The Christian Nationalist Schism: Fascist Religion at the End of Empire

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The pope has a tendency to release statements. It’s kind of his thing. We’ve seen it over and over again and it’s usually just lost in a list of headlines of stories we won’t read. “Pope calls for world peace.” “Pope says to beware of divisive energies.” It’s like white noise. You would have to actively work to care about any of it.

Meanwhile, up and down the MAGA spectrum, personalities and doofuses are lining up to debase themselves in response to Pope Leo XIV’s criticisms of the war in Iran. President Donald Trump, in one of the more ridiculous Truth Social posts of all-time, which is saying something, called the Pope “weak on crime.” Declaring himself “uniquely qualified” to comment, Fox News host Sean Hannity accused the pontiff of being a “run-of-the-mill, Trump-hating Democrat.” JD Vance, a recent convert to Catholicism who famously met with Pope Francis before his death, likely because Francis could no longer stand to exist in a world in which JD Vance also existed, advised the pope to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

During the dust up, Trump got hold of his phone and reposted an AI slop image of him as a stand-in for Jesus Christ. Clad in robes, he heals a sick man as soldiers, veterans, and nurses watch in religious reverence and eagles fly and fireworks pop and angels and demons float in the sky. Weird, weird shit. After he was called out for it, Trump claimed he didn’t know he was being portrayed as Christ and then reposted another AI image of Christ holding him in a manner that can only be called…tenderly?

As I have been pretty open about my ex evangelical past and have talked at length about the utility of evangelicalism in creating and supporting MAGA, I heard from a lot of people after the papa back-and-forth and the Trump/Christ post. Most of the questions shared a similar theme: is this the moment where Christians finally abandon Trump?

No.

It’s not.

And, before we get to the larger story here, a succinct reason why: evangelicals exist in a reality where they have been taken advantage of by one grifter after another who placed themselves as stand-ins for Christ as they stole their money, preached obvious heresies, and were often found to engage in absolutely sadistic and unspeakable abuses against their parishioners, including children. Trump is familiar to them. Comforting, even. His tenure as a the leader of a death cult was made possible by decades of other death cult leaders and he will be far from the last one.

In fact, what we are witnessing right now is a story that has been in the works for a long time. For centuries. Now, as the American Empire begins to buckle and fall, we are likely experiencing the rise of a “new” religion. And its emergence is an integral part of the larger unfolding history of both the fall of America but also the birth of a new order.

Religion as Political Cover

The past decade has made several things abundantly clear for those willing to recognize them. Among them is the rampant hypocrisy, hatred, and extremism that defines the American evangelical community. Surely, people said, they would never coalesce around Trump, who struggled painfully to perform even the most blatant and clumsy gesture toward the Christian faith. Dalliances with pornstars and blasphemies didn’t matter. Deep down at its core, evangelicalism was about one thing: power. And anyone willing to grant them more power to hurt others and more power to earn money and prestige would do regardless.

Because Trump was willing to give evangelicals “wins,” including the overturning of Roe V. Wade, and because Trump paid lipservice to the ringleaders and charlatans who lead the movement, Trump was not only tolerated but venerated. And it wasn’t enough to simply place Trump as a “divine agent” who carried out the will of God. He was embraced as “the chosen one” meant to save the United States of America and, by proxy, the world. His messianic glazing was also key in creating an entire cottage industry of some of the most heretical products ever produced, including Trump-themed Bibles and, this is true, knockoff audio books for kids in which a fake Trump voice narrates biblical stories like Noah’s Ark (“So, there was this guy, Noah, right? Amazing guy, very successful in his field…”) and the birth of Jesus Christ (“One day, Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, top angel, great messenger…”).

Absolute low-rent and embarrassing. What should be considered sacrilegious just becomes part of the culture, which was already primed by lines of sacrilegious frauds who swindled their believers out of their money in order to buy luxury cars and private jets. But the truth is that this hypocrisy was always cover for a larger game. Rather than having the Christian faith guide these churches and their members, the service the grifters, and later Trump, were offering was something else. Something much more valuable.

Permission. Or, more specifically, permission to gain wealth and power over others. It was, at its root, a perversion of the Christian faith by the wealthy and the powerful.

Ideology is a means to an end. While some would argue that political decisions and stances are informed by ideology, in truth ideology is what squares the political in the mind of the subject. You are drawn to a religion or an ideology that expresses something you already believe. Despite what some would argue, “brainwashing” doesn’t exist, at least not in its commonly understood context. If someone is convinced of something, it is because the convincing successfully pricked at an already held belief or suspicion. Otherwise, humans tend to follow movements and support leaders that conform to what they already believe, even if it is unconscious.

Trump and MAGA’s appeal has always been an appeal to people who want to behave worse and more selfishly but also need to be told repeatedly that they’re actually doing what is right and what is good. Evangelicalism in America has always worked on this principle. The message is that believers are backed by a God who wants them to succeed financially and personally and politically but that they are surrounded by supernatural evil that both schemes for their soul and works in partnership with their neighbors, coworkers, culture at large, and sinister governments to subvert their efforts and to throw the world into literal Hell. To this end, they are not only right in trying to destroy these people and their organizations, but they have a spiritual obligation to do so.

Oh, and considering that the American Religious Right has roots in white supremacists pushing segregation, it shouldn’t be that hard to understand that the “demonic opposition” is composed of minorities and those political groups and leaders seeking to unseat white supremacy itself.

Evangelicalism, which has now largely been absorbed into Christian Nationalism, or the intentional mixing of heretical Christianity with Right Wing political ideology, was always heading in this direction. What we are witnessing is an evolution that will likely change the direction and trajectory of the country and world.

The spat between MAGA and the pope isn’t just some sideshow circus. It’s more evidence that the cult of Christian Nationalism is a historically powerful force and seems ready for a meaningful schism from other forms of Christianity.

A Materialist Understanding of Schisms

Most have heard the story of Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church and how it sparked what would come to be known as the Reformation. The generally understood explanation was outrage over the selling of indulgences, but beyond religious interpretation and personal philosophies is a larger story of ideologies layered over material and historical motivations.

Prior to the Reformation, the Catholic faith served as the legitimizing force for an era of colonialism and feudal consolidation of power. The church worked in tandem with monarchs and their associated infrastructures to maintain control over populations by caretaking a system of rewards and punishments and controlling their access to information, as well as their imaginations and perception of reality altogether. It was a partnership that lasted from the final swoon of the Roman Empire to the 16th century.

The Reformation was more than one man’s rebuke of a church. It was a seismic event that allowed one epoch to end and another to begin. Because Protestantism emphasized a “priesthood of all believers,” it violently shook the centralized control of the Catholic Church and paved the way for the rise of the nation state free of its control and, eventually, the formation of liberal democracy and capitalism, which are inexorably intertwined. Multiple wars that were essentially world wars at the time weren’t fought just for control over interpretation of scripture. Upwards of 12 million people didn’t die in the European Wars of Religion over who read the Bible more correctly. It was an existential battle for control of the future and Protestantism, with its economic twin sibling capitalism, undeniably won that battle.

In the process, the nation state became the prime driver of history while religion was subsumed into a complimentary role. There is a reason the Founding Fathers in the United States sought an unbreachable wall between Church and State. Not only had they witnessed the carnage of the European Wars of Religion, they were deists who had worked their entire lives to create logical systems of power that worked beyond the realm of “revelatory power,” or power based on authority granted by God. During the American Revolution, they leaned on what was called “the Great Awakening,” a period of protestant religious interest, because it provided a metaphysical basis for the creation of the United States and, handily enough, the stamp of approval for the new nation by God himself, but there was no interest whatsoever in chaining political authority to religious affiliation or belief.

Schisms, or splits in political orthodoxy and affiliations, happen because of differences of interpretation, for sure, but those interpretations and the eventual division itself are most often grounded in disagreements over power. Namely, who controls the apparatuses of control itself.

Considering this, it should probably make more sense that so many different sects and churches and religions have been founded in the United States, where religious activity has been restlessly connected to the phenomena of migration, settlement, and disputes over power and resources, all of which have followed the conquering of the continent as internal tensions have continually led to violence and colonialism, both here and abroad, all of it spurred by a belief that every individual is, in essence, their own priest and prophet and, in a twist that might help make sense of the lack of outrage among Trump supporters, their very own messiah.

And, because liberal democracy was grounded in a separation of church and state, it probably shouldn’t surprise people that the destruction of liberal democracy is being accompanied by a movement that seeks to assert the authority of the church over the state.

The First Church of Christian Nationalism

As the United States of America suffers through the end of empire it is also destroying the larger world order it has controlled and sculpted since the end of World War II. Rather than accepting our waning power, we are lashing out in self-destructive violence that accelerates the decline and alienates our once trusted allies. These nation states, still somewhat dedicated to liberal democracy, are rightfully critical of the U.S. and wary to continue partnering with the increasingly pariah state. It’s hardly a surprise that, as this happens, we are also seeing a severing of cordiality with international institutions, notably for this article a Catholic Church that has been defined by somewhat progressive leaders like Pope Francis and his successor Leo. In this way, it is necessary for those obsessed with destroying liberal democracy to also assert control over religious authority.

This is hardly the first time this has happened. When nation states embrace anti-democratic, authoritarian projects, religious institutions either offer a stamp of approval or are broken and reformed. Italian Fascists found willing accomplices in Popes Pius XI and XII. The church played a central role in laying the foundation for the Spanish Civil War and formed an unwavering partnership with murderous dictator Francisco Franco, who seized power and reigned according to what was then called “National Catholicism.” As the Nazis seized power in Germany, a movement known as “Positive Christianity” swept through Christian populations and soon heralded Adolf Hitler as a prophet supplying a “new revelation.”

Evangelicals have already played an outsized role in the authoritarian drift in the United States, but it is likely that any future developments will involve a more overt role for Christian Nationalism as a perversion and fascist ideology.

So, what does that look like?

The current moment of increasing tension between the Christian Nationalists and entities like the Catholic Church and simultaneously the rest of the liberal democratic world is likely a beginning of a larger schism. European countries are already forging their own alliances outside U.S. influence and have been careful with their own intelligence and planning since November 2016. Neoliberal Globalism, and the necessary construction of international bodies that monitored and guided it, meant the U.S. and its European allies began something of a shared culture. Religion took a backseat outside of occasional culture tussles. The main goal, the purpose, was the continuation of markets and perpetual growth.

As we have already seen, the decline in American hegemony is also being accompanied with more and more aggression. Warmongers like Pete Hegseth not only pepper their language with religious appeals to a God who favors America, but also adorn themselves with “crusader” tattoos like Hegseth’s “Deus Vult,” which is, ironically enough, a nod toward the purported words of Pope Urban II as the Crusades were launched. This mindset, as shallow as it is, legitimizes the aggression in the minds of the aggressors. If they were simply gobbling up resources and oppressing people, that would be a problem, but if they are carrying out the will of an almighty God? It certainly helps to square the circle.

Europe will continue to distance themselves from the U.S. and likely develop something of their own culture, which, because it is steeped in liberal democracy, will tend toward pluralism. The U.S., unless something drastically changes, will continue to isolate itself and Right Wing radicalization will predictably continue. What began with the cult of personality around Trump will likely metastasize further into a more overt Christian Nationalism with its own mythologies and purposes. We’ve already seen the foundation of this and the lionization of the Founders as “divinely inspired” and the history of the nation guided by God’s hand. As we fight more wars, invade more countries, and embrace more oppression and surveillance, the entire operation will likely be clothed in a new and startling faith.

Trump does not understand any of this and is quite uncomfortable with every aspect that goes beyond messianic worship and adoration. I have no faith that he will ever just willingly hand over power, but he is in the twilight of his life and the contradictions of MAGA are beginning to shear it in several directions. The question now is whether what follows Trumpism will bind some of those contradictory groups together into a new coalition. And the ingredients are there, already, for the follow-up to be even more fascistic and even more extreme.

What you then have is a fascistic, militaristic, white supremacist, patriarchal, religious movement that is, fundamentally, a death cult at the end of American empire.

The GOP will not moderate. Already we see stirrings within the party among younger people and certain anti-semitic / neo-fascistic interests that have been calling for a theocratic U.S. that embraces Christian Nationalism as a whole. It is likely this will be linked with the militaristic interests as well and considering the humiliation we are suffering presently, the narrative that we were “stabbed in the back” by Jews and their controlled operators slots in quite nicely with the Christian Nationalist ideology and framework. Add in the struggles of economic crisis, which are only now settling into place, and you’ve got a recipe for future disaster.

Actual Reformation

Those of us who grew up in this church can tell you that nothing good will come from any of this and that a reckoning is a long time coming. The abuses and corruption are almost too numerous to even begin a full accounting. Religion has been a touchy subject when it comes to our politics, but it needs discussed and it needs addressed. American Evangelicalism is not only a perversion of the Christian faith, but it is one of our main drivers of extremism and radicalization.

Pope Leo’s willingness to lock horns with the Trump Administration has brought only a fraction of this issue to light and others should follow his lead. All it takes to see there is a problem is to watch any of the “spiritual advisers” who surround Trump for photo ops before heading back to their mega churches on their private jets. Politically, it’s a winning issue to start pointing out the unholy alliance between these people, the MAGA regime, and the wealth and oligarchical classes relentlessly destroying democracy. In an increasingly secular country, the opening is there to spotlight this abomination and use the papal controversy as a springboard.

It isn’t enough to simply wait for MAGA to come its “end,” whatever that means. We’ve wasted a decade with this useless strategy and look where it got us. Existential crises ranging from climate change to World War III saber rattling, not to mention genocides and economic collapses, tell us we simply do not have time to waste. Religious fanaticism will be the ideological driver of what comes next on the Far Right and unless we begin to address material conditions, demand change and fairness, and find, in opposition, something inherently spiritual and inspiring, say a belief in our shared fates and interconnectivity, then the vacuum will be filled with something unholy and altogether apocalyptic.

And that simply cannot be allowed to happen.