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This work studies White Christian Nationalism (henceforth, WChN) from the katechontic perspective, arguing that, when seen in this light, the movement betrays itself as both anti-Christian and anti-democratic. When studied from the perspective of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, WChN can be described as an attempt to create an empire, that is, a force that yearns for eternity, a political power that is reluctant to embrace the necessary contingent character of all human works, an idea defended by both Christianity and democracy.
The katechon refers to Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, wherein the apostle is describing the end of times and Christ’s return (παρουσία). According to Paul, Christ’s triumphal return is currently being delayed by a withholding power, the katechon (τὸ κατέχον), the removal of which will unleash the manifestation of the Lawless one (ὁ ἄνομος) who will sit on God’s throne pretending to be Him, deceiving many, and will finally be destroyed by Jesus, “with the brightness of His coming” (2 Thess 2:8). The kathechon is, from this perspective, the force keeping the world spinning, delaying the end of time either as a self-assuring force that stubbornly resists its removal, or as a pious force deferring the final time so as to let as many human beings as possible to convert (cf. Rev 7:1-8). Be as it may, the katechontic time is characterized, as Massimo Cacciari observes, by a paradoxical character: on the one hand, as a withholding force, the katechon insists on its own immutability, while, on the other, it is doomed to be removed at the end of times, accepting its provisional character. Given this theological background, a political empire appears as the paradigm of the katechontic force, insofar as it embodies the ultimate human endeavor to create an epoch without end, as we see, for instance, in Adolf Hitler’s assertion, on September 5, 1934, that the Third Reich would see no end for a thousand years, or Virgil’s famous imperium sine fine.
White Christian Nationalism’s katechontic character can be described in term’s of Eric Voegelin’s critique of the gnostic immanent eschatology, that is to say, the effort to turn the soteriological event into a worldly epic. While for Christianity salvation is clearly unattainable here and now, and, more importantly, it is a product of grace rather than the outcome of human achievement, WChN is a political project aiming to gain enough power so as to become an irresistible force the interests of which are to dominate the political life of the American society at large. The movement, moreover, displays an antagonistic logic that can be traced—as it is described, for instance, in Nancy MacLean’s book, Democracy in Chains—as early as Brown v. Board of Education (1952-1954), being framed as the racial battle that has dominated American politics since its inception. Closely related to this reaction, WChN shares bed today with the most radicalized, anti-democratic, version of capitalism, namely, neoliberalism, understood not as an economic theory but, as Adam Kotsko suggests in Neoliberalism’s Demons, as “a complete way of life and a holistic worldview, in a way that previous models of capitalism did not.” With these elements put together, WChN emerges as a messianic attempt to build an everlasting empire here and now, immanentizing salvation, bringing it down to earth as a political, economic, and social project understood as the cosmic battle between good and evil.
In order to illustrate this idea, I turn to two descriptions of theopolitical empires: Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Satan in Goray, which beautifully paints the destruction that self-appointed messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, caused in a once peaceful and harmonic Polish community; and the monumental critique that Fyodor Dostoevsky makes to Christendom in Ivan Karamazov’s story of the Great Inquisitor. This final section uses literature as a mirror in order to fully uncover WChN’s imperial impetus, as well as the many perils that its victory would suppose to America and, consequently, to the world.