I read The Wall Street Journal’s excellent article on Evangelical Preacher Douglas Wilson with interest. Written by Aaron Zitner, it lays out how the Christian Right seeks to impose its will upon the entire United States and what that would mean for the rest of us.
In essence, The United Sates would become Margaret Atwood’s fictional Gilead. If you thought that would never happen, just look around you.
The Christian Right and God’s Will
It helps when claiming you know God’s will, what he wants, and what makes him angry to have absolutely no sense of history. Certainly, some of the people who support this movement, such as Vice President JD Vance and his mentor Billionaire Peter Thiel to believe what they prefer to believe instead of what history says will likely happen.
Both men are Catholic. Peter Thiel was raised in an Evangelical Christian home and came to Catholicism later in life. His apprentice, VP Vance, had a culturally Protestant Appalachian upbringing. He converted to Catholicism, was baptized and confirmed in 2019.
So, neither man grew up, as I did, with parochial school, Catechism classes, First Communion, the First Fridays of the month, and childhood confession. When reading how they both converted to Catholicism, it strikes me that their approach to their faith is more intellectual than emotional or even spiritual.
Returning to Protestant Values
Now let’s get down to history. In the article, Mr. Wilson says, “America was built on Protestant values from its start and should return to them.”
Well, Boston was founded in 1630 by a breakaway group of Protestants who sought to strip the Anglican faith of any traces of Catholicism. These included vestments, rituals, graven images and—most of all-hierarchies of churchmen telling them what to believe and what to do.
These Puritans sought religious freedom, but only for themselves. Their laws made it illegal to be Catholic in Boston until 1780. The first public mass was celebrated in a converted Huguenot chapel in 1788, Holy Cross Church, designed by Charles Bulfinch, did not open until 1803.
Those Catholics who are, like Mr. Thiel and VP Vance, attracted to the Christian Right might note that Mr. Wilson’s Protestant values declared their newly adopted faith illegal for 150 years and it was eight years more before the Mass could be celebrated publicly.
The Christian Right’s Hierarchies
They might also pay attention to Mr. Wilson when he says, “Protestant America did successfully adapt to the presence of Catholics and Jews.” That means he, along with many fundamentalists, does not see Catholics as Christians any more than the Puritans did in 17th and 18th century Boston.
He groups them with Jews and goes on to say that, “But millions of Muslims without any commitment to or mechanism of assimilation is another matter.”
Maslow’s Hierarchy
It should come as no surprise, then, that he believes, “the Bible creates a hierarchy in society.” The quote regards the structure of the family but I think he applies the same concept to American society with Protestant Christians (and not all of them) at the top and everyone else cascading down in a perverted form of Maslow’s Hierarchy. The Catholics will occupy a level somewhat further down the pyramid.
In his world view, if you are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Mormon, atheist or anything other than Protestant Christian, conversion is your only hope of success in life. Should you be homosexual, get back in the closet or face violation of the “sexual morality laws.”
Women, of course, will lose both the vote and protection of the law, as interpreted by men. In 2025 our rights are already determined by what state we live in—or even travel through. Black people will soon join us in losing equal protection under the law, according to the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court’s majority has little respect for Stare Decisis and, it seems, little use for the U.S. Constitution. Our rights are what the Roberts Six say they are.
A Warning for Catholics
But getting back to Catholicism, I have a warning. Just because you believe in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, and just because you have faith in God, doesn’t mean that Protestants consider you a Christian. As you donate to the MAGA-approved Republican candidates of your choice, keep in mind what the new version of the Martin Niemöller’s famous quote will be:
First they came for the transsexual people, and I did not speak out because I was not Trans.
Then they came for women but I did not speak out because I was not female.
Then they came for the Blacks but I did not speak out because I was not Black.
Then …
Snookering the Catholics
The Christian Right and its ministers like Douglas Wilson may have snookered the Catholics into believing that, because they follow Jesus, they occupy the same level of Gilead’s hierarchy as those arbiters of Christianity’s “moral teachings” do. But pay attention. Be assured that it’s only a matter of time. As Mr. Wilson says, the moral teachings of Christianity should have the force of law. And they intend to write the law.
Remember that Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor and Nazi sympathizer who supported radically right-wing political movements. He spoke out against Adolf Hitler only after the Chancellor interfered with the Protestant Church. He spent eight years in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. Mr. Niemöller did not write his lamentation until after the war.
A Matter of Time for the Christian Right
If the Christian Right succeeds, sooner or later, they will come for the Catholics. And it won’t matter if you are a person of faith, a cleric, or a Cardinal. It won’t matter if you go to Mass every Sunday, say the Rosary, or pray every night. It won’t matter if, like WSJ Columnist Peggy Noonan, you write whole paens to the “new way of Christians.”
Once the Christian Right has gotten what they want from those Catholics foolish enough to support them, they will push you down into whatever level of their hierarchy they devise. Sooner or later, they will come for you.
