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    Evangelical education nearly ruined me. Now the Christian right is coming for public schools

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    When I got the chance to attend a conservative, evangelical high school in rural Iowa, I was ecstatic. My early education had been in a similar school – where creationism was the one true science, and evolution was satanic propaganda – and I’d spent the interim as a frightened pilgrim in the unholy land of public school. I was a teenage zealot and longed to be among my people.Throughout those years, my church leaders urged me to proselytize to the public school students, to debate teachers about the age of Earth or the founding of our Christian nation, to be a spiritual exhibitionist, praying loudly at my locker or the flagpole. The apocalypse was at hand, so who had time for algebra?I viewed my enrollment at Forest City Christian school in my junior year as being honorably discharged from my duty of “reclaiming our schools for Christ”. But what I envisioned as a sanctuary of faith, community and “true” education not only left me more disillusioned and bullied but also robbed me of a high school diploma and set me on a path of crushing financial insecurity that would haunt me for years.View image in fullscreenTwenty-five years later, Donald Trump and the Christian nationalist movement that put him in the White House (twice) are seeking to transform public education into something similar to what I was reared on, where science, history and even economics are taught through an evangelical conservative lens, while prayer and Bible reading are foundations of the curriculum.These efforts test the boundaries of the constitution’s establishment clause, reversing a century of civil rights victories in public schools, and have the potential to fundamentally alter the way American children learn – and what they learn about.The push comes in two forms: injecting more Christian rhetoric and rituals into public school curriculum and for the first time in history, using tax dollars to subsidize private religious schools, generally via vouchers that cover student tuition. Each has the potential to bolster the education of America’s most privileged students, while downgrading services for children of low-income families.In Oklahoma, the state superintendent ordered his public schools to teach from the Christian holy book; he later sought to mandate all schools to air a video in which he prays for Trump. On his desk sat a black mug with the Latin phrase si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”In June, Louisiana passed a law ordering all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. And in Florida, Pam Bondi, now Trump’s attorney general, supported a constitutional amendment to allow state funding for religious schools before voters rejected it.In 2022, a supreme court ruling allowed private religious schools to receive government funding. In response to this, LGBTQ+ advocates helped pass the Maine Human Rights Act in their state, protecting students and faculty from discrimination. Two Christian schools are suing the state for the ability to violate the new law while still receiving government funding. Separately, the supreme court has taken up a case addressing whether to allow taxpayer funds for religious charter schools, potentially leading to the first Christian public school in the US.View image in fullscreenIn Texas, the state representative James Talarico has been fighting against a new elementary school curriculum that infuses Bible stories into language arts programs, as well as a bill that could allow students to use public funds to attend private schools, including Christian schools, a move he says will harm low-income students while bolstering the most privileged.“Attempting to indoctrinate public school students into Christianity is not only unconstitutional and un-American, it’s deeply un-Christian,” says the former public school teacher, who is also studying to be a preacher.And this wave of Christianizing is not limited to the south.In 2023, my home state of Iowa passed legislation granting taxpayer-funded scholarships to families who enroll their children in private schools, including Christian ones. And last fall, a wildly successful Christian lobbying group, the Idaho Family Policy Center (IFPC), announced the drafting of a new bill that would require Bible reading in all Idaho public schools.“By bringing back school-sponsored Bible reading, we are bringing God back into public education,” says Morgan MaGill, communications director for IFPC, which has drafted successful state measures restricting rights to abortion and transgender healthcare in Idaho.Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has characterized the growth of US Christian schools as an “educational insurgency” collecting “recruits” to build an underground army “with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way”, Hegseth said in a podcast appearance. Such militaristic language is reminiscent of the evangelical rallies, camps, youth services and Christian rock concerts I attended as a boy, where we were indoctrinated to be “soldiers in God’s army”, fighting to “take back our schools for Christ”.That, said Hegseth, is “what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation”.View image in fullscreenTalarico views Texas’s efforts to create a voucher program for private Christian schools as not only bad for Jewish, Muslim and LGBTQ+ students, but also as stealing from the poor to serve the rich.“If you gave my students on the west side of San Antonio an $8,000 or $10,000 voucher, there’s still no way they can afford a $20,000 a year private school,” Talarico says. “But because the voucher program is universal, the wealthy family that is sending their kid to that private school will now get an $8,000 or $10,000 discount on their tuition, at the expense of the working-class kids on the west side.”Talarico adds that the voucher program includes funding for home-school students, up to 90% of whom are Christian and whose curriculum is often poorly regulated. “So we taxpayers will be funding homeschool programs that teach students the earth is flat,” he says.The battle for schoolsTrump’s promise to “bring back prayer to our schools”, shut down the Department of Education and embrace “school choice” fulfills an evangelical wishlist I’d heard about throughout my childhood. The belief that our government seeks to brainwash children into liberal atheists, close churches and outlaw prayer – threats that Trump promised to eradicate throughout the last election – were at the heart of the formation of the Christian right in the late 70s. But the clash over Christian education in America began long before.Protestant education was the norm in the US for nearly two centuries. MaGill points out that Benjamin Rush – a founding father who helped build the US public school system – was a strong advocate for Bible reading in US schools.And while opponents emphasize the idea of “separation of church and state”, those pushing to re-Christianize US public schools are correct when arguing that the phrase is not in the constitution. But it is misleading to claim that this was ever a settled – or simple – issue.In 1797, John Adams signed the treaty of Tripoli, which stated: “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”View image in fullscreenThe first amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Thomas Jefferson later said the amendment created “a wall of separation between church and state”.When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was often explained to me that this phrase was intended to keep the government out of religion and not the other way around. The issue of religion in public education muddies this divide.Throughout the 19th century Catholics fought for their unique prayers and scripture to be taught in public schools. When Tennessee passed a law in 1925 banning the teaching of evolution in public schools, the trial of a jailed science teacher captivated the nation, leading to a media circus that portrayed biblical literalists as “yokels”, accelerating the fundamentalist movement in America, as well as a deep distrust of both the media and intellectuals among evangelicals.In 1962, the supreme court ruled that teacher-led prayer in school violated the first amendment’s establishment clause, essentially banning the practice. Many evangelicals – particularly in the south – felt that their religious rights had been violated years earlier when the court mandated that all US schools be racially integrated, as many white, southern Christians at the time interpreted scripture as mandating segregation.In response, there was an explosion of what would come to be known as “segregationist academies”, private Christian K-12 schools and universities that believed they could continue to racially discriminate – while enjoying tax-free status – due to protections to their “religious liberties”. In time, they would create their own textbooks and accreditation systems, a whole bubble of education independent from public schools or conventional higher education.View image in fullscreenIn the late 1970s, the heavily segregated Bob Jones University had its tax-exempt status revoked by the IRS, a move that was interpreted by many evangelical pastors as the government shutting down a church. The ruling was blamed on Jimmy Carter’s new Department of Education (which would become a whipping boy for evangelicals in the years to come) despite the IRS acting on a court ruling from several years earlier.The perceived attack on segregated Christian schools by the US government helped galvanize evangelicals into voting Republican.Meanwhile, the Christian right doubled down on the creation of its own, independent education system, one that rejected evolution in favor of creationism, made students pledge allegiance to a Christian flag, and preached against environmental issues, LGBTQ+ rights and progressive policies.Escaping the bubbleI was born in 1982, and my education began in this isolated world of alternative facts. In my Christian kindergarten, I learned to read using the Bible and did math equations from scriptures on tithing. We were taught a great deal about the dangers of communism, while our working-class parents fell victim to predatory capitalism, manipulated into paying a tuition they couldn’t afford, convinced public schools were unsafe.View image in fullscreenThe collapse of my parents’ small business, a farm crisis tanking the Iowa economy, and years of tithing and additional “seed faith” donations to our church had left them broke.When I was in first grade, my mom and I performed janitorial work after hours for a reduction on my tuition. My dad borrowed money from family members to keep us enrolled and away from the dangers of public school. But following a divorce and bankruptcy, they, like many other working families, could no longer afford tuition.I was terrified of public school, which I imagined to be a cesspool of adolescent sin.I developed a hypervigilant paranoia when it came to the lessons of my public school teachers, particularly when it came to science and history. I was not only tasked with rescuing my classmates from hell; I had to avoid it myself, mainly through maintaining my belief in (a very specific definition of) God, which the “secular humanist” curriculum was a threat to. This required me to keep a heavy filter on the information I allowed into my mind and censor the thoughts that information inspired.Consequently, I flunked half of my classes.At the Christian school I attended my junior year of high school, things were different. We were taught from the lectures of creationists such as Ken Ham and Kent Hovind that our planet is only 6,000 years old, along with a detailed meteorological explanation for Noah’s flood. Hovind often blended conspiracy theories, such as evolution being a communist plot, into his lectures. Ham and Jessica DeFord’s book Climate Change for Kids explains to homeschooled and Christian school students: “Man cannot destroy the earth. God promised that.”In “Logic” class, we learned about gay rights rallies in San Francisco that were attempting, according to my teacher, to “indoctrinate children into that lifestyle”. It was not uncommon to hear leaders in the Christian school movement, like the “Christian economics” textbook author Gary North, argue for capital punishment for all homosexuals. North believed this should occur through the biblical practice of “stoning”. As a thin, effeminate young man with little interest in sports or hunting (yet perked up if the conversation turned to musicals or Alloy magazine), I was a relentless target for the rural boys at the Christian school, who saw it as their religious duty to shout “fag” in my ear as they tussled my hair and knocked books from my hands.The longer I stayed at the school, the deeper I fell into a malaise of depression and self-harm. In addition to the stress of bullies, I had trouble getting my mind around the logic of these classes, and knew that if I didn’t understand it, and believe it, eternal torture awaited me. Meanwhile, costs remained difficult. I was working part-time at Subway and Bennigan’s to pay for my Christian education, but it still wasn’t enough.I headed back to public school for my senior year. I’d been there a semester before it was explained to me that my credits from Forest City Christian school didn’t transfer, because they weren’t “accredited” by the government. (The school has since closed.)Instead, I was directed toward the GED testing center, where my education came to an unceremonious end with a generic certificate. Colleges and universities, I was told, were even worse than public schools in their liberal indoctrination, so I drifted through a decade of low-wage jobs in factories, restaurants and construction sites, as my fellow students who’d graduated from public school, then college, ascended the socioeconomic ladder.In time, I developed my own education at libraries and bookstores. But first, I had to, in the words of Yoda, “unlearn what you have learned”. In fundamentalist education, all knowledge and thought must bend itself to unarguable truth that the Bible is 100% factual in all matters. The itchy curiosity of philosophy, the relentless questions of the scientific method, the skeptic probing of journalism, have no place in that world.It was only through breaking out of the Christian education bubble – defecting from my duty to “reclaim America for Christ” – that I was able to cultivate strong learning faculties, eventually clawing my way into a career in journalism.Perhaps my financial prospects would have been much brighter if I had stayed in my Christian high school, attended a Christian college like Liberty University (which accepts students from non-accredited Christian schools) and gone on to work at a megachurch like Joel Osteen’s Lakewood church or in a Maga political organization like Turning Point USA. But my inability to get my head around the 2+2=5 logic of creationist science, or the claim that our founding fathers intended to create a Christian theocracy, prevented me from being an effective soldier in the fight for Christian nationalism, despite how eager I was to join the fight.Instead, I eventually traveled in the opposite direction, reporting extensively on the modern machinations of the Christian right. In the course of that work, I have often felt a deep sorrow for students enduring the bubble of private Christian education – particularly the poor and queer ones. Now it seems that compassion must extend to those in public schools as well.

    This story was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project’s James Ledbetter Fund. More

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      Trump ‘roundtable’ in Miami packed with pre-screened ultra-loyalist Latinos

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      It was billed as a roundtable discussion with Latino leaders, but the reality of Donald Trump’s appearance at his Doral golf club in Miami on Tuesday was a succession of adulatory monologues from his most loyal Latino supporters, interspersed with familiar, lengthy rants from the former president laden with grievances and insults.Little of the conversation, such as it was, related to issues directly affecting Latino voters, with whom Trump falsely claimed he was leading in the polls despite significant evidence to the contrary.His remarks about immigration, for example, were largely limited to baseless and often-aired claims that foreign countries, especially Venezuela, were opening their prisons to send “violent gang members” and drug dealers into the US with military weapons.And, his comments addressed to the many business owners and leaders present were distinctly light on policy, apart from a promise to maintain the generous tax cuts from his first term in office.“We gave you the biggest cut in taxes in the history of the country,” he said. “We have a great foundation to build on so we have a lot of companies coming in very fast.”Trump trails Harris in all battleground states among Latinos, a poll for Voto Latino published Monday and cited by the Hill, found, while the most recent AS/COA poll tracker shows a 56-31 preference for Harris nationally among the 36 million eligible Latino voters.Still, there is evidence Trump has been gaining ground, with the Democratic edge among Latino voters at its lowest level in four presidential election cycles, according to NBC News polling.Perhaps with this in mind, Trump was directly appealing to the Latino bloc for the second time in less than a week at Tuesday’s roundtable.“We’re going to talk about what’s happening with the election. We’ll take some questions from the fake news,” he said after a raucous welcome to the stage.Ultimately, he took none, ensuring he would avoid a repeat of his misfire at a town hall hosted by Univision, the largest US Spanish-language network, in Miami last Thursday when he mostly dodged awkward questions about immigration from undecided voters. At that event, he repeated debunked claims that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets and “other things too that they’re not supposed to”.Tuesday’s audience, a gallery of pre-screened ultra-loyalists at Trump National Doral, appeared unconcerned by the lack of a dialogue, cheering loudly at every insult. Trump called Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the 5 November election, “a stupid person” as he falsely labeled her Joe Biden’s “border tsar” during a brief section on immigration.His remarks segued quickly into an attack on Democrats for allegedly allowing transgender athletes to play women’s sports, and he told a somewhat fanciful tale of “a man who transitioned into, congratulations, a woman” smashing a baseball so hard it hit a female player on the head and “these young ladies said they’d never seen anything like it”.Calling Harris a “radical-left lunatic”, he added: “There’s a sickness going on in our country. We have to end the sickness.”Perhaps sensing things were going off-topic, event host Jennifer Korn, a former White House aide and executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, attempted to interrupt with a: “Mr President … ”“I just want to leave it at that,” Trump said. “Would anybody else like to say anything?”Robert Unanue, the president of Goya Foods, the largest Latino-owned food company in the US, and a longtime vocal cheerleader of the former president and his lies that the 2020 election was stolen, stepped up to take the microphone and deliver a lengthy speech praising Trump.“I can’t believe your courage, your fight, and I know why you’re doing this. You’re not doing it for anything, but because you love this country. You love us, and we love you,” he said.“The other side of loving and building and creating is hating and destroying and dividing, and that’s what’s happened. We have become from the land of opportunity the land of exploitation, and the exploiter-in-chief is Kamala Harris and this administration.”Unanue was not the only Latino business figure heaping praise. Joel Garza, owner of multiple Sonic fast-food franchises and another veteran of the Trump podium, said the former president needed to be re-elected to “help us with banks [and] stop regulations”.“The last three-and-a-half years, the worst years for businesses, inflation, interest rates, with banks, prices, everything, is nothing compared to 2017 to 2020 when you were at the White House,” Garza said.The ultimate adulation, however, came at the conclusion of the roundtable when a group of religious leaders stood around Trump, who was seated at the table, eyes closed, with their hands on his shoulders.“We lift up the man that we believe you’ve put your hand upon to help restore America and bring America back to the place that honors you,” Ramiro Peña, one of Trump’s most influential Latino evangelists, said in a direct appeal to the heavens.Honduran televangelist Guillermo Maldonado, founder of Miami megachurch the King Jesus International Ministry, closed out the event with a prediction Trump would defeat Harris because “there’s a higher assignment for him to finish with this nation”.“This is a war between good and evil,” he insisted. “God sets up kings. He removes kings. We’re going to pray for the will of God to make [Trump] the 47th president.” More

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      Thousands rally at Christian nationalist event in DC to ‘turn hearts back to God’

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      Tens of thousands of Christians poured onto the National Mall on Saturday to atone, pray and take a stand for America – which, in their view, has been poisoned by secularism and must be ruled instead by a Christian god.Summoned to Washington DC by the multilevel marketing professional-turned-Christian “apostle” Jenny Donnelly and the anti-LGBTQ+ celebrity pastor Lou Engle, they streamed onto the lawn holding blue and pink banners emblazoned with the hashtag #DontMessWithOurKids – a nod to the myth that children are being indoctrinated into adopting gay and transgender identities.It was no coincidence that the event was held on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, or that many attendees carried shofars and Israeli flags: evangelicals and charismatic Christians find spiritual meaning in Old Testament scripture, Jewish rituals and support for Israel – where they believe the end times prophecy will take place.Although most of the day was spent in prayer and worship, November’s presidential election hung heavy over the crowd. A promotional newsletter for the event called on “the Lord’s authority over the election process and our nation’s leadership”, and organizers handed out flyers promoting a pre-election prayer event hosted by the Donald Trump-aligned organization Turning Point USA Faith.Lance Wallnau, a Maga evangelist who rose to prominence after prophesying Trump’s first term in office, delivered remarks at the gathering.“We have 31 million Christians, I just found out, they’ve just been so bombarded by woke preachers and apathetic Christians that they don’t think they’re gonna vote this year,” said Wallnau. “Folks, this meeting, on Yom Kippur, is our governmental moment to shift something in the spirit.” Wallnau called on pastors to urge their congregants to vote.“I was here at January 6,” said Tami Barthen, an attendee who traveled from Pennsylvania to attend the rally, and who described her experience of the Capitol riot as profoundly spiritual. “It’s not Democrat versus Republican,” she said. “It’s good versus evil.”It’s the first of a series of Christian nationalist gatherings in DC to rally believers to the Capitol ahead of the 2024 election.Donnelly billed the event as a rallying call for mothers concerned about changing gender norms in the modern US and casting the gathering at the Capitol as an opportunity for women to stand their ground and play a pivotal role in changing the country’s cultural and political trajectory.The rally is a collaboration organized by multiple far-right Christian leaders affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement on the political far right that seeks to establish long-term Christian dominion over government and society as well as get Trump a second presidency in November.Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, said the effort was aimed at “creating a network – a mass of people – who see it as their spiritual mission to take over Washington DC”Most prominent in the push to turn out women to the National Mall is Engle, a rightwing pastor and staunch opponent of LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, whose tutelage of anti-gay Ugandan pastors and coordination of mass prayer mobilizations has earned him international notoriety and celebrity.The Southern Poverty Law Center, which characterizes Engle as an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist, notes that Engle has in the past compared the anti-LGBTQ+ push to the secessionist south during the American civil war, calling on opponents of gay rights to emulate the Confederate general Robert E Lee, who “was able to restrain Washington”.Donnelly’s vision – of a crowd of moms descending on the Capitol in pink and blue – is her own. Engle, whose mass prayer rallies have drawn hundreds of thousands to DC in the past, offers a platform to turn people out.View image in fullscreen“We are seeing a million women and their families coming together to see this great country turn their hearts back to God,” said Donnelly, on a 21 June podcast promoting the march. Donnelly, who lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family, described how during the Covid-19 lockdowns and Black Lives Matter protests – twin forces she says shut down her church – she was called by God to go deeper into the political realm.“I said: ‘Lord, I’m just a mom of five, I have a great church – it’s not huge. I’ve done women’s retreats, I think I’ve been doing my part in the kingdom and I love Jesus so much, but I don’t even know where to begin, but would you put me in the fight?’” she said.Donnelly has sought to pass along that message to other Christian women through an organization called Her Voice Movement Action, which organizes women into decentralized, independently-run “prayer hubs” – a source of spiritual community for women that also functions as a political mobilization tool.“We’ve been praying for our nation for a couple years in small prayer hubs,” said Louette Madison, who traveled from Washington state to DC for the rally. Madison has teenagers in the public school system and described hoping for a day when prayer is embraced in schools, saying: “I think that the schools are kind of getting rid of the values, and also getting rid of the discipline, [and] when there’s no consequences, that can cause a lot more chaos in school.”The decentralized organizing model carries echoes of Donnelly’s previous life: before reinventing herself as a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation, Donnelly earned millions through the multilevel marketing company AdvoCare, which collapsed after settling with the Federal Trade Commission for $150m in a lawsuit alleging the company was an illegal pyramid scheme.From Peru to PortlandYears before Donnelly flew the #DontMessWithOurKids flag, a movement under the same name took hold in Peru, promoted by Christian Rosas, a conservative Christian political strategist and consultant in the mining industry. The evangelical “No te metas con mis hijos” – “don’t mess with my kids” – coalition, which opposed LGBTQ+ inclusion and abortion, earned followers in 2016 during a wave of conservative backlash against governmental efforts to introduce themes of gender equality and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the school system.When the government issued lockdown orders to slow the spread of Covid-19, it issued travel restrictions by gender, allowing women and men to leave the house on different days of the week and affirming that trans people’s gender identities would be respected in enforcing the rule. Rosas took issue with the trans-inclusive policy, claiming that police officers were obligated to enforce the rule based on travelers’ identification cards, not their gender identities.During the lockdown orders, the Peruvian investigative reporting outlet OjoPúblico reported on 18 incidents of humiliating and abusive arrests of trans women by the police.What started as street protests has turned into an electoral strategy to elect ultra-conservative allies of the Christian right into office in Peru. These lawmakers have passed a slew of socially conservative laws, including one this year that classifies transgender identities as mental illnesses.Donnelly has taken up the mantle of this movement among Christian moms in the US, drawing directly from Rosas’s vision in Peru and consulting him on strategy.“We challenged the law, why? Because the law was unjust. We challenged the curriculum. Why? Because the curriculum was unjust,” said Rosas on a podcast interview with Donnelly on 6 November 2023. “TV, news [outlets], they mocked us every day, they mocked us, they ridiculed us, saying: ‘Look at them, they’re radical, religious, whatever,’ but they saw that we are not retreating.”Rosas spoke at the Capitol rally on Saturday, too, where he preached against LGBTQ+ acceptance and promised that his movement could be replicated in the US.“Obedience to the Lord also requires us to stand up strong against weakened structures,” Rosas said. “Against evil, against unjust laws.”Don’t Mess With Our Kids and No te metas con mis hijos have both attempted to cast their organizations as grassroots mobilizations. In a 2017 interview with Vice News, a spokesperson for the group spoke on the condition of anonymity, claiming to speak for “the collective”.Donnelly’s Her Voice Movement adopts a similar approach. In a recording of a Zoom call in August – which journalist Dominick Bonny obtained and shared with the Guardian – Her Voice Movement spokesperson Naomi Van Wyk said the group had teamed up with Moms for Liberty to launch a multi-state campaign called March for Kids, but cautioned members to keep the association private.“The parent company is Moms for Liberty, but they don’t wanna be recognized. They really want this movement to be grassroots, and to make a public statement that there are hundreds and thousands of people across the country that are coming together under one umbrella,” said Van Wyk.Elizabeth Salazar Vega, a reporter covering gender and politics in Peru, said she was not surprised that the push had taken hold in the US – or that it had found expression just weeks before a presidential election.“This is the ideal scenario to bind these voices together, that could normally appear siloed in civil society,” Salazar Vega told the Guardian in Spanish. “I don’t think it would be impossible for this to escalate rapidly in the United States.”Sean Feucht, a Christian nationalist pastor who has organized “Kingdom to the Capitol” protests in swing states, is planning a similar march in DC later this month. More

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      Christian nationalists embrace Trump as their savior – will they be his?

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      A thrice-married man who refers to the Eucharist as a “little cracker”, was apparently unable to name a single Bible verse and says he has never asked God for forgiveness was always an unlikely hero for the most conservative Christians in the US.But in both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump resoundingly won the vote of white evangelicals. Now, with Trump having almost certainly secured the Republican nomination for 2024 and eyeing a return to the White House, his campaign is doubling down on religious imagery, securing the evangelical base and signaling sympathies with Christian nationalism.Indeed, the former US president’s relationship with the religious right has deepened so much that Trump is now comfortable with comparing himself to their messiah.“And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise, and said: ‘I need a caretaker,’” booms a video that Trump shared on his Truth Social account, and that has been played at some of his rallies.“So God gave us Trump.”The video, made by Dilley Meme Team, a group of Trump supporters, continues:“God said: ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay up past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state.’ So God made Trump.”To some, it is a baffling pairing. Evangelicals, who typically adhere to a literal reading of the Bible and, theoretically, follow a strict code that opposes infidelity, immorality and abortion and is critical of same-sex relationships, seem an odd match-up with a man like Trump.But the pairing has had benefits for both parties: Trump got elected in 2016, and evangelicals got a conservative supreme court that has already overturned the Roe v Wade ruling, which enshrined a constitutional right to abortion.Now, Trump is believing the hype he’s received from some on the religious right: that he has been chosen, or anointed, by God himself.He has increasingly begun to lean into the rightwing social conservatism that white evangelicals – who make up 14% of Americans – favor. That was clear in February, when Trump spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters convention (NRBC), a gathering of the kind of conservative Christians who lead mega-churches, host televangelist shows and claim to receive prophecies from God.Trump said in that address that there was an “anti-Christian bias” in the US, and promised that he would create a taskforce to investigate “discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America”.While Trump easily won the white evangelical vote in his previous two presidential elections, Kristin Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University whose research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion and politics, said this election cycle sees him leaning even further into this appeal.Du Mez said his speech at the NRBC was “a new level we haven’t often seen”.“He was promising [the evangelical audience] power, but in much more explicit terms,” she said. “And he was really leaning into this language of culture wars, of religious wars: that he was going to protect their interests and protect their power against the enemies – against fellow Americans, against liberals, against the enemies who were trying to persecute Christians, who were persecuting Christians.”The “God made Trump” video is not the only example of Trump seeing himself as a deity. On 25 March, Trump said on his Truth Social account that he had received the following message from a supporter:“It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you.”It follows Trump sharing a fake court sketch in late 2023, published during Trump’s fraud trial in New York, which shows him seated beside Jesus Christ.About 85% of white evangelical Protestant voters who frequently attend religious services voted for Trump in 2020, Pew Research found, as did 81% of those who attend less frequently.Securing, and adding to, that vote could be key to a Trump victory. Du Mez pointed to research by the Public Religion Research Institute that shows how crucial the evangelical vote is in swing states. Evangelicals make up about a quarter of residents in Georgia and North Carolina, 16% of the population in Pennsylvania and about 12% of voters in Wisconsin.Biden beat Trump in all but North Carolina in 2020. Given the lack of enthusiasm for both candidates, both men are desperate to win every possible vote in what is expected to be a tight election.It helps Trump that evangelicals feel under attack. Since 2015, he has told his supporters that they are looked down on by liberal elites, and that their rights are threatened. That same message resonates with some religious voters, Du Mez said, who could also resent the mockery of Trump’s imagining himself as Jesus Christ.“It only reinforces the scripts that they’ve been handed, which is that the left is out to get you and they are mocking and they have no respect for your faith,” Du Mez said.While Trump has long enjoyed popularity among evangelicals, and has been courted by leaders including televangelists and pastors at mega-churches, this is the first election cycle in which he has been confident enough to compare himself to Jesus Christ. So, what’s changed?Trump “has been getting this message from these folks for years now”, said Matthew D Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, recalling the sight of evangelical leaders praying over Trump during his time in office.The thirst for Trump as a biblical figure can be traced to the unique way he ascended to become an evangelical favorite, Taylor said: when he launched his campaign in June 2015, few in “respectable evangelical circles” wanted anything to do with the brash, twice-divorced, self-proclaimed billionaire.It made sense. This was a man who, during his first presidential campaign, memorably misnamed the body of Christ, and while at church put cash in a plate that is meant to hold the communion. During his early forays into religious outreach, Trump was asked to name his favorite verse in the Bible, and couldn’t name one – asked again three weeks later, he named one that doesn’t exist.He enlisted Paula White as his spiritual adviser, and charged her with bringing the evangelical elites onboard. The problem was that White, herself a thrice-married multimillionaire who preaches the idea that God will bestow wealth on his followers, didn’t move in those circles.Taylor noted that White’s allies were among fellow prosperity gospel preachers and “new apostolic reformation leaders” – a movement that seeks to inject Christianity into politics, the judiciary, the media and business.“These folks were really on the margins not only of American Christianity, but of American evangelicals. They were seen as kind of lowbrow and prosperity gospel types and televangelists. They were seen as kind of a laughable sector of evangelicalism in respectable evangelical circles,” Taylor said.As Trump won primary elections in state after state, the respectable evangelicals were able to overcome their moral objections to him being the Republican candidate.But by this point, Trump’s main advisers were cemented as the type of religious leaders once scoffed at by the religious elites. Trump continued to rely on the Paula Whites of this world, and the more far-out religious leaders won influence – and are set to have even more if he wins in 2024.“Those are the type of people I think Trump would be bringing in to help shape policy, help shape identity,” Taylor said.“These aren’t the kind of people who are policy wonks, but there are Christian nationalists who have very clear agenda items, especially on topics like abortion, on topics like support for Israel, on topics like religious freedom, on topics such as LGBTQ +rights.“Trump has surrounded himself and has brought into his White House advisers echelons some very, very extreme Christian voices. And he seems to be at the very least playing footsie with them, if not overtly endorsing some of their ideas.”This bodes poorly for a Trump second term, when abortion rights, the rights of LGBTQ+ people and even the right to access IVF treatment could come under attack.There are also warning signs, Taylor said, should Trump again refuse to concede the election – and if his supporters once more interpret his rhetoric as a call to attack the home of US democracy.Trump’s religious supporters were among those at the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. Taylor said he was seeing “more and more of this cross-pollination between far-right and even overtly racist elements and these spiritual warriors”.“When you are mixing white nationalism and neo-Nazi ideas with very heavy religious fervor and processes, that is a very, very dangerous mix,” Taylor said.“Because it’s encouraging more and more people to do extraordinary things, if they feel like their country is slipping away from them.” More

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      The Exvangelicals review: fine study of faith under fire in the age of Trump

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      Sarah McCammon’s new book about “exvangelicals” like herself is a powerful memoir of her complicated journey away from Christian fundamentalism. Because she experienced it from the inside, she is also able to give the rest of us one of the best explanations I have ever read of how so many Americans became part of the non-reality-based cult that remains so stubbornly addicted to the insanities of Donald Trump.Brought up by rigorous evangelicals equally opposed to abortion and in favor of corporal punishment of their children, McCammon grew up inside a religious bubble supposedly designed to protect everyone within it from the evils of a secular world.Now 43 and national political correspondent for NPR, she was born at the dawn of the Reagan administration, which also marked the beginning of the alliance between religious extremism and the Republican party.The number of Americans who identified as evangelical or born again peaked in 2004, when it reached 30%. McCammon’s parents, though, came of age at the height of the Vietnam war and the sexual revolution. Like millions of others who felt unhinged by the chaos, they cast aside the “love ethos” of their youth, replacing “drug culture and anti-war protests” with “praise choruses” and the teachings of religious reactionaries such as James Dobson.The McCammons took Dobson’s teachings very seriously, especially his book Dare to Discipline, which taught them to spank babies as young as 15 months and to use “a small switch or belt” which should be seen by the child as an “object of love rather than an instrument of punishment”.As the historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez has explained, McCammon’s generation grew up during the creation of “a massive industry of self-reinforcing Christian media and organizations” and a media network that functioned “less as a traditional soul-saving enterprise and more as a means by which evangelicals … maintained their own identity.” Or as DL Mayfield, another writer born into an evangelical family, put it: “Being born into white evangelicalism as marketers were figuring out how to package and sell Christian nationalism … was really bad timing.”The literal interpretation of the Bible McCammon grew up with of course required the rejection of evolution. Everything, including “our understanding of basic scientific facts” had to be “subordinated to this vision of scripture”. By pulling their children out of public schools, parents could guarantee that “they could graduate from high school without ever taking a course on evolution or sex ed” and then move “seamlessly to a four-year Christian college with the same philosophy”.View image in fullscreenEvolution had been invented by scientists so they could reject God’s authority and construct “a world … where they were free to pursue their sinful lusts and selfish desires. What other motive could the there be” for dismissing the story of Adam and Eve?The real-world consequences of this indoctrination include a Republican party blithely unconcerned with the effects of global warming. As Jocelyn Howard, an exvangelical interviewed by McCammon, observes: “When you’re taught that science is basically a fairytale … then why would you care if the world is burning around us … The world around us doesn’t matter, because this is all going to burn like in Revelations anyway.”By distancing so many evangelicals from mainstream thought, their leaders created “a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories that can be nearly impossible to eradicate”. As Ed Stetzer, an evangelical pastor and executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center told FiveThirtyEight: “People of faith believe there is a divine plan – that there are forces of good and forces of evil … QAnon is a train that runs on the tracks that religion has already put in place.”Part of the time, McCammon manages to remember her youth with humor, particularly in a passage describing a discussion of the meaning of “oral sex” with her mother, inspired by the release of Ken Starr’s report about Bill Clinton’s interactions with Monica Lewinsky, an intern at the White House.“I think,” said the author’s mother, “if you have Jesus, you don’t need oral sex.”McCammon can’t remember how she responded but she has been “telling that story for decades when people ask me to describe my childhood”.The first cracks in her evangelical faith began when she spent a semester as a Senate page and befriended a fellow page who was a Muslim.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Do you believe that because I’m Muslim I’m going to hell?” he asked.“Suddenly,” McCammon writes, “everything that felt wrong about the belief system I had been told to promote crystalized in my mind. All she could muster in response to his question was, ‘I don’t know. I think it’s between you and god.’”By the time she graduated from college, McCammon “was exhausted from trying to get my brain to conform to the contours of the supposed truth I‘d been taught. Why did certain types of knowledge seem forbidden, and why were only our experts to be trusted?”Her solution was to choose a career in journalism: “I craved a space to ask questions about the way the world really was, and the freedom to take in new sources of information. Journalism required that: it honored the process of seeking truth and demanded the consideration of multiple points of view.”This book is an elegant testament to how well McCammon has learned her craft. The hopeful message she leaves us with is that her own journey is being replicated by millions of others in her generation, many finally convinced to abandon their faith because of the racism and xenophobia embraced by evangelicals’ newest and most unlikely savior: Trump.Since 2006, evangelical Protestants have experienced “the most precipitous drop in affiliation” among Americans, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, shrinking from 23% in 2006 to 14% in 2020. In November, we will learn if that is enough to keep democracy alive.
      The Exvangelicals is published in the US by St Martin’s Press More

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      What Alabama’s IVF ruling reveals about the ascendant Christian nationalist movement

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      In the Alabama state supreme court case that dubbed embryos “extrauterine children” and imperiled the future of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state, the first reference to the Bible arrives on page 33.“The principle itself – that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification – has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God’,” the Alabama supreme court justice Tom Parker wrote in an opinion that concurred with the majority. Attributing the idea to the Book of Genesis, Parker’s opinion continued to cite the Bible as well as such venerable Christian theologians as John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas.For experts, Parker’s words were a stunningly open embrace of Christian nationalism, or the idea that the United States should be an explicitly Christian country and its laws should reflect that.“He framed it entirely assuming that the state of Alabama is a theocracy, and that that is a legitimate way of evaluating laws and policies,” said Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida professor who studies religion and culture. “It looks like he decided to just dismiss the history of first amendment religious freedom jurisprudence at the federal level, and assume that it just doesn’t apply to Alabama.”View image in fullscreenDebates over the centrality of Christianity in US life have raged since the founding of the country. But now that Roe v Wade has been overturned and Donald Trump is once again running for president, observers say Christian nationalism has gained a stronger foothold within US politics – and its supporters have grown bolder.“They’re sort of saying the quiet parts out loud,” said Paul Djupe, who studies Christian nationalism as the chair of data for political research at Denison University in Ohio, of Parker’s decision.Today, 30% of Americans support tenets of Christian nationalism, according to a study released earlier this week from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Researchers asked more than 22,000 Americans how much they agreed with statements such as: “The US government should declare America a Christian nation”; “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American”’; and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” Ultimately, about 10% of Americans qualify as “adherents” to Christian nationalism, and another 20% are “sympathizers”.White evangelicals are particularly likely to support Christian nationalism: 66% hold Christian nationalist views.View image in fullscreenPRRI did not ask whether people self-identify as Christian nationalists, because many people who may hold those beliefs shy away from the divisive label. Yet over the last several years, conservatives at the local, state and federal level have notched major legal and political victories that have cleared the way for Christian nationalist priorities such as the overturning of Roe v Wade and the proliferation of efforts targeting sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and the separation of church and state in schools. Now, supporters are seeing further opportunity in a potential second Trump term. Whether someone openly claims the label of “Christian nationalist” is almost beside the point, Ingersoll said.“There are all kinds of people who are influenced by it in ways that they’re not even aware of,” Ingersoll said. “Most people couldn’t tell you who Thomas Aquinas was, but that doesn’t matter. They don’t have to know who that is to have been shaped by a form of Christianity that arose from his work. And I think that happens with Christian nationalism all over the place. It’s a way of shaping the public discourse.”Parker has ties to proponents of the “Seven Mountain Mandate”, a theological approach that once seemed fringe within evangelicalism but is now gaining traction. Backed by a network of nondenominational, charismatic Christians known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this mandate calls on its adherents to establish what they believe to be God’s kingdom over the seven core areas of society, including the government. On 16 February, the day the Alabama supreme court issued its ruling, a prominent proponent of the Seven Mountain Mandate released an interview with Parker.View image in fullscreen“God created government and the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others is heartbreaking,” Parker said in the interview, whose existence was first reported by the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America. The interview took place in front of a framed copy of the Bill of Rights.A spokesperson for the Alabama state supreme court did not immediately return a request for comment from Parker.“It is clear that in the US, there have been two competing visions of the country,” said Robert P Jones, PRRI’s president and the author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. “They’re mutually incompatible visions of the country, but they really have been: are we a pluralistic democracy, where everybody stands on equal footing before the law, or are we a promised land for European Christians?”‘I’m going to be your defender’Support for Christian nationalism is deeply linked to partisan politics. Residents of red states are far more likely to espouse Christian nationalist beliefs; in Alabama, 47% of people are adherents of or at least sympathetic to Christian nationalism, according to the PRRI survey. More than half of Republicans also hold Christian nationalist beliefs, compared with a quarter of independents and just 16% of Democrats.According to Jones and the PRRI survey, Christian nationalists’ top litmus tests for politicians are support for access to guns and opposition to immigration, although they are also very likely to say that they would only vote for a candidate who shares their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.The 2015 US supreme court decision Obergefell v Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, sparked a huge backlash among many conservative Christians. Galvanized by the ruling, they threw their considerable electoral power behind Trump, who had announced his presidential candidacy just days before Obergefell was decided.View image in fullscreen“Conservative Christians have long had this kind of worldview that they’re embattled by the broader culture,” Djupe said. The Obergefell decision “was a huge spur and Trump played with it. He came on the scene to run for president about the exact same time saying: ‘You’re about to be persecuted. I’m going to be your defender.’”Trump went to great lengths to reward rightwing Christians for their support. According to one analysis, Trump’s judicial appointees were more than 97% Christian and a majority had some kind of affiliation with a religious group such as churches, the Christian law firm the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Catholic fraternal order the Knights of Columbus – far higher rates than judges who were appointed by Democrats or other Republicans. (The judges were no less well-credentialed.) Trump-appointed judges were also much likelier to vote in favor of Christian and Jewish plaintiffs embroiled in cases over the free exercise of religion.Trump also appointed three of the six US supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe. The supreme court’s new conservative majority has steadily eroded the separation of church and state embedded in the US constitution.View image in fullscreenThe post-Roe skirmish over abortion rights illustrates another key element of a Christian nationalist worldview: the tendency to not only cast issues in binary terms, but to believe that the opposing side is a force of literal evil.“If you believe that babies are being murdered – which is the rhetoric that you often find in these ‘pro-life’, anti-abortion circles – if you believe that, then that is a very troubling and even diabolical activity,” said Matthew Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies and author of an upcoming book about Christian extremism, The Violent Take It by Force. “There’s no dialogue with the other side … in their mind, you never compromise with demons. You exorcise demons.”Christian nationalists are roughly twice as likely as other Americans to believe that political violence is justified, according to the PRRI survey.‘They’re seeing the energy’In 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, openly embraced Christian nationalism. “We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”But Greene is something of an outlier. Powerful organizations within the Christian legal movement, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, are not yoked to the charismatic strain of evangelical Christianity that is today more closely linked to Christian nationalism, according to Djupe – even if they often work toward similar aims.View image in fullscreenStill, Djupe believes that the energized charismatic movement is pulling other Christian groups further to the right. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, has ties to the New Apostolic Reformation, which has also been linked to Trump’s rise. Johnson once suggested that no-fault divorces were responsible for school shootings.“They’re seeing the energy, they’re seeing the growth among charismatics, and saying, ‘Hey, you know, there’s clearly something to that formula that’s influential,” Djupe said. I think they’re starting to adopt it.”View image in fullscreenPolitico reported last week that the Center for Renewing America, a rightwing thinktank close to the former president, is drawing up plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas throughout a second Trump administration. The Center’s president, Russell Vought, has also advised another powerful conservative thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, on its Project 2025, a playbook of proposals for a Trump administration 2.0, according to Politico.If Trump does win in November, experts fear what may happen next.“This is a worldview that does cast political struggles into an a kind of apocalyptic struggle between good and evil,” Jones said. “We stop thinking about our fellow citizens as political opponents and we start seeing them as existential enemies. And that really, at the end of the day, is poison to the blood of democracy.” More

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      A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers

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      Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group known for its fundraising prowess and for promoting election-conspiracy theories, is mounting a multimillion-dollar mobilization drive via its advocacy arm in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.Arizona-based TPUSA, a non-profit co-founded in 2012 by then 18-year-old Charlie Kirk that’s become a key ally in Donald Trump’s Maga ecosystem, has launched the drive through Turning Point Action, which has raised tens of millions of dollars and is hiring hundreds of full-time employees in the three states, according to its spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet.While its current fundraising drive is to support the voter-outreach efforts, TP Action is likely to help finance other political advocacy initiatives, including ousting some key Arizona election officials who disputed claims of election fraud in 2020.Dubbed “chase the vote”, the drive is being supplemented by another get-out-the-vote campaign that TP Action is starting with the Christian nationalist and televangelist Lance Wallnau.Together with Wallnau and some other Maga allies like Moms for America, TP Action is planning a “courage tour” in the same three swing states to enlist pastors and their churches in the voter-mobilization drive, which will include booths in churches to register voters.TP Action’s fledgling campaign is aimed at identifying and registering “patriotic” voters, encouraging early voting and getting voters to the polls in November, according to its website. Billed as the “first and most robust conservative ballot-chasing operation”, TP Action’s drive could benefit Trump and Maga-allied candidates in the three states.The new political advocacy drives come after TPUSA and TP Action sparked strong criticism from veteran Republicans, watchdog groups and analysts for backing several hard-right candidates in Arizona who were defeated in 2022, and pushing conspiracies about election fraud, Covid-19 and other issues.“TPUSA has a radicalized worldview that they use as a litmus test” in backing candidates, said Kathy Petsas, a GOP district leader in Phoenix. “When it comes to the general elections that matter, their ROI is lousy.”Notably, four top Arizona candidates in 2022 who were backed by TP Action lost to Democrats, including ex-Fox News anchor Kari Lake in her race for governor, and Mark Finchem in his bid to become secretary of state.“Virtually every major race they touched they lost in the general election in Arizona,” the former Arizona congressman Matt Salmon said. “Everyone Trump endorses they get behind. It’s not clear if it’s the tail wagging the dog, or vice versa.”Kolvet pushed back on criticism of the group’s 2022 results, noting that TP Action only spent $500,000 in total in several states in 2022, but that this year it intends to mount a much better-financed and robust effort, hiring hundreds of full-time employees for its “chase the vote” drive and seeking to raise an eye-popping $108m dollars.View image in fullscreenTP Action’s aggressive fundraising could prove useful in other election-related projects this year that the group is likely to get involved with.Austin Smith, a state legislator and TP Action’s enterprise director, in a tweet this week signaled an effort to oust several key election officials in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, in primaries this July.Smith said “[we] need to clean house in Maricopa county” and cited, among other officers, the county recorder, the Republican lawyer Stephen Richer, who rejected unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud in 2020 and 2022.Kolvet said TP Action to date hasn’t joined the effort, but added that “it’s more likely than not we’ll get involved in some of these races. We’re going to get behind conservative candidates.”One key example: TP Action in February endorsed Trump loyalist Kari Lake’s 2024 Arizona senate campaign.Kirk and TPUSA’s strong fundraising talents could prove helpful to TP Action’s current drive. TPUSA’s annual revenues have soared in recent years with help from leading rightwing donors including the Bradley Impact Fund, which chipped in $7.8m in 2022, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and dark-money behemoth Donors Trust.TPUSA has also benefited mightily from hosting several gaudy gatherings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and in tony Arizona venues that have drawn some big donors and conservative stars like the representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, and Don Trump Jr.These events and mega-donor checks have helped make TPUSA a fundraising goliath: the group’s revenues soared from $39.8m dollars in 2020 to $55.8m in 2021 and $80.6m in 2022, according to public records.TPUSA now employs 450 people and has broadened its focus from fighting left and “woke” influence on campuses to other culture war fronts by setting up a Turning Point Faith unit that’s hosted large gatherings at churches featuring Wallnau and other Christian nationalist figures.Notwithstanding TPUSA’s fundraising successes, the organization and Kirk have been buffeted by criticism on multiple fronts. Late last year, Kirk ignited a political firestorm in mainstream GOP circles by using his eponymous radio show and an Arizona bash to make incendiary attacks on the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, which recycled old and unverified slurs about King, and disparaged Black airline pilots.During a major TPUSA event in Arizona in December, Kirk opined that “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”“Kirk’s cheapening of Martin Luther King’s legacy and disparaging remarks about Black pilots hurt our cause, and don’t help it,” Salmon of Arizona said, adding that Kirk is “one of the strongest voices for factionalism in the party”.Other GOP veterans also voiced harsh critiques.“Kirk chases conspiracies that animate his followers and generate funds,” the long-time GOP consultant Tyler Montague said. “Kirk has used this method to push conspiracies about election fraud, Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and now he’s opened a new front in racism with his Martin Luther King attacks.”Montague’s comments are in keeping with earlier criticism of Kirk for promoting Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in 2020.Kirk and TP Action collaborated with about a dozen other groups to bring busloads of Trump allies to DC to attend Trump’s 6 January March to Save America rally that preceded the mob attack on the Capitol.View image in fullscreenPrior to the rally, Kirk predicted in a tweet it “would likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history”, but he quickly deleted the tweet after the day’s violence.Independent analysts who study misinformation criticize Kirk’s penchant for pushing conspiracies and false narratives on the Charlie Kirk Show, which runs daily on the evangelical Salem Radio Network.“The Charlie Kirk Show consistently ranks high in the top 100 shows on Apple podcasts, and has been a leader in spreading false and unverified claims,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in AI and emerging technologies.Kirk’s dubious claims range “from the idea that the Covid-19 vaccine was poison, to the belief that the election was stolen in 2020 with fraudulent ballots, to claims that purported Ukrainian bioweapons facilities are somehow linked to Anthony Fauci,” she added.Kirk had company in backing Trump’s election fraud claims, which could pose legal risks to a top TP Action official: Tyler Bowyer, the COO, who also had that title with TPUSA, and who was one of Arizona’s 11 fake electors for Trump in 2020. He and the other fake electors are facing a state attorney general probe.The 11 fake electors filmed themselves signing documents stating they were legitimate electors, even though the then GOP governor, Doug Ducey, had certified Biden’s win by more than 10,000 votes.Bowyer, an Arizona GOP national committeeman who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won, introduced a resolution at a Republican National Committee meeting that began in late January seeking to get the RNC to indemnify RNC members in multiple states who had been fake electors and who face legal bills due to state probes.Bowyer justified his resolution by writing on X that “we need to send a clear signal that the RNC will defend those who serve as electors against Democratic radicals trying to criminalize civic engagement and process”.The resolution didn’t pass, but to appease Trump backers the RNC pledged to “vocally” back individuals who “lawfully” served as Trump electors in states that Biden actually won.Prosecutors in three states have brought charges against fake electors for sending certificates to Congress falsely stating Trump had won their states, and the justice department has probed fake elector schemes in multiple states in its wide-ranging inquiry into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s election.Serendipitously, right before the RNC meeting, TP Action hosted a two-day summit dubbed Restoring National Confidence, which drew several big-name election deniers including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, ex-Trump senior White House strategist Steve Bannon and Don Jr.In a tweet, Don Jr wrote: “It was great speaking to all my friends at the Turning Point Restoring National Confidence Summit earlier this week.”The tight ties between TPUSA and Don Jr were underscored in 2020 when TPUSA paid a company owned by Don Jr $333,000 to buy copies of one of his books, which TPUSA gave away as part of a fundraising drive, according to the Associated Press.But watchdog groups are alarmed by TPUSA and TP Action’s record of promoting the ex-president’s bogus claims of election fraud, and candidates in Arizona in 2022 who espoused similar election falsehoods. They’re bracing for more in another heated election year.“They’ve backed conspiracy theorists for high office, mobilized activists around the ‘big lie’ and hired one of Arizona’s fake electors to help run their campaign arm,” said Heather Sawyer, the president of the watchdog group American Oversight.“Since January 6, TPUSA has become an animating force behind the election-denial movement.” More

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      Trump warns of enemies ‘within our country’ to Christian media gathering

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      Donald Trump told a warmly receptive gathering of religious broadcasters on Thursday that “it’s the people from within our country that are more dangerous than the people outside”, in his latest effort to mobilize Christian fundamentalists who have swung dramatically behind him in recent years.Trump’s speech in Nashville, Tennessee, to the National Religious Broadcasters presidential forum gala offered him a chance to pitch himself to hundreds of Christian media figures whose approval – and willingness to carry his message on air – could drive huge turnout in November.“The greatest threat is not from the outside of our country – I really believe it is from within,” said Trump, whose fire-and-brimstone speech focused largely on his political enemies. “It’s the people from within our country that are more dangerous than the people outside.”The former president’s relationship with the religious right has shifted since his unlikely bid for the presidency in 2016, when his campaign was met with deep skepticism from conservative Christian leaders who had initially thrown their support behind Ted Cruz.Trump has since consolidated support among Christian fundamentalists. In 2016, in exchange for the support of prominent conservative pastors, he offered them a direct hand in policymaking through an evangelical advisory board, giving rightwing Christian religious leaders unprecedented access to the White House.“In my first term I fought for Christians harder than any president has ever done before,” said Trump. “And I will fight even harder for Christians with four more years in the White House.”In his speech, Trump promised to create a new taskforce to counter “anti-Christian bias” by investigating “discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America”. He vowed to appoint more conservative judges, reminded the audience of his decision to break with decades of international consensus and move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and assured them a future Trump administration would take particular aim at transgender people – for example, by endorsing policies to restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare.The event brought together key figures in the former president’s coalition, from the president of the Heritage Foundation to the hard-right former head of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Michael Harris.A non-profit and tax-exempt organization, National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) is prohibited from campaigning directly for any candidate for public office, a fact that its president, Troy Miller, mentioned during his opening remarks. Trump was nevertheless the star of the show, with speakers lavishing him with praise in an atmosphere similar to one of his campaign rallies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Appearing on a stage before Donald Trump is like opening for the king himself, George Strait,” said the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, to laughter and applause. “If you do well, everyone will be very nice. If you do poorly, no one will remember anyway.”The event spotlighted the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a “presidential transition project” that envisions reshaping the executive branch to maximize the president’s power. Many fear Trump’s first acts should he win office would be to enact revenge on his political enemies, deport immigrants en masse and roll back legal protections for LGBTQ+ people.It also highlighted the central role that Christian fundamentalism would play in Trump’s second term in office, with Miller declaring: “One of the most dangerous falsehoods spread today is the separation of church and state.” More

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      ‘This war is prophetically significant’: why US evangelical Christians support Israel

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      It didn’t take long for many evangelical Christian groups in America to show their support for Israel.Hours after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people, Christians United for Israel, an evangelical lobbying group which claims to have more than 10 million members, posted a message to on X, formerly known as Twitter.“To the terrorists who have chosen this fight, hear this, what you do to Israel, god will do to you. Despite today’s weeping, joy will come because he [god] who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps,” CUFI, whose founder believes the presence of Jews in Israel is a precursor to Jesus Christ returning to Earth, wrote.Soon an “Evangelical statement in support of Israel” was issued by the ethics and religion liberty commission – an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination which has 45,000 churches in the US.In the statement, 2,000 evangelical leaders – not all were named – said they “fully support Israel’s right and duty to defend itself against further attack”. Little credence was given to the Palestinians who would soon find themselves under attack: more than 8,000 people in Gaza have now been killed by Israeli bombardments, according to Gaza’s health ministry .“While our theological perspectives on Israel and the Church may vary, we are unified in calling attacks against Jewish people especially troubling as they have been often targeted by their neighbors since God called them as His people in the days of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3),” the evangelical statement said.“In keeping with Christian Just War tradition, we also affirm the legitimacy of Israel’s right to respond against those who have initiated these attacks as Romans 13 grants governments the power to bear the sword against those who commit such evil acts against innocent life.”The more than 90 named signatories – four were women, the rest men – included the current president, and eight former presidents, of the Southern Baptist Convention, among other influential evangelicals.For people not immersed in evangelicalism – a conservative strand of Christianity which emphasises adherence to the Bible – the overt biblical references may have seemed unusual to hear in a geopolitical context.Romans 13 – the 13th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament – is essentially a lengthy treatise on the importance of submitting to bureaucracy, which states:“Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason.”For those more familiar with the evangelical world, the vehemence of the support has not been a surprise, given the importance to evangelicals of an Israel inhabited by Jewish people. One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return.To that end, the issue of Israel and Palestine has dominated sermons at evangelical churches over the past two Sundays, said Daniel Hummel, a historian of American religion, and the author of Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and US-Israeli Relations.“The overwhelming theme has been: this war is prophetically significant, but no one is willing to really claim exactly how,” Hummel said.“And that’s been a long tradition of sort of hedging your bets and getting whatever you can in terms of sort of interest and eyeballs, by declaring that there’s something significant here, but once you start saying specific things and you’re sort of on the hook, it doesn’t turn out that way.”The rush to respond, and the statements in support of Israel, were not surprising to those aware of the deep feeling evangelicals have for Israel.Broadly speaking, some evangelicals believe that Jewish people returning to Israel following the 1917 ​​Balfour Declaration, a British statement which called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, was key to end times, when God will purge sinners and Jesus Christ will return.John Hagee, an evangelical pastor and influential founder of Christians United for Israel, explained the prophecy to TBN Networks in December 2022.“God is getting ready to defend Israel in such a supernatural way it’s going to take the breath out of the lungs of the dictators on planet Earth but we are living on the cusp of the greatest most supernatural series of events the world has ever seen ready or not.”Hagee said when Jewish people are present in Israel “the clock starts ticking” on the rapture.“What will come soon [is] the antichrist and his seven year empire that will be destroyed in the battle of armageddon. Then Jesus Christ will set up his throne in the city of Jerusalem. He will establish a kingdom that will never end,” Hagee said.Hagee, despite having a long history of antisemitism – he has suggested Jews brought persecution upon themselves by upsetting God and called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” – founded Christians United for Israel in 2006.Among other things, the group lobbied for the US embassy in Israel to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Donald Trump did in 2018, and is “committed to Israel’s strength, security and sovereignty”.The support of evangelical Christians – in 2015 the Pew Research Center estimated there were about 62 million in the US – for Israel can be split into different groups, Hummel said.While there are plenty of evangelicals who, like Hagee, adhere to the Israel-is-key-to-Jesus’-return theology, there are also those who believe in “blessings theology”, a less outlandish, more transactional approach to support for Israel.The blessings theology is based on a literal reading of the book of Genesis, where God told Abraham – who Hummel described as “the patriarch of the Jewish people” – that he would “bless those who bless you” and “curse those who curse you”.“For the last couple of centuries this has been interpreted on individual terms. So you can accrue personal blessings by being good to the Jewish people, or by giving money, or touring Israel or things like that,” Hummel said.That also works on a national level, he said.“And so the crude way of doing this is a pastor will say something like: ‘Look at the Roman Empire and how they persecuted the Jews and Rome fell. Look at the British Empire and how the British didn’t treat the Jews well, and how they fell. Look at the Nazis and how they persecuted the Jews, and they fell.“And we, the Americans, don’t want to be the next Empire or the next great power to fall because we didn’t sufficiently bless the Jewish people.’”There are also those whose support is “more broadly American”, Hummel said: “There’s a deep cultural affinity that’s been built over decades and decades between the US and Israel all across the board.”Evangelicals make up an influential part of the Republican party base, and have a strong number in Congress. More than 100 members of the current Congress can be broadly identified as evangelical, and that was on display in recent days.Lee Fang, a journalist, recently asked congressmen and women whether their religion was important to their support for Israel, for the documentary “Praying for Armageddon”.“This entire matter is based upon the faith of our maker, our creator, but it’s also faith of a chosen people,” Pete Sessions, a Republican congressman from Texas and a Methodist, said.Fang asked Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, about evangelical support.“They’re following the scripture, and what the scripture says about Israel: ‘Those who bless Israel will be blessed,’ they take it literal, and I’m one of those people,” Burchett said.In terms of the influence evangelicals might wield as the Israel-Hamas conflict continues, Hummel said there had been a “mixed record” on evangelicals’ political sway.Still, Trump has specifically said he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem “for the evangelicals”, while Hagee served as an adviser to the twice-impeached president.In the 2020 election, evangelical or born-again Christians made up 28% of the overall electorate, CNN reported, and three-quarters voted for Trump. Given that support for the Republican party, under GOP leadership evangelicals would have plenty of influence.“When there’s a Republican president they have a seat at the table it doesn’t mean the president’s going to do exactly what they want, but they’re the ones that the president’s listening to more than other interested parties on Israel,” Hummel said.With a presidential election looming, and with few signs that the Israeli conflict will ebb away any time soon, evangelicals could find themselves in a position of significant power in the near future. More