"Christendom"

[Recusant]

Though I briefly considered posting this in the "Dominionists" thread, it clearly deserves its own thread because it addresses an international phenomenon. Basically the same ideas the Dominionists find so compelling are motivating power hungry god-botherers around the world. Hungary is a country in which a conservative Christian autocrat has made some of their dreams a reality.

"J.D. Vance Is Stumping for a Dictator. The Reason Should Make Us Very Nervous." | Slate

On a stage in Budapest, Hungary, on Tuesday afternoon, Vice President J.D. Vance had a remarkable request for the Hungarian people: reelect a dictator.

Vance knows that country's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has fostered rampant corruption, curtailed the independence of the country's judiciary, attacked its universities' academic freedom, spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, and promoted racial homogeneity. But Vance had one major justification for flying to Europe to personally campaign for Orbán's reelection, as Orbán flags in the polls: Orbán was the United States' partner in morality. "Because what the United States and Hungary together represent under Viktor's leadership and under President Trump's leadership is the defense of Western civilization," Vance said on that stage. At another event that day, he called on people to vote for Orbán to preserve that morality: "Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth, and for the God of our fathers?"

. . . Orbán isn't just leading the most corrupt country in Europe; he's also Russia's primary asset inside of Europe. As recent reporting has found, Orbán has repeatedly called Russia's foreign minister after closed-door meetings of European leaders to fill him in, leaking sensitive information. Orbán's foreign minister has reportedly worked on Russia's behalf to get an oligarch's relative off of European sanctions lists. Publicly, Orbán portrays the E.U. as a sinister organization, and has even blocked military aid to Ukraine, which he has made out to be Hungary's enemy. And as a result, Russia is working to keep Orbán in place. So when the Trump administration goes to bat for Orbán, they're allying themselves with Vladimir Putin—and against pro-democracy politicians in Europe.

It's an odd place for the United States' presidential administration to intervene. But Vance articulated one primary reason why he would drop everything to fly to Hungary to help the prime minister there: to fight for Christendom.

There's been a lot of talk, in recent years, of Christian nationalism in America. But Christendom, as an idea, dreams much bigger, beyond national borders. In its benign use, Christendom is an archaic label for the Christians of the world. But among a certain small cadre of conservative intellectuals and theologians, its relevant definition is its geopolitical one. In that use of the term, the regions populated by Christians unite as one single and powerful civilization. Doug Wilson, the prominent theologian behind Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's church, for example, has written a book advocating for a new Christendom in which laws are based on the Bible, and reward virtue and faith. (In a different book, in 2005, he called the Confederate South "the last nation of the first Christendom.") He and other theologians have discussed the possibility of a "Christendom 2.0," a term that has been used for certain patriarchal Christian conferences and ministry programs. Hyper-traditionalist Catholics sometimes use it to mean a return to strength of the old Catholic Church. Charlie Kirk, an evangelical, called Christendom the "American way of life," a root to Western civilization, and something to wage "spiritual battle" over. (The conservative writer Rod Dreher in turn called Kirk a "man of Christendom.") And as one popular commentator for Blaze Media wrote on social media, "Western civilization is another name for Christendom," and "Christendom existed because Christian rulers held power and defended their people against the enemy."

There are other code words that mean the same thing: "Christian civilization" or "Western civilization," if you're a certain kind of right-wing Christian, and "ethnonationalism" if you're an academic. But Christendom most accurately captures the spirit of the idea: organizing the world along medieval civilizational lines. Christendom, as these conservative thinkers use it, is both a propagandistic way of describing majority-white countries as they exist now and an aspirational way of describing white countries in their ideal world: whole swaths of the Earth governed by Christian values, peopled by Christians with a European cultural background, and intolerant of secularism and of other faiths. Christendom, in the medieval world of the Crusades, was Europe against the Islamic world. Today, these traditionalist intellectuals are hoping for the same worldview to take over, but with atheists thrown in with the infidels. Christendom proposes a new international order, no longer built around shared concerns for democracy and human rights, and ties together any countries seen as having that same Christian DNA, regardless of their behavior.

As Vance put it in his speech, what unites the U.S. and Hungary, more than anything, is their "defense of the idea that we are founded on a certain Christian civilization and Christian values that animate everything."

There have long been indications that Vance's part of the MAGA movement—what some call the new right or post-liberal right—would prioritize such religious issues when it comes to foreign policy. But never before have we seen it stated so baldly and made so abundantly clear: Because of this shared image of a Christian world, Vance is advocating for Moscow's interests over those of America's more secular traditional allies. In his address to Hungarians, he accused Brussels of trying to "destroy" Hungary's economy in "one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I've ever seen." (This was in reference to the EU's decision to freeze funds to Hungary over concerns about corruption. It's a topic central to the election, but there's no evidence the EU is meddling in Hungary's elections.) It was a shocking attack on European democracies.

[Continues . . .]

As mentioned in the article, among the chosen enemies of this militant "Christendom" are atheists, of course.

[Icarus]

I had high hopes that Vance had some degree of integrity. In his favor, he was one of the few people in the Trump cabinet who  opposed going top war with Iran. Before he became a high ranking politician. he was publicly opposed to Trump.  Ah well...so much for the integrity part.

[Dark Lightning]

The chump ruins everything he is associated with. Most politicians don't like him, but are used to dealing with people and reconciling differences. The chump doesn't work like that, so they cave in. I'm loving that Governor Newsom is giving it right back to the chump, and just laughing at the hypocrisy of republicans who complain when he does it.

[billy rubin]

vance was corrupt from the start. he has never had a strongly held conviction that he would not abando n if he saw personal advantage in doing so.

i suspect his religion is in that same category.

[Recusant]

In the vote, Orban's party lost. Even with Trump vociferously supporting him. Maybe Orban lost partly because of that support. So what becomes of Orban's project? The winner Magyar is nominally center-right. His party has pretty much avoided taking positions on the cultural issues that Orban was so keen on. Maybe they'll back off a bit--the party isn't as anti-EU as Orban's, for instance.

Meanwhile, a world in which the Christendom of these zealots plays a large part isn't anything to look forward to.