Thread by @reportbywilson

🧵Why do White Evangelical Christians in the U.S. embrace Vladimir Putin?

It’s complicated.

Caveats: Not all White Evangelical Christians embrace Putin nor support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; veneration of Putin not necessarily based on facts and includes many contradictions.

1) White Nationalism: White Evangelical Christians believe that America was founded as a “Christian Nation,” and that the founding documents, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, were divinely inspired—and that these documents ensure religious liberty exclusively for Christians.

White Evangelical Christians generally do not embrace the idea of a “melting pot” America, a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious pluralistic democracy, but rather a “assimilationist” America, where everyone is welcomed if they embrace a specific idea of American identity.

This view of America as fundamentally the birthright of White Evangelical Christians informs their embrace of Vladimir Putin, who is viewed by White Evangelical Christians as protecting the racial, ethnic, and religious integrity of Russia from outsiders (Muslims, LGBTIQ people).

2) Muscular Christianity: White Evangelical Christians venerate the idea of male leaders that embody a very specific type of hypermasculinity (Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez).

Vladimir Putin is a textbook example of the performative hypermasculinity viewed as ideal by White Evangelical Christians, a “strong leader” who “acts like a man” and is not “politically correct” and takes actions to “protect his people.”

This is similar to why White Evangelical Christian supported former President Donald Trump— a strong man leader that is viewed as a vessel for God’s will, and who will impose His will. Hence the comparisons of Trump to King David and Cyrus.

3) Patriarchy: Russia’s persecution of the LGBTIQ community, promotion of the “traditional family,” and opposition to so-called “gender ideology,” are key to understanding White Evangelical Christians embrace of Putin.

White Evangelical Christians in the U.S. perceive Russia as a monoethnic, patriarchal, authoritarian Christian nation, and view that as preferable to a multiethnic and religiously plural democracy.

All of these ingredients are key to authoritarian movements, and Evangelical Christian Churches are highly authoritarian—such as the theological belief that the Bible is the infallible Word, and must be read as literally true, and that truth is determined by Church’s leaders.