Religious Totalitarianism and Hypocrisy Theme Analysis

Following up 1985’s A Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments depicts the last days of Gilead, a dystopian society that has replaced the United States in the near future. Gilead is a theocratic regime, meaning that its government and its religion are intertwined at every level, and the rulers believe that their authority comes from God himself. Thus, the ruthless oppression and terrible violence it inflicts are all done in the name of God, using pieces of the Bible or other religious teachings as its justification. While the totalitarian government’s actions may seem extreme, Atwood draws each brutality from actual historical events, crafting Gilead into a disturbing warning of the possibilities of theocratic governments and the abuse of religious power. While the novel does not argue that all religion is inherently bad, it demonstrates the power and potential of religious abuse already realized throughout history.

Originally established as a “Puritan theocracy,” Gilead’s power structures are justified through particular passages from the Bible, demonstrating how religion can be employed to establish and uphold totalitarian systems. Although very few individuals are allowed to read it, Gilead’s leaders hold the Bible as their source of authority and power—the only Bibles are kept “in the darkness of their locked boxes, glowing with arcane energy,” suggesting that Gilead’s general citizenry ascribe a mythical sense of power to them in their minds. This increases the power of Gilead’s leadership, since they can argue that any dissension is a betrayal of not just Gilead, but God, and thus a threat to the dissenter’s mortal soul. As they preach it, obedience to God is the same as obedience to the government. Aiming to subjugate women, the men of Gilead base their marital systems almost entirely on a brief description of Abraham’s life in the Old Testament, where he he has complete power over his wife, and when she could not bear him a child, has sex with her handmaid as well to produce an offspring. By codifying this one instance into law and creating a class of Handmaids who are forced to bear men’s children, Gilead’s male leaders are able to enforce and justify a regressive view of marriage and gender that benefits themselves at the expense of women. Although Canada exists as a democratic state and opposes all of Gilead’s ideals, Gilead’s leadership indoctrinates its citizens to believe that Canada is morally bankrupt, equating them with Sodom, a city that God smites in the Old Testament as punishment for their wickedness. By teaching and reinforcing the belief that the outside world is sinful and the object of God’s wrath, Gilead’s leadership strengthen their grip over their own citizens, who want to live virtuous lives and thus fear the corruption of the outside world.

However, the novel clearly argues that Gilead’s understanding of the biblical God is misconstrued and that religious hypocrisy is rampant within Gilead’s leadership, suggesting that such a totalitarian regime built on religion is abusing that religion and bastardizing it, rather than embodying it as it was meant to be practiced. The narrative argues that Gilead’s leadership only utilizes some of the Bible and ignores much of it. When Becka, a young woman who is training for a celibate, administrative role called an Aunt, is finally allowed to read the Bible for herself, she discovers that the “Gilead kind of God”—an overwhelming masculine and powerful God—does not fit with the idea of God written about in much of the Bible. Although she cannot admit this publicly, Becka warns her friend Agnes that the Bible “does not say what they say it says” and that after reading the Bible oneself, one can either “believe in Gilead or […] believe in God, but not both,” arguing that Gilead’s oppressive vision of God and the Bible’s description of God are mutually exclusive. Despite the fact that Gilead claims to be a bastion of moral purity, the majority of its leadership are disturbingly criminal and predatory. Many of them murder and bribe others to increase their power, and prominent figures use their power to sexually abuse and even murder children and teenage girls. Although Agnes once believed in Gilead’s righteous cause, as she learns about the widespread and grotesque crimes at the highest levels of government, she realizes that “Gilead is rotten,” suggesting that it is not the bastion of biblical or moral principle that it claims to be.

Although Gilead employs bits of the Bible, Atwood goes out of her way to avoid making Christianity the prime target of the novel’s social commentary, suggesting that though organized religion can be abused and made a vessel of totalitarianism, it is not in itself the root cause of such corruption, but merely a potentially dangerous tool. Along with never explicitly mentioning Christianity itself—rather, Gilead is recognized as a country of “religious fanatics” and its religion is referred to as “the faith of Gilead”—Gilead is violently opposed to other Christian groups such as Catholics, Quakers, and Mormons, placing them in the same camp as secular Canada. This suggests that Atwood is not trying to warn of the evils of Christianity as a whole, but the extremists and abusers of it. This is reinforced by the fact that Becka and Agnes see the evil of Gilead but maintain their faith in the biblical God. Although realizing how corrupt and wretched Gilead is challenges their belief, they both ultimately choose to maintain their religious faith, even after Agnes escapes from Gilead. Although Gilead uses the Bible and certainly parallels aspects of Christian fundamentalism, the narrative’s cautious and nuanced handling of religion suggests that the novel is not condemning religion or even Christianity at large, but warning against its integration into government to justify totalitarian rule, as has been seen numerous times throughout history such as the New England Puritans (enactors of the Salem Witch Trials) in the late 1600s or the Caliphate that ruled the Middle East and territory in Europe, Africa, and Asia for 600 years following the Prophet Muhammad’s death.