Scott Coley – Ministers of Propaganda [Feature Review]

Mapping the Path to Authoritarianism

A Feature Review of

Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, and the Ideology of the Religious Right
Scott M. Coley

Hardback: Eerdmans, 2024
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Reviewed by Maria L. Henderson

The first time I used the term “evangelical” to refer to something I felt part of, I was on my way to a college conference. As the weekend progressed, I found myself bristling at random anti-Catholic and patriarchal comments from the main speaker, but also drawn by the invitation to discover a relationship with Jesus. That tug-of-war between repulsion at some of the cultural manifestations associated with evangelicalism and attraction to the life-giving kernel of faith has persisted over the past four decades. Scott M. Coley’s Ministers of Propaganda may not resolve my internal conflict, but it does present an insightful diagnosis of “American evangelicalism’s social and intellectual infirmities” (2), and his hints at an alternative approach remind me that there is another story to be told besides the familiar collusion of evangelicalism and right-wing politics.

Coley is a philosopher, and though he draws on the works of sociologists and historians throughout the book, he is primarily interested in the way patterns of thought and practice operate in the evangelical subculture, especially as theology has merged with politics. He defines ideology as a feedback loop between beliefs and social practices, each reinforcing the other, supported by “propaganda that manipulates political, intellectual, or religious ideals in order to preempt dissent” (2). He offers the classic example of antebellum slaveholders appealing to their “liberty” to hold slaves, while denying liberty to the human beings they enslaved and undercutting the possibility of appealing to liberty as a reason to abolish slavery. Coley proposes an understanding of how ideology and propaganda interact to justify existing social hierarchies, supported by legitimizing narratives and “motivated reasoning” that makes weak arguments and prooftexts believable because people want to believe them. “Finally propaganda insulates our legitimizing narratives from arguments against the established hierarchy by manipulating the ideals on which opposing arguments are based”(8). What unfolds is a detailed account of the way the echo chamber develops around various conservative social positions, “biblical” arguments raised to support them, the institutions built by culture warriors and the inexorable slide of the whole system towards authoritarian politics. Through chapters on gender hierarchy, racism and creationism, Coley builds his case that the religious right uses Christian theology to “legitimize social hierarchies that assign power and privilege to white evangelical men at every level of human society: marriage, church, political community, and so on” (189-90). 

Weaving through the book’s exploration of evangelical arguments is the questionable practice of prooftexting, creating theological narratives out of “dubious interpretations of isolated passages of Scripture” (4). The paradigmatic example of this is the use of Genesis 9, the “curse of Canaan” or “curse of Ham” initially to support race-based chattel slavery in the United States. The narrative of a divinely cursed underclass connects antebellum defenders of slavery to twentieth-century patriarchy and even shows up in creationist museum displays. Coley hints at alternative interpretations and hermenuetical approaches to these questions in order to point out that disagreeing with the conclusions of the prooftexters does not constitute an abandonment of Scriptural authority. Under these claims, he reveals an unspoken commitment to “a theological paradigm that places authority and submission at the center of Christian faith and practice” (40).

When he turns to the issue of white supremacy and racism, Coley identifies the popular evangelical appeal to colorblindness as yet another piece of propaganda, resting on the idea that America is a meritocracy where people are rewarded for their own efforts and ignorance of the way racialized laws like redlining helped build the white middle class. In the context of existing inequalities that are the legacy of past unjust legal structures, insisting that policies should be colorblind “invokes the ideal of racial equality in service to a social and political agenda that perpetuates racial inequality” (69). While attitudes like colorblindness are often approached as a psychological defense which allows the individual to claim they are not racist, Coley explores the implicit racism logically implied by beliefs embraced by evangelicals. Given the wealth gap between white and Black families, most of which can be attributed to unfair housing policies of the mid-twentieth century, “the claim that wealth in our society is allocated on the basis of merit implies that the median white family deserves $161,000 more wealth than the median Black family” (76), which in turn implies that the average white family is somehow superior. This is not a conscious choice to be prejudiced, but the logical outcome of believing that Americans have what they have or don’t have on the basis of merit alone. Claims about colorblindness and meritocracy keep the racial disparities in wealth (and so many other areas) out of sight, allowing white evangelicals to disavow “white supremacy while preserving the racial stratification engendered by generation of white supremacist belief and practice” (79). 
 

A growing chorus of authors have attempted to explain how evangelicals fell into the moral incoherence of supporting Christian nationalism. Ministers of Propaganda presents a cogent argument that the ideology of the religious right, which for four or five decades has presented itself as evangelical or simply “Christian” theology, is really no such thing. For those of us who have wondered how this ideology got mixed into the faith, there is some relief in identifying the logical errors, straw man arguments and general obfuscation surrounding the attempt to maintain or reassert the dominance of white male Christians in American society. Coley is less thorough in arguing for an alternative. He gestures broadly toward more nuanced readings of the Bible, and suggests rather than proves that justice is a more faithful central theme than authority. I’m happy to go along with him, because those interpretations have been part of my educational and church experiences. But I wonder, who does he want to convince, or at least help, with this book? Coley states his belief that much of the current trend toward deconstruction is “an effort to decode propaganda that’s embedded in the ideology of the religious right” (3). In demonstrating how so-called “biblical” viewpoints on gender, race and science are not actually derived from a holistic approach to the Bible, but rather rest on commitments to a particular social order, Coley is attempting to carve out some breathing room between a Christian identity and the growing authoritarianism of the right. I struggled with a growing discomfort that the “evangelicals” he cites represent the most fundamentalist tendencies of the movement. It would not be hard to point to churches and even denominations that don’t adhere to the absolutism of many of the figures he discusses.  And yet, I suspect that even in these non-fundamentalist spaces, there is a blindness to issues of justice and a willingness to accept the status quo. Like any other American institution, the church is part of a history built on genocide and slavery, and it’s not entirely clear that we have the moral or spiritual resources to fully face that history. Coley’s book unmasks the most extreme forms of denial, and his critiques of the philosophical errors plaguing that extreme are instructive. The problem of reconstruction remains.  Having pulled apart the false ideology embedded in conservative theology, he leaves us with hints at a reading of scripture that centers justice, and a way of life that serves the interests of the marginalized. Whether enough people find places to do that within the tent of evangelicalism (or Christianity for that matter) will depend on how we learn to confront difficult truths and orient the church toward service rather than self-preservation.

Maria Henderson

Maria L. Henderson is a writer and spiritual director based in Santa Barbara, California. She is trained to lead others through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and is currently working on a D.Min. focusing on the spiritual formation of White Christians for the work of pursuing racial justice. She writes at mariahenderson.substack.com.

 

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