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    ‘Partisan politics’: how efforts to overturn the Johnson amendment could upend campaign finance

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    Donald Trump has long promised his evangelical base he will undo the Johnson amendment, allowing churches and other nonprofits to weigh in on and donate to political campaigns – and his path to doing so is now clearer than ever.A provision of the tax code since 1954, the Johnson amendment prohibits certain tax-exempt nonprofit organizations from making political endorsements in – or offering monetary support to – political campaigns. If the president-elect succeeds in overturning it through any of a few available methods, experts say it could have the profound effect of opening up a flow of dark money into politics.“I think it’ll have as big, or a bigger impact than Citizens United,” said Andrew Seidel, a constitutional attorney and expert on Christian nationalism. “I don’t think people are fully prepared for a country in which churches can accept tax deductible donations in the billions of dollars and then turn around and use that money for partisan politics.”With a likely narrow majority in the US House of Representatives and the Senate, Trump has multiple avenues to challenge the provision. He could try to push Congress to take legislative action. He could attempt to unwind parts of the provision through executive action, an approach that would likely be subject to litigation. Or, he could involve the Department of Justice – which he has vowed to mobilize politically – in a key, ongoing Texas lawsuit threatening the law.During Trump’s first term, he failed to deliver on his promise to destroy the amendment. Congress failed to roll back the regulatory measure and in an executive order gesturing at the issue, Trump only advised the treasury to take a lenient posture on the political speech of clergy – “to the extent permitted by law”.Now, with a lawsuit filed in Texas making its way slowly through the courts, Trump has yet another avenue to chip away at legal limits on churches’ political activity. The complaint, filed against the IRS by National Religious Broadcasters, two Texas churches and the group Intercessors for America – whose mission includes a “call for godly government” – seeks to find the Johnson amendment unconstitutional.It claims that churches are subject to “unique and discriminatory status” under the tax code and that the IRS “operates in a manner that disfavors conservative organizations and conservative, religious organizations” in enforcing the law.Named after its author Lyndon B Johnson, the Johnson amendment is inserted into section 501(c)(3) of the tax code to prevent certain nonprofits from “participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office”. The law also notes that “contributions to political campaign funds” would “clearly violate” the provision.Some churches already flaunt the law’s requirement to refrain from endorsing political candidates – a trend that the Texas Tribune has documented. Repealing the Johnson amendment would allow churches to go further, including potentially donating to partisan causes. Because churches, unlike other nonprofit organizations, are not required to file 990 forms disclosing key financial information to the IRS, such an arrangement would allow for little public oversight.Representing National Religious Broadcasters on the complaint is Michael Farris, the former CEO of the powerful rightwing legal outfit Alliance Defending Freedom and a driving force behind the “parental rights” movement, which seeks to limit schools’ ability to teach about race, gender and sexuality in the classroom. Like the conservative “parental rights” movement, the push to do away with the Johnson amendment could chip away legal barriers separating church and state.In the short run, overhauling the provision could, Seidel said, allow churches to function effectively as Super Pacs, accepting tax-deductible donations from politically-motivated donors and channeling them into political causes. Such a scenario could, Seidel cautions, force churches to subject themselves to the same financial disclosures that Super Pacs face.“The church could be the subject of litigation, but then again, who’s going to be running the IRS? Who’s going to be enforcing that?” said Seidel. “It’ll be the Trump administration.” More

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      How the Christian right is twisting the legacy of an anti-Nazi hero

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      This article is co-published with DocumentedLeading figures on the Christian right have seized on an unlikely hero in their campaign against secular government: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an antifascist theologian and pastor who resisted the Nazi regime before he was executed in 1945.Driving the trend is Eric Metaxas, a prolific author, speaker and celebrity on the Christian right, whose writings on Bonhoeffer and American politics provide the intellectual fodder for a movement that seeks to turn evangelicals against liberal policies on women’s rights, LGBTQ+ inclusion and racial justice.In the short term, this push has taken the form of a well-funded voter mobilization campaign ahead of the 5 November presidential election, with conservative organizations coordinating to screen Metaxas’s 2024 film – which lays out an argument equating liberal policies with Nazism, and urges believers to emulate Bonhoeffer – in churches across the country.In the long run, experts worry that the push to liken American liberal democracy to Nazi Germany could spur political violence, citing past examples of Christian extremists who invoked Bonhoeffer to justify bombing and shooting up abortion clinics.“We’re worried about post-election political violence, and this is a way of inspiring that,” said Victoria Barnett, a theologian and eminent scholar of Bonhoeffer and the Holocaust who has advocated for a nuanced understanding of Bonhoeffer and has cautioned against depicting Bonhoeffer as a kind of evangelical “Lone Ranger”.According to documents obtained by the Guardian and Documented, the production and distribution of the movie, called Letter to the American Church, was coordinated by the rightwing group Turning Point USA and American Letter Productions – the film division of Metaxas Media, an entertainment business founded by Eric Metaxas.Through the Letter to the American Church tour, an initiative launched in mid-2024, these groups and others have screened the film at churches, community organizations, and small groups for donations of any amount; churches willing to screen the film received an “extensive marketing kit” to promote it.Funding for this film and tour was pledged, in part, by the secretive Christian donor network Ziklag, a non-profit that embraces the aims of a growing movement of Christian nationalists who strive to rule over US government and society. As a piece of Ziklag’s larger, coordinated effort to get out the vote, the group committed to funding movie screenings in churches across the country “with a focus on oversaturation in the battleground states” to galvanize congregations and increase evangelical voter turnout.Since its launch, the film has been screened at least 170 times across the country, including more than 40 times in key swing states. Local GOP chapters and numerous outside organizations on the right have also held screenings, some in conjunction with poll worker sign-up initiatives and alongside Turning Point Action, a group the Trump campaign has relied on for its voter registration and turnout efforts.Internal videos produced by Ziklag, obtained by the Guardian and Documented, detail Ziklag’s 2024 election strategy, pledging $800,000 to “focus on rallying the church behind biblically based voting using Eric Metaxas’ new documentary, Letter to the American Church”. Organizations that partnered with Metaxas, including Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith, were promised donations from Ziklag in this effort to engage evangelical voters.Ziklag and Turning Point USA did not return requests for comment.View image in fullscreenIn an email, Metaxas denied having “anything to do with the making of the LETTER film” – although he stars in the movie and founded one of the companies that produced it. Metaxas rejected the term “Christian nationalism”, saying it is used to “demonize people who believe that we Christians are obliged to live our faith in every sphere, including the political.”And he suggested that Bonhoeffer scholars and his critics were in fact the ones inciting political violence, not him.‘Co-opted by extremists’Born in 1906 and raised in a family of intellectuals and academics, Bonhoeffer dedicated himself as a young man to theology and ministry. At 21 years old, he wrote a dissertation exploring the idea of Christians’ ethical and moral obligations to one another and society.But Bonhoeffer’s prodigious academic career was cut short by the rise of Hitler’s Nazi party.An early dissident, Bonhoeffer wrote in 1933 that the Hitler government’s increasingly discriminatory and violent oppression of Jews was a “problem for the church”, which he viewed as responsible for opposing such policies, even if they were not directed at Christians.His work in the following decade, with other dissenting clergy and networks of resisters, would eventually lead the regime to accuse him of aiding in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested in 1943 and hanged in 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, leaving behind his letters from prison and numerous writings on ethics, morality and the role of Christians in a secular, modern society.Before he was executed, Bonhoeffer warned of the dangers of zealotry and groupthink – perils he believed societies face during times of political upheaval.“[The] upsurge of power is so terrific that it deprives men of an independent judgement,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “and they give up trying – more or less unconsciously – to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.”Scholars of Bonhoeffer, and Bonhoeffer’s living relatives, have argued that Bonhoeffer teaches Christians to reject nationalisms of all kinds.To their dismay, Christian nationalists have embraced Bonhoeffer, frequently invoking his participation in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler as an example of moral courage. In this interpretation, Bonhoeffer is cast not as the contemplative theologian who agonized over his role in the antifascist resistance, but as a Christian warrior with the political leanings of a 21st-century American evangelical.Tobias Korenke, Bonhoeffer’s great-nephew, has expressed frustration about the use of Bonhoeffer by the religious right, saying in a recent interview with Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper that Bonhoeffer’s name had been “co-opted by extremists”.At its worst, this interpretation of Bonhoeffer has led to violence. Michael Bray, a pastor who was convicted for his role in bombing numerous abortion clinics in 1984 and 1985, cited Bonhoeffer as an inspiration. Paul Jennings Hill, an anti-abortion zealot who shot and killed a physician at an abortion clinic in 1994, too, invoked Bonhoeffer.Metaxas’s political evolutionOne evangelical celebrity who has consistently and effectively worked to popularize Bonhoeffer on the right is Eric Metaxas, a Yale-educated talkshow host whose popular biography of Bonhoeffer helped introduce the historical figure to a broader audience in the US.Metaxas’ 2009 book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, was marketed to Christians but achieved popular acclaim – serving as a biography and an inspirational history for readers familiar and unfamiliar with Bonhoeffer.To explain Bonhoeffer’s participation in the resistance, Metaxas writes that God had called him to “get his hands dirty”.In turn the New York-based Metaxas, already an unusual east coast ambassador for conservative evangelicalism, achieved a new level of fame.“He was the rare figure in the evangelical world who was mixing it up with the culture shapers and the intellectuals in New York City,” said John Fea, a historian who has documented the rise of contemporary Christian nationalism. “And then the Bonhoeffer book came out, and that skyrocketed him.”At the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast, an annual gala in Washington convening lawmakers and Christian faith leaders, Metaxas spoke about the genesis of his Bonhoeffer biography in a speech delivered with the cadence and occasional vulnerability of a stand-up routine.View image in fullscreenFifteen minutes into the 30-minute talk, Metaxas reflected on the book’s widespread popularity, joking that “it was read even by president George W Bush, who is intellectually incurious, as we’ve all read. He read the book.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMetaxas paused, turning to Barack and Michelle Obama, who were seated to his right. “No pressure,” he added, and thrust a copy of the book into the hands of the president, who played along, smiling for a photo with the book.During the remainder of his speech, Metaxas became sharply political, railing in particular against abortion.“This is a Bonhoeffer moment,” Metaxas declared, implicitly comparing abortion to the Holocaust and calling on Christians to intervene in the manner that many Germans did not.In the decade that followed, Metaxas’s political evolution has turned even more dramatically to the right. In a 2016 column in the Wall Street Journal, he endorsed Donald Trump, acknowledging his reservations about the real estate mogul but writing that if Christians voted for Hillary Clinton, “God will not hold us guiltless,” citing abortion as a top issue.Metaxas eventually embraced Maga politics fully, vowing to support Trump as the former president falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election had been stolen and attempted to overturn the results.“This is the most horrible thing that has happened in the history of our nation,” Metaxas told Trump on 30 November, in a since deleted recording of a phone call between Metaxas and the former president that ran on Metaxas’s show. “I’d be happy to die in this fight,” he told Trump later in the call.Experts question the underpinnings of Metaxas’ work on Bonhoeffer. A recent petition circulated by eight Bonhoeffer scholars, and signed by dozens of clergy and scholars of religion, argues that Metaxas “has manipulated the Bonhoeffer story to support Christian Nationalism”.It warns that in his social media posts and public appearances, Metaxas “glorifies violence and draws inappropriate analogies between our political system and that of Nazi Germany”.Barnett argues that Metaxas’s book overstated Bonhoeffer’s role in the plot to assassinate Hitler and that Metaxas “tapped right into” a “mythology that Bonhoeffer was like the Lone Ranger, the Christian hero who fought the Nazis”.In fact, the full extent of Bonhoeffer’s role in the conspiracy has been disputed – and however closely involved he might have been in the plot, Bonhoeffer did not legitimize political violence in religious terms.“He did not justify his knowledge of the conspiracy on his being Christian – he just refused to do that, because he understood the dangers of that,” said Barnett.Blurred lines between religion and politicsIn Letter to the American Church, Metaxas, who narrates much of the documentary-style film, and a roster of rightwing pastors and activists take the Bonhoeffer narrative a step further, casting liberals and Democrats as being as destructive as Nazis and calling on evangelicals to take action and oppose evil.They insist liberal teachings are destroying the family and religion in an effort to strip away freedoms from the American people. The speakers warn that if evangelicals do not rise up against ideas that they portray as evil, such as LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights, the country is headed for destruction.At the heart of their argument is Bonhoeffer.“Bonhoeffer effectively told the church that if we’re going to see any effective change for the better, they needed to start taking action and getting political,” Metaxas tells his audience in the film. “He said those who call themselves Christians have an obligation to God to get political if necessary, and to take a bold and likely dangerous stance against their own government.”Letter to the American Church has partnered with influential rightwing organizations, including the pro-Trump Moms for America, the anti-LGBTQ+ Her Voice Movement, and Patriot Academy – a Christian nationalist group that seeks to rewrite the constitution – to promote the film and spread its message. The organization also partnered with Million Voices, an evangelical get-out-the-vote initiative, to launch a “Pledge to Vote” campaign, aiming to see “250,000 pledge to vote” after seeing the movie.View image in fullscreenThe effort highlights how some tax-exempt religious organizations push the boundaries of legal restrictions on electioneering.Churches are banned from issuing endorsements or campaigning on behalf of a candidate, but they may be able to participate in the screenings without fear of incurring legal penalties, said Andrew Seidel, a constitutional attorney who specializes in first amendment and religious freedoms cases.“One of the ways that this Christian nationalist movement has started operating in the political space, is to create these kinds of movies and then push them out through churches,” he said.Despite the timing of the screenings – which end on election day – and the film’s ultra-political content, “the churches would all have, probably, some pretty credible deniability, if they said: ‘Hey, we were just [given] a chance to run a movie we thought our folks would be interested in.’”The Letter to the American Church tour officially ends on 5 November – but don’t expect Bonhoeffer to go away anytime soon.A splashy feature film, Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin, is to debut in theaters across the US on 22 November. Bonhoeffer, the movie, features a star-studded cast of German actors and promises to be a captivating second world war drama. (Americans might recognize August Diehl, who plays the resistance theologian Martin Niemöller, from his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, or the 2010 thriller Salt).Posters for the movie show Bonhoeffer carrying a gun. “With world-shattering stakes,” the Christian streaming company Angel Studios writes in its promotional materials for the film, Bonhoeffer “begs the question, how far will you go to stand up for what’s right?”Bonhoeffer scholars reject this gun-toting version of the theologian – and the film’s “how-far-would-you-go” framing. “[In] the current, highly-polarized climate in the United States, these are dangerous words,” wrote the leaders of the English and German-language International Bonhoeffer Society last month in Die Zeit.In their petition, the scholars warn more broadly of a possible uptick in violence after the election linked to the Christian far right.“Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words and witness will be used to pit one side against the other, to fight ‘evil’, to put ‘America First’, and to justify violence,” they write. “The misalignment between these views and actions and Bonhoeffer’s own cannot be overstated. When you hear these grievous misuses, and you will, do not be fooled.” More

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      Mormons were once reliably Republican – but they could tip Arizona Harris’s way

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      A valuable Republican voting bloc in Arizona is seeing a shift from members towards Kamala Harris in numbers that Democrats believe could make the difference for them in an election where the latest polls have Donald Trump slightly ahead in the swing state.With nearly 450,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as LDS or Mormons, living in Arizona, they make up about 6% of the state’s population and both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been going all out to woo them.While the church’s home base of Utah is one of the deepest red states, in neighboring Arizona there is a growing partisan rift.Mormons in Arizona are now “poised to support Kamala Harris more than any other presidential Democratic ticket in 60 years”, Jacob Rugh, an associate professor in the department of sociology at the LDS church-run Brigham Young University, said in a Harris-Walz campaign call in August.In the 2020 election, Joe Biden delivered the first Democratic win in Arizona in a presidential election in 24 years. He garnered an estimated 18,000 votes from the LDS community, double Hillary Clinton’s share of LDS voters there – and won the state by just 10,457 votes.“The 18,000 votes was more than the margin of victory, and it showed the significance of the LDS vote,” said Robert Taber, the national director of LDS for Harris-Walz.“Where Biden got 18% of the LDS vote in 2020, I think Harris could hit 25-30% of the LDS vote,” Taber added, citing the increased Democratic campaign efforts there this cycle, as well as the “post-January 6” environment.“I think there’s a decent chance that Harris does a little bit better than Biden,” he said, which, if it happens, could help the Democrats to “hold on to Nevada and Arizona”, he added.In the United States, members of the LDS church make up a relatively small, predominantly white voting bloc – about 2% of the population – and have traditionally been among the most loyal voting blocs for the Republicans over the last several decades, historically aligning on traditional conservative values such as religious freedoms, pro-life stances and small government.But in 2016, when Trump was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, some in the community felt conflicted. That year, after the Hollywood Access tape was published, Deseret News website, which is owned by the LDS church, called on Trump to resign, stating that he did not align with the community’s ideals and values.A small but increasing number of LDS voters continue to shift away from him.Julie Spilsbury, a Republican council member in Mesa, Arizona, and an LDS church member, recently endorsed Harris .“I think the character of our leaders matter,” Spilsbury, 47, said. “And when I hear him talk about – women, immigrants, refugees, people who disagree with him – I cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone like that.”Spilsbury voted for Trump in 2016 but later abandoned him due to his character, divisiveness and rhetoric, she said. She voted for Biden four years later – but quietly. Now she’s publicly supporting Harris.In 2020, about half of LDS voters under the age of 40 voted for Biden, and in Utah, he performed the best of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.While most LDS voters nationwide are expected to vote for Trump, if Harris can better the Biden numbers among the group, it could make a crucial difference in Arizona – and Nevada, where Mormon numbers are also strong, although there is less data available about their voting history in that state from 2020.View image in fullscreenThe Harris campaign launched an LDS advisory committee in Arizona in September and in Nevada in early October to canvas Mormon voters and hold events.The Republicans launched a Latter-day Saints for Trump coalition in early October, and Trump called in to an LDS for Trump video call as the campaign tried to shore up the vote.But in Arizona, John Giles, a lifelong Republican, LDS member and the mayor of Mesa – once dubbed the most conservative city in America – publicly backed Harris just eight days after Biden dropped out of his re-election campaign.He wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republican saying Harris “is fighting to make sure Americans can get ahead and be safe from gun violence and to restore and protect the rights of women”, while Trump stood for the far right, “crudeness and vulgarity”.And at a recent Harris-Walz rally in Arizona, Giles said the GOP had been “taken over by extremists”, and described Trump as “morally and ethically bankrupt”.In recent years, Trump has also clashed with prominent LDS members, including Mitt Romney, Utah’s retiring US senator and past presidential nominee, who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol; Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona house who resisted Trump’s demands to undermine the 2020 election in Arizona; and former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who recently endorsed Harris.“I saw a lot of people really upset about the way that he attacked very well-respected Arizona politicians like Rusty Bowers,” said Lacy Chaffee, a member of the LDS church and a candidate for school board in Mesa.“Rusty campaigned for Trump, but he wasn’t willing to lie,” she added. “So I think that that’s something that speaks very deeply to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We hold very deeply the sense of integrity and truth, and I think that, for a lot of people, was the breaking point.”The Mormon church itself maintains political neutrality, but it encourages civic participation and for members to elect politicians who are “honest, wise and good”.Rugh, the sociology expert, said his analysis showed that candidates who denied that Biden won the 2020 election lost substantial LDS votes.Meanwhile, the church teaches members that the principles in the US constitution are divinely inspired, said Taber, the director of LDS for Harris-Walz. . But Trump has said the constitution should be “terminated”.The LDS youth vote is also shifting significantly. Brittany Romanello, an anthropologist and faculty associate at Arizona State University, said that Harris and the Democrats “have a very big opening” with young LDS voters because of greater diversity both of people and opinions in their ranks, and agreater willingness to disagree with the church majority.“Gen Z is the most politically, ethnically, sexually and romantically diverse generation, and they’re a huge part of the voting bloc, and this includes Mormons,” Romanello said.Rugh’s analysis also found that more than 50% of gen Z LDS members voted for Biden in 2020.View image in fullscreenIn terms of more LDS voters being willing to buck the norm, and be open about it, Spilsbury said:“If me speaking out helps some others, specifically LDS women, know that there’s another choice and that we don’t have to vote Republican just because it’s the thing we think we’re supposed to do, then that’s really important to me.”She said a lot of the reaction from her community to her choice had been “rough” but that she received some positive messages, too.Meanwhile, Mormonism is a conservative, pro-life religion but known as less fiercely anti-abortion than some, generally supporting exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother or child. Harris has zeroed in on reproductive rights since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, after Trump’s three appointees tipped the bench to the right.LDS Arizona resident Monica Chabot, 28, had a miscarriage last year and elected to have the fetus removed rather than wait for it to pass naturally. Her experience changed her perspective on the Republican party and its anti-choice stance, she said. She believes theprocedure would probably not have been allowed under an extreme ban dating from 1864 that briefly took effect in Arizona after Roe was overturned, before some Republicans crossed the aisle to repeal it, which the state’s Democratic governor signed off on, leaving a less harsh ban.“It made me realize how little Trump and other Republicans seem to care about me and my experiences and my body,” she said. “And hearing Kamala talk about it and fighting for that is a big reason why I’ve been involved in the Harris campaign.”Arizona voters have a ballot measure this November that would enshrine in the state constitution the right to abortion until viability, or around 24 weeks. It remains to be seen whether it will encourage split tickets as conservatives who want reproductive choice vote for the measure but also for Trump, or whether it boosts women’s turnout in a huge windfall for Harris.Chabot said that while she would never choose to get an abortion, or encourage others to get an abortion, she doesn’t believe in the government making that decision for a woman.She said: “We talk a lot about agency in the church, and how it’s one of our greatest gifts from God – the ability to choose.” More

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      Harris and Trump lean into their faith in appeals to Christian voters in Georgia

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      Two Georgia megachurches hosted presidential candidates last week, highlighting the stark differences between how Kamala Harris and Donald Trump speak about faith and what Georgia’s Christian religious congregations expect of them.Though Trump and Harris communicate differently to the public about their faith, religious leaders on the left and the right are casting this election in apocalyptic terms. And both candidates know religious voters will be essential to winning swing states like Georgia.“It is so good to be here with everyone today and to worship with you,” Harris said from the pulpit to thousands gathered at New Birth Missionary Baptist church in south DeKalb county last Sunday. “On this day, then, I am reminded, with everything that we reflect on, on the parable from the Gospel of Luke.”Four thousand people packed the pews of the predominantly-Black megachurch outside of Atlanta, one of the most prominent and powerful Black churches in America – a point of which pastor Jamal Bryant regularly reminds his congregation. New Birth owns more land than any Black church in America. It gave away $83m in college scholarships last year, he said.It wields its political clout deftly. New Birth’s congregants include many of Atlanta’s most powerful political figures – mayors, sheriffs, members of Congress. Bryant said it has hosted appearances by five presidents.But people who attend New Birth aren’t there for a stump speech. And Harris didn’t give one.“You don’t want to give political speeches in a sanctuary, because you’re there to worship God,” said state senator Emanuel Jones, a DeKalb Democrat who attended church at New Birth last week. “To me, it is not a good use of a sanctuary to try and politicize – particularly on a Sunday, by the way – to try and mix politics with religion. I think she does a really good job of keeping them separate. She did that today, and we all should.”View image in fullscreenHarris campaigned in Georgia with her pastor Rev Dr Amos Brown, pastor at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco and a contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr and other luminaries in Atlanta’s civil rights history. She told a CNN townhall a few days later that her first call after learning that Biden would be withdrawing was to Brown.“I do pray every day,” she told Anderson Cooper. “Sometimes twice a day.”Harris will discuss her faith when it comes up, but doesn’t go out of her way to portray her campaign as religiously motivated. Conversely, she never mentioned her campaign directly while speaking at New Birth. She shied away from the political themes common to her political rhetoric – abortion rights, the cost of living and the general unfitness of her opponent. She used the word “faith” 16 times in her 14-minute address.“Faith is a verb,” she said. “We show it in action, in our deeds and in our service.”Though she had not come to deliver a political speech, in a church with the flags of dozens of countries lining the balconies, the subtext was clear enough – a repudiation of conservative xenophobia about immigrants.Elaine Montgomery heard it.“Like she said, when you don’t help people like my neighbors and we all in this world,” Montgomery said. “Everything belongs to God.”Montgomery, 69, from Stone Mountain, Georgia, was wearing a pink hat big enough to see from space that Sunday. She was on her way to vote. Her disdain for Trump’s expression of faith was plain.“He’s a man speaking on a level that’s below God, I will say that,” Montgomery said. Her voice lowered. “I don’t really think Donald Trump had faith. I really don’t. I’m serious, you know, because if he had faith and he believed in Jesus Christ, he wouldn’t be doing the things he does.”Faith matters in Georgia. White Christian evangelical beliefs correlate with the strongest support for Donald Trump, and about 38% of Georgians fall into that category, according to the Pew Research Center. Black voters in Georgia are also much more likely to be religious than the baseline, and Black voters represent about 30% of the electorate.Georgia, in the heart of the Bible Belt, has one of the highest rates of regular church attendance in America at 42%.View image in fullscreenLast Sunday, 42,694 voters cast a ballot in Georgia, many going in a “souls to the polls” push regularly organized by churches, particularly in metro Atlanta. In the flurry of conservative election legislation that followed the 2020 election in Georgia, a plan to eliminate Sunday early voting floated through the legislature. Outcry from pastors across the state ended that gambit. Mobilizing religiously-motivated voters is a necessary, if insufficient, requirement for any candidate to win a Georgia election.Trump found himself in Zebulon, Georgia, last week, doing just that.He was 45-minutes late to the faith townhall held at Christ Chapel church. Thousands of people packed its hall and sprawled into a parking lot ringed by semi-truck trailers with snipers on the roofs.“You know, without religion, it’s like the – it’s like the glue that holds it all together. This would be a different country,” he said, noting a declining trend in religious participation, suggesting that “people started thinking a little bit differently and they got used to a different way of life” after the pandemic. He spoke about how Christians – particularly Catholics – faced unspecified “persecution” today in America.But most of Trump’s comments at the “Believers and Ballots” townhall were campaign fodder about illegal immigration, how great his rallies have been and attacks on Harris and the Biden administration.About 1,100 people live in Zebulon, about an hour-and-a-half south of Atlanta. Christ Chapel has about 1,600 members, with more at satellite campuses in middle Georgia.Brian Hood, a congregant at Christ Chapel, said he expected Trump to speak about the border and inflation, but also freedom of religion.“Donald J Trump professes to be a born-again Christian. Does that mean that he’s perfect? Of course not. None of us are. Anybody who says they are is a liar. He appeals to, not just Christians, but all the American people. He loves God and loves people, all walks of life.”Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, a Republican and ally of the former president, asked Trump about coping with the assassination attempts and the pressure of the campaign. “How do you lean into your faith and your family to deal with this?”“I say this. Faith – when you have faith, when you believe in God, it’s a big advantage over people that don’t have that. It’s a big advantage,” Trump replied.It was the only substantial reference Trump made to his own faith in the abbreviated 40-minute forum for faith voters.View image in fullscreenRalph Reed, chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and a longtime activist on the Christian right, succinctly laid out the stakes for antiabortion conservatives as he warmed up the crowd before Trump’s arrival.Harris is “going to pass a federal law to impose abortion on demand on all 50 states,” Reed said. “And when she’s done doing that, she’s going to repeal the filibuster and then she’s going to pass a federal law imposing term limits on the supreme court which will instantly remove justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts from the court and she’s going to replace them with the most leftwing radical extremist justices ever nominated. That’s her agenda.”The first accomplishment listed on the campaign’s “Believers for Trump” website is how Trump appointed three supreme court justices, “which led to the end of Roe v Wade and broader protections for religious liberties.” Ending legal abortion is central to the religious conservatism of many of his supporters.“I believe that life begins in conception. I cannot follow the dictates of being able to abort at any time,” said Carol Whitcomb of Stockbridge, a conservative who attended the Trump forum.But it also may be a losing political position, even in Georgia. In every state where abortion rights have been a ballot referendum since the end of federal protections, voters have taken the more pro-choice position. Trump has generally avoided talking about abortion on the campaign trail, with no mention of it at all in a later appearance in Georgia last week.Sandra Stargel of McDonough, Georgia, who attended the forum, has registered a change in Trump’s posture toward abortion, she said. “But, you know, I believe God has been talking to him, too. God has him here for a reason. I understand that women want to be in charge of their bodies. I get that. But in that case, they make birth control. Use it. Don’t just keep killing babies.”Reed highlighted the stakes of the election: “We gather in this sanctuary 13 days before not only the most important election of our lifetimes but one of the most important elections in American history,” he said.While Harris was at New Birth a few days earlier, the church’s pastor Bryant used similar rhetoric, likening this political moment to the biblical story of Esther and her obligation to save Jews from death. “If you are silent in this moment, your family will not survive,” Bryant said. “This is not the time for y’all to be bougie and stuck up. Generations of your unborn family are waiting to see what you do next.” More

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      ‘I’m a Christian for trans rights’: pro-LGBTQ+ Missouri pastor runs for office

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      When Phoenix Lemke was in his final year of high school, he had nowhere to go.The family of the teenager from O’Fallon, Missouri, had long disapproved of him being queer, and in December 2021, at age 17, he left home without a clear plan. He spent several days couchsurfing with friends until he found refuge with an unlikely figure: a local pastor.The Rev Susan Shumway, a minister at a nearby church, had known Lemke for years through his friends and offered him a room as soon as she learned of his predicament.“She has a history of letting people stay here when they are struggling,” Lemke, now 20, said on a recent evening, seated with Shumway in their living room. “She was adamant in letting me know she supported me, and at some point I just started calling her mom.”Shumway is something of an anomaly in this deep red state: a clergy member advocating for LGBTQ+ equality.Missouri in recent years has been at the center of a national push to limit the rights of trans and queer people. State officials have pushed to outlaw healthcare for trans youth, block trans kids from sports, restrict trans people’s bathroom access and censor LGBTQ+ content.As in other parts of the country, those efforts have found the support of Christian nationalist groups, and Missouri officials have explicitly pointed at their faith while enacting trans restrictive policies. Mike Moon, the state’s senator and author of its trans youth healthcare ban, has referenced God and the Bible to support his bill (and defend child marriage). The Missouri attorney general, Andrew Bailey, as well as the Missouri US senator Josh Hawley, who embraces the idea of America as a “Christian nation”, have promoted the anti-trans talking point that God “doesn’t make mistakes”, falsely suggesting children cannot be trans.Shumway has a very different view. “I’m a Christian who believes in trans rights. And I’m going to be loud and make sure legislators hear from Christians who are not spewing hate,” she said.Shumway’s now campaigning to become a state representative, hoping to be a strong opposition voice in a legislature that has become one of the most hostile in the nation toward queer and trans people.“The Christian right has not had a challenge from the Christian left, and we need to join together and make some noise,” she said.Shumway traces her LGBTQ+ rights advocacy to 1999, when she was in seminary, leading a youth group. As she prepared to move away, one of the young members confided he was gay, telling her last-minute and worried she would disapprove. “I said, ‘So what? I love you,’” she recalls.The interaction taught her about how coming out feels risky to many kids, she said. “And I knew that wouldn’t be the last youth to come out [to me].”Shumway is a member of the United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination with 770,000 members, which promotes inclusivity.Over the years, she has helped lead numerous churches through the process of becoming “open and affirming” congregations that support LGBTQ+ members. She acknowledges non-queer congregants’ discomfort and tries to help them grasp what it might be like to struggle with dysphoria. She emphasizes the importance of treating people like Lemke with respect, even if they don’t understand them. “I affirm God’s love for this person,” she said. “I believe God created Phoenix to be a wonderful person of God just as he is.“I believe it’s my job to kick open the doors that have been closed and allow Phoenix and others the opportunity to walk through if they want to,” Shumway added.Moving in with Shumway was transformative for Lemke, he said. He came out as trans after he started living with Shumway, and began transitioning soon after. “Here, I could do what I want, be who I want and kiss who I want without being called a slur.”View image in fullscreenLast year, he posted a joyous photo holding his court paperwork confirming his legal name change: “I just felt so much better and happier.”Lemke said he’s estranged from most of his relatives, who have resisted acknowledging his transition. “By insisting they had a daughter, they lost the opportunity to have a son,” he said. “I wish I could get them to understand that – as much as you think you know me, you don’t live in my body. You didn’t live the first 17 years of your life looking at it and knowing something is wrong but not being allowed to say it, because you know you wouldn’t be safe.”Lemke said he still feels unsafe using public bathrooms in Missouri. While he was grateful to turn 18 so he could access gender-affirming healthcare, he has also had distressing conversations with his doctor about how hard it has become to support trans patients in the state.Lemke scoffs at the idea that Republicans are “protecting children” with bills restricting trans existence – laws that have been linked to sharp increases in suicide attempts among trans youth. “They want to die because they aren’t allowed to be themselves,” Lemke said of some of his peers. “I genuinely feel I am alive because I was able to put my foot in the door.”Shumway said watching Lemke blossom had inspired her to keep fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. “It’s such a privilege seeing these shackles that were holding him down fall off, and seeing him become such a confident young man.”Lemke isn’t religious, but sometimes makes food for Shumway’s congregation. When friends learn he lives with a pastor, “they say, ‘Are you okay? Blink twice,’” he said, noting how many of them have come to associate religion with intolerance.Shumway added: “The corporate church has done such harm, and there needs to be healing.”Shumway’s statehouse race is an uphill battle in a district dominated by Republicans. Whether she’s elected, she said she’ll advocate for the passage of a nondiscrimination law in Missouri, where state law does not prohibit employers from firing people for being LGBTQ+.Other Missouri faith leaders have organized against anti-trans bills, some motivated by their own trans children.Daniel Bogard, a St Louis rabbi, has pleaded with lawmakers to preserve the rights of his 11-year-old trans son. He cited sacred Jewish texts that scholars interpret as referencing nonbinary identity. “Legislators pretend like being queer is new, and it’s not,” he said. “There have always been queer people. It’s just another incredible way of being human.“I used to believe, if I could show them that, they would leave my family alone. I don’t believe that anymore,” he continued, saying legislators now won’t acknowledge his family. “They stopped looking us in the eye, because it just hurt them too much to see us as humans … It works for these Christian nationalist politicians to get people to be fearful of and disgusted by my child.”While disillusioned by the political process, Bogard said he will continue to encourage faith leaders to “stand up for the dignity and sacredness of trans kids.“These kids need to know there are people who love them and are fighting for them.” More

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      The California community caught between a powerful megachurch and far-right extremists

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      This is the third in a series of three stories on the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election in Shasta county, a region of 180,000 people in northern California that has emerged as a center of the election denial movement and hotbed for far-right politics. Read the first and second story.For years, an extremist far-right movement has worked to transform one of California’s most conservative regions. Since gaining a majority on Shasta county’s governing body, they have managed to spark an exodus of government workers, attempted to do away with the voting system and fought the state over policies pertaining to Covid-19 and the second amendment.Earlier this year, voters in the community of 180,000 – perhaps tired of Shasta’s national notoriety as a hotbed for extremist politics and election denialism – declared they had had enough. In a stunning rebuke, they voted out a far-right leader by an enormous margin, handing his seat to a political newcomer.Matt Plummer, a Yale-educated former college football player who owns a corporate training business, pledged to provide an alternative to the “hostility and division” tearing Shasta apart. Supporters view Plummer, with his focus on issues such as crime, roads and homelessness, as someone who can help the community chart a path out of the upheaval.But others are concerned about Plummer’s connection to another powerful and ultra-conservative force that has reshaped the region: Bethel church. The megachurch has more than 11,000 members, including Plummer, and a school of “supernatural ministry” that serves 2,000 students a year.View image in fullscreenBethel leaders once said that God wanted Donald Trump to have a second term and have claimed that Joe Biden won the 2020 election by “fraud”. Church members have become major players in local government – three of the five members on the city council in Redding, the county seat, attend Bethel. The city’s vice-mayor is a church elder.The church is involved in nearly every part of Shasta county, and is a cornerstone of the local economy, said Doni Chamberlain, a longtime local journalist and chronicler of the area.Shasta’s extreme political landscape has forced residents to choose between a toxic rightwing movement and a church that also has deeply conservative and extreme beliefs, she said.“This is the bind we’re in,” she said. “Shasta county is in this weird extremist sandwich where we have the rightwing pushing for guns and splitting the state. And there is the other extreme side of the sandwich that is Bethel church. Then the middle where people are trying to figure out how to survive in this place.”Before Shasta county garnered national attention for its fierce opposition to Covid-19 restrictions and efforts to institute a hand-count voting system favored by those who believe lies about election fraud, it was Bethel church that raised the region’s profile.There are churches – of which Shasta county has plenty – and then there is Bethel, a behemoth institution without parallel in the area. First established in a private home in 1952, it now has more than 11,000 members – more than 10% of the population in the city of Redding – where the church is based.Bethel’s transformation came under the direction of Bill Johnson, the son of a long-serving pastor who began leading the church with Beni, his wife, in 1996. The church has grown significantly, opening a school, a youth outreach program and Bethel Music, a record label that produces popular worship music and reported $18m in revenue in 2023. Justin Bieber is a fan and has filmed himself covering a song from a Bethel artist. Today several of Johnson’s children work as senior leaders in the church.But it’s Bethel’s school of supernatural ministry, which has been called a “Christian Hogwarts”, that is often credited with its growth. The program was founded by Kris and Kathy Vallotton, the senior leaders of the church, and teaches students that they can perform miracles and heal through prayer. “Students will learn how to read, understand, and ‘do’ the Bible, how to practice His presence, to witness, heal the sick, prophesy, preach, pray, cast out demons and much more,” the school website states.People travel to Redding from around the world, more than 100 countries, to attend the vocational program. Students have been known to approach people in the city, particularly those in casts or with walkers, to offer prayers for healing. The focus on “supernatural power” is fundamental to the church, which in 2019 asked members to pray for the resurrection of a two-year-old girl.Bethel has long believed in the power of healing people through prayer. Chamberlain joined the church as a child after her mother died and her siblings were adopted by a local couple who were members. When they learned that Chamberlain and her twin sister had a neurological disorder that caused involuntary movements, church elders came to treat their “demons” and the children were made to throw away their medications, Chamberlain recalled.“When you have a bunch of adults circling around you and putting their hands on your heads and shaking you, it was pretty intimidating,” she said, adding that they coached her on how to speak in tongues.“It’s like being waterboarded, you just give up and give in so they leave you alone. Then you’re in the club.”Since its founding in 1998, Bethel’s supernatural school has brought thousands of people to Redding. They are a visible presence around the city, in its grocery stores and the hip cafes and bakeries operated by Bethel members. And as the church’s footprint has grown, so too has criticism of its role.Supporters say the church has been a positive force in Redding and that it’s natural for a large institution to attract scrutiny but that members want to be a part of the community in which they live. They often point to local volunteer work or when the church donated money to fund police positions in Redding and began leasing the local auditorium when it appeared the city would have to close it down.Bethel did not respond to multiple requests for comment.View image in fullscreenBut other Shasta county residents argue the church has changed the fabric of the community and worsened an existing housing shortage by drawing thousands of students to the area while driving up costs.“If you look from the outside in, there seems to be positives. They’ve done good things, but I don’t feel like on balance what they’ve done is for the good of the community in general,” said Robert Sid, a Shasta county resident who supported Plummer. “Their Hogwarts supernatural ministry has really played into flooding the market and artificially pricing things that the regular Redding person can’t afford.”Critics have expressed discomfort with church members who hold key positions in local government voting on proposals from Bethel to expand. Some residents have joined a Facebook group to identify businesses connected to the church.“[The owners] tithe to the church. If you patronize a Bethel-affiliated business then now some of those profits are being tithed to the church. You’re kind of indirectly supporting the church by doing that,” said Rachel Strickland, who started the group. “People don’t want to do that.”And for some in this deeply conservative region, where Republicans outnumber Democrats two to one, the church’s political ties have been cause for concern as well. Religious experts have described it as closely related to the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement built around the idea of modern-day prophets and apostles that aims to have Christians transform society and rule over key political and cultural institutions, referred to as the “Seven Mountain Mandate”.Johnson co-authored a book, Invading Babylon: the 7 Mountain Mandate, which advises Christians to exert influence in seven core areas: church, family, education, government, media, arts and commerce.Matthew D Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish studies who has studied Bethel, argued that the church appears to be trying to implement the Seven Mountain Mandate in its community.“I think they very much intend to enact this bigger vision of Christian supremacy and Christian dominance in the Redding area. It doesn’t mean they are always overt about that,” said Taylor, the author of a book on the New Apostolic Reformation for which he interviewed Johnson.Bethel leaders endorsed Donald Trump, and in 2021 one apologized for incorrectly prophesying that he would win a second term. The church has come out against efforts to restrict conversion therapy. In 2019, several figures associated with the church attended an Oval Office event with Trump to pray over the president. Bethel has sought to distance itself from January 6, however, Taylor said.“They are trying to tone down public rhetoric and make themselves [seem] less extreme than they are but as far as I can tell they haven’t moderated their extremism. They are just trying to package it in a better way,” he argued.The church has long emphasized that the beliefs of individual church members are not necessarily reflective of the church’s positions. Chamberlain, who left the church as a young adult, argues it is important to distinguish between the church leadership and its members.“You have to separate the leaders of the church, the people who are millionaires and drive expensive cars, cars that cost as much as somebody might pay for a house. They have vacation homes and eat at The French Laundry,” Chamberlain said.They live a life of the rich and famous, she added, while some Bethel members, and students, leave their homes abroad and live in extreme poverty to be close to the church.Members point out that they are not a monolith.Matt Plummer’s journey to Redding began the same way thousands of others have – with Bethel. He moved to the city in 2016 with his wife and daughters to attend the church, and remains a member, he said in an interview with the Guardian.Plummer, who grew up in rural New Jersey where his first job was on a horse farm, was drawn to the region’s access to nature from hiking to swimming holes, he said, and the family has developed deep ties to the area.He decided to run for the board of supervisors after working in several political campaigns and seeing the intense polarization and problems that have plagued Shasta county.“We have tied basically for the highest suicide rate in the state. You have one of the highest rates of childhood trauma and one of the highest rates of kids being born with drug withdrawal effects,” he said. “This is a pretty cool community that has a lot to offer but at the same time if you look at all these dimensions of what makes a community thrive, we’re trailing.”View image in fullscreenHe had a tough race ahead of him seeking to unseat Patrick Jones, who previously served on the Redding city council and had been a supervisor for three years as well as a leader of the anti-establishment movement that has come to define local politics.Jones, a gun store manager, led some of the county’s most controversial efforts, including attempting to upend the voting system and moving to allow people to carry firearms in public buildings in violation of state law. He also spread conspiracy theories, telling a conservative national news outlet: “Elections have been manipulated at the county level for decades.”He once responded to a reporter’s query by telling them to “drop dead”.While polarizing, Jones was well-known and had been in politics for years, Plummer said, and had the backing of a Connecticut magnate who has poured millions of dollars into local elections.Plummer made up for that by making personal contact, and personally knocked on about 9,000 doors, he said (there are about 23,000 registered voters in his district).“People care if you show up and meet them,” he said.He sought to stay out of ideological debates and focus on what residents were worried about, primarily public safety, roads and homelessness. The number of unhoused residents has grown significantly in recent years from 793 in 2022 to 1,013 people in 2023.“My opponent had been on the board almost four years and he had been on city council for eight years, which had some jurisdiction over the same things. And they had all gotten worse,” he said.His affiliation with Bethel was a concern, he acknowledged, one he tried to address and alleviate. “I’m not speaking on stage and not this type of celebrity at Bethel. I just go there on a Sunday morning.”View image in fullscreen“One of the things I said is: ‘I’m not running to represent Bethel and so my job is not to defend Bethel’ and so when people would attack Bethel for things, I’d say OK, that’s fine. That’s actually not my priority here,” he said.Strickland, who has described Bethel as a cult, said the choice put the community in a tough position, but that even in her Facebook group people seemed to be leaning toward Plummer. “For me Patrick Jones is much more dangerous.”Plummer received the endorsement of Chamberlain’s publication, A News Cafe, drawing backlash from some readers who started referring to the outlet as Bethel Cafe.“It was a tough call. I have a problem with Bethel on a lot of levels, but just kind of putting on your thinking cap sometimes the Bethel candidates were the best choice for the positions,” she said.“Do we vote for Patrick Jones who is pushing guns and open carry? Or do we vote for Matt Plummer who is a Bethel member? He’s also articulate, educated and smart.”And in the current political climate in the county, Chamberlain mused, few people would want to subject themselves to running for office. “The Bethel people are kind of impervious to it. It’s scriptural.” 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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      Pope criticizes Harris and Trump and tells US Catholics to choose ‘lesser evil’

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      Pope Francis on Friday criticized Donald Trump over his plan to deport millions of immigrants and Kamala Harris over her stance supporting abortion rights.Asked about the US presidential election on his flight back to Rome from Singapore, the pope said not welcoming migrants is a “grave” sin, and likened having an abortion to an “assassination“.He said US Catholics would have to “choose the lesser evil” when they vote in November, without elaborating.Francis was speaking in a press conference with journalists after a 12-day tour across south-east Asia and Oceania. Although the pope did not use Trump and Harris’s names, he referred specifically to their policies and their genders. Despite criticizing both candidates, he said Catholics should vote.“Not voting is ugly,” the 87-year-old pontiff said. “It is not good. You must vote.“You must choose the lesser evil,” he continued. “Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone, in conscience, [has to] think and do this.”American Catholics, numbering roughly 52 million nationwide, are often seen as crucial swing voters. In some battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, more than 20% of adults are Catholic.Francis, leader of about 1.4 billion Catholics globally, is usually careful about weighing in on national political elections. But he frequently criticizes abortion, which is forbidden by Catholic teaching, in sharp terms. He has also previously criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. During the 2016 election, he said Trump was “not Christian” in his views. On Friday, Francis said both candidates’ policies were “against life”.“Whether it is the one who is chasing away migrants, or the one that kills children,” said the pope. “Both are against life.”Trump has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and deport millions of immigrants already in the US if elected to a second term as president. He has also refused to rule out building detention camps for undocumented immigrants.Harris has promised to sign any legislation passed by Congress to restore national protections for abortion access, which were struck down by the US supreme court in its 2022 Dobbs decision.The two candidates sparred over both issues on Wednesday in their first debate together. Most polls show a tight race, with Harris leading slightly.The pope called immigration “a right”, citing Bible passages that call orphans, widows and foreigners three kinds of people that society must care for. “Not giving welcome to migrants is a sin,” said the pope. “It is grave.”Francis said abortion “is killing a human being”. He said there could be no excuses for an abortion. “It is an assassination,” he said. “On these things we must speak clearly. No ‘but’ or ‘however’.” More

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      ‘We have to be voting biblically’: the Courage Tour rallies Christians to get Trump in office

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      By 9am on Monday, hundreds of worshipers who had gathered under a tent in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, were already on their feet. Praiseful music bumped from enormous speakers. The temperature was pushing 90F (32C).The congregants had gathered in north-western Wisconsin for the Courage Tour, a travelling tent revival featuring a lineup of charismatic preachers and self-styled prophets promising healing, and delivering a political message: register to vote. Watch, or work, the polls. And help deliver the 2024 election to Donald Trump.Serving as a voter registration drive and hub for recruiting poll workers, it was no mistake that the Courage Tour came to Wisconsin just three months ahead of the presidential election in November. The tour had already visited three other swing states: Georgia, Michigan and Arizona.Heavy-hitting Maga organizations – including America First Policy Institute, TPUSA Faith and America First Works – had a presence outside the tent. Inside, headlining the event was Lance Wallnau, a prominent figure in the New Apostolic Reformation – a movement on the right that embraces modern-day apostles, aims to establish Christian dominion over society and politics and has grown in influence since Trump was elected president in 2016.“‘Pray for your rulers,’ that’s about as far as we got in the Bible,” said Wallnau, setting the tone for the day, which would feature a series of sermons focused on the ideal role of Christians in government and society. “I think what’s happened is over time, we began to realize you cannot trust that government like you thought you could trust, and you can’t trust the media to tell you what’s really happening,” he exclaimed.What followed in Wallnau’s morning sermon were a series of greatest hits of the Maga right: January 6 (not an insurrection), the 2020 election (marred by fraud) and Covid-19 (a Chinese bioweapon).Many of the attendees had learned of the event from Eau Claire’s Oasis church – a Pentecostal church whose congregants were already familiar with the movement’s goal to turn believers into activists with a religious mission.“This is wonderful,” said Cyndi Lund, an Oasis churchgoer who attended the four-day event. “I teach a class on biblical citizenship – the Lord put in my heart that we have to be voting biblically, and if nothing else, we have a duty in America to vote.”According to the preachers who sermonized on Monday, the correct biblical worldview is a deeply conservative one. The speakers repeatedly stated their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion, ideas that were elaborated on in pamphlets passed around the crowd and on three large screens facing the audience. (“Tolerance IS NOT A commandment,” read one poster, propped up in front of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA stall outside the tent.)After Wallnau spoke, Bill Federer, an evangelist who has written more than thirty books weighing in on US history from an anti-communist and rightwing perspective, offered a brief and often intensely inaccurate, intellectual history of the US and Europe. During his talk, Federer dropped references to the villains of his historiography – among them Karl Marx, Fidel Castro, the German philosopher Hegel and, “a little closer to home”, the political theorist of the New Left, Saul Alinsky. The crowd, apparently already versed in Federer’s intellectual universe, groaned and booed when Federer mentioned Alinsky.Federer also railed on “globalists”, tapping into the longstanding antisemitic idea of a shadowy cabal led by wealthy Jewish people who dictate world events.“Globalists,” Federer said, “are giving money to LGBTQ activists to get involved with politics.”It would be up to God-fearing Christians with a biblical worldview to push back against “wokeism”, by influencing what New Apostolic Reformers refer to as the “seven mountains” of society: religion, family, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and, most important at the Courage Tour, government.The stakes, emphasized many of the speakers, couldn’t be overstated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What we’re up against aren’t people,” said Mercedes Sparks, speaking on the topic of the secularization of US life. “These are spirits.” Sparks made clear her explicit goal – shared by the other speakers on the tour – of bringing Christianity into politics and government. But despite invoking an intense form of Christian nationalism, the speakers at the Courage Tour repeatedly decried the label as a smear.“This whole idea of Christian nationalism, it’s kind of interesting, right?” said Sparks, who claimed the term amounts to a form of persecution against Christian Americans. “This term that’s being thrown around, that I really think is designed to shame Christians into not voting and not being engaged like any other group that makes up America.”By the end of the day, the speakers had warmed up the crowd for the afternoon’s natural conclusion: a call to get involved.Joshua Caleb, a speaker at the event who described himself as a former Republican opposition researcher, called on attendees to join his organization, The Lion of Judah – a group which, according to its website, aims to unleash “the ROAR of Christian Voters across America” and urges members to “fight the fraud” by becoming election workers. Event organizers handed out flyers provided by the Trump-aligned America First Works and the evangelical group Faith and Freedom, urging pastors to help their congregants get registered to vote before the November election.Not all attendees were prepared for the speakers’ political, and often dire, message.“It’s too intense for me,” said Kahmara Kelly, who is 20 years old and recently joined the Oasis church. “My body just doesn’t like the tension that could come with it, and the conflict, so I just try avoiding politics.” At times, Kelly left the tent for a breath of air.“Not gonna lie, I was ready to just walk away,” Kelly added. More