Annotated Twitter Thread: Why do White Evangelical Christians in the U.S. embrace Vladimir Putin?
Annotated Twitter Thread: Why do White Evangelical Christians in the U.S. embrace Vladimir Putin?
It’s complicated, but the reasons include White Nationalism, hypermasculinity, and patriarchy — and all of these reasons are rooted in authoritarianism.
Since the Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military invasion of Ukraine, the responses and statements from prominent leaders in the U.S. Christian Right has ranged from “pray for Ukraine” to “Putin is protecting Russia,” and these responses and statements have certainly not resulted in a coherent or unified message.
Why do so many White Evangelical Christians in the U.S. embrace Vladimir Putin? Well, it’s complicated. The reasons include support of White Nationalism, hypermasculinity, and patriarchy — all of which are components of authoritarianism.
Annotated Twitter Thread:
While these caveats are necessary, it is also necessary to reject the idea that Christians that embrace authoritarianism are “fake Christians.” Chrissy Stroop writes that “dismissing anti-democratic and bigoted believers from ‘real’ Christianity is a convenient deflection tactic that serves to absolve more liberal Christians from the necessary work of grappling seriously with the ways in which they benefit from, and are complicit in, historical and contemporary Christian hegemony and its attendant violence.”
David Barton claims that the historical evidence “unequivocally demonstrates that any claim that America was not a Christian nation is an unabashed attempt at historical revisionism.” Bryan Fischer claims that the “First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam… Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy.” White Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly support the claim that America was founded as a “Christian nation” and reject the claim of a “separation of Church and State.”
James Dobson wrote of the migrants at the Southern border that “their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation.” White Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly supported former President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting refugees and travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and overwhelmingly supported supported Trump’s plan to build as wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Lauren Witzke said that “Russia is a Christian nationalist nation…I actually support Putin’s right to protect his people, and always protect his people first, but also protect their Christian values. I identify more with Putin's Christian values than I do with Joe Biden…I watched as he deported, they literally walked them through the streets, the criminal illegals who were coming into their country. They walked them out, they escorted them out, and they said ‘get out.’ You know, I can respect that.”
Putin embodies the type of hypermasculinity male leader and “muscular Christianity” that has been embraced by Evangelical Christians, as written about by Kristin Kobes Du Mez in Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
Mike Pence said that it is “inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.” Pat Buchanan wrote that Putin “stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.” Sam Rohrer said that “Russia, Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church has now lifted themselves up as the moral leader of the world.”
Bryan Fischer said that Putin is the “lion of Christianity, the defender of Christian values, the president that’s calling his nation back to embracing its identity as a nation founded on Christian values.” Johnny Enlow said that Putin "is a key chess player of God," and that he prefers Russia's government over America's: "It's much more dangerous to be a citizen in this country under who we have in our government." Rick Joyner said that “I know people that just get outraged at Putin because he’s had some people knocked off. Well, just about everybody in government, including our government, has done that kind of thing.”
Franklin Graham praised Putin for “protecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda.” Bob Vander Plaats praised Putin for taking a stand and saying “you know what don’t bring this homosexual propaganda into my country for the Olympics; we believe in one man, one woman marriage; there is no homosexual marriage in Russia.” Scott Lively claimed that President Barack Obama opposed Russia’s seizure of Crimea because of “Putin’s unequivocal stand against homosexual perversion.”
U.S. Christian Right fundamentally rejects democracy as a legitimate form of government, and you will often see this view echoed in the popular refrain that America is a “republic and not a democracy.” as well as in the embrace of the false claims of wide spread voter fraud during the 2020 election. Katherine Stewart writes that the Christian Right is unified by a “radical political ideology that is profoundly hostile to democracy and pluralism, and a certain political style that seeks to provoke moral panic, rewards the paranoid and views every partisan conflict as a conflagration, the end of the world.”