Christian fascism

{{Short description|Ideology focused on fascistic aspects of Christianity}}

Christian fascism is a far-right political ideology that denotes an intersection between fascism and Christianity.

The term "Christofascism" is a neologism which liberation theologian Dorothee Sölle coined in 1970 to designate one strand of Christian fascism.{{cite book |author-link=Dorothee Sölle |last=Sölle |first=Dorothee |year=1970 |title=Beyond Mere Obedience: Reflections on a Christian Ethic for the Future. |publisher=Augsburg Publishing House |location=Minneapolis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zbeCGwAACAAJ}}{{cite book |first=Sarah K. |last=Pinnock |title=The Theology of Dorothee Soelle |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=56_VviorwEsC |quote=...of establishing a dubious moral superiority to justify organized violence on a massive scale, a perversion of Christianity she called Christofascism.... |isbn=1-56338-404-3 |publisher=Trinity Press International |year=2003}}

Interpretation of Sölle

Tom F. Driver, the Paul Tillich Professor Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary, expressed concern "that the worship of God in Christ not divide Christian from Jew, man from woman, clergy from laity, white from black, or rich from poor". To him, Christianity is in constant danger of Christofascism. He stated that "[w]e fear christofascism, which we see as the political direction of all attempts to place Christ at the center of social life and history" and that "[m]uch of the churches' teaching about Christ has turned into something that is dictatorial in its heart and is preparing society for an American fascism".{{cite book |title=Christ in a Changing World: Toward an Ethical Christology |last=Driver |first=Tom Faw |pages=[https://archive.org/details/cristinchangingw0000unse/page/19 19] |year=1981 |publisher=Crossroad |url=https://archive.org/details/cristinchangingw0000unse |url-access=registration |quote=We fear Christofascism ... |isbn=0-8245-0105-5}}{{cite book |last1=Wildman |first1=Wesley J. |title=Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century |date=1998 |publisher=SUNY Press |isbn=978-0-7914-3595-3 |quote=Driver argues that traditional Christology fosters what he calls 'Christofascism.' He means by this, first, the absolutizing of the past in order to… }}

Christofascism "disposed or allowed Christians, to impose themselves not only upon other religions but other cultures, and political parties which do not march under the banner of the final, normative, victorious Christ" – as Paul F. Knitter describes Sölle's view.{{cite journal |last1=Knitter |first1=Paul F. |title=Theocentric Christology |journal=Theology Today |date=July 1983 |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=130–149 |doi=10.1177/004057368304000204 |s2cid=220984907 |quote=Dorothee Soelle can even describe much of Christology as 'Christofascism' in the way it has disposed or allowed Christians to impose themselves upon not only other religions but other cultures and political parties which do not march under the banner of the final, normative, victorious Christ }}{{cite book |title=Law, Freedom, and Story: The Role of Narrative in Therapy, Society, and Faith |last=Hoffman |first=John Charles |pages=127–28 |year=1986 |publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press |isbn=0-88920-185-4}}

Christomonism

Douglas John Hall, Professor of Christian Theology at McGill University, relates Sölle's concept of Christofascism to Christomonism, which inevitably ends in religious triumphalism and exclusivity, noting Sölle's observation of American fundamentalist Christianity which led him to conclude that Christomonism easily leads to Christofascism, and violence is never far away from militant Christomonism. (Christomonism worships one divine person, Jesus, rather than the Trinity.) He states that the over-divinized ("high") Christology of Christendom is demonstrated to be wrong by its "almost unrelieved anti-Judaism". He suggests that the best way to guard against this is for Christians not to neglect the humanity of Jesus in favour of his divinity, and remind themselves that Jesus was also a Jewish human being.{{cite conference |title=Confessing Christ in a Post-Christendom Context |last=Hall |first=Douglas John |url=http://religion-online.org./showarticle.asp?title=528 |book-title=1999 Covenant Conference, Network of Presbyterians |date=November 6, 1999 |place=Atlanta, Georgia |publisher=Religion Online |quote=...shall we say this, represent this, live this, without seeming to endorse the kind of christomonism (Dorothee Sölle called it 'Christofascism'!... |access-date=December 21, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070823092345/http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=528 |archive-date=August 23, 2007 |url-status=dead}}{{cite book |title=Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries |last=Rhee |first=Helen |chapter=Superiority of Christian Monotheism |pages=80 |year=2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-35487-0}}{{cite web |title=The Identity of Jesus in a Pluralistic World |last=Hall |first=Douglas John |url=http://www.genevalutheran.ch/spaghetti/articles/THE%20IDENTITY%20OF%20JESUS%20IN%20A%20PLURALISTIC%20WORLD.doc |format=Microsoft Word |access-date=December 21, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080228002022/http://www.genevalutheran.ch/spaghetti/articles/THE%20IDENTITY%20OF%20JESUS%20IN%20A%20PLURALISTIC%20WORLD.doc |archive-date=February 28, 2008 |url-status=dead}}

American history and politics

File:Kosola körttiseuroissa.jpg members praying, Vihtori Kosola in the middle.]]

Chris Hedges and David Neiwert contend that the origins of American Christofascism date back to the Great Depression, when Americans first espoused forms of fascism that were "explicitly 'Christian' in nature".{{Cite book |pages=[https://archive.org/details/eliminationistsh00neiw/page/88 88]–90 |url=https://archive.org/details/eliminationistsh00neiw |url-access=registration |title=The eliminationists: how hate talk radicalized the American right |publisher=PoliPoint Press |first=David A. |last=Neiwert |isbn=978-0-9815769-8-5 |date=May 1, 2009}}{{rp |88}} Hedges writes that "fundamentalist preachers such as Gerald B. Winrod and Gerald L. K. Smith fused national and Christian symbols to advocate the country's first crude form of Christo-fascism".{{Cite book |first=Chris |last=Hedges |title=American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America |page=140 |year=2008 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-8446-2}} Smith's Christian Nationalist Crusade stated that a "Christian character is the basis of all real Americanism". Hedges also believes that William Dudley Pelley was another prominent advocate of Christofascism.{{rp|88}} Nonetheless, some historians contend the presence of Christian fascism in the antebellum United States.{{cite journal |last1=Roel Reyes |first1=Stefan |title='Christian Patriots': The Intersection Between Proto-fascism and Clerical Fascism in the Antebellum South |journal=International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity |date=24 November 2021 |volume=9 |issue=1–4 |pages=82–110 |doi=10.1163/22130624-00219121 |s2cid=244746966 |doi-access=free }}

In the late 1950s, some adherents of these philosophies founded the John Birch Society, whose policy positions and rhetoric have greatly influenced modern dominionists. Likewise, the Posse Comitatus movement was founded by former associates of Pelley and Smith.{{rp |90}} The 1980s saw the founding of the Council for National Policy and Moral Majority,{{Cite book |title=On violence: a reader |page=364 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_EBb9bgut74C&pg=PA364 |publisher=Duke University Press |year=2007 |first=Sharon |last=Welch |chapter=Dangerous Memory and Alternate Knowledges |editor1-first=Bruce B. |editor1-last=Lawrence |editor2-first=Aisha |editor2-last=Karim |isbn=978-0-8223-3756-0}}{{Cite book |title=The window of vulnerability: a political spirituality |publisher=Fortress Press |year=1990 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_PCIAAAAMAAJ |first=Dorothee |last=Sölle |author-link=Dorothee Sölle |isbn=978-0-8006-2432-3}} two organizations which carried on the tradition, while the patriot and militia movements represented efforts to mainstream the philosophy in the 1990s.{{rp|90}}

Incidents of anti-abortion violence, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing and Birmingham bombings committed by Eric Rudolph and the assassination of George Tiller at his Wichita, Kansas church in 2009, have also been considered acts which were motivated by Christofascism.{{rp|90–91}}{{Cite news |date=June 2, 2009 |url=https://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/643783 |work=The Star |title=Doctor's killing is domestic terrorism |first=Antonia |last=Zerbisias |author-link=Antonia Zerbisias}}

Usage of the term caused controversy in 2007 when Melissa McEwan, a campaign blogger for then-presidential candidate John Edwards, referred to religious conservatives as "Christofascists" on her personal blog.{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/world/americas/09iht-camp.4533901.html |work=The New York Times |first=John M. |last=Broder |title=Edwards gets lesson in reconciling Internet culture with presidential campaign |date=February 9, 2007}}{{Cite news |newspaper=The Washington Post |title=Obama Web Site Seeks to Rally The Faithful |first=Alan |last=Cooperman |date=June 2, 2007 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102283.html}}{{anchor|Criticism}}

Criticism of the use of the term

{{Update section|date=January 2025|reason=Hunsinger is writing in 2001 about an entirely different idea than post-2016 Christofascism, which has very real and active proponents}}

Anti-war and human rights activist George Hunsinger, director of the Centre for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, regards the very accusation of "fascism" as a sophisticated theological attack on the Christian biblical depiction of Jesus. He believes that the view of Jesus, which is called Christofascist, is, in fact, the real "Jesus Christ as he is depicted in Scripture". Hunsinger contrasts his preferred understanding of Jesus with the "nonnormative Christology" that self-proclaimed anti-Christofascists offer as an alternative, which he criticizes as extreme relativism that reduces Jesus to "an object of mere personal preference and cultural location". Hunsinger believes that this relativism may contribute to the same problems that Karl Barth saw in Germany's Christian church during the previous century.{{cite book |last=Hunsinger |first=George |year=2001 |title=Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth |publisher=Wm B Eerdmans Publishing |isbn=0-8028-4940-7 |page=99 |chapter=Where the Battle Rages: Confessing Christ in America Today}} The strife of the medieval Hussite Wars has led some contemporary historians to condemn their methods as fascist.{{cite book |last=Edwards |first=I. |title=Praguewalks: Five Intimate Walking Tours of Prague's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-4668-6589-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MzSuAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT242 |access-date=June 2, 2023 |page=242}}