A Twisted Understanding of Traditional Roles

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/21/fascism-women-homemaker-trad-wife

I won't deny there are Neo-Nazis within the ranks of Trumpism and there are ugly currents at work within some Christian circles that are able to tap into various cultural traditions and gain traction.

That said, this sort of article not only angers me, it's irresponsible. Apparently, a lot of married mothers in the 1950's and 1960's were closet Nazis? What about the Amish? They certainly qualify as traditional housewives. Are they Nazis too?

Even today there are lots of stay-at-home wives and married couples that adhere to traditional family structures and yet aren't caught up in any of this political business - let alone qualify as fascists.

And this would completely confound the author of the essay - there are some who live this 'traditional' (not 'trad') way out of conviction. It has nothing to do with nation or nationalism, but a submission to New Testament teaching. This entails a rejection of Enlightenment Liberalism as well as the Neo-Fascism taking root in some right-wing and Christian Right circles.

But thanks to reporting like this, everyone traditional family is assumed (by some ignorant readers) to be associated with this kind of Far Right ideology.

Further it turns all husbands in such relationships into potential abusers, assumed tyrants, and misogynists.

Once again, look at the Anabaptist community. Like other conservative Christians, the wives submit to their husbands and yet this has nothing to do with the social order as their communities traditionally do not even vote or participate in politics. Therefore, something else must be motivating their ethics and this behaviour. As such, the assumed thesis of the Guardian piece is in error as it paints with too broad a brush.

I take great umbrage at the suggestion that my Christian-ordered family somehow turns my wife into a state resource and that we must therefore harbour anti-immigrant views. The only thing that's clear to me is that Matei herself lives in a tiny little box and has restricted herself to thoughts and reflections of matching calibre.

There's no doubt that the Christian Right is flirting with fascism and the confusion of Churchly identity with that of nation falls into this pattern, but responsible reporting demands (at the very least the suggestion) that some traditional families and some Christians who have the same traditional appearance and ethos are exempt from these charges and may in fact repudiate the values of the Christian Right. In the case of the Far Right, their views of marriage and family represent a distortion because they have cast these questions in nationalist and economic terms. Thus, their motivations are different or at best mixed.

And in other instances there's simply false information and the conflation of different cultural forces and motivations - which is sometimes reducible to profit. Is the single-income paradigm viable in 2025? Well, certainly not in the same way it was in 1955. However, for those pursuing this course, it's not a matter of wistful romanticised dreams of a past golden age - which the 1950's were not. Rather, it's a conviction that has admittedly become more difficult in the industrial age, and is an additional challenge when most of the Church has sold out on this issue - but it's not impossible. It means sacrifice, and so while we choose this path of struggle, we garner the additional privilege of being labelled ultra-right Neo-Nazis - which is all the more ironic since we repudiate the Christian Right, Trumpism, and just about everything the modern GOP and American Evangelicalism stand for.

The one positive was the insight that in some respects it's hypocritical for anti-feminists to market themselves and monetize their domesticity. I've always thought the same and would extend that to the likes of Phyllis Schlafly or someone like Michelle Bachmann. They're lipstick feminists fighting misandrist feminism - but they're still feminists.

Overall, the article demonstrates not just the divide, but the gulf or chasm between Christian and unbelieving thought. The confusion has entered thanks to sacralist ideology which has corrupted and sown chaos within the Church for centuries. And it has wreaked havoc on the Church's testimony vis-a'-vis the world. Trumpism is also wreaking havoc within the Church because the groundwork was laid for it decades earlier by false teachers who twisted Scripture and conflated God's Kingdom with America or sometimes the larger (and equally nebulous) concept of Western 'Christendom'.

Now, the confusion has spawned various permutations and it's a daunting task for anyone wishing to wade through all this or to parse all the different nuances that have emerged. I truly pity young Christian couples struggling to find their place. It's sad that Evangelical leaders can distort the Scriptures and manipulate sound doctrine and ethics into the service of twisted ideology. And worse, you have so many Christians who oppose it - not on the basis of Scripture but by adopting the values and ideology of the world.