From “Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies” by David P. Gushee
Orban Becomes a Global Christian Superstar
Viktor Orban has become a model, even a hero, of the US America right. New York Times writer Elisabeth Zerofsky reports that there is no more influential figure abroad in influencing the direction and the strategy of the American right, and her reporting shows exactly how many conservatives are making the pilgrimage to Budapest. Fox News start Tucker Carlson visited Orban in Budapest in 2021, spending a week celebrating him on his influential evening program. This unprecedented step by Carlson offered a major boost in Orban’s visibility among American conservatives.
In her October 2021 piece, Zerofsky describes her talks with celebrated Christian conservative Rod Drreher, with whom she visited while he was being hosted in Budapest on a Danube Institute fellowship. In a piece posted ten months later, Andrew Marantz interviewed Dreher, who was still in Budapest and attending the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference of May 2022, a CPAC event being hosted in Europe for the first time ever. Marantz quotes Dreher as saying that what the Republican Party needs now is “a leader with Orban’s vision,” a new “American Orbanism.” We also learn the startling news that Dreher is so smitten that he is considering relocating permanently to Budapest, where he has been offered a job by the government-funded Danube Institute. Says Dreher: “There are many things that the Americans here want to learn from the Hungarians. We’re going to keep our heritage for ourselves, our Christian heritage, our ethnic heritage…that’s what I think they want to say but can’t say, and so they point to someone who can say it.” Marantz concludes: “Dreher has completed his transition from aspiring ascetic to partisan booster.”