Conservative writer and commentator Andrew Sullivan wrote an extensive consideration of Vladimir Putin and the American Right recently. It was in Sullivan’s Substack newsletter which I think can only be accessed by subscription. I won’t outline the entire article. The focus was on how the actions and approach of Vladimir Putin present a challenge to the American political right to offer something better than a longing for the past. Though Sullivan is a conservative he clearly parts company with Donald Trump and his apologists in the Republican Party. His Substack piece points out how there is, in Trumpian conservative circles, a kind of admiration for authoritarian leaders such as Putin in Russia and Orban in Hungary. Prominent conservative voices (aligned with Trump) have publicly stated that they see Democrats in the United States as more of a threat to the world than Putin in Russia. Sullivan argues that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may force such cheerleaders to face the limits of their own arguments. This is because Putin has proven to be “neither smart nor strong”. In Sullivan’s words, “he is, in fact, dumb and increasingly weak”.
Sullivan quotes another non-Trump conservative, David Frum who said:
“Everything the [far right] wanted to perceive as decadent and weak has proven strong and brave; everything they wanted to represent as fearsome and powerful has revealed itself as brutal and stupid.”
I outline all of this to get to something that Sullivan sees playing out in international relations which is clearly present in many other contexts, including the evangelical church. Sullivan labels what Putin has on offer as “reactionism”. He briefly outlines what he means by the term in the Substack article, but he has written on reactionism before including in an essay in New York Magazine in 2017. Back then, Sullivan was speaking from the context of Trump becoming President, England supporting Brexit, and Putin establishing a new “czardom” with the help of the Russian Orthodox church.
In Sullivan’s words:
“Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were.”
and from the more recent piece:
“And so a president recently celebrated as a mastermind on the world stage has allowed his ancient fantasies of imperial glory to kick-start his own country’s economic and social collapse…That’s why he’s a useful insight into what reactionism actually is. It’s not really a politics; it’s a mood. It’s not really about the problems of the present; it’s about living in an imagined past, and believing that you alone can restore it by some mystical rhetorical magic.”
You see it, don’t you? Reactionism is tempting to so many as a means to power or explanation. It offers a cheap way to make sense of things, but it turns out to be nonsense, a façade. Sullivan argues that that Republican Party as currently constituted (in 2017, and I assume more so now) is not a conservative party, but rather a reactionary party.
“If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up.”
Again, you see it, don’t you? Evangelicalism has tended towards conservatism in its politics and is often tempted towards reactionism. This can become ridiculous as when American mega-churches distribute voting guides to their congregations.
As a pastor of an evangelical church in Canada, for years there were many occasions where I felt it necessary to express that we ought not, as a church, support one political party by default. I remember one time when a local Christian leader called me very excited about a “prayer breakfast”. He said that a prominent national politician (a local MP) was going to be present at the breakfast and that it would be great if all of the pastors could attend. I asked who the politician was (I knew the answer before asking, it was a local conservative politician). I asked if any politician from a different party had been invited as well, from the Liberal Party or the NDP. He told me that no such invitation had been issued. I replied that the event was then a political event more than a gathering for prayer, and that I was not interested. I could have considered attending if it had been billed as a political event, if I had been interested. I used to tell the congregation that I served that if we were truly part of the diverse body of Christ, then in our congregation there ought to be people who voted Conservative, people who voted Liberal, people who voted NDP and people who voted Green, all out of Christian conviction.
Reactionism in evangelicalism is similar to what it is in global politics. It is a mood. It is an assumption that “things used to be better” which tends to despair at the current moment and idealism about a past that turns out to never have existed. Reactionism in evangelicalism gets dressed up often. It can be present in really nice church buildings or in well organized church functions. If you are part of an evangelical church you might want to listen for it. You might hear it in a Bible Study group in which there is a kind of a condemnation of the present and a longing for the past. You might hear it in a kind of morose evaluation of the way the world is today,
“Young people these days …”
“Politicians these days …”
The reason that I hope to do better than reactionism, is that I see it as so very far from the Christian gospel. The Christian gospel, properly understood, is a gospel of hope. What I saw very often in the church was a kind of hopelessness. The ideal presented was in the past, not the future. This is not gospel, it is reactionism.
Hopeful Christian theology looks to the future with confidence in the renewal of all things in Jesus. Karl Barth wrote that the gospel address of Christians in the world ought to be “unconditionally bright”. I spent many hours in many church services and prayer meetings where this was far from descriptive. For Barth; “A gloomy, morose and melancholy Christian can obviously attest to only a gloomy, morose and melancholy gospel.”
Such is reactionism, and it is being proven empty in geo-politics. May we also see that it is empty in its ability to express anything of value regarding Christian faith.
As Barth said, true gospel address is always “radiant and cheerful” as it is a working out of the truth that the future (the renewal of all things in Christ) determines the present.