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Why Was it So Easy for Politicians to Corrupt Christians? [1]
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Date: 2025-03-09
A significant proportion of the US population have authoritarian personalities which means they want someone in authority to tell them what to do and what to think or believe.
In an article that quotes the book The Authoritarians, author and psychologist Bob Altemeyer relates a 2006 conversation he had with John Dean (White House counsel for Richard Nixon) saying,
“Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds.”
More recent research concludes based on surveys that 26% of the US Population is “highly right-wing authoritarian.”
But the percentage is probably much higher among Christians based on the history of Christianity and the fact that an estimated 80% of evangelicals consistently voted for the President.
Authorities seek total power and do not want any check or limit to such power. Absolute power corrupts. Christian cultures therefore can tend toward corruption with only Christian ethics standing in the way.
A huge component of any religion is ethics and Christianity is no different. It contains a great many ethical requirements and arguably asks Christians to be [morally] perfect as their father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).
But both theologians and right-wing politicians have sought to chip away and negate any such goal or requirement. They have been very successful.
Here, we will discuss some elements in Christianity that made it easy to corrupt Christians so they could ignore Christian ethics.
The first is that Christianity has traditionally been an authoritarian religion. The Pope’s role is modeled on the Roman Emperor. He has enormous power, and the final say in Catholic theology and how the Bible should be interpreted. So, as the supreme authority, Catholics must fall in line and do and believe what the Pope says.
Authoritarian religions require people to obey the leader’s edicts even if they consider those edicts corrupt or ignorant. Christians are required to obey their leaders even if what they say obviously disagrees with what the Bible says.
One significant element which increased the church’s tendency towards corruption was a decision made in 413 CE. The Donatists were a group that required priests to be pure and uncorrupted by sin. This doctrine was declared a heresy by the Church and was rejected so that the moral state of the priest was no longer relevant to the validity of the mass and other sacraments performed by him.
In effect, this meant that an immoral priest, bishop, etc. still had the power to perform the sacraments, which meant that the Church sanctioned corruption in its ranks. As with an emperor, the faithful must continue to grant church leaders near total authority regardless of their corruption or lack of moral standing.
This doctrine was a recipe for endemic institutional corruption in the Catholic Church.
But the Protestants also found ways to be authoritarian and minimize or negate the need for Christian ethics.
When Protestant theologians rebelled against the Pope’s authority in the Reformation, they said that Christians should read the newly translated Bible and be their own priests (the priesthood of all believers). They would be guided by the Holy Spirit to interpret the Bible and depend on no external authority. This is an anti-authoritarian position and was considered a major reform of Protestantism.
But a great many Protestant churches are congregationalist, which means that the theology is decided by the church members. In practice, this means that the church members choose the minister, and the minister usually gains near total authority to decide what is believed.
The advantage of this system is if members disagree with the minister, they are free to go and join a different congregation or in some cases the church board can find another minister who is more acceptable. This is unlike in the Catholic Church, where the church or priest may change but the theology will not.
So, we see that attempts to grant authority to the church members generally wound up giving that authority over to the local minister. Much of Protestant Christianity remained authoritarian, but the theology was decided locally rather than by distant sources such as bishops or a Pope.
As an example, the Southern Baptist Convention which was formerly a congregational church has moved away from the congregational model (become more hierarchical or “Catholic”) and taken some of this local authority away. It has rejected churches who do not follow their theology and banned them from the organization. As one of the largest Christian denominations, 50,000 churches abide by the Convention’s decisions.
But even Protestant churches without an overarching organization (Synods or Conventions) remained authoritarian institutions which can allow corrupt leadership to flourish (the history of televangelism demonstrates this to some degree).
Here we see one basis for how 80% of evangelicals and many Catholics are attracted to “strong man”, authoritarian politics and voted for the current President and other right-wing candidates despite their questionable ethics.
But Protestant theology is also subject to corruption by rejecting biblical ethics in another way.
Luther and Calvin provided a theology that can be easily corrupted. They both believed mankind to be totally depraved based on their inheriting the sin of Adam. God was so superior to his people that there was no way even the saintliest person could be other than depraved and morally corrupt. They therefore threw out the saints and left people with few role models for sanctity or moral superiority.
Thus, good thoughts and works became irrelevant when seeking salvation. Only faith mattered and God’s forgiveness became the only path to heavenly glory.
Since no amount of virtue or good works could get a person into heaven, no amount of bad works could keep that person out of heaven. Ethics could become much less relevant or even irrelevant. In the Reformed Church, which was strongly influenced by Calvinist thought, God chooses those destined for heaven regardless of their behavior or Christian virtue.
As an example used by right-wing religious leaders to illustrate the lack of importance of ethics in gaining salvation, God anointing the Persian King Cyrus made him “chosen by God” despite the fact that Cyrus was a heathen unbeliever.
So, these two critical elements (authoritarianism and the irrelevance of ethics to salvation) came together to justify the election of our current President by modern Christians. Right-wing politicians and pastors told Christians that if God supports or “chooses” a leader, they must vote for that leader too in order to attain their own salvation.
So, to recap, how did good Christians come to ignore their own ethics and embrace authoritarian leaders in the church and beyond? Let’s look at the elements:
The Catholic Church is an authoritarian institution (encourages authoritarian government)
Many Christians seek to be told what to do and think (are authoritarians)
Corrupt Catholic bishops and priests (and by association other civic leaders) retain their respect and leadership status despite their corruption
God controls significant events in the world and can choose leaders (divine kingship and Calvinism)
Protestants have adopted their pastors as authorities as they ceased to rely on their own judgement concerning theology
Protestants believe faith is all that is important for salvation and good works and ethics are less important or unimportant
Thus, ethics are not determinative in choosing a leader for both God and voters
One must support a leader chosen by God (as determined by church authorities) to gain salvation for oneself
All of these work together to justify our current political situation and show how Christians were able to ignore ethics in choosing their leaders, both religious and political. Both God and his followers want a “strong man” leader and do not care about his dishonesty and corruption.
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