Hiding in Plain Sight

Christian Nationalism is on the March

Kenneth Copeland. Do you want this man deciding what your kids learn?

For the last 60 years, a network of Christian evangelical churches, pastors, and ultra-wealthy families have worked to crystallize a movement and reshape American culture in their faux-Biblical image. Their piety is thin. Their adherence to the actual teachings of Jesus is often non-existent or so twisted as to be unrecognizable. As I wrote late last year, their efforts - decades and billions of dollars - paid off when Donald Trump arrived on the scene.

Read MAGA :: The Devil’s Brew here.

This week, I interviewed Jeff Sharlet, author of The Undertow, Scenes From a Slow Civil War, an incredible book about how Trump, MAGA, and evangelical churches have become a Christian nationalist movement, constantly shifting its tactics and ‘beliefs’ making it difficult to keep track of what’s going on. It’s worth remembering that when Roe v. Wade became the law of the land in 1973, the Southern Baptist Convention (!) considered it worthy of high praise.

Abortion, the environment, schools, a Biblical belief in how the federal government should be structured, are all means to an end. Ironically, for a group so dedicated to being left alone to worship as they want (per the 1st Amendment) they spend most of their time trying to make sure the rest of us must conform to their twisted vision of society.

Note: In the next couple of weeks I’ll be covering this movement extensively in a special mini-series on The Lincoln Project Podcast.

Much of their work exists in a bubble away from those not in this movement’s communities. The results, however, a plain for all Americans to see. The Republican Party is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Donald Trump’s nationalist movement. Whatever it purported to be while I was growing up in it, or later when I worked with the GOP, is gone, and gone forever.

The Venn Diagram between Christian nationalism and right-wing media is a circle. The themes the congregants pick up in the temporal world (say civil war) are carried to the pews; and the pastors are expected to amplify and sanctify this rhetoric.

The RNC is now simply the political operation for the MAGA movement. The other components - the propagandists, front groups, financiers, and evangelical churches form a well-organized, well-resourced, relentless machine. Remember: For these people, those deepest into the conspiracies and the shallow religiosity, this is an existential fight. They believe that their world is coming to an end.

In some ways, it is. We are a pluralist, multi-racial democracy (for now.) There are no 40 million voters under the age of 30. Nearly half of those are people of color. This trend is already accelerating. Whether we call them Christan nationalists, dominionists, or theocrats, they know this, too.

Why did they spend the last 50 years warring on the Supreme Court and the judiciary? Because they know America is moving away from them politically, culturally, and demographically. The courts allow a the United States Senate (less representative all the time) and a President to enshrine (read: legislate from the bench) policies and ideas that would never pass Congress.

The good news is that there are more of us than there are of them. But here’s where it really counts: Evangelicals vote in droves. They turn out: Everytime. Yes, it is possible to defeat Trump and his nationalist allies at the ballot box, but we must show up. We must convince everyone we know to show up. We must do the work of highlighting the kind of country these people envision. Hint: It doesn’t involve democracy, pluralism, freedom of expression, or educating your kids (other than in some form of evangelical Maoism.)

A friend of mine reminds me a fair bit that demographics are destiny. Indeed, they can be, but not if the bad guys get there first. There are plenty of examples from history to the present day of minority rule of majority populations. We should expect nothing less from these people should Donald Trump retake power.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for gutting the bureaucracy in a second Trump presidency is very clear about its objectives. It wants to get rid of all the pieces of government that help and/or protect us. They want to grow, embolden, and weaponized all the pieces that would control us (all of us - no one escapes this.)

The beating black heart of this is at work in thousands of churches across the country, some even where you live or where your neighbors pray each Sunday. Understanding who they are, what they want, and how they’re doing it is an important first step in ensuring, once again, that we take nothing for granted in these next nine months.

This brief essay just scratches the surface. To understand how this movement operates, I’ve included some excellent reads and listens below:

The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet

The Founding Myth by Andrew Seidel