America's Christian nationalist spectre

The rise of religious fundamentalism in mainstream American politics explains both its institutional corrosion and Donald Trump’s persistent popularity

- Prashant Jha

 

“What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview. That’s what I believe,” the senior-most elected Republican figure declared unapologetically.

Johnson is opposed to abortion access and same-sex intimacy. He denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential elections and had few qualms about the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, which was animated by the presence of religious extremists. He is a member of the Freedom Caucus, the Far-Right branch of the Republican Party which has moved from the fringe to the mainstream of America’s oldest political formation in less than a decade. And he is a Donald Trump loyalist. Since Trump’s election in 2016, American political scientists have offered several frameworks, primarily economic and cultural, to explain the rise of the Far-Right.

Globalisation and technology hollowed out American working-class jobs. Liberals failed to recognise this angst and shift policy gears. The dramatic shift in the voter base of the two parties, where White and increasingly Black and Hispanic voters who didn’t go to college are opting for Republicans while the college-educated across race veers towards Democrats, reflects this changing political landscape.

The demographic churn, with the rise in the power of people of colour, caused anxieties among the White majority. Barack Obama’s presidential tenure was emblematic of this trend, and the most progressive vote in America in 2008 and 2012 was followed by the most regressive vote in 2016. Immigration has also led the Right to peddle the “Great Replacement Theory”, which suggests that the influx of outsiders was part of an organised conspiracy to take over America.