(RNS) — It is a very good thing that no violence has occurred this Jan. 6th as the 2024 presidential election results are certified by Congress. A peaceful transfer of power, which recognizes the legitimacy of free and fair elections regardless of the winner, is a central pillar on which democratic life is built. Four years ago, this pillar was nearly toppled by a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump who wished to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump’s supporters called the 2020 election “stolen” and were willing to “Stop the Steal” by any means necessary, including violence. But alleged (and widely disproven) voter fraud was never the real source of the supposed theft. If we take the insurrectionists’ words at the Capitol that day seriously, they viewed the election as stolen because the candidate chosen by the majority of white Christians — those the insurrectionists framed as “real Americans” — had lost.
The same conspiratorial voices who had fanned the flames of “Stop the Steal” conspiracies in 2020 were poised to do so again in 2024 should their chosen candidate (Trump) lose again. But a curious thing happened when Trump won. We heard hardly a peep about fraudulent ballots or stolen elections. Suddenly, the Make America Great Again movement seemed to trust elections again.
This peace reveals a darker truth. The right’s support for democratic institutions like elections has always been contingent. Specifically, it has been contingent upon those institutions maintaining a traditional social hierarchy.
For the past decade, large shares of white Christians have lamented the demographic and social shifts that have made them a minority in “their own country.” Trump rose to power, in part, by promising this group that he would return them to a position of power and privilege in a country they believe God intended for them to rule.
The MAGA movement has coalesced around this political theology of hierarchy, which sanctifies a social order resting on hierarchies between social groups—racial, religious, gendered and moral. Moreover, it asserts that the nation’s very survival depends on the maintenance of this hierarchical social order in which conservative white Christian men are at the top.
But one need not feel invested in all of these forms of hierarchy in order to embrace the general package Trump offers, or to feel anxious about threats to this hierarchical system in general. The MAGA movement has masterfully stoked fear that threats to any one prong of this hierarchical system augurs social collapse.
It is not surprising that this message would appeal to conservative white Christian men who stand to benefit personally from the maintenance of this hierarchy. But observers have been surprised to see that women, and some voters of color and non-Christians, are also among Trump’s most ardent supporters today. Some of these supporters may not explicitly endorse a theology of hierarchy, yet they overwhelmingly express frustration with efforts to subvert the traditional social order — DEI initiatives, wokeness, feminism, anti-racism, resistance to white Christian nationalism. Disdain for such efforts is the glue that binds the MAGA movement.
In recent years, MAGA’s leaders have also taken pains to promote a version of the theology of hierarchy that makes space for social diversity. While describing the United States as a white Protestant nation, one such leader, the avowed Christian nationalist William Wolfe, put it this way: “This is our homeland, and we welcome you on the condition of conformity.”
Put differently, the country rightfully belongs to white Christians, but racial and religious others will be tolerated as long as they accept the legitimacy of this social hierarchy and their subordinated place within it.
As we reflect on this anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, we must recognize that those who view a hierarchical social order as sacred have a complex relationship to democratic institutions and processes: They are more than happy to use them as tools to maintain these hierarchies. But when democracy produces outcomes that threaten these hierarchies, they will defend the sacred hierarchy and reject democracy as profane — illegitimate, corrupt, a tool of the devil. When democracy empowers groups they view as illegitimate, today’s right is willing to burn it all down, just as they tried to do four years ago.
So while we should be celebrating the peaceful transfer of power today, we should not be so naive as to believe this represents a new embrace of democratic norms and institutions on the right.
(Ruth Braunstein is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and the director of the Meanings of Democracy Lab. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
