Christian Nationalism, A Growing Threat To Democracy
One of the most insidious, alarming and powerful ramifications of the trump years has been the erosion of the wall between government and religion and the empowerment of a virulent form of Christian nationalism that continues to fester and metastasize across the country.
Christian nationalists claim that America should be an overtly Christian nation based on certain Biblical interpretations. The most extreme Christian nationalism threatens pluralism and democracy, most notably in the Jan. 6, 2021, bloody insurrection at the Capitol by trump supporters, radical Christian nationalists and others.
The rioters at the Capitol carried images of Christian nationalism, like those who marched with crosses, with images of the Virgin Mary, signs that read “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President,” a red flag that proclaimed “JESUS IS LORD” and an RV bedecked in Trump paraphernalia that declared, “PRAY FOR 45.” At the Supreme Court, protesters erected a massive white Christian cross.
There was a more explicitly Christian nationalist version of MAGA, “Make America Godly Again,” on an American flag. “Born, Raised, and Protected by God, Guns, Guts, and Glory,” was emblazoned on another flag and a black Christian cross and two assault rifles were superimposed over the American flag with the words, “GOD GUNS TRUMP.”
“Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy,” says a report titled, “Christian Nationalism and the Jan. 6, 2021 Insurrection,” sponsored by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) and Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), two organizations that advocate for the separation of government and religion.
“As we learn more about Christian nationalism and how it threatens to destroy American democracy, we are even more convinced of the need for a national commitment — from religious and secular groups and individuals — to furthering the American ideal that our belonging in American society is not in any way conditioned on or connected to our religious identity,” the report notes.
The report says that Christian nationalism “implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian” and that the ideology often “overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.”
Regarding the Capitol insurrection, the report said that national survey data found that facets of Christian nationalist ideology, like believing the nation’s founding documents are divinely inspired or that the federal government should declare the U.S. a “Christian nation,” “were strongly associated with white Americans believing that Black Lives Matter and Antifa started the violence and that President Donald Trump was not to blame for the riots.”
The report also found that Christian nationalism is often related to other conspiratorial views, such as QAnon and white supremacist ideology. In one survey of Americans who strongly embrace Christian nationalism, 73 percent agree with the QAnon conspiracy. This same subset of Americans who strongly embrace Christian nationalism are also much more likely to subscribe to anti-Semitic views.
The Christian nationalism movement is thriving and was most recently in the news because of a Texas-based company, Patriot Mobile, that has raised money to support conservative school board candidates and pressing boards of education in Texas into providing conservative instruction on issues like abortion, books and gender identity.
“Patriot Mobile Action is engaging on the front lines of this culture war. We are independently researching candidates and advocating on behalf of those who will stand for American values and stand against leftist indoctrination, racist Critical Race Theory and the sexualization of children that is rampant in public schools,” the website says.
Patriot Mobile also sponsored this year’s far right, CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) held in Dallas. Speakers included trump and other far-right politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Color. The phone carrier said it will donate $1.5m to conservative causes in 2022 and expects to double that contribution by next year.
A closer look at Patriot Mobile Action discloses a wide net of far right conservative organizations listed as the company’s “patriot causes.” They include:
Family Police Alliance
The Family Policy Alliance (FPA), formerly CitizenLink and Focus on the Family Action, is a conservative Christian organization that acts as the lobbying arm of “Focus on the Family,” which was founded in 2004 by James Dobson. The alliance’s mission is “to advance biblical citizenship, equip and elect statesmen, promote policy and serve an effective alliance, all committed to a common vision.” The FPA opposes same-sex marriage, transgender rights, legal abortion, sexual consent education, marijuana decriminalization and the Equal Rights Amendment.
The FPA offers “rigorous training by experienced Christian legislative leaders” for politicians who align with the organization’s conservative priorities.
Family Policy Alliance maintains associations with state-based family policy councils that lobby for conservative policies in 40 states, including Alabama, Arizona, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire, Kansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Turning Point USA
Turning Point USA was founded in 2012 by conservative talk show host, Charlie Kirk. The organization’s mission is to identify, educate, train and organize students “to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.” One of its sister organizations is Students for Trump. The organization is known for its “Professor Watchlist,” a site that claims to expose professors that Turning Point says “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”
Mercury One
Mercury One is an education organization focused on “restoring the human spirit through programs to advance skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for individuals and communities to help themselves.” It was founded in 2011 by far right media personality, radio host, conspiracist and author Glenn Beck. Beck is the CEO, founder, and owner of Mercury Radio Arts, the parent company of his television and radio network TheBlaze. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Beck promoted many false conspiracy theories about Obama, his administration, billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros, and others.
Beck opposed trump during his 2016 campaign for president, comparing him to Adolf Hitler and describing him as “an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity.” On May 18, 2018, Beck changed totally and said that he intended to vote for trump in the 2020 presidential election, calling trump’s record “pretty damn amazing.” Beck said trump’s defeat in the 2020 election would be “the end of the country as we know it.”
American Cornerstone Institute
The institute to support conservative values was founded by Dr. Ben Carson, a former Republican presidential candidate and former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under trump. Carson also created the Little Patriots platform for parents, grandparents, teachers, and caregivers to have a free, online resource to use to teach children civics lessons, history, and American values at home, in the car, or after school.
Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA)
SBA mission is to end abortion by electing national leaders and advocating for anti-abortion laws, “with a special calling to promote pro-life women leaders.”
Concerned Women for America
Concerned Women for America is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization “with a rich history of over 40 years of helping our members across the country bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy. CWA is on the frontline protecting those values through prayer.”
Embrace Grace
Embrace Grace has more than 700 active support groups and has helped more than 6,000 women to avoid abortions.
The National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is “America’s longest-standing civil rights organization, founded in 1871. Together with its more than five million members, they’re proud defenders of history’s patriots and diligent protectors of the Second Amendment.”
Council for Life
Council for Life provides a resources as they relate to unplanned pregnancies. They have funded 57 agencies “that benefit women, men, and youth through pregnancy resource centers, adoption, and foster care, maternity homes, youth mentoring.”
Students For Life America
Student leaders across America “are working to change the hearts and minds of their peers to save lives and recruit more young people to join the pro-life movement” and “end Planned Parenthood’s influence in our schools.”
“We have Democrats who paint themselves in blackface, who stand accused of rape, and who stand on a pile of dead babies only to scold the political right in this country as haters, bigots and racists,” said the group’s leader, Sean Kenney.
A co-chair of Students for Life is Leonard A. Leo, a lawyer and conservative legal activist who was the longtime vice president of the right wing Federalist Society. Leo is trustee and chairman of the political group, Marble Freedom Trust, which recently received a $1.6 billion donation by 90-yaer-old, billionaire, electrical company executive, Barre Seid. Leo helped Clarence Thomas in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and led campaigns to support the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)
The Conservative Political Action Conference claims to be “the largest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world” and that it brings together “hundreds of conservative organizations, thousands of activists, millions of viewers, and the best and brightest leaders in the world.” Speakers at the most recent conference in Dallas, Texas, included authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary Victor Orban; far right personalities such as Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.; Kari Lake, a GOP candidate for Arizona governor; and leading the charge, trump.
Tunnel to Towers
The Tunnel to Towers Foundation provides mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children.
First Liberty
First Liberty says it is the largest legal organization in the nation “dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans. They believe that every American of any faith — or no faith at all — has a fundamental right to follow their conscience and live according to their beliefs.”
WallBuilders
WallBuilders was founded by David Barton, an evangelical Christian political activist and author and founder of WallBuilders, LLC, a Texas-based organization that promotes pseudohistory about the religious basis of the United States. Barton has been described as a Christian nationalist whose work has been devoted to advancing the idea that the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and rejecting the consensus view that the United States Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Barton is a former vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas and served as director of a political action committee that supported the unsuccessful Ted Cruz 2016 presidential campaign.
Concerned Women for America (CWA)
Concerned Women for America (CWA) is a conservative, evangelical Christian legislative action committee. The CWA is involved in social and political movements, “through which it aims to incorporate Christian ideology.” The group was founded in 1978 by Beverly LaHaye, whose husband Timothy LaHaye was a vociferous anti-homosexual, a harsh critic of Roman Catholicism, and a strong believer of the Illuminati global conspiracy theory. The theory claims the Illuminati are world leaders who are secretly engineering world affairs.
The CWA opposes abortion, sex education, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, needle exchange programs, pornography, cloning, drug abuse, secular education, gambling, or any other efforts which “intervene with natural human life.” CWA believes that sex education should not be taught in school and that intelligent design should be taught in public schools.
First Liberty
First Liberty Institute, a Christian conservative legal organization based in Plano, Texas., is prominent for litigating First Amendment cases on religion. The institute was founded in 1997 by Kelly Shackelford. Prominent cases include high school football coach Joseph A. Kennedy who sued the Bremerton School District in the state of Washington after he was fired for holding prayers for players after each game. In June 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kennedy and held that his prayers are protected by the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and religious exercise.
Another prominent case argued by First Liberty was the Maine Tuition Program which centered around the limits of school vouchers offered by state governments to pay for religious-based private schools. Three families sued because a Maine law excluded religious schools from a state tuition program, which pays for students to attend private schools. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the families.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)
ADF claims to be the world’s largest legal organization “committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.” The group strongly supports restricting rights and protections for LGBTQ people; expanding Christian practices in public schools and in government; and preventing access to abortion. The global arm, Alliance Defending Freedom International, is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and operates in more than 100 countries.
The Southern Poverty Law Center designates ADF as an anti-LGBT hate group based on its active opposition to legal rights and protections of LGBTQ people.
ADF has lobbied, brought lawsuits, and provided legal support to groups to prevent decriminalization of homosexuality in the United States and worldwide; oppose same-sex marriage; prevent laws from being passed to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; force transgender people to be sterilized in order to change their identification documents; and restrict transgender people’s rights to use bathrooms and play sports. ADF is supported by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, former vice president Mike Pence, former attorneys general William Barr and Jeff Sessions and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
Holy Ghost Ministries
Holy Ghost Ministries is a Christian ministry that was created by Stanley Jason Rapert, a Republican Arkansas state senator. Rapert has pushed for the installation of the privately funded Ten Commandments Monument on the Arkansas state capitol grounds. He believes in banning abortion even for victims of rape and incest, as well as banning exceptions for the health of the mother.
Andrew Whitehead, co-author of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” noted that Christian nationalism is embraced by around 20 percent of American adults and is accommodated by another 32 percent.
Whitehead found that that while Christian nationalists are most commonly found in rural areas of the South and Midwest, they are present throughout the country. They are also from all educational levels, though their numbers are highest among high school graduates and Americans who have some college education.
“The ‘Christianity’ in Christian nationalism, to a certain population, generally means ‘people like us.’ And the people like us are generally white, native born and culturally Christian,” said Whitehead.
Whitehead said the extreme form of Christian nationalism “demands a tribal loyalty of sorts,” that draws on the “Old Testament tradition … of violently defending the group and the tribe against outside influences. … It wants to define the ‘us’ against a ‘them.’”
Christian nationalists and right wing conservatives have been talking about a new term, known as biblical citizenship, which has been championed by many, including Rick Green, a former Texas State Representative, and candidate for the Texas State Supreme Court.
“We can no longer remain NEUTRAL! We must become equipped for the Restoration in our midst! Join Patriots from across the country for Biblical Citizenship in Modern America,” is the introduction to a free, eight week class, offered Mondays through November, sponsored by the far right, Patriot Academy, based in Dripping Springs, Texas and hosted by Green.
Green speaks around the nation as a member of the WallBuilders organization, run by David Barton. Green is founder of Patriot Academy, a right wing organization that seeks to educate citizens to “help restore our Constitutional Republic and the Biblical principles that cause a Nation to thrive.”
Thousands of people have participated in Green’s free, eight-week course, “Biblical Citizenship in Modern America,” which explores links between biblical values and constitutional rights.
“A constitutional republic works best when citizens follow the biblical commands on everything from obeying just laws, proper taxation, work ethic, loving your neighbor, freedom of choice, free market principles and so many other issues that affect our daily lives,” Green said in one published report.
“How the Christian Right is Hijacking Mainstream Religion” by John Dorhauer and Sheldon Culver, delves into how conservative renewal groups have been backed by a right-wing organization called the “Institute on Religion and Democracy.” The renewal groups use social wedge issues like homosexuality to infiltrate mainline churches and stir up dissent among members of the congregation, “with the goal of taking over the leadership of the church, and ultimately, the denomination.” The process is known as steeplejacking.
The “Institute on Religion and Democracy” (IRD) was founded in 1981, with an initial focus on communism and opposition to elements within mainline Protestantism that they perceived as supportive of communism. In more recent years, the institute has turned to promoting theological and political conservatism in mainline churches, particularly on issues of sexual morality, the sanctity of human life, and in support of Israel.
Major donors to IRD include the Scaife Foundations, the Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson’s Fieldstead & Company.
The Scaife Foundations were among the largest contributors to the climate change denial movement from 2003 to 2010.
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, commonly known as the Bradley Foundation, is based in Milwaukee, Wis. In the August 2021 New Yorker magazine, Jane Mayer wrote that the Bradley Foundation “has become an extraordinary force in persuading mainstream Republicans to support radical challenges to election rules — a tactic once relegated to the far right” and “funds a network of groups that have been stoking fear about election fraud, in some cases for years.”
According to Mayer, public records show that, since 2012, the foundation has spent around $18 million supporting 11 conservative groups involved in election issues. On the foundation’s board of directors is attorney Cleta Mitchell, who joined trump on his infamous phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, when he pressured Georgia election officials to find more than 11,000 votes to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results.
The foundation has funded millions of dollars for three anti-Muslim groups: the David Horowitz Freedom Center (which received $4.2 million), Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (which received $815,000) and Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum (which received $305,000).
The John M. Olin Foundation was a conservative American foundation established in 1953 by John M. Olin, president of the Olin Industries chemical and munitions manufacturing businesses. It made its last grant in the summer of 2005 and officially disbanded on Nov. 29, 2005. It had disbursed more than $370 million, with its most notable support funding the right wing Federalist Society.
Regarding Howard and Roberta Ahmanson’s Fieldstead & Company, Howard Ahmanson funds and sits on the board of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization committed to disproving Darwin’s theory of evolution and claiming that the universe was created by the “intelligent design” of a superior being.
Ahmanson has given millions to the Discovery Institute, which has promoted the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The institute denies the scientific consensus on climate change.
Ahmanson, a reclusive billionaire and significant contributor to the Republican Party, is also a director of the Claremont Institute, an ultra right-wing think tank that places “Christian values” at the center of public policymaking. The institute has published literature describing homosexuality as barbaric and once sponsored a conference where speakers asserted that homosexuals can be cured by therapy.
Ahmanson has funded the Chalcedon Foundation, “a think tank of the Religious Right” and listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also has provided funding to R.J. Rushdoony, father of a religious movement known as “reconstructionism” which calls for government based on the literal word of God. Rushdoony, a Calvinist, supported the reinstatement of the Mosaic law’s penal sanctions where civil crimes which carried a death sentence would include homosexuality, adultery, incest, lying about one’s virginity, bestiality, witchcraft, idolatry or apostasy, public blasphemy, false prophesying, kidnapping, rape, and bearing false witness in a capital case.