The dynamics and issues at the intersection of religiosity and authoritarianism are massively complex. Nothing here can be distilled and explained simply. That caveat being offered, Ruth's essay speaks to sets of psychological predispositions that similarly draw people to certain religious beliefs AND to feeling safely held, rather than alarmed and imperiled, by authoritarian-leaning actors, and in particular those who also gravitate into theocractic-fascistic territory.
Many Christian sects, but especially Catholicism, uphold precepts regarding human sexuality and other features and expressions of natural human desires and impulses that are summarily denounced as sinful. And which should be eradicated or, minimally, denied, disavowed, squashed or suppressed. Over centuries, a canon of teachings, beliefs, and practices have inculcated adherents into passively normalizing the pathologization of human desire. One outcome of this serial transgenerational trauma is the establishment of deep shame on a macro-social scale.
It is well-known that early shame experiences are a common denominator of both tyrannical actors and those drawn to their orbit. The sado-masochistic dyad--the re-enactment of lacerating cruelty absorbed in subjugation ennobled as pious grace is a core trope of religious doctrine.
Authoritarianism carries this form of abusive relationship out of the church and church-going homes into the state. But its familiarity and the sense of calming normalcy--the impassioned acquiescence to the ostensibly powerful all-controlling authority who promises redemption, salvation, and escape from the pain of mortal life--phantasmagorically transforms the authoritarian into a wonderful welcome figure. He is loved, not loathed.
In this regard, while reductionistic, I will suggest that certain aspects of religious thinking and beliefs have directly contributed to some of the most viciously destructive psycho-social pathogens in human history, and are causal to the formation of the authoritarian personality and to the perverse social acceptance of that figure and the authoritarianism he brings.
Dr. Stein‘s account of the perversion of sexuality by religion, which throughout history has produced innumerable damaged lives, and produced secular authoritarianism as well, is important and compelling.
However, in the context of a discussion of freedom and tyranny in relation to church and state, it is necessary to consider as well the secular counterpart of religion’s perversion of sexuality—a trade on which religion does not have a monopoly. The chief secular form of perverted sexuality is war.
Dr. Stein writes eloquently about the “sado-masochistic dyad,” in which the victim’s “impassioned acquiescence to the . . . all-controlling authority who promises redemption, salvation, and escape” produces in the victim a “sense of coming normalcy,” a sense that “phantasmagorically transforms the authoritarian into a wonderful welcome figure” that “is loved, not loathed.”
In Dr. Stein’s description of perverted sexuality imposed by authoritarian religion, the authoritarian figures are parents, priest, and ultimately the God whom the priest represents. But the same description could be applied, word-for-word, regarding the innumerable victims of wars waged by the state, to the secular authorities who throughout history have conscripted soldiers (and civilians) into the perverted sexual apocalypse that is war.
Underlying these perversions of sexuality in the service of both religious and secular authoritarianism is the phenomenon identified by Anna Freud as “identification with the aggressor”(exemplified most familiarly by the so-called “Stockholm syndrome”). The ne plus ultra of this kind of identification (as the great psychoanalytic theorist Otto Kernberg has pointed out) is the cry of Winston Smith in “1984,” after torture by the secular God of the totalitarian state has completely hollowed out his humanity from him: “I love Big Brother.”
To the extent that we are all complicit in what is beyond all measure the largest and most lethal war machine in history—a war machine that maintains nearly 1000 military bases in the service of ruthless secular domination and exploitation in every corner of the globe—a machine that well might destroy all life on the planet in the next fifteen minutes (and has failed to do so until now, according to a former head of the Strategic Air Command, which controls US land- and air-based nuclear weapons, only through “divine intervention”)—a machine of totalizing death and destruction that our culture “phantasmagorically transforms” into “a wonderful welcome figure” that is “loved not loathed” by almost all Americans—to that extent we all love Big Brother, an authoritarian tyrant of perverted sexuality who is almost exclusively secular.
I welcome Alexander Chimes’ response to my comment. He amplifies my central points well but also usefully extends religious shame and debasement as generators propelling both actors and supplicants of tyranny and authoritarian oppression into the secular realm of warfare.
It’s a useful and accurate distinction. History tells us with empirical certainty that human warfare and predispositions to abuses of power long predate Western, Judeo-Christian edicts governing notions of human nature and assigning unimpeachable judgment on acceptable vs unacceptable aspects of how we think, feel, and behave.
Just the same, a couple of clarifications regarding the deeper points I was attempting to make but perhaps didn’t articulate clearly enough.
At core, the psychological difference between the secular and the sacred is synthetic. It’s a shift of location or context but not of underpinning psychology. The god of war or howsoever we call the totem of worship is still a fetish object, whether cast as a deity or otherwise. State-sponsored warfare is a displacement from the ennoblement of engaging in ruthless inhumane acts against brothers and neighbors at the behest of or in the service of the Lord or Allah or Yahweh or Ares, Zeus or Mars to doing so in the name of territorial, economic, political, or nationalistic interests.
While yes, of course, all of these are operationally different—or anyway not all mutually equivalent—the underpinning drivers of the impulses and conduct carry through irrespective of the rationale or justification erected to condone it. Church or State. Same same.
I don’t wholesale subscribe to most theories of evolutionary psychology but there is certainly, nearly obviously and irrefutably, evidence that many of our aggressive, hostile impulses are organically animalistically intrinsic to the human condition. Nature before nurture.
In that regard, people (or our early ancestors) were battling each other and engaging in various forms of quasi-authoritarian abuses of power long before the invention of deity narratives, even those of antiquity. I’m NOT suggesting the Church is ground zero for all the macro-social dysfunctions that give rise to modern warfare and autocratic or tyrannical systems.
The primary point I was and am making, pinging off Ruth’s essay connecting authoritarianism and the church, is that many religious concepts and teachings about the human condition have tragically influenced centuries of lives around the world, embedding—metastasizing—radically traumatizing experiences of shamefulness and self-hatred propelling consequent reactions in both implosive-depressive and explosive-aggressive directions.
But after saying all this, I’m a practitioner not an academic—an advisor to leaders—people in positions of power, authority and influence. My professional work is to help mitigate or solve these problems not only to illuminate theories about them. Perhaps more on that, how to do that, another time. Or in a follow-up conversation with Ruth if that interests her.
Dr. Stein, it is interesting that you conclude a robust back-and-forth about theories concerning authoritarianism with the assertion, “I’m a practitioner . . . an advisor to . . . people in positions of power, authority and influence,” whose “work is to . . . solve these problems not only to illuminate theories about them.”
One should of course take appropriate pride in one’s work and one’s co-workers; but does being “a practitioner” who works with people in positions of authority confer greater authority on one’s theories of authoritarianism than if one were “an academic” who “only” worked to “illuminate” such theories?
The essential point of all your comments, the theory of the etiological sources of authoritarianism in childhood experiences of humiliation and shame, is a fine and welcome contribution to our understanding of authoritarianism. But it is difficult to see how this theory has any direct relation to working with “people in positions of power, authority and influence.” One does wonder how such work affects (or interacts with) one’s own understanding of authority.
Agreed. It’s a robust and interesting exchange on the topic. Among all the commentators not just you and me. Given that, it’s equally striking that you’d divert from extending the conversation to focus on my closing remark about my work. I won’t presume to suggest I know why because I cannot. But my surmise is you’ve taken umbrage. It seems you may have taken my comment as a slight against scholars and academics? No such comparison or judgment was in my mind. I assert no greater authority than others by virtue of the type of work I do (although I own my authority as an expert in my field). I shared something about myself. Full stop.
The question you ask about how my perspectives on the psychological and psycho-social dimensions of authoritarianism and abuses of power is related to working as a practitioner with people in positions of power, authority, and influence is excellent. And entirely relevant to the broader discussion here.
The most concise answer is to consider the differences between study and intervention or between research and application. Both are important and valuable. The first of each pair is in fact a prerequisite to being effective in the second. There is no hierarchy, value judgment, implicit denigration (eg ‘those who can’t do, teach’), or anything of the kind. They’re simply different modes of engaging and using knowledge and training.
My education and training orients me to actionably address situations in which individuals in positions of power, authority, and influence are adversely impacting organizations or larger communities of stakeholders. This might not always involve willful malice or intentional abuses of power; it could well be a byproduct of a leader’s blind spots or other features of her/his psychology coupled with the ways in which followers and others in the leader’s orbit respond to the malfunction or dysfunction at play.
The direct relevance is in the value of deep diagnostic understanding—a root cause analysis—precedent to instituting some corrective and/or reparative action. No problem can be effectively attended to without first accurately understanding the nature of the problem. But, in addition, addressing dynamic problems involving human decision-making and, especially, misconduct is a connected but also distinct activity from understanding or theorizing about them.
It is essential to understand the argument that informs RBG’s piece. She does not interpret either historical phenomena, or peoples’ attitudes, in terms of simplistic dichotomies. She does not treat either reason or faith, either church or state, as being intrinsically authoritarian or democratic. Both church and state may be either authoritarian or democratic. Thus she writes:
“Not every faith tradition is suitable for serving strongman purposes. The decline or demise of democracy can be paralleled by a realignment of power in the religious realm. Faith traditions with their own authoritarian cultures prosper, while progressive ones are sidelined or suppressed.”
Accordingly, she depicts the complex interrelationships between church and state in the modern era in specific, concrete, historical detail, beginning with Mussolini:
“Mussolini created the template. [He persecuted] the Italian left . . . . Yet . . . both the Fascists and the Catholic Church needed to neutralize another threat: a progressive Christian movement, embodied in the fast-growing Popular Party, which was led by the revered priest Don Luigi Sturzo.”
Similarly, there is no simple dichotomous relationship between authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism (or democracy). As soon as we are born, we are necessarily under the authority of our parents, and our parents must exercise authority over us. Endlessly complicated webs of authority, and the hierarchical relationships it engenders, are essential and unavoidable elements of human society and existence. The relationships between teachers and students, supervisors and workers, doctors and patients, bus drivers and passengers, hosts and guests—all the myriad relationships we routinely enter into—require the exercise of authority and cooperation with that authority. The question is not whether we live under and exercise authority. The question is whether the relationships of authority and hierarchy we live under are healthy or unhealthy. A useful starting point for examining the complex nature of authority is Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.”
Authority, being both creative and destructive, inspires us with both awe and dread, and therefore with a frightening sense of unresolvable ambivalence. D.L. Dusenbury writes, in a still larger historical context than that of modern fascism, of the seemingly implacable destructiveness of human authority, whether exercised by temporal or the religious authority. He writes that Nietzsche, discussing Socrates and Jesus, suggests that
“European culture is inaugurated . . . by a pair of legal ordeals in which innocent persons are condemned. . . . [The European] drama of truth begins not once, but twice, with an innocent [person] being sentenced to death. The mirroring of these events is heightened by the fact that Socrates, the protomartyr of European philosophy, and Jesus, the protomartyr of Christian theology, are . . . [both] convicted of the highest political crime (treason) and the highest religious crime (blasphemy)” (The TLS, No. 6106, April 20, 2020).
One of the essential points of the Gospels is often considered to be that when God enters the world, human beings will inevitably crucify him—thus the chapter on the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” Human innocence will inevitably be crucified—thus Melville’s “Billy Budd.” We all crucify Christ despite ourselves. Similarly, throughout the Old Testament, God must instruct his prophets to tell his chosen people that they have once again chosen death over life.
As with faith, so with reason. if the Goddess Reason is the royal road to democracy and human happiness, the empirical evidence for it is vanishingly scant. In fact, the evidence points overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. Reason itself tells us that reason in itself cannot produce desirable results. There is no rational reason for us not to murder, enslave, or exploit other human beings. In fact it is often entirely rational to do these things, as entirely rational human beings have determined again and again throughout history. The reason we refrain from doing these things is that we desire to refrain from doing them; and there is little or no compelling rational reason for that desire.
At any rate, addressing age-old fundamental issues of human existence does require a virtue that is central to both our secular and religious traditions—humility.
Lovers of authoritarianism and patriarchy drift toward organized religion as a natural ally. All three merit strong resistance. Bertrand Russell's observation has never been more apt, that turning to religion is a complete delusion, borne of terror.
For a grand discussion of the work of Christian evangelist believers and their influence on American politics, I suggest "The Family: the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power," a truly disturbing expose of the bizarre thinking behind these folks.
Steve Hassan’s THE CULT OF TRUMP in depth analysis of intersection of evangelistic authoritarians and trump politics, including details of The Family’s involvement with trump
Steve Hassan’s group health spectrum shows a difference between cults like Jonestown and Trumpsters promoting the worst in us, at unhealthy end … and many mainstream religions at healthy end that generally promote the best in us
No.. in fact faith means not wanting to know whats true. To accept something as true without evidence is irrational. Thats what cults and most religions do big time. Religions arise out of individual psychic needs and for the requirements of social solidarity. Religo is the latin word for 'to bind'.
Although I am not a religious person, I do not dismiss the religious way of life. I know many very religious people who are whip-smart scientists or scholars and are anything but submissive minds. The issue is very complicated and I try to approach it on a case by case analysis, the same way I do when I am dealing with non-religious folks.
Agreed.. people need spiritual outlets to be sure, organized or not. I would never want to see this activity stamped out or threatened. In many circumstances religion is good for society as long as it remains not a part of government or state.
When religious organizations are formed around an authoritarian mindset, like so many in this nation, it is an easy transition for those people to accept an authoritarian political stance. Chris Hedges addressed this concept in his book, "American Fascists". Christo-fascism has become a major pillar for our current proto-fascism. I know some of these people and they seem to live in a world of post-truth, where their feelings supersede truth. But fascism has never been about the truth and that is what fascist leaders depend on; that followers will believe their fantasy.
Much of organized religion is nothing more than a system of power, a cult and authoritarian control. It is full of the same corruption and abuses as government and the officials who occupy its positions of power. Often times the abuses and scandals can be worse, morally evil in fact, just look at the years and years of cover up that went on in the highest levels of the Vatican and its churches to protect it's priests, who sexually abused children.
Where ever there is concentrated power there will ineluctably be corruption and abuse. Sin and ambition abound. As Dante observed "Human history can't change until human nature changes.”
A current case on point reported in today's The Guardian about the political efforts of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, to create a Christian theocracy.
A useful and informative guide to how American far right Christianity has waged war on America take a look at Chris Hedges' book, "American Fascism." He does an outstanding bit of analysis laying out the grievance this particular group has with America's culture.
And overseas we can see the radical Hindus supporting Modi in India as he establishes his own authoritarian regime and the radical Buddhists in Myanmar working hand in glove with the military to purge Christians and especially Muslims from the country and let us not forget the radical Shi'ite clerics running Iran. Point being that while Christian groups seem to have perfected the art, they are not alone in wedding religion to authoritarianism.
Ruth Ben Ghiat writes yet another compelling piece... this one about the age-old, unholy alliance between Government and Religion.
I started becoming aware of that unholy alliance during the Ronald Regan and George W. Bush years, and most notably during the Trump years (and the 1st Amendment concepts of separating Church and State be damned).
As poster Steve Rasmussen indicates... those who accept "unprovable" (yet "authoritative") religious beliefs as gospel are already in lockstep submission with "authoritative" thinking and tyrant spokespersons. Thank heaven for my Jesuit education that shifted my focus from the "unprovable" dogma of Christianity to the "message" of the historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth... the Man in sandals who walked from Galilee to Jerusalem preaching a radical gospel, the historical "message" of inclusion, acceptance, social justice, human rights and dignity, forgiveness, love and "Do unto Others." That historical "message" was threat to authoritarianism, a threat to a patriarchal society and a threat to organized religion. That's why those threatened by the "message" of Jesus (patriarchs, organized religion and Rome) eliminated him before any further disruption in the "social order" could be accomplished by the "Civilly Disobedient" Jesus (saving the adulteress from the death penalty, throwing the money changers out of the Temple, elevating the status of women, etc).
I can't help but think that if Jesus lived in our time, the authoritarian figures of our time would crucify him all over again... with the masses of Christians cheering on the execution.
A large faction of the Christian population in the US has been hijacked by theocracy loving autocrats pushing a hard line message of religious bigotry and division. Non-beievers are totaly evil to them. They have claimed that if they do attain a theocracy here, the non-believers will be punished. If that sounds like the division seen in fascist countries, it is because these radical Christians have embraced fascism. I'm glad to say that many Christians have rejected this hate, including my wife.
"I can't help but think that if Jesus lived in our time, the authoritarian figures of our time would crucify him all over again... with the masses of Christians cheering on the execution."
I don't doubt that for a moment, Fred. In fact, it's cringe-worthy to listen to many of these Christians and their so-called spiritual leaders talk about the faith. What they never talk about or even mention are the Beatitudes.
The dynamics and issues at the intersection of religiosity and authoritarianism are massively complex. Nothing here can be distilled and explained simply. That caveat being offered, Ruth's essay speaks to sets of psychological predispositions that similarly draw people to certain religious beliefs AND to feeling safely held, rather than alarmed and imperiled, by authoritarian-leaning actors, and in particular those who also gravitate into theocractic-fascistic territory.
Many Christian sects, but especially Catholicism, uphold precepts regarding human sexuality and other features and expressions of natural human desires and impulses that are summarily denounced as sinful. And which should be eradicated or, minimally, denied, disavowed, squashed or suppressed. Over centuries, a canon of teachings, beliefs, and practices have inculcated adherents into passively normalizing the pathologization of human desire. One outcome of this serial transgenerational trauma is the establishment of deep shame on a macro-social scale.
It is well-known that early shame experiences are a common denominator of both tyrannical actors and those drawn to their orbit. The sado-masochistic dyad--the re-enactment of lacerating cruelty absorbed in subjugation ennobled as pious grace is a core trope of religious doctrine.
Authoritarianism carries this form of abusive relationship out of the church and church-going homes into the state. But its familiarity and the sense of calming normalcy--the impassioned acquiescence to the ostensibly powerful all-controlling authority who promises redemption, salvation, and escape from the pain of mortal life--phantasmagorically transforms the authoritarian into a wonderful welcome figure. He is loved, not loathed.
In this regard, while reductionistic, I will suggest that certain aspects of religious thinking and beliefs have directly contributed to some of the most viciously destructive psycho-social pathogens in human history, and are causal to the formation of the authoritarian personality and to the perverse social acceptance of that figure and the authoritarianism he brings.
Thank you Alexander!
Dr. Stein‘s account of the perversion of sexuality by religion, which throughout history has produced innumerable damaged lives, and produced secular authoritarianism as well, is important and compelling.
However, in the context of a discussion of freedom and tyranny in relation to church and state, it is necessary to consider as well the secular counterpart of religion’s perversion of sexuality—a trade on which religion does not have a monopoly. The chief secular form of perverted sexuality is war.
Dr. Stein writes eloquently about the “sado-masochistic dyad,” in which the victim’s “impassioned acquiescence to the . . . all-controlling authority who promises redemption, salvation, and escape” produces in the victim a “sense of coming normalcy,” a sense that “phantasmagorically transforms the authoritarian into a wonderful welcome figure” that “is loved, not loathed.”
In Dr. Stein’s description of perverted sexuality imposed by authoritarian religion, the authoritarian figures are parents, priest, and ultimately the God whom the priest represents. But the same description could be applied, word-for-word, regarding the innumerable victims of wars waged by the state, to the secular authorities who throughout history have conscripted soldiers (and civilians) into the perverted sexual apocalypse that is war.
Underlying these perversions of sexuality in the service of both religious and secular authoritarianism is the phenomenon identified by Anna Freud as “identification with the aggressor”(exemplified most familiarly by the so-called “Stockholm syndrome”). The ne plus ultra of this kind of identification (as the great psychoanalytic theorist Otto Kernberg has pointed out) is the cry of Winston Smith in “1984,” after torture by the secular God of the totalitarian state has completely hollowed out his humanity from him: “I love Big Brother.”
To the extent that we are all complicit in what is beyond all measure the largest and most lethal war machine in history—a war machine that maintains nearly 1000 military bases in the service of ruthless secular domination and exploitation in every corner of the globe—a machine that well might destroy all life on the planet in the next fifteen minutes (and has failed to do so until now, according to a former head of the Strategic Air Command, which controls US land- and air-based nuclear weapons, only through “divine intervention”)—a machine of totalizing death and destruction that our culture “phantasmagorically transforms” into “a wonderful welcome figure” that is “loved not loathed” by almost all Americans—to that extent we all love Big Brother, an authoritarian tyrant of perverted sexuality who is almost exclusively secular.
I welcome Alexander Chimes’ response to my comment. He amplifies my central points well but also usefully extends religious shame and debasement as generators propelling both actors and supplicants of tyranny and authoritarian oppression into the secular realm of warfare.
It’s a useful and accurate distinction. History tells us with empirical certainty that human warfare and predispositions to abuses of power long predate Western, Judeo-Christian edicts governing notions of human nature and assigning unimpeachable judgment on acceptable vs unacceptable aspects of how we think, feel, and behave.
Just the same, a couple of clarifications regarding the deeper points I was attempting to make but perhaps didn’t articulate clearly enough.
At core, the psychological difference between the secular and the sacred is synthetic. It’s a shift of location or context but not of underpinning psychology. The god of war or howsoever we call the totem of worship is still a fetish object, whether cast as a deity or otherwise. State-sponsored warfare is a displacement from the ennoblement of engaging in ruthless inhumane acts against brothers and neighbors at the behest of or in the service of the Lord or Allah or Yahweh or Ares, Zeus or Mars to doing so in the name of territorial, economic, political, or nationalistic interests.
While yes, of course, all of these are operationally different—or anyway not all mutually equivalent—the underpinning drivers of the impulses and conduct carry through irrespective of the rationale or justification erected to condone it. Church or State. Same same.
I don’t wholesale subscribe to most theories of evolutionary psychology but there is certainly, nearly obviously and irrefutably, evidence that many of our aggressive, hostile impulses are organically animalistically intrinsic to the human condition. Nature before nurture.
In that regard, people (or our early ancestors) were battling each other and engaging in various forms of quasi-authoritarian abuses of power long before the invention of deity narratives, even those of antiquity. I’m NOT suggesting the Church is ground zero for all the macro-social dysfunctions that give rise to modern warfare and autocratic or tyrannical systems.
The primary point I was and am making, pinging off Ruth’s essay connecting authoritarianism and the church, is that many religious concepts and teachings about the human condition have tragically influenced centuries of lives around the world, embedding—metastasizing—radically traumatizing experiences of shamefulness and self-hatred propelling consequent reactions in both implosive-depressive and explosive-aggressive directions.
Some but not all of this was alluded to though it didn’t get explicitly surfaced in the final edit of Ruth’s recent interview with me [ https://lucid.substack.com/p/alexander-stein-on-the-psychology ].
But after saying all this, I’m a practitioner not an academic—an advisor to leaders—people in positions of power, authority and influence. My professional work is to help mitigate or solve these problems not only to illuminate theories about them. Perhaps more on that, how to do that, another time. Or in a follow-up conversation with Ruth if that interests her.
Dr. Stein, it is interesting that you conclude a robust back-and-forth about theories concerning authoritarianism with the assertion, “I’m a practitioner . . . an advisor to . . . people in positions of power, authority and influence,” whose “work is to . . . solve these problems not only to illuminate theories about them.”
One should of course take appropriate pride in one’s work and one’s co-workers; but does being “a practitioner” who works with people in positions of authority confer greater authority on one’s theories of authoritarianism than if one were “an academic” who “only” worked to “illuminate” such theories?
The essential point of all your comments, the theory of the etiological sources of authoritarianism in childhood experiences of humiliation and shame, is a fine and welcome contribution to our understanding of authoritarianism. But it is difficult to see how this theory has any direct relation to working with “people in positions of power, authority and influence.” One does wonder how such work affects (or interacts with) one’s own understanding of authority.
Agreed. It’s a robust and interesting exchange on the topic. Among all the commentators not just you and me. Given that, it’s equally striking that you’d divert from extending the conversation to focus on my closing remark about my work. I won’t presume to suggest I know why because I cannot. But my surmise is you’ve taken umbrage. It seems you may have taken my comment as a slight against scholars and academics? No such comparison or judgment was in my mind. I assert no greater authority than others by virtue of the type of work I do (although I own my authority as an expert in my field). I shared something about myself. Full stop.
The question you ask about how my perspectives on the psychological and psycho-social dimensions of authoritarianism and abuses of power is related to working as a practitioner with people in positions of power, authority, and influence is excellent. And entirely relevant to the broader discussion here.
The most concise answer is to consider the differences between study and intervention or between research and application. Both are important and valuable. The first of each pair is in fact a prerequisite to being effective in the second. There is no hierarchy, value judgment, implicit denigration (eg ‘those who can’t do, teach’), or anything of the kind. They’re simply different modes of engaging and using knowledge and training.
My education and training orients me to actionably address situations in which individuals in positions of power, authority, and influence are adversely impacting organizations or larger communities of stakeholders. This might not always involve willful malice or intentional abuses of power; it could well be a byproduct of a leader’s blind spots or other features of her/his psychology coupled with the ways in which followers and others in the leader’s orbit respond to the malfunction or dysfunction at play.
The direct relevance is in the value of deep diagnostic understanding—a root cause analysis—precedent to instituting some corrective and/or reparative action. No problem can be effectively attended to without first accurately understanding the nature of the problem. But, in addition, addressing dynamic problems involving human decision-making and, especially, misconduct is a connected but also distinct activity from understanding or theorizing about them.
It is essential to understand the argument that informs RBG’s piece. She does not interpret either historical phenomena, or peoples’ attitudes, in terms of simplistic dichotomies. She does not treat either reason or faith, either church or state, as being intrinsically authoritarian or democratic. Both church and state may be either authoritarian or democratic. Thus she writes:
“Not every faith tradition is suitable for serving strongman purposes. The decline or demise of democracy can be paralleled by a realignment of power in the religious realm. Faith traditions with their own authoritarian cultures prosper, while progressive ones are sidelined or suppressed.”
Accordingly, she depicts the complex interrelationships between church and state in the modern era in specific, concrete, historical detail, beginning with Mussolini:
“Mussolini created the template. [He persecuted] the Italian left . . . . Yet . . . both the Fascists and the Catholic Church needed to neutralize another threat: a progressive Christian movement, embodied in the fast-growing Popular Party, which was led by the revered priest Don Luigi Sturzo.”
Similarly, there is no simple dichotomous relationship between authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism (or democracy). As soon as we are born, we are necessarily under the authority of our parents, and our parents must exercise authority over us. Endlessly complicated webs of authority, and the hierarchical relationships it engenders, are essential and unavoidable elements of human society and existence. The relationships between teachers and students, supervisors and workers, doctors and patients, bus drivers and passengers, hosts and guests—all the myriad relationships we routinely enter into—require the exercise of authority and cooperation with that authority. The question is not whether we live under and exercise authority. The question is whether the relationships of authority and hierarchy we live under are healthy or unhealthy. A useful starting point for examining the complex nature of authority is Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.”
Authority, being both creative and destructive, inspires us with both awe and dread, and therefore with a frightening sense of unresolvable ambivalence. D.L. Dusenbury writes, in a still larger historical context than that of modern fascism, of the seemingly implacable destructiveness of human authority, whether exercised by temporal or the religious authority. He writes that Nietzsche, discussing Socrates and Jesus, suggests that
“European culture is inaugurated . . . by a pair of legal ordeals in which innocent persons are condemned. . . . [The European] drama of truth begins not once, but twice, with an innocent [person] being sentenced to death. The mirroring of these events is heightened by the fact that Socrates, the protomartyr of European philosophy, and Jesus, the protomartyr of Christian theology, are . . . [both] convicted of the highest political crime (treason) and the highest religious crime (blasphemy)” (The TLS, No. 6106, April 20, 2020).
One of the essential points of the Gospels is often considered to be that when God enters the world, human beings will inevitably crucify him—thus the chapter on the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” Human innocence will inevitably be crucified—thus Melville’s “Billy Budd.” We all crucify Christ despite ourselves. Similarly, throughout the Old Testament, God must instruct his prophets to tell his chosen people that they have once again chosen death over life.
As with faith, so with reason. if the Goddess Reason is the royal road to democracy and human happiness, the empirical evidence for it is vanishingly scant. In fact, the evidence points overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. Reason itself tells us that reason in itself cannot produce desirable results. There is no rational reason for us not to murder, enslave, or exploit other human beings. In fact it is often entirely rational to do these things, as entirely rational human beings have determined again and again throughout history. The reason we refrain from doing these things is that we desire to refrain from doing them; and there is little or no compelling rational reason for that desire.
At any rate, addressing age-old fundamental issues of human existence does require a virtue that is central to both our secular and religious traditions—humility.
Thank you for this, Ruth. You bring clarity to what I find unfathomable. I am very worried for us.
Thank you Margaret!
Lovers of authoritarianism and patriarchy drift toward organized religion as a natural ally. All three merit strong resistance. Bertrand Russell's observation has never been more apt, that turning to religion is a complete delusion, borne of terror.
For a grand discussion of the work of Christian evangelist believers and their influence on American politics, I suggest "The Family: the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power," a truly disturbing expose of the bizarre thinking behind these folks.
Steve Hassan’s THE CULT OF TRUMP in depth analysis of intersection of evangelistic authoritarians and trump politics, including details of The Family’s involvement with trump
Is religion and Personality cults connected by the fact they are driven by belief rather than reason?
For sake of argument if there is no provable rational basis for a religion is it any different from a personality cult
Steve Hassan’s group health spectrum shows a difference between cults like Jonestown and Trumpsters promoting the worst in us, at unhealthy end … and many mainstream religions at healthy end that generally promote the best in us
No.. in fact faith means not wanting to know whats true. To accept something as true without evidence is irrational. Thats what cults and most religions do big time. Religions arise out of individual psychic needs and for the requirements of social solidarity. Religo is the latin word for 'to bind'.
Although I am not a religious person, I do not dismiss the religious way of life. I know many very religious people who are whip-smart scientists or scholars and are anything but submissive minds. The issue is very complicated and I try to approach it on a case by case analysis, the same way I do when I am dealing with non-religious folks.
Agreed.. people need spiritual outlets to be sure, organized or not. I would never want to see this activity stamped out or threatened. In many circumstances religion is good for society as long as it remains not a part of government or state.
When religious organizations are formed around an authoritarian mindset, like so many in this nation, it is an easy transition for those people to accept an authoritarian political stance. Chris Hedges addressed this concept in his book, "American Fascists". Christo-fascism has become a major pillar for our current proto-fascism. I know some of these people and they seem to live in a world of post-truth, where their feelings supersede truth. But fascism has never been about the truth and that is what fascist leaders depend on; that followers will believe their fantasy.
Much of organized religion is nothing more than a system of power, a cult and authoritarian control. It is full of the same corruption and abuses as government and the officials who occupy its positions of power. Often times the abuses and scandals can be worse, morally evil in fact, just look at the years and years of cover up that went on in the highest levels of the Vatican and its churches to protect it's priests, who sexually abused children.
Where ever there is concentrated power there will ineluctably be corruption and abuse. Sin and ambition abound. As Dante observed "Human history can't change until human nature changes.”
A current case on point reported in today's The Guardian about the political efforts of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, to create a Christian theocracy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/02/christ-church-idaho-theocracy-us-america
This was excellent and very important information.
It seems to me that two of the goals of certain denominations and sects--goals that those groups andi ndividuals always try to hide, of course--are:
1. to attempt to control the behavior of others, especially non-group members; and
(2) to attempt to control the thinking of non-group members.
A useful and informative guide to how American far right Christianity has waged war on America take a look at Chris Hedges' book, "American Fascism." He does an outstanding bit of analysis laying out the grievance this particular group has with America's culture.
And overseas we can see the radical Hindus supporting Modi in India as he establishes his own authoritarian regime and the radical Buddhists in Myanmar working hand in glove with the military to purge Christians and especially Muslims from the country and let us not forget the radical Shi'ite clerics running Iran. Point being that while Christian groups seem to have perfected the art, they are not alone in wedding religion to authoritarianism.
Ruth Ben Ghiat writes yet another compelling piece... this one about the age-old, unholy alliance between Government and Religion.
I started becoming aware of that unholy alliance during the Ronald Regan and George W. Bush years, and most notably during the Trump years (and the 1st Amendment concepts of separating Church and State be damned).
As poster Steve Rasmussen indicates... those who accept "unprovable" (yet "authoritative") religious beliefs as gospel are already in lockstep submission with "authoritative" thinking and tyrant spokespersons. Thank heaven for my Jesuit education that shifted my focus from the "unprovable" dogma of Christianity to the "message" of the historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth... the Man in sandals who walked from Galilee to Jerusalem preaching a radical gospel, the historical "message" of inclusion, acceptance, social justice, human rights and dignity, forgiveness, love and "Do unto Others." That historical "message" was threat to authoritarianism, a threat to a patriarchal society and a threat to organized religion. That's why those threatened by the "message" of Jesus (patriarchs, organized religion and Rome) eliminated him before any further disruption in the "social order" could be accomplished by the "Civilly Disobedient" Jesus (saving the adulteress from the death penalty, throwing the money changers out of the Temple, elevating the status of women, etc).
I can't help but think that if Jesus lived in our time, the authoritarian figures of our time would crucify him all over again... with the masses of Christians cheering on the execution.
Fred Lauck
Thank you Fred!
A large faction of the Christian population in the US has been hijacked by theocracy loving autocrats pushing a hard line message of religious bigotry and division. Non-beievers are totaly evil to them. They have claimed that if they do attain a theocracy here, the non-believers will be punished. If that sounds like the division seen in fascist countries, it is because these radical Christians have embraced fascism. I'm glad to say that many Christians have rejected this hate, including my wife.
Can you say Martin Luther King Jr?
"I can't help but think that if Jesus lived in our time, the authoritarian figures of our time would crucify him all over again... with the masses of Christians cheering on the execution."
I don't doubt that for a moment, Fred. In fact, it's cringe-worthy to listen to many of these Christians and their so-called spiritual leaders talk about the faith. What they never talk about or even mention are the Beatitudes.
I think we both know why.
If not exiled, jailed or tortured in some rehabilitation camp..