Interweaving #23 - Damon Berry on Christian Nationalism, Russia, and Ukraine

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In this episode of Interweaving, host John Collins talks with religious studies scholar Damon Berry about Christian nationalism and its relevance to the war on Ukraine. They discuss how Christian nationalists in the US see the world through a lens of white nostalgia, where their views connect with Vladimir Putin’s agenda, and why it is politically necessary to look closely at these views even if we find them abhorrent.

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Transcript

John Collins: Welcome to interweaving. I'm John Collins. We're currently in the midst of a series of conversations examining how a focus on white supremacy and the politics of race can help us identify some of the limitations in the narratives of geopolitics that tend to dominate the public conversation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

We began by speaking with sociologist Mark Ayyash, who offered a Palestinian Canadian perspective on some of the sharp differences between dominant Western discourses on Ukraine and Palestine. More recently, Claudia Hoffman helped us think critically about the Ukrainian refugee story by focusing on the racist, ethnocentric and other assumptions that drive far too much of the public discourse on global migration.

Today, we're going to zero in on a different aspect of the Ukraine story: how the racial and religious aspects of the story are finding resonance within the political ecosystem of the far-right in the United States. And I can think of no one better to help us understand that particular constellation of issues than our guest today, Damon Berry. He teaches religious studies at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and he's published extensively on the intersections of religion, violence and race, especially in relation to far-right movements. Damon, thanks so much for joining us on Interweaving today.

Damon Berry: My pleasure. 

So I've been starting each of these interviews in this series by just acknowledging that our views of major events like the war on Ukraine are always influenced by our identities and experiences. With that in mind, how does the Ukraine story look for you, and what are some of the main factors shaping your view of the situation?

Well, I come from a family that we usually refer to as working class. And from a family that is currently very mixed with Trump support. So that's informing a lot of the perspective that I have on the issue, but also that my college career started rather late in life after a short term in the military, figuring out what I was going to do next as an undergraduate, and then witnessing 9/11 and trying to figure out as the events unfolded, what exactly was happening and what was shaping how people were seeing what was happening. I bring that perspective when I think about domestic groups. So I've written on white nationalism, the alt-right and Christianity, and more currently thinking about a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. So I'm always looking at these questions through the lens of thinking about the intersections of race, religion, and violence, because that's something I've been working on for 20 years now.

And couldn't be more timely. 

Unfortunately. 

Yes, indeed. Well, part of the reason why we're here today is to think about those issues in relationship to this dominant news story right now involving Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But in order to do that, I think we need to establish some conceptual groundwork a little bit here. And so let's start with Christian nationalism. What is it? How do you define it, and what are some of the ways that Christian nationalists themselves define it? 

Yes. I actually don't try to define it on my own. I'm finding that I've seen it defined rather accurately with the work of Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry in their book Taking America Back for God. And it's a sociological survey so it does take into account how people who we would qualify as Christian nationalists define themselves. They define it primarily as a cultural framework, a way of perceiving politics, a way of perceiving their social world and a way of conceiving of how that social world should be affected. So it's in a sense an identity that they say actually works very similarly to an ethnic identity. 

And the main questions that they used when they did their survey were the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation, the federal government should advocate Christian values, the federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state, the federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces, the success of the United States is in part God's plan, and the federal government should allow prayer in public schools. And depending on how someone answered these questions, they would rank them about their proximity, from rejecter, that is people who think we shouldn't be doing any of these things, all the way to someone who would identify as a Christian nationalist. And they would affirm that yes, indeed, America is part of God's plan, yes indeed Christianity should be preferred over other ways of perceiving things. 

But then they also argue that it's not reducible to that. So this is a constellation, as they describe it, a dense constellation of ideas, that blend an authoritarian perspective with a sort of nationalism that often does reflect a white ethnicity. And Christianity is a part of that, but it is not necessarily Christian in and of itself. So does that go a distance into explaining? 

It does. Thank you. And it strikes me immediately that, while the phrase or the label, "Christian nationalism" may be relatively new, there's nothing particularly new about those intersections if we look at the history of this country.

Absolutely not. And they're very particular about that, that this is an expression, not the or a first expression of these ideas, that these ideas have been around for a very, very long time, and they're inherent to what we talk about when we think about the settler colonial nature of the United States and about preserving a certain kind of identity as they understand it. 

The thing that I'm most interested in to sort of segue to that second part of the question is the way that people who would be qualified as Christian nationalist often don't see themselves that way. Or that's not a term that they would necessarily use. Among them, the term Christian nationalism or white Christian nationalism is a term of derision and they don't see themselves as that thing. They would affirm all the things that Perry and Whitehead say qualify someone as Christian nationalist, but the narrative for them is not necessarily one of trying to establish a theocracy but simply seeing, from their perspective, that these things are true, this would be the better way. And it fits within their general context of a dualistic frame of morality, right/wrong, good/evil. And they see themselves working on behalf of God to establish a more perfect union. So they don't actually look at these terms as terms that they would self-ascribe. And I think that's something that we can talk about. And this is one of the reasons I don't define it because I'm actually interested in, like I was with the alt-right, what the term meant to certain kinds of publics, whether they were identified as that or not. 

No, that makes a lot of sense. And part of the orientation that you're bringing, I guess if I'm understanding this right, is that the thing that we might call Christian nationalism involves, among other things, a certain kind of political orientation or set of principles or set of commitments. That leads me to ask about Trumpism and the particular manifestations of right-wing politics in the US in recent years. So what's the connection? Where does Christian nationalism intersect with, or what role does it play in the development of Trumpism as a political movement? 

Perry and Whitehead note that Christian nationalism was the single most significant predictor for support for Trump. So, from their interviews and the surveys that they did, Christian nationalists supported Trump. Period. I think if you look at events post the publication of this book, with January 6th, the symbols, representations and rhetoric of Christian nationalism were all over the place. You couldn't not see it. So when the QAnon shaman took his position in the Capitol building, he made a prayer to Jesus, right then and there. Right? 

And then also among groups that I'm more familiar with, so I think in terms of the particular groups involved, the network of self-described apostles and prophets called the New Apostolic Reformation had long supported Trump and did so for reasons that we'd identify as Christian nationalist according to the rubric that Perry and Whitehead give us. So, they're deeply, deeply connected. 

And the January 6th insurrection gives us some concrete visuals and other kinds of evidence to see and understand the nature of that connection. 

And the surrounding sort of prayer vigils and rallies that were happening before, somewhat during, and then after that event solidified that this was the Christian nationalism and those who identify as Christian nationalists are all in behind Trump, even for 2024. And this pattern continues when It comes to the attitudes toward the election, whether or not it was valid. So they consistently, across the board, reject the election of Joe Biden. 

So the next step, I think, in making sense of this very complicated constellation that we're talking about is to think about race and think about whiteness in relationship to Christian nationalism, because that's one of the things that we're currently trying to make sense of in relationship to Ukraine and Russia. So could you tell us a little bit about where Christian nationalism intersects with the construction of whiteness and the politics of anti-blackness? 

Yeah, and the surveys that Whitehead and Perry talk about, they notice that white Christian nationalism looks very different from other people who would not be identified as white and how they think about their relationship to Christian nationalism. So there was a big difference they noted between the way white, American Christians answered the questions, particularly along the lines of xenophobia, racial justice and social justice more broadly, that Black American Christians who would answer most of these questions similarly to their white Christian nationalist counterparts had very different attitudes about race and xenophobia and social justice. And that there was a certain kind of nostalgia present with the white Christian nationalist answers that wasn't present in Black American Christians' answers. And this tracks consistently across the board when you look at conservative Christians who would probably see things politically, probably similarly vote on issues like abortion, that the Black Christian and the white Christian experience diverges dramatically. 

And the way that they see their politics diverges dramatically. And this is something that is important. For instance, when I was looking at the conversation about the alt-right among Southern Baptists, that they were literally splitting away, a very important, prominent African-American leadership in the Southern Baptist convention, splitting away from the convention precisely because of their support for Trump, that is their white counterparts' support for Trump, the Southern Baptist conventions rejection of the way they were talking about critical race theory, the way they talked about the alt-right. So these racial divisions among Christian nationalists do run along racial lines in very significant ways. 

I want to hear a little bit more about the nostalgia part of this because nostalgia, of course, appears to be about the past. But it's always about the relationship between the past and the present and also visions of the future. So could you tighten that up a little bit in terms of helping us understand the present and future coordinates of that nostalgia. 

Yes So there was another survey done demonstrating that white Americans by and large felt that things have gotten worse since the 1950s and other Americans did not agree. Right? So, when I think of the nostalgia that I'm referencing here, and the way that Perry and Whitehead talk about it and other surveys mention it, it is a nostalgia for a world in which whiteness was the sort of normative coordinate for understanding how society should work, understanding a certain kind of "us-ness" in relationship to a certain kind of white ethnicity that never actually was stable, never actually existed in the way it's currently imagined. right? So Poles and Italians and Irish didn't necessarily fit historically within that. But the nostalgia that they imagine is that real America is white, Christian, native. And white Christian nationalists see that as all threatened. So what is being threatened is their sense of identity, but also their sense of what America is, has been, and should be. 

So that's a good reminder that the orientation of white Christian nationalists tells us something important about settler colonialism, because to claim a kind of native status or indigenous status, is a very common settler move, right, to say we're not settlers, we're Americans, we're native to this land. I want to go, zoom out a little bit now, before we get to Ukraine. The Christian nationalist version of whiteness obviously has very particular coordinates in this country. Is it also a global category? In other words, do these folks understand whiteness as a transnational concept as well? 

That's a good question. And I think the "they" would have to be more specific, because that's something I found in my research, especially in the alt-right, that there was the international view of white nationalism or ethnic nationalism, to make the category more broad, was slightly different than the way that many Americans formulate it. So, one Australian white nationalist I spoke to didn't like the idea of white nationalism because it was not ethnically specific enough. Right? So he wanted a British, ethnic nationalism for his context, coming out of British Canada, but also now living in Australia, and didn't like Americans' articulation of white as this blanket category. And I don't know if that's a hundred percent across the board for everyone who would be associated with a white ethnonationalism or European ethnonationalism. But it's something that comes up a lot when you speak to people who are not American as they don't necessarily conceive of whiteness the same way, but I think Americans often sort of predictably think of their categories as universal. So I think white nationalists think of themselves as Euro nationalists, but it doesn't necessarily cross over very well in every context. 

Right. Another chapter in the story of American exceptionalism. We're going to take a short break right now. But when we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Damon Berry about Christian nationalism and dig a little bit deeper into the Ukraine story and where it connects with this topic. Stay with us.

[Break]

And we're back with our guest today, Damon Berry. We've been talking about the concept of Christian nationalism, a very complicated concept, as it turns out, which has its own particular cultural politics, its own particular racial politics and its own very complex transnational aspects as well. 

If you like the kinds of critical perspectives that we've been featuring in these recent episodes of Interweaving, make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And remember that you'll find information about people, resources and other topics mentioned on the podcast in the show notes for each episode. To find those, just go to weavenews.org/podcasts/interweaving. 

So Damon, we've been talking about Christian nationalism in general and trying to understand it in a US context. Now I want to connect with what's in the news right now. So obviously the Ukraine story is dominating the headlines. And my basic question for you is what does the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the larger story there have to do with Christian nationalism? 

In a word, a lot. So there's this fundamental concept that sort of runs through the conversations, both of critics of Putin's move and supporters of Putin's move in Ukraine and that is this notion of Russki Mir or Russian world, right, or the Russian order. And that that Russian order that has something to do with these connections between again, an imagined past of a relationship between the strong authoritarian leader, the czar, and the patriarch who's currently Patriarch Kirril of the Russian Orthodox Church. These ideas are not at all ancillary to what's going on with the invasion. 

There is some debate, I think, and worthy debate of whether or not Putin has internalized the religious narrative that's coming from the patriarch and his affiliates. But it's pretty clear that Putin has been using that narrative to justify, in part, what he's doing in Ukraine. That part of the narrative that he's giving is protecting religious freedom of Russian Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, because since the annexation of Crimea, there's been a strong debate within the Orthodox communion of churches in Ukraine and in Russia about their relationship. And in 2018, 2019 the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was granted autocephaly, that is separation from the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, but much of the church's properties still are there and there are Orthodox practitioners who are identifying as Russian Orthodox still. So this internal conflict going on that's being used and is part of the conversation in the invasion itself. So you can't separate this notion of religious nationalism from what's going on in Ukraine. You just can't. 

And interestingly that has not been as much a part of the media narrative as some other aspects of Putin's motivation, some of the geopolitical aspects of that. I find that interesting that there's been less discussion of the religious parts of this. Why do you think that is?

I think because of our sort of normative biases about what religion is and where it fits in the world. I think a lot of the people doing the reporting think of, a, the religious stuff is secondary, not important, and don't quite understand it, but I think also because these relationships in the Orthodox church are complicated and it's a very different history than, say, Roman Catholic traditions or Protestant traditions. And I think there's a complexity there that they're not equipped to talk about, but also they're not necessarily seeing it. What we would identify as the religious component can't be separated from the political ambitions, but they're wedded together in a particular way. And I think, again, our sort of American or Western biases about what religion is and how it fits in the world, is shaping the way that this is getting talked about. Because if you listen to people who actually do know about these things, they're front and center, talking about how important it is to get our heads around this. 

So there may be a disconnect between the media narrative and what's being discussed by Christian nationalists themselves and the internal discussions that they're having among themselves. 

But even even Christians who are not nationalists are worried about this because they recognize, both in the United States and within the Orthodox communion, they are very, very worried about, this move being backed by this Russki Mir ideology, that this is what they regard is not simply a threat to the region, but a threat to orthodoxy itself. So there's a strong internal conflict between Christians of different kinds in this kind of nationalism. 

So given what you've been saying about the Russian order, the sort of marriage of convenience perhaps, between, between Putin and the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the broader significance of that, can you say a little bit more about how that relationship may influence the way that Putin and his actions are viewed by far-right activists here in the US, particularly in terms of their understanding of whiteness. 

Yeah. I think the best way to locate this, is the way that a proponent of this Russki Mir ideology and someone who has been actually very close to Putin for some time, a philosopher named Alexander Dugin, who's discussed quite a lot in a book called Against the Modern World by Mark Sedgwick and then also a book War For Eternity by Ben Teitelbaum, which I recommend everybody read. It's very accessible. 

But Alexander Dugin, in 2021, was in a conversation with an American rightist and podcaster named Jack Murphy, not his real name, but that's his stage name as it were. And what he kept saying is that Putin is Russia's propaganda, right? That he's fighting a war that represents traditional values versus modernity, right? So he is waging a war, he's on the front lines, fighting liberalism, fighting the decadence of Western liberal elites and establishment globalists, all that kind of language that you hear among the American far right. And he's saying that ultimately, those who would agree that modernity and gay rights and all the things that Patriarch Karill mentioned in a sermon just two weeks ago saying this is what this war is about, that they should support Putin, and that ultimately what they wanted was a multipolar world where you would have various kinds of traditionalist ethnonationalisms represented. And it wouldn't be just the hegemony of the liberal, gay-inclusive West. And I mention gay-inclusive a lot because the bigger concern in this particular discussion was not race. It was LGBTQ equality, and not simply their political rights, but them being allowed to exist in society as an actual threat to traditional notions of family and sovereignty and all these other things. 

So given what you've been describing, the kinds of conversations that have been going on for years and are now accelerating, in the context of This Russian invasion of Ukraine, we seem to have here a significant transnational alliance, and Christian nationalism plays an important role in that. And from a justice perspective, I think the danger posed by that alliance seems obvious. So my question, is what is the antidote to Christian nationalism? 

I don't really know. For me, one of the lenses that I have for thinking about these narratives among groups that we would identify as Christian nationalists is how heavily they rely on tropes of some vast conspiracy to destroy the given country that they happened to be concerned about. In the context of America, to destroy America. That gay rights is not simply an agenda to allow more inclusive and equal society to all citizens, it is a plot to undermine the very foundations of America, right? Feminism is not simply, again, an expression that allows female citizens to have the full equality and rich life that anybody else should be able to enjoy in a given political society. It is undermining the traditional family and therefore undercutting the United States. 

So I think what you're asking people to give up on is exactly what Perry and Whitehead say it is. It's this orienting ideology, right? You're asking them to give up on a thing that allows them to frame the world in a way that is a) extremely simple even though it might be terrifying and b) it's a world where they can solve things.

And I don't know that that's something that many people are willing to give up on. I think, you know, the QAnon phenomenon, which intersects with Christian nationalism pretty significantly, demonstrates that from a certain perspective, you're asking people to give up on their dreams. And I think Slavoj Zizek says it best, you know, when you think you've escaped Into your dreams, that's when you're in the deepest clutches of ideology. So we're asking people to give up on something that might be very significant to them in a way that they can't separate from their religious commitment. And I don't know how that works exactly. 

But I do know that their numbers are much smaller than people who disagree with that position. So I think if we can be allies to one another and think really hard about what our commitments really are, what kind of society do you really want to live in? And what are you prepared to foster, what are you prepared to teach? What are you prepared to allow in the door to work toward that common end? And I think there are more of us than there are of them. There are more people that don't want a world that looks like that than are. But you know, I think a recent study demonstrated that people who do hold these ideologies also believe that the United States cannot be saved without political violence. So maybe that's not a solution. But that's sort of a grid to think about. 

Yeah, and I will say just from my own perspective, becoming more aware of the global reverberations of that combined with an awareness of the global reverberations of US militarism and imperialism can feel like it's leaving us with very little ground to stand on. Because of course the interests that lie behind Putin's actions have their counterparts in the interests that lie behind US actions and NATO actions and so forth, right? So partly it's a question of building grassroots power of a different kind than the grassroots power that the small minority that you've been describing seems to possess and seems to be building. 

Yeah. 

Before we finish up, I want to talk a little bit about media coverage. This is something that we've been discussing at the end of each of these interviews in this series, trying to understand both the limitations of the existing media coverage of this story, and also what it would take to overcome some of those limitations. So when you think about the issues that you care about and that you study, what would better media coverage of geopolitics look like? 

It would take the voice of people, even with whom you disagree profoundly and even find frightening, take their voice seriously. I think many times the categories that get used to describe people from the outside often become a rallying cry for their internal alliance, because they don't see themselves that way. And I think it's a hard line to walk between taking their voice seriously and becoming their mouthpiece, but I think it's not helping, for example, people get referred to in a way that falls right into their narrative, that the media is out to get us, right? That the media does have a point of view and that point of view is supporting a modern, Western, liberal order, hegemony. And that anytime we're represented in that media, it's simply to make us the foil for their ambitions, and it doesn't help that sometimes it does look that way, right? 

So, and I think media that reflects the complicated nature of things as they actually are, can be more beneficial. Because I don't think I've said anything in this interview that shows support for these nationalist ideas, but every time I'm trying to describe them, I'm trying to treat seriously the complexity of the issues on the ground and not make it into another moral dualistic narrative of us versus them, of the good guys versus the bad guys. Because I think what has to be mentioned is the way that the media is describing, by and large the Western media is describing the invasion of Ukraine and its imperial ambitions, which is not actually technically inaccurate, should have been the way that the Iraq invasion was described. And it wasn't, and that's being noticed. 

Absolutely. Those comparisons are essential to make right now. And I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask at this point, because this is a subject of much debate right now, the attempts on the part of some to ban outlets like RT or Sputnik News and so forth, right, which from a sort of anti-censorship standpoint really just comes across as playing into the narratives that you've been talking about. 

It's interesting, the site Gab, which comes up a lot in my work, because this is one of the preferred media for, you know, the anti-Semitic and xenophobic narratives of people who have actually murdered people post their stuff, founded by a man named Andrew Torba, who ends every single email he sends to subscribers with "Jesus is king." So there's strong Christian nationalist elements in the shaping of that media outlet. They've recently allowed RT to present their media on Gab's website. So now Gab's audience is getting RT, whether it's banned or not. 

Very interesting. Well, I think we're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately. There's much more to explore here, but you've already given us a tremendous amount to think about. So Damon Berry, thank you for your insights. Thank you for helping us work through the complexity of all the terminology involved here and the connections among these different groups and their ideologies. We appreciate your perspective, and thanks for being our guest. 

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