When I was 17 years old, I acquired my first position as a simple supermarket shop assistant. I was excited about the prospect of earning a wage but equally naive about the dynamics of the workplace.
One day — early in my employment — I was stacking Cornflakes onto the shelves when I became aware that someone was standing behind me. I turned around to see the manager of the supermarket.
Without warning, he stepped right into my personal space and leaned in so close that I could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath.
“Who’s your boss?” Spat the manager.
“Umm… you are,” I said, more than a little confused by the question.
“That’s right,” He said, “Now, respect me!”
Then he simply walked off.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had just had my first encounter with an authoritarian leader. I want to tell you that his bizarre behavior was an aberration among leaders, but that would be untrue.
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Respect Me!
Authoritarian leadership is characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and the expectation of unwavering loyalty, submission, and obedience from its subordinates.
If I walked up to someone on the street and asked them randomly to name an infamous authoritarian leader who fits this bill, I suspect that nine times out of 10, they would say, “Hitler,” and understandably so.
Indeed, in the aftermath of the war, the world was left with a lingering question: How could the Germans have fallen for Hitler? Germany as a society was advanced, intellectual, and civilized.
The tools of the trade
According to Brian McClaren in his book, ‘The Second Pandemic: Authoritarianism and Your Future,’ the tools that authoritarian leaders use to manipulate and control their followers are remarkably uniform. It turns out that authoritarian rulers of entire nations use the same tools as authoritarian leaders in workplaces, churches, families, and — of course — supermarkets.
But today, I want to focus specifically on how authoritarian leadership is particularly dangerous when mixed with religious authority for a reason that will become evident as we go on.
Before we get to that, let’s take a look at the common weapons that you’ll find in the arsenal of an authoritarian leader:
Number 1: Fear
Nothing brings people together like a common enemy. That is why authoritarians rely upon the fear of a real or concocted enemy to mobilize and unite people around their cause.
Typically, authoritarian leaders like to target an outsider or an internal minority group — thoroughly exaggerating the actual threat from those groups. You don’t have to be a genius to work out how Hitler did this.
But the best kind of enemy for an authoritarian leader is an imaginary one because they pose no real threat. Nobody can point to them as evidence to contradict what authoritarians say about them if they don’t exist.
Number 2: Division
Authoritarians use division to split communities or societies into an in-group and out-group. Anyone who fails to show absolute loyalty to the authoritarian leader, his party, and administration is quickly expelled from the in-group.
No internal critique is allowed.
Those on the inside are expected to show a suitable level of hostility towards both the stated enemy of the authoritarian leader as well as those not part of the in-group. If not, they themselves could find themselves banished to the out-group.
Therefore, division is not a flaw of authoritarianism; it is an essential feature and provides a constant test of in-group loyalty.
Number 3: Distortion or Distraction from the Truth
Authoritarian leaders know that the truth will set people free. Consequently, they are experts at intentionally disseminating and circulating gross misinformation to keep the in-group united, mobilized, and thoroughly invested in their cause.
We call this misinformation propaganda, and we know exactly how Hitler used it. The scary thing is, I’ll bet you can think of modern Western leaders who employed similar tactics to sure up their own leadership, except they call it “fake news.”
Number 4: Suppression of Opposition
Finally, authoritarians suppress dissent. They call a free press the enemy of the people. They attack, jail, or kill journalists. They oppose education that teaches critical thinking, degrade confidence in experts, and poison or imprison rivals. They threaten peaceful protest and public dissent with violence or death. They often exaggerate looting and violence so that protestors can be characterized as lawless mobs who defy “law and order.”
Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash
How this plays out in the church
We have seen how entire nations can fall prey to the clutches of an authoritarian leader. Now imagine if the person in a position of authority over you adds weight to that authority by evoking the name of God. Such a person has insulated themselves further from critique by adding an additional layer of spiritual and moral authority. After all, how can you undermine God’s chosen?
What is more troubling is that when we look at the list of tools that authoritarian leaders use, we find those exact same tools in the hands of many church leaders.
Fear.
Division.
Distortion of truth.
Suppression of opposition.
Before you accuse me of going overboard, I will add here that there are also many good, noble, and trustworthy church leaders. I am not saying that all — -or even most — Church leaders are dictators, but I am suggesting that authoritarian leaders exist within church structures, and they do use the very same strategies used by Hitler himself. Let’s take a look at how that plays out on the ground in churches.
The use of fear by church leaders
The authoritarian church leader uses fear as a tool to mobilize and unite people around their cause. They use fear to manage and manipulate the behavior of their adherents. They use fear to ‘win converts’ to their group. They use fear to domesticate and groom adherents so they can be deployed as compliant — or even adoring — subjects in the service of the church.
It could be the fear of hell, for example. After all, if you are repeatedly told that the threat of hell hangs over you unless you listen to and apply the preacher’s words, you are much more inclined to follow the preacher’s advice on how to escape this terrible predicament.
It might be Satan — the invisible enemy of the Christian. Or, it might even be those ‘lost’ people beyond the church walls who church leaders choose to demonize, such as racial, religious, or sexual minorities, or even those wicked liberals. It might even be a fear of not belonging; After all, belief in any kind of group is a social exercise.
The use of division by church leaders
This brings me to my next point. The authoritarian church leader also uses the tool of division. These leaders are adept at demarcating who belongs to the church ‘in-group’ and who does not. The church in-group is almost always built around the heteronormative expression of the family unit. Cultural and racial factors may also come into play.
Lines are drawn, walls are built, and are reinforced from the pulpit regularly. What is more, although it is not explicitly stated, followers are expected to demonstrate suitable contempt towards those on the outside — as a test of their loyalty to the in-group. Those who embrace the people beyond the walls to the fullest extent — in a similar way to Christ, for example — find themselves pushed to the fringes and labeled as a compromiser.
The use of distortion by church leaders
The authoritarian church leader might preach “good” sermons from the pulpit, where he skilfully exegetes a Biblical text and delivers a homiletically thought-out structure with appropriate gestures and voice modulation.
In other words, you might hear him preach and think that he’s really good at it. But the truth comes out once he is out of the pulpit. The authoritarian church leader typically lacks grace, compassion, and tenderness toward others because people are merely a means to the end of the chief goal of his ministry — which is to survive, to cling to his power and position at all costs.
Therefore, while it might seem like he preaches well, he often uses the pulpit for his own purposes, attempting to bolster his position, undercut others, and even twist biblical texts with shrewd manipulation — which he calls “interpretation” — to emphasize his authority. He is adept at digging out those obscure Old Testament texts related to authority that particularly support his ministerial position! He is a twister of the truth!
The use of suppression by church leaders
Many church leaders silence dissenting voices. At the risk of losing their power and influence, authoritarian church leaders must maintain their position as the perceived expert at all costs. They often leverage their — apparently — sophisticated knowledge of the Bible to position themselves above critique.
The last church I attended had a pastor who desperately clung to power by systematically weeding out anyone who had ever opposed him theologically, questioned his performance, or raised concerns about his leadership style. He achieved this through a concerted campaign of political maneuvering where he would stack the church board with “yes men” while simultaneously assassinating the conduct and character of his foes until they were vanquished.
This is not the kind of behavior you would expect from a ‘man of God.’ Yet, he was enabled by a group of followers who were so committed to respecting authority that they submitted themselves too fully to this leader, trusting him too much and giving him too much leeway to do whatever he wanted. Worst of all, they couldn’t even see it.
Image by Jasper Chamber on iStock
The danger of authoritarianism and church
You might think that I am overstating the danger of authoritarian leaders in the church. After all, the result of the Nazi Regime was something far more sinister and wicked than any evil resulting from authoritarian leadership in the church, right?
Perhaps.
But it is kind of hard to explain away the Crusades, for example. The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church between 1095 and 1291 intended to liberate Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Islamic rule.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reports that Hitler’s Final Solution resulted in the deaths of over six and a half million Jews. On the other hand, the Crusades resulted in the deaths of up to nine million people, according to writer and historian John M. Robertson. It’s amazing how adding the authority of God can take things to a whole other level.
Ordinary people enable authoritarian leaders
According to Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor of Psychology at The University of Manitoba, “authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves.” Of course, this is not usually intentional on the follower’s part, but the fact remains: Leaders are not leaders unless they have followers. Authoritarian leaders are enabled by ordinary people who either don’t recognize what’s going on or lack the gumption to put a stop to it.
A major reason that the child sex abuse scandal in churches was allowed to occur was that people mistakenly believed that pastors or priests were less likely to fall into moral failure. As a result, we enabled sexual abusers by simply believing that they were unlikely to offend in this way by virtue of their authority or position.
Don’t enable an authoritarian church leader.
Walk away.
Good church leaders NEVER place themselves above critique. Good church leaders NEVER invoke their own training, expertise, or superior Biblical knowledge as reasons to be trusted. Good church leaders are NEVER iron-fisted. Instead, they hold their position loosely and would be willing to lay it down at a moment’s notice.
Good church leaders do not need to use fear to control and manipulate their followers into believing certain things or behaving in certain ways that seem desirable to the leader. Good church leaders are invested in tearing down the walls of division and blurring the lines that keep people out.
Above all, good church leaders follow the example of Christ, who being in very nature God, made himself nothing, taking on the nature of a servant. And you can’t be a servant and an authoritarian at the same time.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: John Kevin on iStock
