Jesus told his disciples to love their neighbors and even their enemies and “those who persecute you.” But today, some of Jesus’ politically active followers have defied that command and “darkened America’s political soul by constructing a biblical justification for hate,” argues a new book.
In The Politics of Hate: How the Christian Right Darkened America’s Political Soul, British political scientist Angelia R. Wilson analyzes more than 20,000 emails from nine Religious Right organizations, concluding the movement’s grand strategy has “normalized an ethic of hate.”
Angelia R. Wilson
Wilson notes political groups on both the left and the right use hate to motivate, but those who self-identify as Christian activists harness the Bible in these efforts, transforming their cause into a holy war that breeds suspicion of and separation from the evil, fearful other.
“The protection of us, because we are exceptional, will necessitate the exclusion of them,” writes Wilson, who decries how “those whom one might expect to be advocates of love in the public square (have) morphed into a political industry justifying hate.”
A chart in her book illustrates how conservative Christian groups rely on “war talk,” which she calls “a continuous loop of anger, fear and the need for troops to act against the enemy.” Words such as “fight,” “stand,” “watch,” “protect,” “defend,” “march,” “force,” “victory,” “war,” “strong,” “power,” “win,” “battle,” “attack” and “death” appear thousands of times in the emails these groups send to their troops to stir them to battle and the ballot box.
She focuses her study on nine groups, which are organized into three tiers:
- The Old Guard (American Family Association, Focus on the Family, National Religious Broadcasters)
- Tactical Forces (National Organization for Marriage, the Ruth Institute, International Organization for the Family)
- Commanding Officers (Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, Faith and Freedom Coalition)
Six of these groups are designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, often for the misinformed and weaponized rhetoric they direct toward LGBTQ people in campaigns against their rights. Focus on the Family was added to the list this year, and like other listed groups, condemns the SPCL list and denies it promotes hate.
Six of these groups are designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
War talk makes clear these Christian groups don’t see their role as an “interest group representing constituents and competing among other interest groups in a pluralist democratic debate,” but rather as military leaders fighting on God’s side in do-or-die battles over abortion, LGBTQ rights and other divisive issues.
Wilson says war talk is a form of spiritual formation that teaches Christians to hate their neighbors rather than love them and banish Imago Dei, the theological concept that sees each and every person as created in God’s image and therefore worthy of respect.
War talk conveys that “American politics is no longer hospitable to the competition of ideas in the political marketplace,” she writes. “It is a war zone between ‘us’ and ‘other.’ ”
The “other” is pretty much everyone who doesn’t embrace the Religious Right’s agenda and methods and is “blamed and constructed as essentially wrong and immoral.”
Wilson grew up in Texas, where her father was a Methodist pastor, and she studied in the U.S. before visiting England as an International Rotary Foundation Fellow. She now serves as associate dean for internationalization in the faculty of humanities at the University of Manchester. She researched the book by attending Religious Right conferences and events, picking up tons of movement literature, and signed up for email from the nine groups.
Wilson shows how Religious Right groups justify their hatred of others through the skilled use of biblical texts that are wrenched out of context and applied to contemporary American politics.
Matthew 10:22 is a favorite verse. Jesus is getting ready to send out his 12 disciples to drive out impure spirits and heal the sick when he warns them “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins expounded on this verse in a talk at Liberty University, using it to achieve two key purposes. “First, it establishes hate as an expected biblical outcome of oppositional politics,” Wilson writes. “Second, it establishes that those who disagree with the Christian right do so out of hatred.
“What Perkins did not do was counter that hate-infused oppositional politics with a message of love. … Perkins’ rhetoric clearly constructed a world of two opposing sides and roots any opposition firmly in hate.”
Wilson says the Christian Right’s strategy has established hating as an ethical act.
Family Research Council has adopted another New Testament passage for its purposes, latching on to Paul’s “armor of God” metaphor in Ephesians 6:10-17 for its branding. FRC asks supporters to “put on the whole armor of God, take our stand in the evil day, and having done all, keep standing!”
FRC calls its annual conference Pray Vote Stand. It calls its activist news outlet The Washington Stand. Last year it launched its Stand Firm App. FRC even sells a 15-ounce STAND mug that’s “perfectly sized for standing firm.”
Wilson says the Christian Right’s strategy has established hating as an ethical act.
There’s an intellectual component to hating (these people are wrong) but there also is an emotional aspect to hate, and war talk plays on those emotions in order to “evoke disgust, anger, devaluation and domination of those deemed the ‘other,’” she writes. Opponents are portrayed as “profoundly bad, immoral, dangerous” or all of the above.
As hatred grows, so do negative judgments about the other’s character or essence that exclude any possibility of compassion. Such passions help explain evangelicals’ surprising embrace of many of President Donald Trump and his many animosities, she suggests. “The 50 years of the Christian Right priming constituents for war enabled their leadership to frame Trump’s oppositional politics as a manifestation of their own battles, providing theological justification to the policies endorsed by Trump.”