Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God.
Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming the enemy: state Democratic officials who are challenging her right-leaning policies—and drafting laws that hinder book bans and protect teachers from harassment.
“Today we stand here and declare in his almighty name that it’s only a matter of time before we take your seats and we be a God-fearing example to the nation, how God is using California to lead the way,” Shaw crowed, adding, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name! You, Satan, are losing.”
Now Shaw is in the national spotlight in wake of her Chino school board passing codes that ban pride flags in classrooms and force educators to inform parents if their children identify as transgender—the first such policy to be passed in the state.
This summer, Shaw’s school board meetings, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles, became chaotic spectacles, ones that attracted the Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists and pitted them against students and parents protesting what they’re calling anti-LGBTQ practices that endanger children. When California superintendent of schools Tony Thurmond appeared at the July meeting in opposition, Shaw unceremoniously silenced him.
Weeks after state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a civil rights probe into Shaw’s “gender disclosure” policy, his office sued the school board. Bonta said the policy violates the California constitution and state law, and would cause LGBTQ+ students, “mental, emotional, psychological and potential physical harm,” according to a press release.
Other right-leaning school boards across the state have followed Chino Valley Unified’s lead. Shortly before filing suit against the Chino board, Bonta issued statements denouncing the Anderson Union High School District, Temecula Valley Unified and Murrieta Valley Unified school boards’ decisions to pursue “copycat” anti-trans policies.
“These students are currently under threat of being outed to their parents against their will, and many fear that the District’s policy will force them to make a choice: either ‘walk back’ their constitutionally and statutorily protected rights to gender identity and gender expression, or face the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm,” Bonta said.
To concerned observers in Chino, Shaw’s tack is not unlike what’s happening at school boards across the country, with brawls over curriculum, social emotional learning, and the banning of books that focus on race and LGBTQ issues. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty have spawned a mainstream narrative that public schools are “indoctrinating” children with “woke” ideology and into believing they’re a different gender.
But in Chino Valley, the school board’s new direction appears to be spurred on by a man behind the curtain: Shaw’s megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs.
Of course.
Indeed, three of the board’s five members belong to his church, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills.
At the Sacramento rally, Hibbs boasted of his congregation’s work in electing Shaw. Calling her a “true modern-day Deborah,” Hibbs said the soccer mom “heeded the call to run for the school board” and that “when churches get involved and get informed, people vote.”
God, Hibbs said, installed Shaw into her position.
“Get on your knees every night,” Shaw told the crowd. “All day I talk to him. People probably think I’m crazy, but I’m really just talking to God all day.” After reciting a Bible verse, she added, “I have looked demons straight in the eye and with God’s authority rebuked them back to hell where they belong.
“You can do that too, trust me.”
Residents have long raised alarms about the school board’s religious bent. And Pastor Hibbs and members of his megachurch congregation appear to be more involved than ever in Chino’s public schools.
Last week, in an interview with right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, Hibbs said that he brought the policy language to the school board after Republican state Assemblyman Bill Essayli’s “parental notification” legislation died without a hearing.
“He came back thinking he was defeated,” Hibbs said. “What we did is that we read his bill and we took the verbiage from that bill and then introduced it to our unified school district school board and they voted and adopted the verbiage.
“Guess what happened?” Hibbs continued. “We found out something, Charlie, that the most powerful politics is local…”
Hibbs then turned to Bonta’s lawsuit against the board, saying, “We’re going to take that on, we’re going to make sure that this goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The pastor, who hasn’t returned messages left by The Daily Beast, wasn’t shy about his fight on the school board’s behalf.
Before he signed off, Hibbs told Kirk that children are “groomed” into trans ideology in the classroom and that schools want to “castrate your children” and “mutilate them.”
Ahead of the parental notification vote in July, Hibbs also urged people to flock to the fiery board meeting. “We’re asking people to show up by the thousands,” he said in a video announcement on the church’s Facebook page. “Please make it a priority.”
Churches have long been hubs of political activism for people all over the political map. It stands to reason that this particularly virulent form of Christian bigotry would be involved in the homophobic fever that’s broken out on the right. Trans rights seems to have pushed them over the bend but gay marriage lies underneath it all as the main affront. They’re already trying to get it on the books in the states if they can get the high court to reconsider. It worked with abortion.