This paper applies the concept of late fascism, specifically the notion of “fascist freedom” in the work of Alberto Toscano, to both illuminate and analyze the divergent, theologically-charged concept of freedom presently organizing right wing evangelicalism in America. This evangelical concept is a paradox of “freedom”. Evangelicals are deeply entrenched in a material political and economic coalition pursuing authoritarian rule while championing “anti-woke” retrenchment as liberation. How do evangelicals go on about "freedom" while ensuring its demise?
This paper argues evangelical studies gains significant purchasing power on the ability to name and resist this paradoxical state through engaging Toscano’s account of fascism. Specifically, Toscano defines “fascist freedom” as a freedom “sustained by the blurring of the borders between liberal conceptions of freedom and individualism (as market freedom, freedom to own, freedom from interference with individual sovereignty) and what we could term fascist visions of freedom (freedom to dominate, to rule) – both drawn to aggressive imaginaries of competition or ‘fitness’ and a repulsion for solidarity, care, vulnerability.” It applies this definition to generate analysis on the rhetoric of freedom in public evangelicals Charlie Kirk and regime loyalist Jeff Bezos. Both speak of "freedom from" while practicing a freedom "to rule."
In offering this analysis, this paper seeks to demonstrate the offer of a decidedly materialist approach to evangelical studies charged by theological awareness. This analysis is meant to contribute to the ongoing divergence in the field itself. Specifically, it contributes to the ongoing debate regarding defining evangelicalism according to a set of theological beliefs or through a scheme socio-economic and cultural phenomena. This divide was named and illustrated brilliantly in Matthew Avery Sutton’s “Redefining the History and Historiography on American Evangelicalism in the Era of the Religious Right.” This paper contributes to that ongoing debate through the consideration of accounts of fascism and their offer to evangelical studies while retaining a commitment to the theological and existential element of lived faithfulness.
And so, this paper both applies Toscano’s “fascist freedom” to right-wing evangelicalism in America and argues this application generates a different set of questions that provokes the gridlock between competing historiographical schools in evangelical studies. Instead of asking after theological beliefs alone, it considers how material considerations of freedom come to define the extent to which theological beliefs are determined by politics but also delimited by them through suspended eschatologies. Questions of this sort on the nature of “freedom” and evangelical theo-politics not only illuminate the theological disorientation of freedom in evangelicalism, but also provoke the field of evangelical studies to consider the latent moral responsibility and formation inherent to the guild’s accounting of evangelicalism. This existential reality demands theological responsibility.
The popular invocations of “christofascism” and even “fascism” are too thin to generate the responsible action our present moment demands. Evangelical studies can offer a thicker account of evangelicalism that meets the practical needs of the moment.
In conclusion, this paper names the need for serious academic application of evolved forms of fascism on the study of evangelicalism. It sketches the possibility of this application through a consideration of the concept of fascist freedom applied to right-wind ascendant evangelicalism through analysis of Charlie Kirk and Jeff Bezos. In this offer, this paper is suggests that evangelical studies recognize the moral responsibility and formative power of its own accounts of evangelicalism. These accounts can become a site of resistance and a source of Christian reflection for the present time.
Quote found in Toscano, Alberto. Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis. 1st edition. London New York, NY: Verso Books, 2023. 94.
This paper applies the concepts of "late fascism" and "fascist freedom" in the work of Alberto Toscano to consider the paradoxical vision of freedom animating ascendant ethno-nationalist evangelicals. This application generates an analysis of freedom rhetoric in public evangelicals like Charlie Kirk. On this basis, the paper demonstrates how thicker accounts of fascism indeed offer purchasing power for not only categorizing popular evangelical support for authoritarian political coalitions, but also generating questions that provoke and imagine resistance against authoritarianism.