During the 1980s, far-right white evangelicals like the Moral Majority’s late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson railed against the Soviet Union relentlessly — often applauding President Ronald Reagan for standing up to the Kremlin. But times have changed.
These days, Donald Trump, not the late Ronald Reagan, is the most influential figure in the Republican Party — and white evangelicals, journalist Anthea Butler explains in an op-ed published by MSNBC’s website on March 1, are among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most ardent admirers in the United States.
“While the world looks on in horror as Russia's invasion of Ukraine unfolds,” Butler observes in her op-ed, “one group has been praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. It turns out Putin has a fan base in America’s right-leaning evangelical politicians and pundits.”
Butler continues,
“At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, which wrapped up over the weekend, Lauren Witzke, a GOP candidate for the Senate in Delaware, said: ‘Here’s the deal. Russia is a Christian nationalist nation. They’re actually Russian Orthodox.... I identify more with Putin’s Christian values than I do with Joe Biden.”
Witzke’s praise of Putin, according to Butler, “isn’t an uncommon stance among some Republicans and white American evangelicals today” — as they have “admired Putin because of the alignment of their beliefs with his about homosexuality, authoritarianism and fealty to former President Donald Trump.” Far-right white evangelicals, Butler notes, believe that Putin’s Russia, Butler notes, “is the way America should be.”
