Ruth Ben-Ghiat on How to Resist Authoritarianism | The Civic Forum | Aug. 15, 2025

Editor’s (admin’s) note: Lightly edited copy, with links added, of my email in advance of this month’s appointment with my spiritual director, giving her a heads-up on what I’ve been journaling about (or, in this case, why I haven’t been jouirnaling) since our last meeting and, more to the point, helping me focus over time by archiving the emails with my journals on this blog.

Aug. 15, 2025, 10:06am (CDT)

Hi Sister —

Confirming (and looking forward to) our monthly Zoom session Monday evening. I’ve been pretty busy, so we should have plenty to talk about. No online journaling to share with you, though. 

I’ve been busy with other things (including too much time watching podcasts trying to keep up with news the commercial media don’t bother to cover), and when I *do* start to write something, I have second thoughts about it as the news cycle grinds on and everything changes.

So I’ll decide I need to rethink the whole topic before I’ve finished editing it, and the draft queue on my WordPress account is full of half-completed and/or abandoned posts. (Sometimes a little dose of writer’s block can be a good thing!) In the meantime, I continue to wrestle with how people of faith can deal with the quasi-fascist, authoritarian cruelty and intolerance the Trump regime and his white Christian nationalist followers have brought us.

A cinundrum: How do I do that without trash-talking them? Especially when so many of them are entirely willing to trash people like me as “radical Leftists,” “lunatics” and the “enemy within?” I think there’s a decent answer there, and it may have something to do with what St. Paul says about standing up to powers and principalities, but I need to give it a lot more thought.

In the meantime, I’ve been elected to chair my parish church’s Faith Formation Committee for the coming year. To say I’m flabbergasted would be a mild understatement! 

So I’m studying the congregational bylaws — and a very useful best practices manual, with age-appropriate learning objectives, put out by ELCA’s churchwide faith formation office — and I can rely on the parents, who know what’s best for their kids. So it’s totally new to me — at least the parish education part of it is — but I can take heart from the story of Isaiah. If a “man of unclean lips” can compose some of the best poetry in the Hebrew Bible, maybe there’s hope for a spiritual-but-not-religious guy like me. 

Who knows? I may even journal about faith formation, when and if I learn enough about it to share my thoughts online.

In the meantime, I’m active on social media. Mostly sharing political cartoons but also longer articles on economic, legal or political developments, especially at the intersection of faith and politics. For example, a recent Substack column by Diana Butler Bass, an Episcopalian who takes part in the pro-democracy Convocation Unscripted podcasts, on a recent warning by the general counsel’s office for the United Church of Christ advising UCC parishes that some federal grants now require recipients to “cooperate with immigration officials”; refrain from boycotting Israeli products; and “not engage in or promote programs that engage in DEI, DEIA, or ‘discriminatory equity ideology’ ” as defined in Trump’s executive orders. (I’ll link below.) So far, if I’m reading this correctly, it seems to be limited to Homeland Security grants, for now, but Bass says:

It is notable that all three of the issues identified for grantee cooperation are concerns long at the center of mainline Protestant and social justice Catholic agendas — care for and protection of immigrants, racial and gender equality, and justice for the Palestinian people. [,,,] In the next several months, lawyers, constitutional experts, historians who specialize in church/state issues, and denominational leaders will be busy sorting through what this all means to specific churches [and] their social justice work.

If nothing else, I think it reflects the growing animosity between Trump supporters, culture warriors and white Christian nationalists, on the one hand, and the kind of love-thy-neighbor, welcome-the-stranger Christianity I identify with. In general, I like to share content that reminds people that not all people of faith share the racist, homophobic, sexist attitudes that dominate the headlines. 

But I try to keep things positive and factual. There are some popular mainline Protestant commentators — I won’t name names — who strike me as condescending and holier-than-thou. I seldom read them, and I *never* share them to social media. Even the political cartoons, I won’t share if they show derogatory stereotypes of people who aren’t public figures. 

There’s this, too. In 2020 (the most recent year for which I’ve seen these figures tabulated by denomination), ELCA members split evenly, with about 50 percent voting for Biden and 50 percent for Trump. I imagine our parish would shake out about the same, maybe a little more red than blue but decidedly purple. 

All of which tells me to go slow, and reinforces my instinct to be positive. 

Some white Christian nationalist beliefs are widely held. That US law should reflect Christian values, for example; others — including “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society” — maybe not so much. At any rate, I don’t think it would be very appropriate — or productive — for me to question anyone’s faith. Online or much of anywhere else.

A couple of days ago, I got an emailed scripture reflection from America magazine with the intriguing message line, “Is reconciliation possible in the comments section?” It was by Sebastian Gomes, executive audio and video editor for the magazine’s website.

Gomes’ answer: Probably not. The passage he’s reflecting on is from Matthew (18:5) “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.” This he paraphrases like this: “Jesus seems determined that his followers “not make a scene’.” Good advice, I think, online and in daily life.

So here’s my conundrum. I’m convinced, not so much by the partisans (although I do enjoy those political cartoons I share) as by a growing number of scholars who argue that in the United States we are in very real danger of a true fascist takeover. 

The year I was a freshman in high school, they had to call out the National Guard when local police were overwhelmed during the school desegregation riots in my county seat (Clinton, Tenn.), and it left a lifelong impression on me. I was a history major in college, and I am honestly alarmed by the militarization of police in Washington DC. I’ve read enough about Germany, Italy and Franco’s Spain to know what that can lead to.

And I especially agree with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat of NYU, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present,” that our slide toward autocracy in Amrica can be reversed if enough citizens vote, take part in protests and support institutions of civil society (beginning around 3:00 in the linked video). She doesn’t mention churches, but I’ve been encouraged by the way mainline churches, including my own ELCA Lutherans, have launched a pro-democracy movement in response to the Trump regime. I’m not entirely sure how yet, but I think I can be a part of that.

All of which tells me, again, don’t make a scene but do stand up against, empire, powers and principalities. I’ve been wrestling with this ever since Trump took office in January, and I still don’t know exactly how I should proceed. But I’m not giving up hope. In the meantime, I have a lot to learn about faith formation and parish ed.

See you Monday at 6!

— Pete

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[Uplinked Aug. 17, 2025]

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Published by Pete Ellertsen

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