Religion and Authoritarianism: Collaboration and Resistance
Tech journalist Gil Duran is our guest on Sunday
This essay is adapted from the keynote address on “Religion and Authoritarianism,” which I gave this morning in New York City at a conference on Religious Resistance to Authoritarianism. It was sponsored by the Interfaith Center of New York, Union Theological Seminary, Riverside Church, The Beacon, and the Interfaith Alliance.
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I am honored to be here and speak to you about the complex relationship of religion and authoritarianism. I’ll speak about how many strongmen cultivate relations with faith institutions, and how religion has been a key component of resistance against autocracies.
Authoritarianism is often defined as the expansion of executive power, and the personal power of the head of state, to the detriment of the independence of the judiciary and other branches of government. The leader’s party, and government institutions, become his personal tools, solving his financial and legal problems, going after his enemies, and enabling his attempts to turn public office into a vehicle of personal enrichment and power consolidation.
This political and legalistic definition does not capture the economic, social and psychological devastation that authoritarianism brings to societies. So here is another definition: authoritarian is a system in which the rights of the many are restricted or eliminated, while the very few are given new liberties to plunder and exploit the economy, the labor force, female bodies, the environment, and more with impunity.
We hear about how authoritarians “hollow out” institutions by removing anyone not loyal to the leader and the party, but they also hollow out people to the point where they will participate in acts of violence, corruption and sabotage against their compatriots.
I call this process moral deregulation: a rolling back of civic and ethical norms against defrauding, silencing, bullying, and physically harming others—norms that in a democracy are supported by civic spaces such as schools and places of worship.
As lying, violence, and corruption are institutionalized, criminals are lionized as patriots, and truthtellers treated as criminals. Over time, a state of moral collapse is reached.
This is the context for the bargains autocrats strike with media, religious, business and other elites. Those elites get profits and power in return for loyalty to the leader, no matter what he says or does. These deals tend to be durable, but every autocrat fears “elite defection” which creates cracks in the edifice of his power.
Autocrats need religious leaders on their side to give them legitimacy. In fact, the more corrupt and violent they become, the more they must surround themselves with an aura of holiness. State propagandists help out by telling us that the leader is an instrument of divine providence. Muammar Gaddafi used to stop in the middle of speeches and look up at the heavens to show that what he said was the fruit of divine inspiration. Steve Bannon recently repeated this line with regard to President Donald Trump in an interview with The Economist.
Another pattern we see throughout history is that the ascent of authoritarianism and the decline of democracy prompt a realignment of power among the country’s religious institutions. In general, faith traditions with their own authoritarian cultures prosper, while progressive currents are sidelined or suppressed. In 1920s Italy, the Catholic Church and the Fascists teamed up to defeat a progressive Christian movement, embodied in the fast-growing Popular Party, led by the revered priest Don Luigi Sturzo.
Sturzo was soon forced into exile, and the Lateran Accords went forward in 1929. The agreement made the Vatican an independent state inside of Italy, and Catholicism the state religion. In return, Fascism gained an air of morality and respectability, especially after Pope Pius XI declared that Providence “had placed Il Duce in our path.”
One hundred years later, autocrats partner with religious institutions that advocate for militantly intolerant brands of Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and other faiths. In Russia, the Orthodox Church has long propped up Putin’s regime based on a common crusade to supposedly save Christian values and Western civilization, as Putin has often asserted.
Putin and the Orthodox Church make common cause against LGBTQ+ individuals, who are seen as as dangerous to the social body. In Russia, as in Hungary and now the United States, anti-gay and anti-transgender actions are at the heart of religion-authoritarian alliances, since homophobia is the throughline of authoritarianism past and present.
In return, the Orthodox Church has benefited from Putin’s largesse: thousands of old churches have been restored and new ones built. But this is just a cover. In an innovation of the religion-authoritarianism relationship, the Orthodox church is not just one of the pillars supporting the regime, but has been made a partner of the intelligence apparatus, the FSB. When the dominant church enables the state spy network, the moral collapse is total.
Religion and Resistance
When I look at the image of the edifice of autocratic power, I imagine a mirror image showing how dissenting forces from media, business, national security and the military, education, and religion can add up to a big-tent resistance coalition. The Horizons Project’s Pillars Project, which focuses on business, veterans groups, professional organizations (including organized labor), and faith communities, aims at the disruption of networks of support for authoritarianism.
Faith communities in authoritarian contexts can work to defeat authoritarian tendencies within their ranks; dialogue with other faith communities in the nation to encourage elite defections; and collaborate with other sectors of society on resistance actions. This last is what Rev. William J. Barber II does effectively by bringing faith and economic justice together in his Poor People’s Campaign.
Dissident Hungarian Evangelical pastor Gábor Iványi acts in a similar spirit. He runs homeless shelters and helps the poor while criticizing the government of Viktor Orban, a kleptocrat who masquerades as a defender of Christianity while closing hundreds of churches because their leaders are not loyal to him.
Chile under the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship is an example of a religious institution mobilizing in important ways against a regime. The Catholic Church in Chile used its space of autonomy and the resources it had from the Vatican to create the Vicariate of Solidarity in 1976 at the request of Cardinal and Archbishop of Santiago, Raúl Silva Henríquez.
The Vicariate was a full-service resistance operation, with an independent radio and press that became one of the only sources of alternate information to regime propaganda. It assisted politicians and labor activists, and undertook legal actions for families of the disappeared. Through its Vatican connection, it was able to get information out of Chile about the use of torture and other human rights violations by the junta.
The Catholic University also became an early center of opposition: the hymns Catholic University students sang in 1979 evolved into the Canto Nuevo musical protests. Campus hunger strikes, prayer vigils, sit-ins, and marches anticipated the mass pro-democracy movement of the 1980s —a movement that eventually succeeded in ending the dictatorship and can inspire us today.
Movement-building is easier if you begin with people who are already organized, which is why progressive faith traditions and organized labor came together with the political opposition in Chile to claim the mantle of moral authority and show care and solidarity in the face of state-sponsored terror.
Each time we show solidarity with others, support those who protect the rule of law, help the targeted, or expose the lies and the corruption, we stand up for democratic values of justice, accountability, and more. Each time we are visible on behalf of those who have disappeared or can no longer speak for themselves, we model behaviors the authoritarian state wants us to abandon.
Joining with others, we transform our individual righteous indignation into a potent moral force for good, and we counter states of moral collapse.
We are seeing this potent moral charge every day now in the United States as ordinary people and clerics protest the brutal ICE raids and disappearances. The Rev. Michael Woolf, who was thrown to the ground and arrested for protesting in Chicago, along with other clerics, has diagnosed a “spiritual emergency” in America. Faith institutions are called to act, and help people in their congregations to arrive at their own reckoning with the costs of this inhumane administration.
With autocracy expanding around the world, and repression intensifying in America, it is more important than ever to know how religious resistance has unfolded around the world and how faith institutions may best respond to attacks on our freedoms. Our conference today is part of this effort, and I am so pleased to be part of it.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." B.F. Skinner
In a democracy, the peril is not technological takeover but citizen passivity. The polis weakens not because machines rise, but because men stop reasoning, questioning, and resisting.
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
B.F. Skinner was concerned about our thinking…or not thinking. Daniel Kahneman's concern was "how" we think.
As citizens, we should read Thinking, Fast and Slow because it reveals how our minds can be tricked—how “fast thinking,” the impulses and shortcuts we rely on, often override “slow thinking,” the reflection and analysis democracy depends on. Kahneman shows how biases like framing, anchoring, and confirmation shape our judgments, and how media, politicians, and algorithms exploit those weaknesses. To understand these forces is to resist manipulation, to pause before polarization, and to defend our own capacity for reason. In this way, the book becomes more than psychology—it is civic training, equipping us to guard democracy by guarding our ability to think.
So excited to hear you and Gil! What a wonderful get. Your speech as always provides such clarity to our time. I appreciate that you ended with how we can use the faith space too.