Conservative Christian Affection for Fascists Predates Trump

The agony of Wehner, Gerson, former Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, and others over the intense loyalty most of their fellow conservative Evangelicals have displayed to Donald Trump, even as his record and rhetoric have grown more heathenish, is understandable. But they shouldn’t be all that surprised. In the mid-20th century’s great battles over fascist and quasi-fascist threats to parliamentary democracy, support for authoritarian and totalitarian leaders of the political right was generally concentrated among religious Christians who had incorporated secular conservative cultural views (especially nationalism and in many cases antisemitism) into their faith.