Summary: This article explores the troubling alignment of segments of Christianity with authoritarian and fascist regimes during the late Age of Separation, revealing a stark contradiction between the radical, nonviolent teachings of Jesus and the actions of many churches and believers. From Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain to military dictatorships in Latin America and evangelical support for Donald Trump in the United States, the article traces how fear, cultural identity, and the pursuit of power led many Christians to betray the heart of their own faith. It also highlights the irony of antisemitic sentiments within a religion founded by a Jew, and contrasts these betrayals with the courageous actions of Christians who upheld justice, compassion, and resistance to empire. The article ultimately calls for a return to the life-affirming core of Christianity as a path of healing in a time of social and ecological regeneration.
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When the Cross Backs the Sword: Christianity and the Rise of Authoritarianism in the Late Age of Separation
By Jorrit van der Meer
A faith turned upside down
There is an enduring paradox in the history of Christianity. At its heart stands a figure who preached love for one’s enemies, nonviolence, care for the poor, and radical inclusion. And yet, again and again throughout history, powerful segments of the Christian church and its followers have aligned themselves with oppressive regimes and authoritarian rulers. In the late Age of Separation—a time marked by deep social fragmentation, ecological breakdown, and the unraveling of old certainties—this contradiction became particularly stark.
As fear, resentment, and longing for control gripped many societies, certain Christian groups found comfort not in the vulnerable love that Jesus embodied, but in strongmen who promised order. They offered their allegiance not to the suffering Christ, but to the Caesars of their day. This alignment reached from the pulpits of the United States to the cathedrals of Europe and the village chapels of Latin America. It was a betrayal of both the ethical core of the faith and of the very identity of Jesus himself.
What Jesus actually said and did
The Jesus of the Testaments lived under occupation. He was a Jew from a marginal province on the edge of the Roman Empire, and his teachings directly challenged both religious orthodoxy and imperial power. He healed on the Sabbath. He ate with the outcast. He preached a kingdom not of domination but of service. He overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple—not just an act of anger, but a direct confrontation with the collusion between religion and empire.
His words were radical. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. The meek shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the peacemakers. He called out hypocrisy and refused to play by the power games of his time. His crucifixion was not simply a spiritual drama—it was a political execution by an occupying force, enabled by local collaborators.
To follow this Jesus is to stand with the oppressed, not the oppressor. To resist empire, not sanctify it.
From the margins to the throne
Yet within a few centuries of his death, Jesus’s message was institutionalized. The early church, once persecuted by Rome, became aligned with it. With Emperor Constantine’s conversion and the Edict of Milan in the 4th century, Christianity transformed from a movement of the margins into a religion of the empire.
This shift changed everything. Hierarchy replaced horizontal fellowship. The sword of the empire was baptized. Jesus the rebel teacher was reimagined as a cosmic ruler. Theology was shaped to justify imperial expansion, colonial conquest, and rigid control. The seeds of later betrayals were already being sown.
The 20th century: cross and swastika
In the 20th century, as fascist ideologies spread across Europe, many churches once again chose empire over Christ. In Nazi Germany, a significant portion of Protestant churches aligned themselves with Hitler’s regime. The “German Christian” movement sought to reconcile Christianity with Aryan nationalism, removing Hebrew texts from the Bible and portraying Jesus as a heroic, anti-Jewish figure—a grotesque distortion, considering that Jesus was himself a Jew.
Catholic leadership in Germany remained largely silent, with only a few voices speaking out. In Spain, the Catholic Church openly supported Franco’s fascist regime, blessing his troops as they carried out purges and repression. In Italy, the Lateran Accords between Mussolini and the Vatican secured the Church’s institutional power while enabling the rise of fascism.
Across Latin America, during the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s, segments of the Church provided cover or justification for regimes engaged in torture, disappearance, and murder. Priests and nuns who stood with the poor were threatened, exiled, or killed. Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated while saying Mass after he spoke out against the violence.
Jesus and the authoritarian right in the United States
Perhaps the clearest example of this betrayal in the early 21st century came from the United States. Large segments of the white evangelical church became fervent supporters of Donald Trump—a figure whose personal life, public rhetoric, and policies stood in direct contradiction to the ethical core of the Gospels.
He mocked the weak, insulted enemies, praised violence, and built power on the back of division and resentment. He demonized immigrants, dismissed the poor, and cozied up to dictators. And yet, many pastors declared him God’s chosen. Prophets proclaimed him a modern-day King Cyrus, sent to restore America’s Christian greatness. Churches flew flags bearing his name. Christian symbols appeared beside nooses and Confederate flags at political rallies. And when his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election, some carried crosses alongside the gallows.
This was not Christianity as lived by Jesus. It was Christianity as political identity, stripped of its heart, mobilized to defend privilege and resist change. For many, especially white Christians in the US, the faith became less about following Christ and more about preserving a cultural order that was rapidly fading.
A betrayal of Jewish roots
Perhaps the most bitter irony in all of this is that Jesus was—and remained until his death—a Jew. His teachings were deeply rooted in Jewish prophetic tradition, drawing from texts that called for justice, mercy, and humility. To support antisemitic regimes while claiming loyalty to Jesus is to cut the faith from its roots.
And yet, time and again, Christians did exactly that. In Nazi Germany. In medieval Europe. In modern far-right movements. Even in Christian Zionism—a movement that proclaims support for Israel while advancing apocalyptic theology that ultimately erases or condemns Jews—there is a transactional logic rather than genuine solidarity. The Jewishness of Jesus, and the deep ethical lineage he drew from, was often erased or weaponized.
The faithful remnant
And yet, alongside this long history of complicity, there have always been those who resisted.
Christians who remembered that to follow Jesus is to break bread with the enemy, to wash the feet of the poor, to resist empire without taking up its tools. Theologians of liberation in Latin America. The confessing church in Germany. The civil rights movement in the US, rooted in Black church traditions. Quakers who stood for peace. Monks who opened their monasteries to refugees. Activists who occupied detention centers and border walls in Christ’s name.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dorothy Day. Óscar Romero. Martin Luther King Jr. These were Christians too—perhaps closer to the heart of the faith than those who sat in gilded halls blessing authoritarian power.
What we must remember
The Christian tradition carries a dual legacy. One strand reaches toward empire, hierarchy, and domination. The other reaches toward justice, mercy, and love. In the late Age of Separation, many chose the former—out of fear, habit, or thirst for power. But the future, if it is to be a future at all, will be built on the latter.
In the Age of Regeneration, faith is finding its roots again. Not in triumphalism or exclusion, but in the radical tenderness of a man who healed the sick, lifted the poor, and told his followers to put away the sword.
If Christianity is to have a place in the world to come, it will be because it remembered what it was always meant to be.
Jorrit van der Meer is a Christian writer and independent scholar with a deep interest in the history and evolution of Christianity. His work explores how the faith has been shaped by the cultures, empires, and historical moments it has lived through—and how, despite distortions, its core message of love and justice continues to call us home. He lives in the Meuse-Rhine watershed of the Low Countries, where he studies early Christian texts, walks forest paths, and reflects on the role of faith in a changing world.