Four Steps Churches Can Take Right Now

Rev. Dr. Ben Boswell

A version of this lecture was delivered at First United Methodist Church, Charlotte NC on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Octavia Butler’s tenth novel, Parable of the Sower, published in 1993, was written about what the world would be like in 2025 if it stayed on course. Global warming has brought drought and rising seawater. The middle class and working poor live in gated neighborhoods, where they fend off the homeless with guns and walls. Fresh water is scarce, as valuable as money. Pharmaceutical companies have created “smart drugs,” boosting mental performance. Fires are common. Police services are expensive, though few people trust the police. Public schools are being privatized, as are whole towns. In this atmosphere, a Presidential candidate named Christopher Donner is elected based on his promises to dismantle government programs and bring back jobs with the slogan, “Make America Great Again.”[i]

What Butler knew in the late 80s was something anti-fascists thinkers and activists in America have always known—it could happen here. In fact, Sinclair Lewis had a famous book and play with that title in 1932. There’s a famous quote attributed to Lewis (that is likely someone else’s) “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Early anti-fascists knew that fascism would most likely will happen here, and did happen here, because much of what the world describes as fascism was born and made right here in America.

Many of us have a caricature in our minds of European fascism in Nazi Germany, Italy, or Japan running up to WWII. But European fascism was inspired by a long-standing fascist/nativist tradition in the United States. The Nazi’s borrowed directly from American practices of indigenous displacement and concentration on reservations for their concentration camps. They borrowed our racist immigration policies and Jim Crow laws of segregation for their Nuremburg laws against the Jewish people, and they borrowed our history of genocide and lynching for their holocaust. America was the blueprint for the Nazi regime. And I believe it is important for us to take responsibility for this, especially as we see a rise of this same fascism today.

Langston Hughes once said, “Fascism is a new name for the terror Black people have always faced in America.”[ii] One short definition of fascism my friend Greg Jarrell shared with me is “imperialism turned inward,” which is in line with what Aimé Césaire said, “fascism is the practice of colonization turned in on Europe’s own people.” Another definition is “a particular strand of right-wing politics…animated by a highly symbolic, populist, mythic drive for national renewal, grounded in militarism or male violence, anti-Marxism, racism, and authoritarianism that mobilizes the population in a culture war against minorities or the political left.”[iii]

However, I prefer the definition from scholar Cedric Robinson says “fascism is a social discipline, which provides the means for wealthy elites to take and preserve power.”[iv] It uses “imperialism, militarism, racism, choreographed mob violence, crypto-Christian mysticism, and nostalgic nationalism to [supposedly] restore a failing social order by inventing and attacking internal state enemies like Communists, Socialists, Marxists, immigrants, ethnic minorities, and the working class more broadly.”[v]

I think this definition is important because it recognizes who fascism benefits to understand how to resist it. Fascism benefits wealth elites, particularly the corporate class of billionaires in America, who lined up in the front row on inauguration day to “kiss the ring.” If fascism did not benefit the wealthy and powerful it would fail and once fascism no longer benefits the wealthy and powerful it will fail.

I’ve noticed a tendency in myself and others in my line of work that when we face a crisis, we immediately turn to the German theologians who resisted the Nazis; especially Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller. We ask, “Is this a Bonhoeffer moment?” I did this myself in the sermon I preached immediately following the election, but then I had an experience with a group of pastors. After the election we went to a local bar to commiserate and learned that we’d all been reading the same book Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich. There are thirteen sermons in the book, and one of the pastors said, “Did you notice that none of the German preachers ever named ‘Hitler’ or the ‘Nazis’ in any of the sermons? It means we don’t have to name ‘Trump’ or ‘MAGA.’ We can keep on simply preaching about love, justice, and peace.”

Not only is this an irresponsible position, but it also fails to take into consideration the fact the German Church (including the Confessing Church) failed to prevent the deaths of over 8 million people. There is an amazing mythology about the Confessing Church that developed after the end of WWII when the world was looking for hope in humanity and went looking for people who resisted the Nazis in any way whatsoever to make into saints. The reality however, as scholar Victoria Barnett points out, is much more complicated. The Confessing Church was for the most part a failure as it kept silent and compromised with Nazis by proclaiming political loyalty and support for the state and by using behind-the-scenes diplomacy rather than speaking out publicly.[vi] Also 90% of its seminary graduates went to fight for the Nazis in WWII. Complicit Church is a better name.

I do not believe we have a particularly clear example of white Protestants resisting fascism or being anti-fascist in American history other than the Communist and Socialist movements of the 1930s including the Social Gospel Movement. Recently I was sent a video of James Baldwin and Reinhold Niebuhr being interviewed together after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four girls. Niebuhr argued that when it comes to resisting racism or fascism the White Protestant Church in America has been an utter failure. W.E.B. DuBois said the same thing in 1920, “A nations’ religion is its life, and as such white Christianity is a miserable failure.”[vii] I’m not sure we should expect the white mainline church in America (on the whole) to be anti-fascist because it is not structured for resistance.

On the other hand, I do believe that all fascist movements have anti-fascist responses or resistance. I believe that there are promising signs in the rise of union participation and the rise of workers movements and strikes. I believe that there are promising signs in the boycott movement—particularly what has happened to Target and Tesla. I believe that there are segments of the anti-racist movement, the abolitionist movement, and the environmental movement that are in fact anti-fascist, which would all make Octavia Butler pleased.

Let me explain how dangerous this is politically. There is a woman named Pentti Linkola, who was a Finnish eco-fascist. Her argument was that the Earth can only sustainably support about half a billion people, and the other six and a half billion ought not to exist. When it comes to choosing who to cull, her implication for modern eco-fascism is those whose future economic development is detrimental to the Earth—in other words, the peoples of the global south. Linkola said this has to happen, if necessary, through war and genocide. While Hitler thought in millions. The modern eco-fascism is thinking in billions. So, if we believe there’s even a 5% chance that these folks like Linkola will one day find their path to political or economic power, we should be doing far more to debunk and their ideas. I think the Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise Movement folks are on the right track.

How do we resist fascism as people of faith? Or better yet, how do we become anti-fascist Christians? The first question we need to answer is: can fascism be reformed or legislated away? Many anti-fascist claim that fascism is embedded in American law and therefore can only be partially and incompletely resisted by jurisprudence. Either way, as Timothy Snyder claims, the number one thing we cannot do (as citizens and businesses) is “obey in advance.”[viii] Do not under any circumstances obey in advance. The difference between Columbia and Harvard is crucial for preventing American from becoming The Handmaids Tale.

One of the things that almost all anti-fascists have in common is a commitment to little “d” democracy, whether that be liberal democracy, social democracy, or direct democracy. There has been a concerted effort by the wealthy elite and big business to destroy democracy in this country and they are succeeding. What started out as backlash to the New Deal (which built the middle class in this country) and a collusion between big business, government, and the church to promote capitalism through anti-communism, led eventually to Neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher, and now to the extreme fascist late-stage capitalism of Donald Trump. All of these movements, couched under the guise of supporting freedom and free markets, have been anti-democratic. They see that democracy is bad for unlimited expansion of wealth, so they fight it at every turn whether that be in voting or uncheck power.

So, fighting for democracy at all costs is absolutely essential. The only problem is that our Constitution itself is anti-democratic. Harvard constitutional scholar Sanford Levinson believes that there are at least four anti-democratic institutions established by the Constitution that need to be reformed: the Electoral College, the Senate, the Presidential Veto Power, and the Supreme Court. Levinson calls for a new Constitutional Convention for the sake of American democracy.[ix] Of course, if you were to try and have a new Constitutional Convention there would be massive resistance on behalf of the wealthy elite in this country. Therefore, the fact that this has not occurred may betray the truth that fascism is a foundational part and parcel of the American project.

Anti-democratic sentiment and fascism tend to rise during times of radical economic disparity and global instability. Poverty and insecurity create a kind of desperation that leads toward the desire for a strongman leader who will help us fight whoever is hurting us and stabilize our way of life. Typically, however, propagandists teach people to blame the wrong people for their economic situation. Therefore, working clearly and specifically for economic justice and equality for all people is an important way to reduce the desire for a strongman authoritarian. When people have enough to eat, access to health care, and good education, our fascist tendencies decline.

Hannah Arendt once described fascism as the temporary alliance of the elite and the mob, and some believe that the only thing that ever defeated the alliance of the elite and the mob was the temporary alliance of the center and the left. I don’t see any other way for the center and the left to come together in America other than through an unabashed fight for economic justice for all people against the corporate and billionaire class that controls the political class. I don’t know if Bernie and A.O.C. can do it, but that is the kind of movement we need in this country. In fact, these fights for economic justice should be wildly embraced by the followers of Jesus as they are exactly aligned with the majority of Jesus’ teachings about money in the gospels—particularly Luke’s gospel.

Here's what I believe that the church can do:

1. Do not obey in advance.

2. Fight for democracy at every turn (even if it means fighting against the government and the constitution itself).

3. Work unapologetically for economic justice and equality for all Americans (which has the power to bridge ideological divides).

4. Live in solidarity with the individuals and communities targeted directly by fascism (i.e. the scapegoats of this administration).

Christians can often build our social and political theology by taking what the worst Americans are promoting and turn it inside out. That is what Christian Communists and Socialists did in the 20s and 30s with the platform of the KKK. The KKK was against Black people, Jews, Immigrants, and Catholics, but they were also against unions, and socialists, and communists, as all fascist groups are. So, in the 20s and 30s you could say we’re on the side of Black people, Jews, Immigrants, Catholics, and Unions and be faithful.

The same could be said today. As followers of Jesus, we should make it our life’s mission to be on the side of the people and practices that the Trump administration is targeting. This means we should be on the side of immigrants, our transgender siblings, black people (as that is who anti-DEI and anti-critical race theory initiatives are against), women in need of reproductive care, and poor people who are being attacked by destroying programs that benefit them. This may require us to create a new version of the underground railroad for immigrants, transpeople, women in need of reproductive care, as well as protestors who are being targeted by the federal government.

Interestingly, by doing this we also find ourselves working for economic justice and fighting for democracy. So, in the end, my point to you is that the liberation theologians of a generation ago were right. God, Jesus, and the Spirit have a preferential option for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed and therefore if we want to know what we are called to do in the midst of fascism—it is the same as always—to find our way into solidarity with the struggle of the poor, marginalized and oppressed. Because it is in this struggle that we will find our life and our faith.

Finally, when the church or religion we have isn’t working, we are called to create a new one. In the final pages of Octavia Butler’s cautionary tale The Parable of the Sower, Lauren Olamina and her Earthseed community are burying their dead and looking for a place to settle. Lauren reminds them that, despite the perils that surround them—whether that be slavery, police violence, drugs, disease, fascist leaders, or other—there is a constant need to grow and build anew. Butler’s concept of Earthseed religion signifies the commitment to radically rebuilding a new society through the lens of solidarity and anti-fascism. As we stare down a resounding global Fascist wave of death, it is imperative that we plant new seeds and build new communities.

[i] Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, Four Walls Eight Windows: 1993.

[ii] Langston Hughes, quoted in Proceedings: Third US Congress against War and Fascism (New York: American League against War and Fascism, 1936).

[iii] The Anti-Fascism Reader, ed. Bill V. Mullen & Christopher Vials, Verso Books: 2020.

[iv] Jeanelle K. Hope & Bill V. Mullen, The Black Anti-Fascist Tradition, Haymarket Books: 2023.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Victoria Barnett, “The Rise and Fall of the Confessing Church,” lecture at the University of Virginia, February 21, 2008.

[vii] W.E.B. DuBois, “The Souls of White Folks,” Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, 1920.

[viii] Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Crown: 2017.

[ix] Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution, Oxford Press: 2008.