When I was younger, I worked at a juvenile detention center. I got stuck on the dreaded weekend shift that was twelve hours back to back on Saturdays and Sundays. On those Sundays, I would take a few of the boys to a local church. Some of them were troubled young men looking for some guidance. Most just wanted to get out of the dormitory they were confined to the majority of the time and be around some girls. The pastor was mostly dry, delivering by-the-numbers sermons, but one day he gave one that stuck out to one of my boys.

The pastor recalled when an immigrant came over to America from a country that had an authoritarian regime and converted to Christianity. He talked about how, when the man came to the church, he instantly understood that you must submit fully to Christ, because he came from a dictatorship, a place where he had to submit to the leadership of the country or suffer severe consequences. He was equipped with an understanding of what it meant to have a King, in Jesus, more than Americans who’d lived in a democracy and not under any sort of royalty.

The sermon didn’t connect with me much at the time, but on the way back to the center one of the boys asked a question that would stick out in my mind all these years later, one that I think subtly defines the relationship Christian voters have with Donald Trump.

He asked me, “Did that pastor just say being under a dictator was good?”

The unwavering support for Donald Trump baffles many, especially the unwavering, near fanatical support of Evangelical Christians. Many think pieces are still written about this oddity with many artists and comedians using this hypocrisy for laughs. There’s a few reasons that people come up with to solve this puzzle. The first and biggest is the anti-abortion reason, with the idea that Christians have sold their souls to finally overturn Roe v. Wade (which is looking very likely to happen soon). The other is that among a changing world, they are desperately clinging to a conman promising that he’ll bring back a time that’s long gone despite being the most anti-Christian person that’s ever walked the earth. If you want to get even more primal, there’s also just the simple racism since, when we talk about Trump’s Evangelical support, everyone knows we’re talking specifically about white Evangelicals.

There’s truth in all of these to some degree, mixed and jumbled together, but there’s a much darker side to that unwavering support that many will never understand and, even if they do, few will dare speak it.

I didn’t connect the dots until I read 2007’s American Fascists by Chris Hedges after the 2016 election happened and the dust had settled. Hedges wrote that book long before Trump came on the scene, but it perfectly shows how the stage was set for him.

The book chronicles the rise of the Christian Right or Moral Majority (or whatever self-righteous name you want to attach to that movement). Mostly, he points out how people like Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell had taken over the various church groups in a hostile takeover of sorts, slowly injected authoritarianism into the conscious of the American Christian culture and created a much more militarized politic outlook that has bulldozed into political power.

The hypocrisy of megachurch pastors is nothing new, of course, but the way in which the likes of Benny Hinn put himself as a holy beacon encases him as a golden idol to his followers. Mixed in with a little prosperity gospel, the idea that God rewards those he favors most with material wealth, Hinn and his like pitted any criticism from the media as being against him, and more importantly his ordained position given by God. He gave impassioned sermons, rallying his followers against these attacks.

In this way, many of these evangelical leaders have created their own reality around them, one their followers are sucked into and have lived in while festering bitterness and hate towards the “secular” world.

One aspect Chris Hedge talks about in relation to Trump is that he, like most demagogues, isn’t a political leader. He’s a cult leader. In that way, he’s become immune to criticism and any devotion to him must be slavish. He has, by all accounts, became a king.

As the so-called Moral Majority has slowly injected this mindset into their followers, who now make up a huge part of the voting block for the Republican party, it was an inevitability that they would gravitate towards a fascist. That leaked down to local preachers, who have spewed it to those sitting in their pews. Slowly, over time, we have many of those in ‘traditional’ churches being drip-fed fascist ideology, just like the sermon that stuck out to that young man I took to church.

The people demanded a king and God provided.

It’s something I’ve had a front seat to. Many times over the last few years I’ve had Christian family members feverishly argue through various Bible verses how we must bow to our President as our “King.” This is not something they would have said about Obama, or even George Bush before that. It’s a fever unique to Trump, or at least unique to what Trump represents: the end of democracy.

The core belief behind the Moral Majority movement is to force their ideology on America at all costs. It’s a natural conclusion that they would seek out a king who promises to destroy any semblance of democracy, a concept that allows those they hate to have a voice, to eradicate any dissent.

Much like how the Israelites demanded a king and ignored all of Samuel’s warnings, the Christian Right are hungry for a dictator, hungry for someone to rule the world in their vision. Make no mistake, they want a country in chains. Many times they’ll tell you this, too. Ask any older white Christian, or even some younger ones unfortunately, about being in the chains of Christ, or the chains of the church. You’ll think they’re talking symbolically, but the truth is that they want a society in shackles, and a king to crush anyone who refuses to put them on. They yearn for a world in chains so much they’ll willingly, with a smile, put those chains around their own necks.

Image credit: Joonas Tikkanen

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