In light of all the crazed Christian posturing of politicians around the world at the moment, I thought it an opportune moment to read South African journalist Pontsho Pilane’s book, Power and Faith: How evangelical churches are quietly shaping our democracy. The book is a personal tale of Pilane’s experience with the abuse that evangelical churches mete out disguised as spiritual sustenance, but also an excellent analysis of the power that religions have to attack human rights and democracies.
A current global example of how Christianity is quietly used to further corrupt ends is the States of America previously known as United, arguably the most powerful Christian nation in the world, where quietly is not, admittedly, the operative word.
Just last week, for example, we had the breakup of the conspiromance™ between President Donald Trump and the almost unbelievably stupid Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican lawmaker famous for spouting insane conspiracy theories. There are so, so many we could choose from, but here are some of my favourites.
In a since deleted Facebook post, she suggested that the 2018 California wildfires might have been caused by lasers from space and tied it to a conspiracy theory involving an international investment firm. She didn’t use the phrase “Jewish space lasers”, but that’s how the internet decided to title her theory.
She has also accused Nancy Pelosi’s “Gazpacho Police” of spying on Congress (it’s assumed that she meant Gestapo, though given that whole Pizzagate thing, who knows) and argued that global warming is beneficial because “we have more food grown … this Earth warming and carbon is actually healthy for us”.
Marjorie and Donald are fighting because Greene wants the Jeffrey Epstein files to be released, and Trump wanted them kept classified. Well, this was at least until an apparent reversal as this column was being written, with Trump now urging Republicans to vote for the files to be released. This is probably because he really has no choice at this stage, so, you know, “optics”.
To quote Trump in his full presidential pomp, this is what he wrote on the Truth Social platform: “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide. And it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown’.”
Why the inverted commas around Shutdown? Who knows. Perhaps Wittgenstein was right, and god is in the grammar. In this case, of course, a tinpot god who has appropriated Christianity for his political ends and is unconsciously problematising his own lies. I’ve noticed the same thing at some of our local supermarkets, where they also tend to put inverted commas around the word “Sale”.
Greene has also turned on Trump because she sees him as having betrayed the America First principles of the MAGA movement. Trump has, of course, responded with his usual restraint and clarity of thought. On Truth Social (a choice example of doublespeak branding, up there with the “Democratic” “People’s” Republic of Korea — see, that’s how you use inverted commas), Trump called Greene a traitor, and posted the following (despite the fear that I will get sued for billions of dollars, I’ve had to edit it down a bit, as the original is almost 300 words long): “I am withdrawing my support and Endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene … Over the past few weeks, despite my creating Record Achievements for our Country [and here he lists a bunch] including a Total and Complete Victory on the Shutdown … No Men in Women’s Sports or Transgender for Everyone … being RESPECTED by every Country in the World (as opposed to being the laughingstock that we were just 12 months ago!) … and having created the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World from being a DEAD Country just 12 months ago (and so much more!), all I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN! … I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day … Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Greene has reported receiving death threats and other harassment because of these posts, which some might see as a delicious irony. In a Fox interview, she said she wants to “end toxic politics” and wrote: “I have supported President Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him. But I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump. I worship God, Jesus is my saviour, and I serve my district GA14 and the American people.”
It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable … God spared my life for a reason
— Donald Trump
This appeal to a higher god than Donald Trump, besides being high treason, is also a familiar device, one used by the president himself. In his speech in January, when he was being sworn in as president again, Trump said: “My life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” On Truth Social, he posted: “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable … God spared my life for a reason.”
Now we might be content to sit back, grab some made-in-China popcorn and watch these unseemly Americans fighting to grab market share of Jesus. But inevitably, when America falls to its knees and starts speaking in tongues, the world gets deafened.
In Pilane’s book, she writes that her intention is to “share my experiences to show how [evangelical South African] churches … are underestimated, even ignored, political players that are shaping our world. It’s not just in the USA that evangelical churches are transforming the political landscape and determining, even ruining, democracies. It’s happening right here in South Africa.”
Her book “aims to unpack structural and systemic issues of Christian evangelism in South Africa and the sociopolitical implications that they have and will have on the state of health, human rights and other aspects of our everyday lives as South Africans”.
The book covers a lot of ground, from the deadly effect that MAGA Christian fundamentalism has had on reproductive rights in South Africa and the world, to the for-profit nature of the faith industry.
It’s the warning to our democracy that is most urgent, though. “I’ve always been uncomfortable with the level of dependence the South African government and civil society have on faith-based organisations as conduits into communities and the delivery of social service,” she writes. “I understand that’s because so many people are religious and belong to an institutional faith structure, but it is particularly worrying in South Africa because our constitution includes many policies that are contrary to conservative interpretations of the Bible and other religious beliefs.”
In an interview with the Johannesburg Review of Books, Pilane said: “I think we are always on the verge of losing our rights, until people actually fight for their rights. For me, what is dangerous is the assumption that we are comfortably in a space where our rights can be practised and where we can assert our rights and we live within our rights.
”I wrote this book to say two things, really: that the impact of evangelical churches and evangelical thinking in our everyday lives is fertile ground in South Africa, because we are a latent evangelical Christian country, and that even though we have rights that are protected in the constitution, the everyday people who enact or create an enabling environment for those rights are not necessarily people who believe in those rights.”
When we look at how effortlessly and quickly the US fell to the grubby politicking of the Christian right, we can’t feel at all secure in the unassailable strength of our own democracy. We might have (just) fought off Jacob Zuma’s state capture, but it’s going to be as perilous a fight to ward off Jesus capture.
When Zuma said that the ANC will rule “until Jesus comes back”, we sneered. But another way of understanding what he said is that the ANC, which for all its faults, and for a variety of reasons, is a party that abides by our constitution, is in danger of falling to the next party of God. We can’t let that happen, because when you introduce gods into politics, democracies die.
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