Anti-Semitism Hiding In Plain View In Guise of Christian Nationalism
Anti-Semitism lives behind many facades, often including Christian nationalism, a movement that now boasts the newest extreme right speaker of the House of Representatives, a man who is second in line of succession to be president.
Christian nationalism is a worldview holding that the United States was created by and for Christians. The Washington Post conducted a survey on Jan. 26, 2021, after the attack on the Capitol by trump supporters. The survey examined similarities between Christian nationalists and QAnon followers and found that identification with QAnon, Christian nationalism, donald trump and anti-Semitism are “tightly linked.”
“Since Christian nationalism is a worldview holding that the United States was created by and for Christians, it may not be surprising that they dislike non-Christians,” the Post reported. “On average, the most ardent Christian nationalists subscribed to four of the eight anti-Semitic tropes presented. Christian nationalists were more likely to believe each individual trope but showed the strongest support for the mistaken ideas that ‘Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country’ and ‘Jews killed Jesus.’”
Some Christian nationalists hold the theory that “Trump was anointed by God to serve as the great Christian protector from those who would not just unseat the Christian majority from its privileged position in American life but would also strip Christians of their rights and liberties.”
This brings us to Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a 51-year-old lawmaker who was among the most strident supporters of the outrageous and debunked effort to show that trump lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud. Johnson had trump’s blessings when he was elected House speaker, after 22 days and 14 failed candidates.
Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a licensed pastoral counselor, host a podcast in which he frequently castigates the government against the prosecution of trump for his efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.
“A movement is underway in America today to censor, silence, and marginalize people of faith, and to erode our most fundamental rights,” said Johnson, a longtime trustee of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. “We are concerned that many in our churches today have no idea of the storm that is coming.”
In only his fourth term in the House, Johnson is the least experienced speaker in 140 years. His record blurs the supposed strong line created by the Founding Fathers between government and religion, and his views are strongly Christian and opaquely anti-Semitic.
In 2014, Johnson worked pro bono as a lawyer for Ken Ham, whose organization, “Answers in Genesis,” was described by Salon as “one of the world’s most notorious purveyors of pseudoscience.” The organization claims that the universe is 6,000 years old and that evolution, geology, archeology, physics and astronomy, are all informed by a deceptive God, “a God who tempted humankind by planting observable, verifiable evidence — things like fossils and distant stars — in order to test our loyalty…”
“Answers in Genesis” also denies climate change, calling environmentalism a “false religion.” Not surprisingly, Johnson also denies the majority scientific consensus on human-driven climate change.
Johnson once forced the Kentucky state government to pay for a Noah’s Ark theme park at Ham’s “Creation Museum” in Kentucky. In 2015, Johnson founded Freedom Guard, a non-profit legal ministry designed to assist churches and win landmark religious liberty cases across the country. Johnson joined with Ham in a lawsuit against the state of Kentucky for refusing to fund the theme park. Genesis won and the theme park gained state funds.
A strong opponent of gun control legislation, Johnson has blamed mass shootings on both teaching evolution and abortion and a rejection of the Christian definition of God.
During a 2016 sermon at the Christian Center in Shreveport, La., Johnson said that mass shootings in schools happen, “because we’ve taught a whole generation — a couple generations now — of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and [that] you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”
Johnson has called for the return of prayer in public schools and said that the framers of the constitution did not establish the separation of church and state to prevent religion from influencing government, but rather to impede the government from restricting the influence and free exercise of religion.
Then Rep. Johnson spoke at the 2022, Christian “Answers for Women Conference” in Kentucky. He referred to “an increasingly hostile culture” in the nation and how Christians need to respond.
“We all know that. We need to understand why that is, and we need to commit to do our part to confront it. The kingdom of God allows aggression,” Johnson said. “There’s nothing on Earth that is a greater threat to the principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this world than a bunch of well-equipped, well-prepared, highly motivated Christian soldiers who are charging forward with their blazing lights for the Kingdom.”
Johnson was an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly Alliance Defense Fund or ADF, a Christian advocacy group that has been described as having ambitions to “eviscerate the separation of church and state.” The ADF has been termed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Johnson has called for criminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults and has said that homosexuality is “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle” and linking it to bestiality.
“Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in 2004.
An opponent of same-sex marriage, Johnson wrote in 2004 that without a law banning same sex marriage, “There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”
Johnson has been getting the most attention as a Christian nationalist but he is one of an expanding group that often expresses ideas far to the right.
A case in point is Colorado Republican state representative and pastor Scott Bottoms. Most recently, Bottoms, suggested that Jews under attack in Israel should just turn to Jesus. The way Bottoms sees it, if the Jews would listen to him, they would become Christians and voila the solution to the Jewish problem.
Bottoms is a far right trump supporter and pastor at a mega church in Colorado Springs. He posted a segment of his sermon on the church social media page in which he prayed to Jesus to “use” the violence in Israeli as an “opportunity for people to reach out to you … for the Jewish people to realize that you’re the savior, the redeemer.”
In the 2022, Bottoms was endorsed by the El Paso County Republican Party leadership for election to the 15th House District. Bottoms defeated his Democratic Party and Libertarian Party opponents, winning 56.76 percent of the total votes cast in the district. Since 2014, no Democratic candidate has won more than 39 percent of the vote in House District 15.
In the first day of the 2023 legislative session, eight Republicans in the state House voted Bottoms for Speaker of the House. The vote was ultimately unsuccessful.
A hardcore anti-abortionist, Bottoms once said, “I will never, ever work alongside anyone that thinks that murdering babies is OK. Anybody that does not see that is immoral, ungodly, demonic, destructive. … I will never, ever, ever work with those people. That is not going to be something I compromise on. It’s not going to be something I cave on, under any circumstance.”
In the past, Bottoms has falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted fetuses. He characterized a law passed in April affirming access to abortion and contraception in Colorado as “demonic.” He described transgender people and gender-affirming care as demonic as well as critical race theory or CRT. The theory is generally taught in higher education to trace the growth of system racism in the U.S.
“Anything to do with CRT is demonic,” Bottoms said. “They’re literally trying to say something that happened, didn’t happen. Anything that starts the beginning of our country other than 1776 is a lie. That’s a blatant lie. Lying is not a God thing. There’s only one other option: Demons.”
Bottoms claimed the FBI helped in the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and that federal agents “lured” people into the Capitol building. The Republican lawmaker also said, without facts, that the country is seeing human trafficking at “the highest levels of Washington, D.C.,” adding, without evidence, that former President Bill Clinton has committed sexual crimes against children.
Bottoms is right down there with his equally unsavory GOP predecessors in the overwhelmingly Republican 15th District. Former Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt said homosexuality is a sin and compared President Barack Obama to a demon. Former Rep. Dave Williams was a supporter of trump’s unfounded claims about widespread voter fraud.
Former Rep. Douglas Bruce was censured by the Colorado legislature after he kicked a photographer for the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News during the legislature’s morning prayer.
Bottoms has been the pastor of the evangelical Church at Briargate in the Colorado Springs’ Briargate neighborhood since 1990. He has an undergraduate degree in Church Ministries from Southwestern Assemblies of God University, a private Christian school. He has a masters in Intercultural Leadership and finished up with his doctor of ministries in Intercultural Spiritual Leadership.
The university handbook at the Southwestern Assemblies of God University notes that homosexuals can be expelled. In 2016, the organization “Campus Pride” ranked the college among the worst schools in Texas for LGBT students. One of its more famous students, the legendary rock and roller, Jerry Lee Lewis, was expelled for having played a boogie-woogie rendition of “My God Is Real.”
Bottoms want to imprison teachers, counselor or administrations, anyone who encourages “a 6- or 7-year-old girl to go mutilate herself because she was kind of a tomboy at the time, I’m going to put legislation through that says that is pedophilia and you’re going to go to prison. Yeah, this is a big deal.”
Gender-affirming surgeries change or remove secondary sex characteristics but are not performed on 6- or 7-year-olds. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care recommends surgery wait until patients reach the legal age of consent. Additionally, 6- or 7-year-olds have not developed secondary sex characteristics that could to be surgically removed or modified.
Another Christian nationalist and major trump supporter, the Rev. Greg Locke, 47, said that war between Israel and Hamas could bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ. Some evangelical Christians have long believed that the return of the Jews to the land of Israel would help bring about the reemergence of the messiah.
Locke also has advertised for his annual “occult burning” event on Halloween at his Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tenn.
“We will once again be burning all things related to witchcraft and the occult. Ask the Lord to show you what’s in your home that needs to be removed. I can assure you, there are some items that must go,” he said, without specifying what might must be destroyed.
“Anyone that denies witchcraft is laughed at by actual witches,” Locke said. “Witchcraft is all around us and only foolish people who refuse truth would deny that.”
Locke posted on Instagram that the event would involve a “mass deliverance service for children.” He claimed that 95 percent of the adults he encountered “have been under attack (by witches) since they were kids.”
Locke has previously burned children’s books such as Harry Potter and Twilight because of their supposed promotion of witchcraft. During a sermon on Feb. 13, 2022, he claimed to have discovered six witches within his congregation during an exorcism and threatened to expose their names.
Locke claimed at a Jan. 23, 2022, sermon that OCD and autism “could be” a form of demonic possession. The statement was condemned by neurodivergent rights movements and the Autism Faith Network.
A non-denominational evangelical Christian, Locke has described Democratic voters as demons and told his congregation, “you ain’t seen an insurrection yet,” following the deadly, Jan. 6, 2021, uprising by trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.
Last December, Locke said he had to increase his home security after his family “was publicly threatened with death by a witchcraft practicing psycho.”
As a teenager, after multiple arrests, Locke was sent to a children’s home at the age of 15, where he converted to Christianity. He founded Global Vision Baptist Church in 2006 and split from the Independent Baptist movement and changed its name to Global Vision Bible Church.
In 2016, Locke posted a Facebook video in which he criticized changes to Target’s bathroom policy to accommodate transgender people. As of April 2022, Locke’s social media audience numbered in the millions. In September 2021, Locke was permanently suspended from Twitter, but his account was later reinstated.
Locke kept his church open through outbreaks of COVID-19, which he claimed was a “fake pandemic.” He said people who wore masks to his church would be asked to leave, and he discouraged his congregation from getting vaccinated.
Lock was at the Capitol during the January attack. He preached at the Freedom Plaza and near the Capitol steps during the riot, which he said had been instigated by antifa. Locke has been a speaker at several stops on the far right Reawaken America tour, which feature conspiracy theories about vaccines and false claims about fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
Locke has created a popular, pseudo-documentary, “Come Out In Jesus Name,” that The-Numbers.com reported grossed $973,795 at the box office in its one-day showing last month.
The film follows the religious paths of Locke, deliverance ministers Alexander and Ibelize Pagani, and YouTube preachers Isaiah Saldivar, Pastor Mike Signorelli, Vladimir Savchuck and Daniel Adams.
Alexander Pagani is an author, pastor and “Bible teacher with keen insight into the realm of the demonic, generational curses, and deliverance.” Pagani said he found religion while serving a sentence at the Rikers Island Prison Complex in New York City, for stabbing two, 17-year-old prisoners.
Saldivar claims a social media ministry that reaches 6 million to 8 million people a week. He hosts a weekly podcast called “Revival Lifestyle” and also uploads videos to his youtube channel, which he claims has 750,000 subscribers.
Savchuk, a native of Ukraine, is the lead pastor of HungryGen Church based in Pasco, Wash. He also offers free E-Courses on theology and Christian living through his online learning platform, VladSchool.
Daniel Adams is a former MMA Cage fighter who committed to Christianity in 2014. His ministry, “The Supernatural Life,” reports 947,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Georgia’s far right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, is a self-professed Christian nationalist. As is another Georgia politician, Kandiss Taylor, who lost her bid for Georgia governor in last year’s Republican primary. She came third receiving just 3.4 percent of the vote and refused to concede her loss, alleging that the election was “rigged.”
Taylor is currently the GOP chair of Georgia’s 1st congressional district.
She ran for governor on a “Jesus Guns Babies” platform, apparently referring to her Christian nationalism, her support of the 2nd Amendment and her complete opposition to abortion.
During her gubernatorial campaign, Taylor promoted the false claim that trump was denied a second term because of widespread voter fraud. She also claimed that the Founding Fathers took Native American land and destroyed Native American homes in an effort to grant Christians the right to “worship Jesus freely.”
Taylor promoted conspiracy theories about state Republican leaders being secret communists and Democrats being Satanic pedophiles. She called the Georgia Guidestones “Satanic” and made their removal part of her campaign platform. The monument was later bombed, leading Taylor to claim that God had destroyed the monument.
The Georgia Guidestones was a 19-foot tall, granite monument that stood in Elbert County, Ga., from 1980 to 2022. The monument’s creators believed a social, nuclear, or economic calamity was coming and they created the monument to serve as a guide for humanity exist after the end of world apocalypse.
The guidestones were heavily damaged in a bombing on July 6, 2022.
Recently, Taylor claimed that mega pop star Taylor Swift put “satanic nods” in her show and was “celebrating witchcraft.”
Taylor’s accusations reflect similar comments from evangelical Christians who apparently were inspired by an Instagram post the singer made last week, in which she referenced her “Eras Tour” concert film. Swift said she was watching videos of fans “dancing and prancing and recreating choreography, creating inside jokes, casting spells, getting engaged, and just generally creating the exact type of joyful chaos we’re known for.”
In April, Swift was accused of promoting witchcraft and Satanism on her tour after some conservative Christians “cherry-picked a bit of theatrical stagecraft” and ranted about it on social media, according to the Unilad website. There also is a TikTok category dedicated to “Taylor Swift Casting Her Spells.”
Taylor, the politician, said Swift had “drifted and backslid” to witchcraft and accused the singer of “influencing innocent minds to be enticed with the dark side of spirituality.”
“I have heard from others that attended this last tour that you had some satanic nods in your show. I didn’t want to believe it,” Taylor said. “After all, I know you’ve claimed to love Jesus. I know you claimed to be a Christian. Now, you’ve not only drifted and backslid. You’re celebrating witchcraft.”
Taylor hosts a “Jesus, Guns & Babies” podcast and this past May, she promoted the Flat Earth conspiracy theory, claiming that globes are part of a conspiracy to “brainwash” people into believing the Earth is a globe.
“Everywhere there’s globes…and that’s what they do to brainwash… For me, if it is not a conspiracy, if it is, you know, ‘real,’ why are you pushing so hard? Everywhere I go, every store, you buy a globe, there’s globes everywhere — every movie, every TV show, news media, why?” Taylor said.
A sector of Christianity identifying as Christian Zionists are among the staunchest supporters of Israel not primarily because they support Judaism but because they are hopeful the Jews will usher in a war to end all wars, the return of Jesus and a resulting Christian world that they claim will vanquish evil and bring peace.
Among the most visible of the Christian Zionists is John Hagee, head pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. Hagee hosts a television program that is seen twice a day on TBN and is founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group that claims 11 million members. Former South Carolina governor and current Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley recognized Hagee when she invited him to give the invocation at her presidential campaign launch.
Haley has been criticized for making anti-Semitic statements, like when he called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” who was sent by God to drive the Jewish people to Israel. He has also suggested that Jews brought centuries of persecution on themselves by disobeying God.
In 2008, Hagee endorsed GOP candidate John McAin for president. McCain rejected the endorsement after it was disclosed that Hagee gave a 1990s sermon in which he quoted from the Bible to make the argument that God’s will had its influence on Nazism.
“‘And they the hunters should hunt them,’ that will be the Jews. ‘From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.’ If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can’t see that,” Hagee had said.