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Notes -
I mentioned a little while back that I meant to write a top-level post about religion, denominational tradition, and political theology. I could draft and re-draft forever but an imperfect post that spurs conversation is better than a perfect post, so here we go.
In that previous discussion I described three 'options' for conservative or small-o orthodox Christian engagement with a culture that is largely abandoning Christian faith. I can't imagine I need to do much to prove that American culture is increasingly abandoning Christianity - the abandonment is especially obvious on the left, but even on the right, the Trump/MAGA right, despite occasionally making gestures in this direction, is substantially post-Christian.
The options I described, named after conservative Christians who have discussed some of these issues in the public square, are 1) the French Option, after David French, 2) the Ahmari/Deneen/Vermeule option, after Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen, and Adrian Vermeule, and 3) the Dreher Option, after Rod Dreher. (And of course choosing this language is riffing on Dreher's book The Benedict Option.)
What I noticed after writing that older post was that these options line up very easily with the three major branches of global Christianity - Protestantism (especially evangelical Protestantism, in the US), Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. The identification of the French Option with Protestantism needs to be nuanced somewhat; French is an evangelical specifically, and I think all these three options rise out of the collapse of the former American mainline. Mainline Protestantism constituted a kind of religious default for American society and a grounding set of institutions and values alike, but as it declines, there is competition over the void. Arguably there is a fourth option I haven't named - Progressive Christianity or Wokism or something else, call it the Bolz-Weber Option or something - but for now I am restricting myself to options for more-or-less conservative Christians.
Let's delve into these options a bit more.
Evangelical Protestantism is the youngest tradition of the three and has developed under conditions of American liberalism. It is therefore the most comfortable with liberal norms. It also tends to be very skeptical of hierarchies, institutions, and regulations - in part due to its own origins in the late 19th and early 20th century, as a kind of rebellion against theological modernists. Buried deep in the DNA of evangelicalism is a sense that one might be betrayed by one's own leadership, and I think we often find evangelicals with an in-principle hostility to higher organisation. Thus there is no one Evangelical Church, but rather scattered networks of independent churches, affiliating and disaffiliating and splitting and fusing as they feel called to do so. Enthusiastic church planting and charismatic celebrity pastors are products of this culture, as is frequent doctrinal dispute. There are loose ways for evangelicals to identify each other, from the Bebbington quadrilateral to simply asking whether a church is 'bible-believing', but there is, intentionally, no umbrella authority. Evangelicals thus also tend to be the most overtly patriotic Americans and are the most tightly wedded to the American project as such - they're the most likely to put tacky American flags up around churches! National or civic identity comes in to provide some of the structure that might otherwise come from a church hierarchy. (It's evangelicals who will sometimes talk about the US constitution being inspired by God, for instance, something very alien to other traditions.)
The French Option is the one I would summarise as "just win the argument". The gospel truth is mighty and will prevail. All you need to do is get out there, present the gospel, and let the Spirit do the rest. Virtue and moral character are important, but they cannot be compelled or produced by any coercive institution - they come from local practices and must be nurtured in local, congregational contexts, attentive to the word of God. Liberalism and viewpoint neutrality are not problems to be solved, but rather are themselves the opportunities to grow the church and create disciples.
All that said, the French or evangelical option is complicated significantly by Trump, with French himself badly out of step with most evangelicals. To an extent Trump makes sense as a result of the evangelical absence of institutional leadership and embrace of charismatic leaders - if they're going to have a political vision, it will be grounded in dynamic individual leaders hostile to traditional institutions, like Trump himself. (And scandalous as Trump is, misbehaving mega-pastors are hardly new.) The more that evangelicals continue to feel that they're doing badly, or that their fortunes are sliding, the more seductive such leaders will be for them.
To put a positive spin on it, the strength of the evangelical approach is that it has deep roots in American folkways, is easily compatible with the liberal American project, and it has a kind of confidence about itself that ought not be underrated. Its great weakness, I think, is the question of what happens if it can't 'win the argument'. What happens then? That's where we might see more of this flirting with authoritarian politics.
Of course, authoritarianism is nothing new to the second tradition, Roman Catholicism, and its integralist exponents today. I should make clear at the start that Catholicism is by far the largest individual church tradition in America (and certainly worldwide) and therefore admits of a great deal of diversity and factional strife. In this context I'm interested in the advocates of an expressly political Catholicism.
Here it is worth noting that Catholicism's relationship with political liberalism has always been strained. Up until the 1960s, the Catholic Church was more-or-less openly at war with liberalism, and continued to hold that the correct formation of a polity was for the secular authority to be subject to, or at least receiving direction from, the church. The history of Catholic-state relations in early 20th century Europe is illuminating in this regard; even in France, up until WWII there continued to be traditionalist hardliners condemning secularism and laicite as mistakes. America posed a problem - you may recall Catholics around 1900 explaining that the church ought to "[enjoy] the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority", and should not support separation of church and state. (Note that that was Pope Leo XIII, whom the current pope named himself after.) I was struck by a 1909 defense of forbidden books explaining plainly that it is the church's duty to watch over society and ban immoral speech. Vatican II represented, in some ways, the Catholic Church making peace with liberalism, but it has been an unsteady alliance, and I interpret the modern-day crop of integralists as looking back to an earlier model of church relationship with the state.
They use a number of different names for it - Deneen's 'aristopopulism', Vermeule's 'common-good constitutionalism', and so on - but what unites this group is the conviction that it is both possible and desirable for the United States to be governed in conformance with Catholic social teaching. Liberal democracy should be limited in its scope, fundamentally reframed, or (in the most extreme cases) abolished entirely.
In its full extent this vision is almost certainly unrealisable, at least in the United States - it's hard to imagine non-Catholics ever acceding to it, even among Catholics it is a tiny minority, and Catholic religious authorities, up to the pope himself, seem at best uninterested and at worst actively hostile to this vision. But to smaller extents it may be realisable or even influential in trying to push the United States more towards morals legislation, and Catholic politicians like J. D. Vance may be swayable to an extent. Moreover, among the three options I describe, the Catholic integralists stand out as the only ones with a clear plan to seize and utilise state power, which makes the prospect of their success - even if only a partial success - much more consequential.
The third option is one I've associated with Rod Dreher and therefore with Eastern Orthodoxy, though Dreher himself is an odd duck and not a great representative of the majority of Orthodox communities in the US. The thing about Orthodoxy is that, despite a handful of prominent converts, it primarily exists in ethnic enclaves, owing to the Orthodox churches' historical links to particular national communities. Both Protestants and Catholics have, in different ways, worked out how to evangelise to entirely new people and communities; I don't think the Orthodox have. (They have historically, looking at the spread of Orthodoxy across much of Eurasia; I just mean the modern day.) Traditionally Orthodox churches have been closely bound to political authority, and in some ways that's a pattern we still today with the Russian Orthodox Church. However, the Greek Orthodox tradition spent centuries existing within the Ottoman Empire, which I think gave a lot of Orthodox churches a habit of bunkering up and focusing on surviving and passing down the faith under conditions of being a minority, with little chance of dominating the wider society. To an extent the pattern repeats with the Russians under Soviet control, though since then the Russian Orthodox seem to have re-established the traditional alliance with the state. The point is that there is a deep well of resources, in the Orthodox tradition, for how to exist as a kind of society-within-a-society, without realistic hope of either converting the masses or obtaining power.
In practice, then, Orthodox communities in America and other Western nations tend to be expatriate or immigrant communities, relatively less interested in conversion, and more focused on internal discipline and cultivation. You can easily see the appeal for thinkers like Dreher, who believe that Christianity as a whole in America is soon going to be in the position of Orthodox in the Soviet Union, or in the Ottoman Empire.
The obvious criticism to make of this option is that it is a counsel of despair - it takes for granted that the public is lost. While Dreher himself denies that he calls for any kind of 'retreat', this denial has always been unconvincing at best. To many in the first two camps, this is abandoning the field before battle has been truly joined. If the Orthodox were to give battle, so to speak, they would need to find some way to compensate for their low numbers and their lack of institutional strength, most likely through alliance with this or that other Christian group. I find it unlikely that this will happen.
Perhaps more relevant to America as a whole are non-Orthodox churches or communities who nonetheless take the Orthodox, Dreher option. The Benedict Option itself is primarily a plea for evangelical Protestants and Catholics to try this. You can indeed find people in those traditions taking an option like this, though so far it's too early to see how generative their efforts are. I don't predict entire evangelical or Catholic communities taking this approach, though, until it's clear that they have no other choice.
Where does this leave conservative Christians in the US overall?
I think they're caught between several bad options. Both the "just win the argument" and the "seize state power" approaches seem very unlikely to succeed in the near or even medium term; and "retreat inwards, focus on community formation" is good as far as it goes, but represents a cession of huge amounts of cultural territory that Christians are rightly reluctant to cede.
I don't mean any of this as a counsel of despair myself - these are all judgements predicated on a cultural situation that itself may not last. At any rate, Christians are called to follow Jesus without counting the cost, so in a sense stressing over tactics like this is beside the point, or at the very least, a second-order consideration.
In terms of my own bias, it should be clear that I have the least affinity for the Catholic, Ahmari/Deneen/Vermeule approach - I believe I called them 'bootlickers' last time. I admire the optimism and confidence of the evangelical approach even if I think it is often wide open to heretical teachings or pseudo-idolatry (which is how I think of most of MAGA), and I respect the Orthodox approach even if I think it is fundamentally limited. Personally what I hope for is a combination of the evangelical view of the world as mission space and its non-hierarchical, liberal approach to conversion with the focus on interior cultivation and community practice of Orthodox communities, but it is very rare that I get what I hope for in any field. So it goes.
Ukraine had over half the surviving churches, and 2/3 of convents by the the fall of the USSR. Sergius pledged total loyalty to the state and is goals, feeding believers to hungry quotas until only a few hundred priests remained (100k were executed). When Stalin (responsible for many of those deaths, and a former seminarian) rehabilitated the church during WWII, the NKVD staffed most of it. Today, the Russian Orthodox Church serves the state, not Christ; he current patriarch worked for the KGB from the 70s on. This is no more survival than if the literal anti-Christ headed it. I pray the church cease to exist, like the blessed martyrs of the Assyrian Church of the East in China and the wider East, than actively damn its followers like today.
I've heard of Patriarch Kirill's collusion with Russian state agencies before but wondered if that was just a western smear and accusation against him. But in a way, it just repeats the same pattern most Christian states have done throughout the centuries. There was always massive interplay between state and religion. The religious authorities were always seen as a keeper of public opinion and the psychological, spiritual and material welfare of the people. Any ruling political elite/class had to be seen as having the approval of the religious body. I don't really share your opinion on this but I do understand it.
Maybe Russia could reverse their demographic decline with what Ilia II did in Georgia by promising to baptize every third child. That seemed to stem and reverse the population drop off. Being godfather to millions of children across the country is quite a job for the clergy however. Good luck on the logistics with that.
I have to admit I don't quite see what the incentive would be here. Having "Godfather: Patriarch Kirill" on your kid's birth certificate? I don't think the demographics who need the incentive really hold the church in such a high regard.
I don't know the specific demographic composition of Russia, bur Orthodox culture is still a very big part of their society. To assume social status doesn't matter to them in religious terms when it still retains a huge amount of cultural capital in the country is placing a large bet against common sense. It's possible I could be wrong here, but I 'highly' doubt it. And at the very least, it doesn't hurt their effort even if it doesn't help it.
According to the latest polls, while up to 70% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox, 6% of those have been to the church within the past month, and 10% commit to fasts. Polls are subject to selection factors, but we have a specific number of those who were in church for Orthodox Christmas in 2024 - 1.4m people, which is about 1% of Russians.
Anecdotally, I live here and while I know a few people who were part of the faith as children, I know no one who has ever mentioned adhering to any religious ritual as an adult, aside from the universally enjoyable ones like eating the Easter pastries or painting eggs. Weddings rarely involve the church, too.
I have got the impression that unless you are extremely urban and Blue in USA, your circle of acquaintances will include practicing Christians to the point where they will not stand out. In Russia, the bubbles of atheists and the Orthodox do not appear to mix as much.
My observations fit my theory that the Russian Orthodox Church is largely grift and a tentacle of generic pro-state ideology.
I actually thought you were going to cite Anne Applebaum who's pointed out similar statistics that I'm aware of. Most Russians as I understand it are cultural Christians in the same sense Americans are cultural Christians in that they celebrate Christmas as a consumer holiday, not as a way to celebrate the glory of Jesus. That doesn't mean Christianity doesn't have a significant sway in both countries. The major reason the US foreign policy establishment is in hock to Israel is because of the massive amount of financial and religious support given to them by the Evangelicals and Christian Zionists in our country, both of which are heretical. That testifies to the institutional power an even secularized Christian society has in advancing their religious causes on the international stage.
You may be surprised to know that I've never formally attended Mass or a church before (in a devout ceremonial sense). Culturally, Christianity was a 'huge' influence in my local community as is Catholicism specifically in the case of my family. It is so huge in fact, that the secular community borrows heavily from the norms and habits largely introduced by Christians as part of their daily lives, without even recognizing it. You may say that that's not unique to Christianity, but Christianity has been the standard bearer for most of our practices from the day this country was founded. I'd argue that's probably historically the case in your country as well.
As I've gotten older, I've become even more attracted to the religion in the sense of a semi-devout or at least lay practitioner. That is to say someone that does more than just profess the faith and pays lip service to it but partakes in the demands and activity of it's more serious adherents. To call your tradition a "grift" I think is an insult to your history. That it's an ideology in league with functioning of the state system isn't a surprise because that hasn't been a historical anathema anywhere in the world and to any religion that's ever coevolved with state institutions.
I did not call "my tradition" a grift, and certainly not the broader kind of traditions that stem from Christianity without being explicitly recognized as religious. I called the church, as in the government-adjacent institution, a grift.
Regarding Christmas as a consumer holiday, it might provide some perspective that while in the Catholic West, as I understand, Christmas is synonymous with the winter holidays and New Year's Eve is an afterthought, in Russia New Year's Eve is synonymous with the winter holidays and Christmas is an afterthought. It is not nearly popular enough to be a consumer holiday.
I don’t know how you can speak meaningfully of Orthodox Christianity without the church. That’s like speaking about governance without the state. By this logic most of Christian history the world over should be discarded and throw on the scrap heap as a grift.
The US in particular is still dominated by non-denominational Protestantism. Calling yourself Catholic in certain areas some of my relatives live in will leave people scratching their heads or looking at you with a raised eyebrow. In both Protestant and Catholic cases, a true sense of bound up spirituality in the religion exists only in pockets across the country, the same as I’d wager it does in Russia. The average American shares much more in common with the average Russian in that neither is anywhere near as religious as the average Jew in Israel or Muslim in the Middle East. If you asked me to say the Our Father in ecclesiastical Latin I couldn’t do it unlike a Muslim who could give Salat in Arabic (which was already given by Muhammad in his native Arabic, save the classical-modern distinction).
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