Solidarity Under Attack

The Strange Alliance Between American Traditionalist Christians and the Far Right

 

Paolo Cugini

In recent decades, the United States has witnessed the strengthening of an alliance between traditionalist Christianity and formations of the political far right. This phenomenon may appear contradictory, especially considering that many of Christianity’s core teachings—such as solidarity, welcoming others, and charity—seem to stand in open contrast to positions that often reject or devalue these very principles. Nevertheless, this alliance is rooted in deep cultural, historical, and theological foundations. In the following lines, I will attempt to explain why a significant portion of American traditionalist Christians support far-right ideologies and movements that interpret solidarity in a negative light.

To understand this contemporary phenomenon, it is necessary to trace the origins of the relationship between conservative Christianity and American politics. Historian Kevin M. Kruse, in his book "One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America" (2015), argues that the link between traditional Christianity and right-wing economic policies emerged as early as the 1940s and 1950s, when businesses and religious leaders joined forces against the New Deal and the growing influence of the welfare state. According to Kruse, from these years onward, Christianity was progressively associated with the values of individualism, economic freedom, and mistrust of public intervention, all of which were seen as "threats" to individual liberty.

Anthropologist Kristin Kobes Du Mez, in "Jesus and John Wayne" (2020), shows how white American evangelicalism promoted a vision of Christianity as a bastion of conservative values—authority, order, patriotism—often in opposition to the idea of collective solidarity or social responsibility, and oriented primarily toward defending "law and order" against any form of dissent or claim to civil rights. To understand why solidarity is viewed negatively by many far-right groups, it is useful to refer to the thought of Patrick J. Deneen, professor of Political Science at Notre Dame and author of "Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future" (2025). Deneen explains how part of the American right believes that collective social projects—often associated with the term “solidarity”—have brought only dependency and inefficiency, undermining individual freedom and responsibility.

Among the most frequently cited sources by traditionalists is also the thought of Ayn Rand, although not herself a Christian. In "The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism" (2023), Rand defends the moral superiority of individualism and considers any form of forced solidarity a threat to human dignity. For Rand, solidarity imposed by the State amounts to a kind of moral slavery, depriving individuals of their autonomy and obliging them to take on the needs of others. Many American traditionalist Christian leaders have paradoxically integrated this vision into their public preaching, as highlighted by Michael Sandel in "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?" (2013).

Another decisive element is the emergence, in the postwar period, of the so-called "prosperity gospel," according to which personal and material well-being is a sign of divine blessing. According to Kate Bowler, author of "Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel" (2013), this theology has led millions of American Christians to identify individual success as God's will, devaluing all forms of institutional and public solidarity, seen as undue interference in the private relationship between God and the believer.

The Cold War played a central role in strengthening the mistrust of the traditionalist Christian world toward the idea of solidarity. In the American context, solidarity was associated with socialism or, worse, Soviet communism. As historian David W. Swartz notes in "Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism" (2012), any welfare, redistribution, or social protection project was attacked as a potential “Trojan horse” for atheist and totalitarian ideologies. This gave rise to a rhetoric that identified solidarity as a direct threat to faith and the foundational values of the nation, and at the same time as the danger of possible communist infiltration into the country.

In contemporary America, according to Robert P. Jones in "The End of White Christian America" (2016), many traditionalist Christians perceive a crisis of values, accentuated by the rise in ethnic diversity, secularization, and the loss of religion’s public centrality. In this context, the far right offers a reassuring narrative, focused on defending a cultural and religious identity perceived as threatened by outsiders, in which any form of universal solidarity is viewed with suspicion, as if hiding a threat to the traditional order. This helps explain the easy penetration into American imagination of the ideas of the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his political project to "purify" America of immigrants.

A key role is played by conservative media outlets, such as Fox News or the Christian Broadcasting Network, which promote a vision in which solidarity policies are represented as instruments of state control and moral corruption. According to sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" (2016), many traditionalist Christians identify with a narrative that sees the far right as the defender of religious and individual freedoms against the oppressive “political correctness” and “globalist ideologies” of universal solidarity.

The support of American traditionalist Christians for the far right, which devalues solidarity, is the result of a complex web of historical, theological, social, and media factors. While early Christianity placed love of neighbor and sharing at its center, contemporary American Christianity—at least in its traditionalist and politicized version—has often privileged the defense of the individual, private property, and negative liberties, perceiving public solidarity as a threat. Understanding the deep roots of this phenomenon is essential to confronting the political and social challenges of contemporary America.