America, Take Care Not to Lose Your Soul
Ressourcement and Resistance
I’ve been reeling since November 5, when the people of the United States voted an authoritarian grifter, a narcissistic bully, a twice-impeached convicted felon, a self-admitted sexual assaulter, who instigated an attempt to overthrow the nation’s government, whose own former close associates described as meeting the definition of a fascist, back into the presidency. He has signaled his intention to act as a dictator from day one and to launch a campaign of mass deportations, and his appointees for cabinet positions have included sex-traffickers and other concerning persons.
I still don’t know how to make sense of this, and in part there’s nothing to make sense of: it’s an entirely irrational state of affairs. But I still need to find a way forward, to figure out how to relate to people who’ve thrown their support behind a movement that I find utterly reprehensible and which I fear will cause untold harm. I need to figure out what my responsibility is over the next months and years. Obviously, and hopefully, it won’t be as bad as all that. As I’ve said before, I hope I’m just wrong about this and blowing it all out of proportion, and that I look like a fool because of my concern.
Among the outgrowths of this process of reflection is clarity about some of the scholarly work I want to undertake. We need more than scholarship and ideas for what’s to come, but I am a theologian and I also have the responsibility to use the tools of my trade to try to be part of the solution.
On the one hand, the fact that Trump received and still receives so much support from Christians is one of the best arguments for atheism I’ve ever come across. If this is where Christianity leads, the world would be better off without it. Thankfully, though, I know that this is not the only form Christianity can take.
My theological heroes are the French Jesuits associated with ressourcement and la nouvelle théologie. Of them, I know Henri de Lubac the best. The process of writing, Salvation in Henri de Lubac was a transformative experience. His theology has always resonated with me, and whenever I return to him, it’s like coming home to an old friend. Plenty about de Lubac and his confrères inspires me, but in the present moment, I’ve been learning more about their resistance work and opposition to fascism and Christian nationalism.
In July 1940, following upon France’s surrender to the Germans, a fascist government was installed in Vichy under Marshall Phillipe Pétain. In 1941, the resistance journal Témoignage Chrétien (Christian Testimony) was launched. The inaugural issue featured a plea from Gaston Fessard, “France, prends garde de perdre pas ton âme” (France, take care not to lose your soul). In it he warned of the threat posed by Nazism, which was particularly insidious because it sought to corrupt Christianity from within, masquerading as Christian while in fact promoting values antithetical to the gospel.
The resistance was costly, these men and women (the Jesuits were all men, obviously, but the resistance had a lot of female participants) had skin in the game. De Lubac had to spend years in hiding, a fugitive from the Gestapo. Yves de Montcheuil was executed in 1944.
These nouvaux théologiens were not unimpeachable. In the project that I hope comes out of this nascent research, I plan to take them to task for all sorts of things. But when you’ve got people standing up against Nazism and paying the price for it, you’ve also got something worth attending to, engaging with, and, mutatis mutandis, emulating.
So, I’ve been learning more about the political context in which all this unfolded, beginning with Action Française, a nationalist movement that operated out of resentment towards the liberalism of the Third Republic, and which was spawned in the heat of an antisemitic backlash after a public scandal, insisting that the “good” of the nation was more important than truth or justice.
As I’ve done so, the parallels to our present situation have been eerie:
The impulse of “owning the libs” as sufficient justification for all kinds of stuff.
The idea that we need “adults in the room” as a pretext for collaborating with and enabling authoritarians.
A resentful nostalgia for a lost (and imagined) golden age.
An information ecosystem cluttered and destabilized through propaganda.
Demonizing migrants.
Suggesting that certain segments of the populace aren’t “really” French/American.
Recruiting beyond the far right by stoking up gender panic.
A related insistence on women bearing children.
A cadre of incels/dudes with “big divorced energy” propping up authoritarians out of resentment.
A couple of quotes from Edward Tannenbaum’s treatment of Action Française are also telling. The first is not an exact parallel, but it speaks to the cult of personality (with so little basis in fact) around Trump as a successful business man, as well as to willingness to overlook constitutional norms in the service of this cult:
At first, then, almost everyone looked to Pétain as a stern but benevolent patriarch whose dignity and prestige would shield his people from the Barbarian invaders. Even some leading Radicals viewed him in this way without thinking about such issues as civil liberties, electoral methods or social justice. Pétain tried to maintain this image of himself for almost four years, but he had no consistent program of his own, and his regime was never more than a congeries of divided and opposed groups surrounding a feeble, vain old man. (p. 231)
The second describes a situation that I think occurred with a fair number of Trump voters, and I’ve been trying to get my head around it, recognizing that they probably weren’t seeking mass-deportations, just cheaper eggs (which isn’t going to happen). How to assess this situation, though, when they’ve decided that mass deportations are worth it if it leads to those counter-factual cheaper eggs:
Many people embraced the Action Française and the fascist movements in admiration for one particular value—such as political order—or as a solution to a specific problem—such as national security. Their wishful thinking led them to believe that these movements would drop their more distasteful aspects. The dictators, once in power, dispelled such illusions. (266)
This post will be published on Inauguration Day. And I’m writing it in anticipation, but I still don’t know exactly what we’re in store for, or precisely what I, as a theologian, a Christian, or just a decent person need to be resisting.
A lot is potentially coming. And a lot of it is likely to be stupid, evil, and harmful. Not all of it demands the same response. My title for this essay is obviously inspired by Fessard’s “take care not to lose your soul.” Not every bad thing is soul-destroying.
People of good will have a responsibility to oppose anything that’s going to be causing harm, but when it comes to the question of losing our souls, it’s particularly the malicious proposals, those which trade on cruelty that put us at such risk.
I think Trump’s deposed tariffs will be harmful and are stupid, but I don’t think they’re evil. They’re going to make the economy a lot worse and cause suffering, but we wont’ lose our soul because of this.
Weakening our vaccine programs would be harmful, stupid, and evil, probably not malicious. A lot of preventable and suppressed diseases are going to come back. People—children—will probably die. And while that’s morally unconscionable, that increased mortality rate won’t destroy the national soul.
I think that abandoning Ukraine to Russia would be harmful, stupid, and evil, but not necessarily malicious (though maybe it is).
I’m against all of those, but they aren’t necessarily risks to the national soul (again, abandoning Ukraine might be).
Targeting political opponents and the news media would be harmful, stupid, evil, malicious, and risks the national soul because it erodes intellectual honesty, access to the truth, and possibilities for correcting abuses.
Mass deportation would be harmful, stupid, evil, maliciously cruel, and a grave threat to the national soul. Jesus warns that in the end nations (not just individuals) will be judged by how they’ve treated the “least of these.” This is the clearest line in the sand for me. It’s a moral imperative to oppose it and do everything we can to prevent it. There can be no common cause or collaboration or agreeing to disagree about this.
Targeting, harassing, and generally making life harder for LGBTQ people (with a preferential option for trans folks) is also stupid, evil, maliciously cruel, and a grave threat to our soul. I understand that there are theological reasons why Christians may have misgivings about embracing LGBTQ folks, but having those misgivings is no excuse for supporting policies that increase teen suicide. These precious lives need to be protected as a precondition for folks working through whatever concerns they may have about sports participation or bathrooms. This vulnerable population is at great risk because of how our society treats them, and our society is under no threat because of them. I’m harping on this point not just because I think it’s a moral imperative to defend LGBTQ rights and flourishing. It also seems that gender panic was a pillar of Vichy propaganda. I have more to learn about this, but it leads me to wonder if radical trans-solidarity is a necessary key to resisting modern-day fascists.
Trying to claim Greenland is stupid and is probably just a distraction from other, more serious threats.
This list is not exhaustive, but I think it is suggestive.
Those of us who are troubled by the return of MAGA and who hope to resist the evils that this administration has promised to unleash need to be clear sighted. Lots of stupid, harmful, evil stuff is coming. Not all of it is an equivalent risk. Not all of it demands an equivalent response. We’re finite and limited. We can’t do everything. But we must do something.
Lord, have mercy.
Terrific, Gene, thank you so much for your thinking and honesty!
Good post. Trump says a lot of things, some intentional, some speculative, some to distract. While I think most of his talk is corrupt, if not immediately harmful, I think whatever/however we respond should focus on concrete actions his administration takes. MAGA might talk critically about those in power, such as *elites* (ignoring those who fund it), bit it always kicks down at the vulnerable as you say. The concrete kicks will be revealed in time, and we need to respond rather than react.