About Authoritarianism

This issue of Dialog, A Journal of Theology, focuses on Authoritarianism. It is now a familiar topic. Too familiar. The familiarity underscores the urgency of countering authoritarianism even as credible writers worry that it is already too entrenched and too uniquely, while complexly, imposed on different body politiques around the world. In the United States, some still argue that other terms are more appropriate names: oligarchy, corporatism, autocracy, fascism, though about that term, some yet quibble more. Quibblers perseverate for having nothing left to do but argue over labels. In the meantime, this country's chief executive has handed the reins of almost all governing processes over to billionaires and wannabe billionaire sycophants to oil the way for trillionaires to emerge not only to be the first such in history, but to control history itself. We'll call it authoritarianism just barely shy of totalitarianism, the DNA of which Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, and the recently late, very great Jürgen Habermas (okay, we'll relent and include the tragedy of Carl Schmitt, too) well described, and which descriptions are still normative. They also all affirmed that resurgent authoritarianism burns hot with theological and philosophical consequences. Yet even they did not anticipate that a Supreme Court somewhere could or would commit theo-anthropological heresy by ruling that corporations are “persons,” the only understandable (while wholly wrong) reason for so doing being the court majority's investment more in capitalism's security than in securing our inheritance of Enlightenment democracy. It is, of course, in the most laissez-faire authority of capital that persons should be so easily redefined by legal fiat that just happens to enter the dance of global plutocratic backscratching. Authoritarianism, by whatever name, now smells as inhumanely foul. Authoritarianism always threatens human well-being. Its conception and praxis are endemic in the original sin, to “be like God.” Etymologically, the word suggests idolatry of the self, of one who would literally put one's name on everything, as if that one were the author of everything. Beyond the grammar effects, the conventional understanding of authoritarianism distorts the very idea of “God,” such that all the classic Hellenic predications of godness are but the grandiose human aspirations of having total control. Insofar as the Nietzschean projection system aptly describes the personal and collective preference to manage not just the apple, but the whole tree, then, under those terms, even a crudely adolescent authoritarian like Donald Trump had it right recently when he said in his 2026 State of the Union address that Christian faith was making a big comeback, thanks to him. Under the bloodied flag of Christian nationalism, “God” is again the ultimate authoritarian who will, with this president's leadership, restore America to its Donroe Doctrine greatness. Of course, the perduring philosophical requirement for godness never gets the Christian God right. Whatever it is that authoritarian Trump and his legion of enablers are calling “faith,” such faith is finally only loyalty to him in the hot language against Christianity as a military campaign. It goes hand in brutal glove with his claim that only he can save America, right alongside his disposition of unilateralism. With no respect for due process, he is the one who finally decides whom to warehouse in a detention center and whom to bomb; no honor of the Constitution; no deference to the war power decisional responsibility of the Congress; no reach out to the UN or NATO or other nations, except perhaps to those who specialize in pocket-lining. “Faith” for such a one is the cant of a Caesarean cheerleader and the lifting high of a crusader's cross. This boorish and willfully ignorant strategy, all in the language of Christian nationalists, to our chagrin, yet again is the triumphalist attitude, though now fashionably tattooed, of a Christianity again proudly violent. Oh, magna irony! Is this not what the whole authoritarian Khomeini/Khamenei regime of the last 47 years in Iran has been saying about the American empire? To that we say this. The biblical witness profusely describes God as wholly other than the conventional trope of an authoritarian. This perhaps is the most theological critique to be made, while so much of our moral exigency in this moment must be about what to do now. God is not an authoritarian. God is kenotic. Authoritarians are not kenotic. They do not, with deliberative humility, strip themselves of all armor so as to serve with love's infinite expanse at the simplest human level, yet at which level God declared humans to be higher than angels. Those then whose hearts are so enlivened by our kenotic God—Emmanuel!—choose to do nothing other than reciprocate. Those who love and follow God-the-anti-authoritarian—God whose cruciform weakness looks like foolishness to hyper-political-partisanized eyes—therefore also recognize and respect in all people the Imago Dei. This means always defying the political paragons of narcissism—American, Russian, Asian, Arabic, whoever and wherever—who regard themselves with sycophantic support as “exceptional.” Authoritarianism always claims an exception (above the law and, by the way, counter to the gospel) and authoritarians always speak of themselves as exceptional. Authoritarianism's fatal flaw, however, is that the God it claims to have delegated authority to mortal authoritarians is not the biblical God. The biblical God, the God of Abraham and Jesus, as Robert Jenson so had it right, is the one who delivered Israel from bondage and raised Jesus from the dead. God did this “from below” with God's power of love, intimately human, signed by the cross. No one who seriously reads the Bible's witness to this kind of godness can conclude that God is an authoritarian. Is God the final authority? Of course. Is God authoritative? Also, of course. Both are uniquely so in the way of love that only God will be and deliver. Only those who wear the lenses of prodigal narcissism, which is also to say only those overwhelmed by the fantastical and hubristic myopia of Christian nationalism, could sacralize authoritarianism and demand that everyone reciprocate with immediate compliance with Christian nationalism's fully fallen imagination. Between the original sin and yet again resurging authoritarianism around the globe lie always too often unchosen paths of spiritual renewal—we prefer the term “reform,” but will go with the pop religious flow for the moment—of returning to the God within and without whom Bonhoeffer proclaimed as Christ truly present (Christus praesens). “Renewal” is a necessary prescription for an acutely dangerous moment, and there is no question that this is (again) an existentially critical moment for political and religious life. That the political and the religious in our small world now are recognizably so fused heightens the danger. If it is true that a butterfly's wing-beating over Washington DC one day changes the weather in Tehran the very next day, a stupid and anti-christic word changes the spiritual weather everywhere for the worse at light speed. We long anticipated this moment; long wondered if and when we'd have a “Barmen moment” again; queried how to speak to purple congregations, questioned whether signing another petition would make any difference; lamented how so many seemed so lax when the storm clouds loom so near and dark and thick. Now many statements have been published, whistles blown, Congress's answering machines jammed. A goodly number (but not enough) of congregations have organized to protect their neighbors and protest the government; all this ever more vigorously and, Deo Gratias, peacefully, while learning and singing even new verses of protest to guide and salve our souls in the streets. We are seeing, finally, traditionally mainlined theology reclaiming both voice and bodily action. Theology is funding praxis in the streets, public squares, courtrooms, detention centers, C-Suites, Capitol halls, naves, and dinner tables. If God's work requires our hands, then dialog must aim for embodiment. In the prayerful hope that this theme issue on authoritarianism will influence a yet wider public than we usually have, and because we take dialogue seriously and humbly (noting that when this journal began the preference was for a hip term, dialog, with the “d” lower case) we, the guest editors invited a more varied set of writers to contribute to, and stimulate, dialog and action. Along with creative and insightful theologians, we include contributions from a military ethicist, a “pastor-resistor,” a well-known journalist, and a career Army chaplain with expertise in moral injury. We outline them here. Theologian Craig Nessan's essay delves deeper into the nature and character of Christian nationalism (CN), exposing more clearly its fetish with authoritarianism and commending the doctrinal Barmen-like reclamation needed to counter CN. Christian ethicist Jim Childs gives us a needed rehearsal and update on the theological ethics that would inform and inspire faithful Christian resistance to the current dramas of the principalities and powers. Military ethicist and philosopher Pauline Shanks Kaurin extends the argument of her 2020 book on obedience in military and civic cultures into sound advice for how our “communities of care” can respond to the exigencies of these days. Theologian and historian Brent Hege revisits the content and effects of the Barmen Declaration, suggesting how it could influence our responsible praxis and reflection now. Theologian Dirk von der Horst brings into conversation two seemingly disparate dialog partners, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Mary Daly, exploring the possibilities and limitations of their approaches to resisting authoritarianism. Pastor and journalist Angela Denker reframes a chapter from her current important book for our consideration. Pr. Paul Ziese, uniquely educated as an activist/consultant under European authoritarianism, supplies us with sound practical advice. And in the adjacent editorial, Lutheran pastor and career military chaplain, Chaplain Jeff Zust, PhD., Col. US Army (Ret.) writes from a personal, pastoral, and military perspective about moral service to the nation (not nationalism) and Christian faith (not Christian nationalism). Each author in this issue confronts the urgent threat of authoritarianism, drawing on a wealth of resources from a variety of perspectives, yet united in their commitment to resist a trumped-up would-be dictator and those who would drape the cross of Christ with the flag. We entrust this theme issue to you, our readers. Do dialogue about this dialog. Take the conversation into your faith communities and classrooms. May it not stop there, but go forth for neighborly care into the streets as God's Spirit and wisdom would impel and guide, for renewal, reform, resurrection.