account, both spiritual and temporal, is a comfort in the sense that we know that God watches and that our leaders are ultimately accountable to God for how they administer the affairs of church and politics.

But with every passing day it gets harder and harder to watch Christian leaders and influencers accommodating and adapting themselves to some version of the American power apparatus, whether it is the one they wish were still here and operative or the one that is here and is actually operative, knowing that the only path forward is to recognize as the people of God that help is unlikely to come from the present or historic political order, and that if we want to worship with integrity and faithfulness, that the path forward will be to claim sovereignty over own affairs, claiming for ourselves the protection and obedience axiom and thus facing the consequences that will emerge from this, likely persecution, but perhaps also armed conflict as some of us take up the kingly task of protecting the others.