Bad Ecumenism: The American Culture Wars and Russia’s Hard Right Turn

INTERSECTIONS Bad Ecumenism: The American Culture Wars and Russia’s Hard Right Turn Christopher Stroop 1 I think “Kantian-ish,” Born in northern Indiana in 1980, I part in it, seeking common ground and, awkward as the term was raised in a conservative evangeli- where possible, making common cause may be, is a better descriptor for me than cal Protestant enclave community, and with representatives of various faith tra- “spiritual but not reli- thereby hangs a tale. While I will try not ditions toward the general good in our gious.” The philosophy to tell it like an idiot, this tale is certainly pluralist society. of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) empha- full of sound and fury. My fundamental- sized what we might ist milieu was characterized by an apoc- Why? I have pragmatic, philosophical, call epistemological alyptic ethos that went hand-in-hand and personal reasons for the value I humility with respect to spiritual reality and with urgent engagement in what I like place on “good ecumenism” (broadly metaphysical specu- to call the quasi-ecumenism of Biblical defined—I do not believe universal lation. literalism—though “interconfessional Christian unity to be an attainable or 2 Eduardo Mendieta culture wars” might be a more imme- even desirable goal, as in my skepti- and Jonathan VanAnt- diately accessible descriptor—with cism I can conceive of it happening werpen, eds., The Power implications for church-state relations, only in an authoritarian way) and on of Religion in the Public Sphere (New York: interfaith dialogue, and even geopoli- the participation of the unaffiliated in Columbia University tics. This tale may be framed as one of it. Pragmatically, religion has proven Press, 2011), esp. 15–69. “bad ecumenism,” the offspring of fun- remarkably persistent; whether atheists See also Jürgen Haber- mas et al., An Awareness damentalist resistance to modernity and and agnostics would like it to persist is of What is Missing: Faith Cold War anti-Communism. Ironically, beside the point. As Soviet experience and Reason in a Post-Sec- the associated movement has, of late, shows, repression—and I would add ular Age, tr. Ciaran been forging an alliance with Moscow. that such repression is, regardless of Cronin (Cambridge: Policy Press, 2010). Far-right voices in both Europe and effectiveness, unethical—cannot elim- North America have been looking to inate it. Ignoring religion, when it re- Russian President Vladimir Putin as a tains substantial social significance, moral exemplar and a beacon of hope. is not a good option either, and this is Bad ecumenism has ushered in an era of where my pragmatic reasons intersect right-wing fellow travelers. with my philosophical reasons. But what do I mean by bad ecumenism? Our pluralist society consists not merely In answering this question, I would like of atomized individuals, but also of var- to begin by placing my commitments on ious social groups and communities, the table. I’m a believer, if not in the spe- among which religious communities are cific dogma of any religious tradition, numbered. I will not concede the funda- then, at least, in the value of interfaith mental importance of the separation of dialogue. I also believe that the unaf- church and state, but at the same time filiated, or “nones”—the atheists, the it would be undemocratic to exclude agnostics, and the “Kantian-ish” sorts members of religious communities from like myself1—ought to take interfaith participation in the public sphere. In this dialogue seriously and ought to take respect, there is much of value in the re- 20 cent slim volume The Power of Religion Here there is much room for common in the Public Sphere, particularly in the ground, and it will be better for all of us debate between Jürgen Habermas and if we seek it. Charles Taylor regarding the appropri- ate means for participation of religious All of this contrasts sharply with bad believers in the public sphere. Once ecumenism, which we can categorize holding to an essentially strict early as a strategy of fundamentalists who Rawlsian position that religious reason- feel threatened. Like good ecumenism, ing should be excluded from the public it seeks, if not full unity, then at least co- sphere, Habermas now concedes that re- operation between members of various ligion has important cultural resources Christian churches (and at times also that ought not to be lost to modern with social conservatives outside Chris- 3 On conservative backlash in evangelical democratic societies. Taylor, meanwhile, tianity). But that is where its similarity institutions of higher adds that in inviting various constitu- with good ecumenism and good-faith education, see encies into dialogue and debate in the interconfessional initiatives ends. In Christopher Stroop, pluralist public sphere, we should set a contrast to these, bad ecumenism is ori- “Special Report: Have Evangelical democratic goal of preventing any one ented not toward the general good, but Colleges Succumbed of them from dominating others.2 toward the goal of conservative Chris- to ‘Theological tian political domination through the Paranoia’?”Religion Dispatches, I agree with both points, and it seems coercive imposition of shared “tradi- January 19, 2016. to me that if the unaffiliated refuse to tional values” that in fact dehumanize religiondispatches. org/ engage with religious believers, this and, when enshrined in law, discrimi- special-report-have- will do nothing to discourage the kind nate against women, members of the evangelical-colleges- succumbed-to- of religious radicalism that does seek to LGBTQ community, non-Christians, theological-paranoia/, dominate society, and will most likely liberals—in short, a variety of “others.” accessed May 25, 2016. encourage it. This leads to my personal Perhaps because I was socialized in 4 Miranda Blue, reasons for supporting interfaith dia- Christian Right institutions to become “Franklin Graham logue and the participation of the unaf- a culture warrior in this vein, when it Praises ‘Gay Propaganda’ filiated and unbelieving in it. I may have comes to approaches to discussions of Law, Criticizes grown up with a kind of fundamentalist fundamentalism, I have something to US ‘Secularism’ evangelical Protestantism that I find in bring to the table in dialogue with non- In Russia Visit,” many respects wrongheaded, but there fundamentalist believers. Right Wing Watch, November 11, 2015. are many kindhearted, generous, good www. rightwingwatch. people in it. I have seen some evolve on Let’s examine the current orientation of org/content/franklin- culture wars issues, and there are signs some American social conservatives to- graham-praises-gay- propaganda-law- that more broadly, despite the numer- ward Moscow as a specific example of critizes-us-secularism- ous examples of fundamentalist back- how bad ecumenism operates. On Octo- russia-visit. Accessed lash currently underway in evangelical ber 28, 2015, Franklin Graham—son of April 23, 2016. institutions, some sections of evangel- “America’s pastor” Billy Graham, and 5 Priest Mark Hodges, ical Protestantism are changing for the current president and CEO of the Billy “Russian Orthodox better.3 Meanwhile, some of my close Graham Evangelistic Association and Patriarch: Americans for Natural Marriage friends are moderate and progressive Samaritan’s Purse—met with Patriarch Are ‘Confessors of Christians (of various stripes, includ- Kirill of Moscow and all Rus’ while on a the Faith,’” PravMir, ing evangelicals), and they demonstrate visit to Russia. During his audience with November 3, 2015. www.pravmir.com/ the ability of believers to act in the pub- the patriarch, Graham opined that U.S. russian-orthodox- lic sphere in good faith, not seeking to President Barack Obama “promotes patriarch-americans-for- dominate society by imposing exclu- atheism,” adding: “Unfortunately he natural-marriage-are- confessors-of-the-faith/. sively religious values on others in the does not have a Christian worldview.” Accessed April 23, 2016. form of coercive law, even though their In a subsequent press conference, Gra- positions are informed by their faith. ham contrasted Obama with Putin, The Wheel 6 | Summer 2016 21 6 Pat Buchanan, thanking the latter for “protecting Rus- course about spiritual warfare. It may “Whose Side Is God sian young people against homosexual also strike us as odd on the U.S. side, on Now?” Patrick J. Buchanan – Official propaganda.”4 For his part, Patriarch given lingering Cold War mistrust and Website, April 4, 2014. Kirill, putting aside doctrinal differ- recently heightened international ten- www.buchanan.org/ ences between Protestant and Ortho- sions over Ukraine. So how did we get blog/whose-side-god- now-6337. Accessed dox believers, declared opponents of here? What unites both parties is their April 23, 2016. marriage equality to be “Confessors fundamentalist conservatism—in par- 7 Ian Hanchett, “Bu- of the Faith,” adding, “This gives us a ticular their anti-gay animus, their fo- chanan on Strained sign of hope: there are people among cus on “the natural family,” and their US-Russian Relations: Western Christians akin to us in ethical refusal to recognize the legitimacy of ‘What is the Matter principles, sharing them with the Rus- LGBTQ rights as human rights. Indeed, with This Country?’ Pu- tin Is an ‘Ally’ Against sian Orthodox Church.”5 Over a year as Alexey Zygmont has argued, the Islamic State,” earlier—just after Putin’s annexation of second primary “enemy” in post-So- Breitbart, April 23, 2016. Crimea, and in a moment in which Gra- viet Russian Orthodox discourse about www.breitbart.com/ video/2016/04/23/ ham may still have had doubts about spiritual warfare is the “sodomite.”9 buchanan-on-strained- Putin’s KGB past—another Catholic Even so, shared anti-LGBTQ animus us-russia-relations- American, the prominent paleoconser- is hardly a sufficient condition for the what-is-the-matter- with-this-country- vative political strategist, pundit, and arguable emergence of a “right-wing putin-is-an-ally-against- former Reform Party presidential candi- international” centered on Russia.10 islamic-state/. Accessed date Pat Buchanan, strongly hinted that April 23, 2016. God is now on Russia’s side.6 He has 8 Erik Rush, “How to remained something of a Putin apolo- Disarm the Mainstream gist since.7 And it is not difficult to find In 1999, during my senior year of high Media,” World Net Daily, other apologists for Putin among hard- school, I was approached by my Mid- October 24, 2012. line American conservatives, a fact that western K-12 Christian school’s or- www. wnd. com/2012/ has important geopolitical implications. chestra director, who, as it turned out, 10/how-to-disarm-the- mainstream-media/. For example, Erik Rush, a columnist for also organized short-term mission trips Accessed April 24, 2016. the far-right website WorldNetDaily and with OMS International. Formerly Erik Rush, “Obama a repeat guest on Fox News who charm- known as Oriental Missionary Society, Backs Nazis, Crickets ingly looks forward to a time when “the and apparently recently rebranded as from the Press,” World Net Daily. March 12, political disenfranchisement of liberals, One Mission Society, OMS was known 2014. progressives, socialists and Marxists can only by its initials at that time. These www. wnd. com/2014/ begin in earnest, and in the open,” has days, its website proclaims that, “on 03/obama-backs-nazis- crickets-from-the- defended Putin’s approach to Ukraine. average, one person comes to Christ ev- press/. He has also been known to tweet memes ery 31 seconds through the ministries Accessed April 24, in which Obama is portrayed as weak of One Mission Society.” One of the 2016. Erik Rush, and effeminate in comparison to Pu- ways this Greenwood, Indiana-based “Homofascists, Christians, and the State tin, and to rail against “homofascists,” missionary organization achieves these as ‘God,’” World Net who exist, of course, only in the fevered conversions is by mobilizing youth for Daily. June 3, 2015. imagination of fundamentalists.8 short-term mission trips to a number of www.wnd. com/2015/06/ countries.11 homofascists-christians- This rapprochement between Ameri- and-the-state-as-god/. can religious and social conservatives Denominational affiliation meant very Accessed April 24, 2016. and the Kremlin might seem odd, little to my family or to many in my 9 Alexey Zygmont, given not only festering post-Cold wider social circle. In my early child- “The Problematics of War resentments among Russians to- hood, my family had attended a Bap- Violence in Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Dis- ward the West, but also given the fact tist church and a Wesleyan church, course,” State, Religion that the “sectarian” represents one of followed by an independent Chris- and Church 2:2 (2015): the two major classes of “enemies” in tian church (historically related to the 29–53. contemporary Russian Orthodox dis- Christian Church/Disciples of Christ 22 denomination, part of the Restoration a priest joined us for some meals and 10 Christopher Stroop, “A Right-Wing Movement), followed by a full-throated regularly led prayer services for the International? Russian embrace of the non-denominational Russian students, which actually made Social Conservatism, Protestant bandwagon. What was very me feel good. Something about the idea the World Congress clear throughout these peregrinations of converting Christians to another form of Families, and the Global Culture Wars in was that in order to be Christian, one of Christianity struck me as off-putting. Historical Context,” The needed to fight to restore officially When I went back the following year, Public Eye, Winter 2016, sanctioned prayer in public schools, to however, and worked with many of the 4–10. reverse the 1973 Supreme Court deci- same people, there was no longer any 11 See the organization’s sion Roe v. Wade (we were taught that involvement of the Russian Orthodox website, https://one- abortion was a literal holocaust), to missionsociety.org/. Church, and I felt increasingly uncom- Accessed April 24, 2016. stop the advancement of LGBTQ civil fortable with the entire project (not least, rights, and to elect Republicans. Failing however, because I was in the midst of 12 See Bruce Wilson, “How to deny evolution and global warming my own crisis of faith). Antigay American was highly suspect, but not necessarily Fundamentalists an automatic indication that someone As it turns out, this was precisely the Indoctrinated Russia’s School Children, 1992- was out of the true Christian club. Over time of a major rift in relations between 1997,” TWOCARE, time, in conjunction with the political Russian Orthodox Christians and con- May 4, 2014. http:// battles surrounding these issues, I ob- servative American Protestants, who www.twocare.org/ served how even Catholicism, once how-antigay-american- had indeed been proselytizing in Rus- fundamentalists- highly distrusted by evangelicals, be- sian public schools, on a very large indoctrinated- came less and less dubious to us. The scale, under the guise of providing a russias-school- same thing has now occurred with Christian ethics curriculum. This ini- children-1992-1997/. Accessed April 24, 2016. Mormonism. tiative was coordinated by a coalition of far-right ministries known as the 13 This is a topic Xenia Loutchenko and I But Orthodoxy? Orthodoxy was hardly CoMission, with Campus Crusade for touched on when I on our community’s radar screen. While Christ (since rebranded as “Cru”) at interviewed her on May my dad, as I recall, knew one Orthodox the helm, and it represented itself very 8, 2015. See “Religion convert from Protestantism, I do not differently to its Russian partners than and Politics in Russia: An Insider’s View. remember ever discussing the specifics it did to its American evangelical sup- Xenia Loutchenko Inter- of his faith. I can recall other instances, porters.12 viewed by Christopher though, in which I got the sense that Stroop,” The Wheel 3, Fall 2015, 30–35. Orthodoxy was “exotic” and “dubious” Despite the disbanding of the CoMis- among evangelicals. When I accompa- sion and the way in which it scan- 14 See Stroop, “A Right- Wing International?” nied the school orchestra teacher to a dalized the Russian Orthodox lead- rural part of Russia’s Vladimir Oblast ership and the Russian government, for our “English camp” missionary proj- Protestant missionary efforts did help ect in 1999, I imagined us attempting to to export the American culture wars convert atheists, assuming there were to post-Soviet Russia.13 Significantly, still quite a few of them in Russia given however, much of what the American the Communist Party’s repression of re- Protestants brought to Russia has since ligion. In fact, I’m not sure any of the stu- been “nationalized.” Culture-war ini- dents—whom we “tutored in English” tiatives have been reconceptualized in by reading from an English translation terms of Russian traditions and Ortho- of the Bible (not a very pedagogically dox Christianity, something that is not sound method), and with whom we in fact out of keeping with the old Sla- shared our testimonies, as evangelical vophile Russian discourse of moral su- Protestants do—were atheists. Our proj- periority.14 Especially since the begin- ect was undertaken in coordination with ning of Putin’s third term, the Russian local Orthodox structures, however, and state has enthusiastically embraced op- The Wheel 6 | Summer 2016 23  position to LGBTQ rights and to some of Families, one of the most significant extent opposition to abortion, and has examples of bad ecumenism on the positioned itself, increasingly success- present world stage. And at WCF IX, fully, as the global standard bearer for which took place October 27–30, 2015, in the defense of “traditional values.” But Salt Lake City, Alexey Komov—WCF’s what has brought the American culture Regional Representative for Russia and warriors, who were used to leading the Commonwealth of Independent rather than following in these matters, States; the Howard Center for Family, into the fold? Religion and Society’s representative to the United Nations; and a member of The American Christian Right’s mod- the Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriar- ern institutional structure—the same chal Commission on the Family and the 15 Angela Lahr, Millennial Dreams and that brought me to Russia on short-term Protection of Motherhood and Child- Apocalyptic Nightmares: mission trips in 1999 and 2000—has its hood—argued that since Russians and The Cold War Origins of roots in Cold War anti-Communism. East Europeans had already survived Political Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford Opposition to Communism was what an era of anti-religious persecution, they University Press, 2007); brought conservative evangelicals back were now prepared to “help our broth- Jonathan Herzog, The into the American mainstream in the ers in the West” in their struggle against Spiritual-Industrial 1940s and 50s, as Angela Lahr, Jonathan the “new totalitarianism” of “political Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Herzog, and others have shown.15 Even correctness” and sexual revolution.18 Communism in the Early the initial opposition of Christian Right Cold War (Oxford: Ox- groups to the Civil Rights Movement Of course, the parallel Komov draws be- ford University Press, 2011). (a part of their history that now embar- tween the Bolsheviks’ persecution of be- rasses them) was sometimes framed as lievers in the Soviet Union and today’s 16 Hemant Mehta, anti-Communism.16 Communism and phony “religious freedom” struggle of “Liberty University, Whose Founder Once secularism were conflated in right-wing the American religious right is a clear- Denounced Martin American Christians’ minds, and it is cut case of false equivalence. But prom- Luther King, Will clear that Franklin Graham, who was inent figures in the American religious Host Donald Trump Today,” Friendly Atheist, socialized in the Cold War conservative right are buying this narrative, as the January 18, 2016. evangelical environment, still thinks in statements Graham made while in Mos- http://www.patheos. these terms. “Secularism, which is al- cow show. Ironically, as they imagine com/blogs/friend- lyatheist/2016/01/18/ most no different from Communism, is their religious freedom to be threatened liberty-university- an atheistic movement,” he remarked by the “new totalitarianism” of latter- whose-founder-once- on his recent visit to Russia in the con- day “secularists,” whom they persist denounced-martin- text of suggesting that Americans are luther-king-will-host- in equating with Communists, they are donald-trump-today/. losing religious freedom, while Rus- looking to a newly resurgent conserva- Accessed April 24 2016. sians are gaining it.17 tive Russia as an ostensibly morally su- 17 Blue, “Franklin perior alternative to hold up against an Graham.” For their part, Russian political and re- America supposedly in moral decline. 18 I thank LGBTQ ligious leaders are only too happy to In these times of newly tense US-Rus- rights researcher L. proffer this narrative to American fun- sian relations, which some are compar- Cole Parke, of Political damentalists such as Graham. Russian ing to the Cold War, we can thank bad Research Associates, social conservatives were heavily in- for providing me with ecumenism for the curious emergence a recording of Komov’s volved in founding the World Congress of right-wing fellow travelers. presentation. Christopher Stroop is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the His- tory Department at the University of South Florida. He is also a © 2016 The Wheel. freelance writer, a senior research fellow in the School of Public May be distributed for Policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy noncommercial use. and Public Administration, and editor of the academic journal www.wheeljournal.com State, Religion and Church. Follow him on Twitter @C_Stroop. 24