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Of camels’ noses and tents

We’ve warned plenty about the New Apostolic Reformation and the Seven Mountains people. Long before us, Richard Hofstadter warned about the paranoid style in American politics in 1964 in the wake of the McCarthy era. The paranoid style in American religion is closely related.

In the late 1970s, Republican operatives decided on mobilizing useful idiots on the religious right for conservative political purposes. They invited the camel to poke its nose under the tent. And in the fullness of time we got QAnon and Trump and MAGA. ALL ONE, like the pepermint soap.

Of camels’ noses and tents

Axios reports this morning that while Christian nationalism is on the rise, it still remains widely unpopular:

About two-thirds of Americans reject or are skeptical about Christian nationalism despite its rising influence that’s shaping education, immigration and health care policies, a new survey finds.

Why it matters: Some Republicans are openly expressing Christian nationalist views, which have ranged from calls for more religion in public schools to book bans and even suggestions that democracy should die.

• This once-fringe ideology has become prevalent in some deeply red states at a time when the nation overall is increasingly diverse and less religious.

The big picture: The new data from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Atlas come days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should receive legal protections as “unborn life.”

Zoom in: 7 out of 10 Americans said they were rejecters (30%) or skeptics (37%) of Christian nationalism, the PRRI survey said.

How fringe are Christian nationalists? In echoes of Steve Bannon’s nihilistic rhetoric about burning the government to the ground, Fred Clarkson reports that these “prophets” want to burn down religion too:

It is more than paradoxical that an ostensibly Christian university leader would say, “We are here to put a knife to the throat of religion.” But that’s what Apostle Greg Hood, the founder of Kingdom University in Franklin, Tennessee believes so heartily he emblazoned it on a KU t-shirt.

This is not a hoax. In fact, the bloody tee epitomizes the paradoxes of the New Apostolic Reformation—a movement that says it means to bust out of the “demonic prison” of  religion, knives out. Religion is, of course, one of the seven mountains of culture that NAR seeks to conquer to achieve Christian dominion (the other six being government, family, education, business, media, and arts & entertainment). The rhetoric they employ when discussing how to do it can be violent, if not always t-shirt worthy. But understanding the paradox of religion killing religion helps us understand this campaign for a paradigmatic change in the direction of American and world Christianity.

There’s a certain tension in the NAR, between the metaphorical and the physical; the hyperbolic and the actual. But most often, these are not mutually exclusive. 

Trump played that tension like a violin ahead of Jan. 6. These dudes do the same. Apostle Greg Hood said, “We’re dealing with demonic strongholds that are controlling people, that are using people to keep their agenda.” Spooky much?

He nevertheless claims “we’re not attacking people”—even as he employs military metaphors and scenarios in which people would inevitably be killed in real life, including by nuclear weapons and drone strikes.

“Wicked things… are happening in our nation,” he says, because “wicked people are ruling at the moment.”  

You know how this works. Trump did on Jan. 6: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

It’s a heavenly battle and a real one.

Even as top apostles prime the pump for possible real-world violence, and encourage the Ekklesia to envision themselves as an End Times army, they are, paradoxically, also planning for the future governance of society. While it’s not uncommon for churches to sponsor Christian schools, at least one apostolic center, Impact Church International in Concord, North Carolina, not only hosts a KU campus, but also the K4-12 Daniel Christian Academy, which is explicitly devoted to teaching about the seven mountains of dominion.

What, no blood-drinking pedophiles?

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Theists couldn’t care less about unintended consequences

The law of unintended consequences doesn’t have a shorter, pithier name like Murphy’s. Seems to me the two are closely related.

They are sure to come into play soon in Alabama.

Media Matters:

During a recent interview on the program of self-proclaimed “prophet” and QAnon conspiracy theorist Johnny Enlow, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker indicated that he is a proponent of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a theological approach that calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values on all aspects of American life.

Enlow is a pro-Trump “prophet” and leading proponent of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a “quasi-biblical blueprint for theocracy” that asserts that Christians must impose fundamentalist values on American society by conquering the “seven mountains” of cultural influence in U.S. life: government, education, media, religion, family, business, and entertainment.

Enlow has also repeatedly pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, sometimes even connecting it to the Seven Mountain Mandate. Per Right Wing Watch, Enlow has claimed that world leaders are “satanic” pedophiles who “steal blood” and “do sacrifices” and that “there is presently no real democracy on the planet” because over 90 percent of world leaders are involved in pedophilia and are being blackmailed.

On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people, with the same rights as living children, and that a person can be held liable for destroying them, imperiling in vitro fertilization treatment in the state. In a concurring opinion, Parker quoted the Bible, suggested that Alabama had adopted a “theologically based view of the sanctity of life,” and said that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”

What about the wrath of Murphy?

There are any number of ways Parker’s cockamamie ruling will collapse in on itself. But then again, we are passing through an unstable region of space-time. The laws of Newtonian space may not apply.

Possible consequences of upholding the Alabama ruling are already the butt of jokes online.

If frozen embryos are children with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto, how does that affect the census, for example?

If frozen embryos are humans do they count for congressional apportionment?

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 23, 2024

“Bubba and Bobbie Jean” likely store dozens of their embryos in blue Nashville or Atlanta or Harris Co., Texas (Houston), a friend observed, not in their red, rural county. Whoops?

And what of the tax and government benefits impacts, Jess Piper asks?

Wait, can folks who don’t plan to have children, freeze embryos, and then claim them as dependents for life?

Ladies, this might work out for us…

— Jess Piper (@piper4missouri) February 21, 2024

Caution is warranted, however, as these jests reinforce the Christian right’s zygotes-are-people arguments. Don’t assume “Seven Mountains” types will back down after mockery over their Tali-bans. (Alabamians chose Tommy Tuberville as their senator, after all.) Their first reflex is to double down. Remember: unstable region of space-time.

Bill Busa (DocDawg at DKos and a biotech entrepreneur) responds to the Alabama ruling from the viewpoint of science and established law: “An IVF embryo is a microscopic clump of 100 cells, with neither any brain nor cardiopulmonary functions. If it’s a child, it is by law a dead child.”

Don’t confuse them with the facts. Makes their heads hurt.

The 1981 Uniform Determination of Death Act defines death as the irreversible cessation of all brain or cardiopulmonary function.

An IVF embryo is a microscopic clump of 100 cells, with neither any brain nor cardiopulmonary functions. If it's a child, it is by law a dead child.

— EQV Analytics 🇺🇦 (@AnalyticsEqv) February 21, 2024

Expect your space-time instability to get worse before getting better.

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Christians executed other Christians in colonial Salem

If you missed Tuesday’s reporting by Politico’s Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybla on plans to enact a Christian nationalist agenda in a second Trump term, do have a look. Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, now “president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.” If you thought overturning Roe would turn the U.S. into the Republic of Gilead, that assessment was perhaps not alarming enough:

One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. “Christian nationalism” is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era.

CRA’s work fits into a broader effort by conservative, MAGA-leaning organizations to influence a future Trump White House. Two people familiar with the plans, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that Vought hopes his proximity and regular contact with the former president — he and Trump speak at least once a month, according to one of the people — will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term.

The documents obtained by POLITICO do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies. But Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda, saying a person’s background doesn’t define who can enter the U.S., but rather, citing Biblical teachings, whether that person “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”

Vought has a close affiliation with Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who has advocated for overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.

Vought, who declined to comment, is advising Project 2025, a governing agenda that would usher in one of the most conservative executive branches in modern American history. The effort is made up of a constellation of conservative groups run by Trump allies who’ve constructed a detailed plan to dismantle or overhaul key agencies in a second term. Among other principles, the project’s “Mandate for Leadership” states that “freedom is defined by God, not man.”

Dan Pfeiffer warns that based on statements from Trump advisers, such an agenda might include:

• A national abortion ban;
• Using FDA authority to ban or greatly restrict access to abortion medication (a defacto abortion ban);
• Undermining marriage equality;
• Attacking the rights and freedoms of trans people;
• Ending no-fault divorce;
• Invoking the Insurrection Act to stop protests;
• Making it harder to access contraception;
• Ending surrogacy; and
• Getting rid of sex education in schools.

Pfeiffer writes:

This is not theoretical. All across the country, Republican extremists are implementing policies to further involve the government in people’s private decisions. Republicans want to regulate what you read, who you marry, how you procreate, and your medical decisions. In Alabama, the State Supreme Court just ruled that frozen embryos are people which could end access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). There is no doubt that a Trump Administration would argue against IVF in this case.

There are two things we know about Trump. One, he is not a details guy. He pays little attention to what his government does. The Christian Nationalist hacks that he places in these government jobs will have the freedom to run amok. Two, given a choice between appealing to his MAGA base or the broader electorate, Trump will choose the base every day and twice on Sunday.

We’ve warned here for years about the New Apostolic Reformation and Seven Mountains Domionionism that are apparently too in the weeds for Politico to mention. These tales of Christian nationalism are scary and meant to be. They are written to alert non-believers, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and non-conforming others that Christian nationalists mean to render them more marginalized than they are now. In Jesus’ name, of course.

What Pfeiffer and others miss is that Christians are no more a monolithic block than any other subset on the American demographic landscape. Christianity may represent the predominant faith in the U.S., but the whacked-out brand Christian nationalists advocate, noisy as it is, hardly represents the Christian mainstream. So it’s not just non-Christians who need worry that Christian nationalists might gain control of the levers of power. Christian non-nationalists should worry.

MAGA Republicans may be tribal, but the American Taliban is even less willing to tolerate deviations from the decidedly un-Jesusy views that the god whispering inside their heads finds acceptable. God help you, ordinary Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc. You are not exempt. Your freedom of religion is not guaranteed.

Puritans executed other Christians in colonial Salem. Christian nationalists in a second Trump term may say, Hold my beer.

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Yes, they’ll howl. The Truth hurts.

A couple of items this morning remind us what lies ahead. There’s dread and there’s hopium, depending on how one reads the tea leaves.

Roy Edroso considers the rise of Unpopularism. Republicans have decided that their path to power is to give people what they don’t want:

I talk a lot about abortion rights here for a bunch of reasons, but the relevant one here is the lengthening string of goose-eggs Republicans have suffered in the repro rights referenda that came after they destroyed Roe v Wade. Even in Kansas and Ohio they couldn’t win.

Yes, a few right-wing pundits who survived Covid with their olfactories intact can smell the stink that isn’t issuing from Trump’s Depends, but they are the exceptions.

Their pro-life palaver started as a sop to one specific religious constituency, but over time it has become the symbol of the Republican Party’s whole anti-choice, anti-consent, anti-democratic ethos.

Look at how hard they fight to preserve gerrymanders, to stop early, drop-off, and mail voting, and to disenfranchise any voter group that is likely to defy their wishes (as opposed to trying to convince new voters to join or even get their old voters to turn out). Look at how (again, despite years of libertarian bullshit) they repeatedly overturn local authorities and plebiscites that deviate from wingnut orthodoxy. Hell, look how they keep coming for Social Security and Medicare!

Republicans still have a lot of tricks in their bag, but their most effective line used to be that they were advocating for the will of the people versus the busybodies, black-robed masters, and buttinskis of the Democrat Party. They used to invite voters to laugh at the gag about how the most frightening words in the world were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

Well, look who’s the busybodies now. (They’re not totally hypocritical, though — since they aren’t even pretending to be “here to help you.”)

There is no sign that Donald Trump believers convinced he’s been charged by God with giving them Dominion over all the Earth (and women in particular) have sobered up. They intend to show the Taliban how it’s done.

Their patron saint of empty promises (Infrastructure Week? That Obamacare replacement?) is now the front runner for the GOP nomination for president in 2024. Yes, he did deliver on Dobbs, and they are drooling about getting control of the Seven Mountains. Standing between them and their grand plans are four grand juries of ordinary Americans in three states and D.C. that reviewed evidence and issued 91 felony indictments against the King of Chaos, the Doge of Mar-a-Lago, the new Clown Prince of Crime.

Stephen Collinson writes at CNN:

The Republican front-runner vows to use the authority of the presidency to wreak “retribution” on his enemies and gut bureaucracy to make the government an instrument of his personal power. Comparisons to Nazis are overblown at this point, but Trump’s rhetoric – including his labeling of political opponents as “vermin” and warnings that immigrants will pollute the blood of America – do recall 1930s demagoguery and augur potentially America’s most extreme presidency. Abroad, Trump is signaling he’d ditch Ukraine to cozy up to autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his hostility to alliances could even endanger NATO.

Time is running out for Republican primary candidates to topple Trump. Unless there’s an upset in the next few weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former president will be more in control of the GOP than when he left Washington in disgrace in January 2021. The country has never faced an election like it – with the likely challenger, an ex-president facing 91 criminal charges across four criminal cases, including for alleged crimes against democracy, being prosecuted by a special counsel in his successor’s administration. If Trump prevails, it will be one of the most stunning, and ominous, comebacks in political history.

Meantime, writes Collinson:

A tiny Republican House majority hostage to pro-Trump extremists, which is bent on impeaching Biden and enacting massive spending cuts despite lacking a functioning mandate, will surely radicalize even further in the election year. New House Speaker Mike Johnson’s grip on power is already tenuous since he’s locked in the same governing-versus-politics dilemma that felled his predecessor Kevin McCarthy. Such is the tumult – and disgust with incumbents – that it’s quite possible that the Republican-led House and the Democratic-led Senate could flip in opposite directions this fall.

Elections are about choices. Much this election year will come down to whether an Electoral College majority of Americans are suicidal enough to return an insurrectionist to the Oval Office who’s promised to end the country his base believes was as divinely inspired as the King James version.

Mark Leibovich a few weeks back wrote that if that happens, well, that should put an end to the myth that “this is not who we are.” He wrote in The Atlantic:

In retrospect, so many of the high-minded appeals of the Obama era—“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”; “When they go low, we go high”—feel deeply naive. Question for Michelle: What if they keep going lower and lower—and that keeps landing the lowest of the low back in the White House?

Are we really “better than this”?

One hoped that Biden was correct, that we were in fact not a nation of vandals, cranks, and insurrectionists. But then, on the very day the Capitol had been ransacked, 147 House and Senate Republicans voted not to certify Biden’s election. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, skulked back to the ousted president a few weeks later, and the pucker-up parade to Mar-a-Lago was on. Large majorities of Republicans never stopped supporting Trump, and claim they never stopped believing that Biden stole the 2020 election and that Crooked Joe’s regime is abusing the legal system to persecute Trump out of the way.

Here we remain, amazingly enough, ready to do this all again. Trump might be the ultimate con man, but his essential nature has never been a mystery. Yet he appears to be gliding to his third straight Republican nomination and is running strong in a likely rematch with an unpopular incumbent. A durable coalition seems fully comfortable entrusting the White House to the guy who left behind a Capitol encircled with razor-wire fence and 25,000 National Guard troops protecting the federal government from his own supporters.

You can dismiss Trump voters all you want, but give them this: They’re every bit as American as any idealized vision of the place. If Trump wins in 2024, his detractors will have to reckon once again with the voters who got us here—to reconcile what it means to share a country with so many citizens who keep watching Trump spiral deeper into his moral void and still conclude, “Yes, that’s our guy.”

Perhaps Trump will choose “Honey Boo Boo” as a MAGA-pleasing running mate. Sure, she’s not old enough for federal office per the Constitution. But then, MAGA Republicans have decided that hewing to a constitution inspired by the Savior himself is optional.

“It was a magical evening”

Trump doesn’t believe in any of this religion stuff. But he believes in MAGA and if they love him, he loves them. They can have whatever they want as long as it benefits him personally. It works out great for everyone — except the sane, decent people of this country and the world:

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS WERE out in force at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, once again demonstrating their proximity to MAGA power.

Lance Wallnau — the chief promoter of a “Seven Mountains Mandate” for right-wing Christians to seize control over government and culture — was dressed in a tux and streaming live to his 1 million Facebook followers. The black-tie event was the America First Policy Institute gala at Trump’s Palm Beach estate, where the former president was soon to speak.

As he filmed with his cell phone, Wallnau grabbed co-religionist Jim Garlow — the MAGA pastor with whom now-House Speaker Mike Johnson recently prayed to spare a “depraved” America from the “judgment that we clearly deserve.” Both religious figures are associated with an evangelical movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, which has an unusual obsession with earthly power. The duo engaged in jocular banter during the stream on Friday: “You can read about you in the news lately,” Wallnau ribbed Garlow, referring to Rolling Stone’s coverage of the pastor’s prayer call with Johnson. Garlow rejoined: “It’s because we’re dangerous — what do they call us? — ‘Christian nationalists.’”

Garlow at first mocked the media attention, saying he was “disappointed they didn’t call us Christian internationalists” — reflecting the global ambition of his quest for right-wing Christian dominion. But then Garlow played the victim: “The phrase ‘Christian nationalist’ has one purpose,” he insisted. “And that is simply to bully Christians — to intimidate, silence them so they will not be involved governmentally.” Garlow then claimed that this was done in the service of satanic forces, “so The Enemy can have his way and destroy the country.”

The fact that Garlow and Wallnau were palling around in tuxedos at Mar-a-Lago the same week that their religious movement made national news for its troubling reach into the highest ranks of elected Republican politics, was itself another remarkable sign of that influence. Wallnau shared that Garlow’s online prayer partner — who has credited the pastor as a “profound influence” on both his life and his “walk with Christ” — was also in attendance. “Mike Johnson is here tonight,” Wallnau said. “I want to hear Mike Johnson. He’s under attack because he’s such an outspoken Christian.” (Rolling Stone could not independently confirm Johnson’s attendance at Mar-a-Lago. The Speaker’s spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests.) 

In his banter with Wallnau, Garlow certainly did not distance himself from a Christian nationalist ideology. In fact, he underscored his belief that Christians are meant to be in control — to advance the Kingdom of God across the planet. Garlow even advised Americans to break up with their pastors if the religious leaders don’t use the pulpit to advance “the issues that God has commanded us to.” Garlow explained: “We don’t just ‘preach Jesus.’ We preach what Jesus preached. He preached the Kingdom … What’s the King over? Everything. Everything. Including the governmental and political realm.”

The Friday evening gala at Mar-a-Lago was the culminating party of a three-day conference held by America First Policy Institute. AFPI exists to formulate policy for what MAGA-world anticipates will be a second Trump term. AFPI’s leaders include past bigwigs from the Trump administration like chair Linda McMahon, a former Trump cabinet member, and CEO Brooke Rollins, who served as Director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump White House. 

Other AFPI leadership include executive director Chad Wolf, who was the illicit acting Homeland Security chief when the Trump administration battled protestors in the streets of Portland; far-right economist Larry Kudlow; and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who addressed the AFPI conference on day one.

AFPI’s gathering featured a strong Christianist undercurrent. Paula White Cain — a top religious influencer in Trump’s circle — led prayer and scripture at an AFPI “Ladies” event, later posting on Instagram: “God moved at our prayer breakfast 🙏🏻.” Televangelist Jentezen Franklin, whose broadcast is called Kingdom Connection, was honored, along with his wife, with AFPI’s 2023 Patriot award.

In fact, right-wing religion seems to be woven through the DNA of AFPI. The group’s chief digital officer is Adam W. Schindler. Schindler is also a pastor who works closely with Garlow; they co-founded the World Prayer Network, which hosted the call where Mike Johnson decried the rise of LGBTQ children as evidence of America’s “dark” and nearly “irredeemable” culture. AFPI has also championed Johnson’s rise to speaker. Rollins, the CEO, wrote a Newsweek op-ed praising Johnson’s selection, calling him “indefatigably optimistic.” Rolling Stone sought interviews with Garlow, Wallnau, and Rollins; none responded. Schindler emailed that he is “proud to work at AFPI and support the work we do there.”

As the MAGA movement seeks a return to the White House, religious extremism is no longer marginalized. It is now baked into the cake. The AFPI conference proceedings included an appearance from Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk, of Turning Point USA. Self-proclaimed Christian nationalist congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene was also in attendance at the gala.

There were secular elements, too, including a performance by country star Wynonna Judd. Boldface MAGA names included former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, former Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway, and former acting attorney general (and well-endowed-man toilet promoter) Matt Whitaker. Rollins described the gala night as “The most magical evening … with 700 closest friends, supporters, and partners.” 

The whole coalition gathered together at the scene of Trump’s theft of America’s nuclear secrets. And it was magical.

Johnson did turn up on Monday night for a fundraiser and met with Trump after fervently endorsing him just last week. He’s come a long way since 2015 when he wrote this:

“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a lengthy post on Facebook on Aug. 7, 2015, before he was elected to Congress and a day after the first Republican primary debate of the campaign cycle.

Challenged in the comments by someone defending Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson responded: “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”

Mr. Johnson, then a state lawmaker in Louisiana, also questioned what would happen if “he decided to bomb another head of state merely disrespecting him.”

“I am only halfway kidding about this,” he wrote. “I just don’t think he has the demeanor to be President.”

Apparently, his discussions of golden showers and calling his rivals fat pigs and drug addicts on the campaign trail are no longer characteristics of someone who doesn’t have the demeanor to be president. Certainly no one could say the man who wants to deport half the country doesn’t have a moral center.

I have been saying for years that the good news about all of this is that we no longer have to believe these self-appointed moral guardians have any morals or principles. Clearly they don’t. On the other hand, these people are no longer in the fringe. They have cast their lot with Donald Trump and he owns the party.

Dual threats

We raised the alarm yesterday both about Donald Trump’s Nazi-adjacent eliminationist rhetoric and his “concentration” on creating detention camps in a second term. We have also spread lots of pixels describing the New Apostolic Reformation that views Trump as an instrument of God.

Trump and Stephen Miller want to lock up and deport all immigrants not to their liking, and to eventually cut off paths to immigration for the same. That’s the political cleansing of America they seek. But the Seven Mountains people backing Trump want religious purification as well. They will dismiss any and all his personal, political, and criminal failings to advance that end.

All of them, they don’t want to govern, they want to rule.

Members of the Awaken Church have been targeting school boards in Southern California. This video from their Emerge Men’s conference shld be a wake up call re: the militant component of America’s Christofascism problem. Yes, Awaken pastors attended Jan 6. 1/ https://t.co/kHvwycBIs1

— jennycohn@toad.social ✍🏻 📢 (@jennycohn1) November 10, 2023

There will be cracks on the road to Christian Dominion and local infighting, as Fred Clarkson details at Salon. Plus a healthy dose of wishcasting and Christian soldiers cosplay. But right now these people hold actual political power in the Speaker of the House.

Janine Melnitz : Yes, of course they’re serious…

Think they’re not serious? Remember Jan. 6? That was a small group of (for the most part) poorly organized political-religious zealots as well. The few who were better organized meant to overturn the presidential election and perhaps hang the vice president and House speaker.

Yes, they may be a small group of self-inflated cranks, but they are not kidding, as the video below reveals.

If this doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will. Christofascist indoctrination ceremony: pic.twitter.com/gQZ9KdwsMU

— Nick Knudsen 🇺🇸 (@NickKnudsenUS) July 13, 2022

After that, a dose of constitutional principle.

Watch @RepRaskin brilliantly explain to @jrpsaki why having a religious fundamentalist who puts the Bible ahead of the Constitution like @SpeakerJohnson is so dangerous and incompatible with the secular system of government created by the founders. pic.twitter.com/rhKpHlEoit

— Andrew—Author of America Rises On Substack—Wortman (@AmoneyResists) November 12, 2023

You can’t win if you don’t show up to play

David Rothkopf described new House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana as representing “a movement that is actively seeking to institutionalize the religious beliefs of evangelical Christians into law.” Rothkopf was just getting warmed up (Daily Beast):

The term Christofascism may seem inflammatory. It is not. It is intended to provide the most accurate possible definition of what Johnson and those in his movement wish to achieve. Like other fascists they seek to impose by whatever means necessary their views on the whole of society even if that means undoing established laws and eliminating accepted freedoms. Christofascists do so in the name of advancing their Christian ideology, asserting that all in society must be guided by their views and values whether they adhere to them or not.

Johnson has ties, Rothkopf claims, to the Christianist New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and Seven Mountains Dominionism. Read more at Daily Beast. David Corn has another chilling account of Johnson’s beliefs at Mother Jones. Men in Afghanistan who don’t think the same things as Mike Johnson think the same way. Fundamentalists are universally rigid, dogmatic, judgmental, uncompromising black-and-white thinkers. Fundamentalism is not about what you believe but how.

David Pepper yesterday explained where the Mike Johnsons come from. Gerrymandering is “fueling the insane and extremist behavior of the U.S. House and so many of the American statehouses.” Johnson has risen to Speaker of the House running either unopposed or in uncompetitive, lopsided districts where his extremist views were never really challenged in election after election. “He’s spent his entire career in a world devoid of democracy—devoid of accountability.”

But gerrymandering is only one reason. Democrats’ writing off rural America to focus on federal races handed Republicans the power in those statehouses to gerrymander them:

Democrats focus so much on federal offices in a few swing states, we have decided it’s acceptable to let the young Mike Johnsons of the world, or the Tennessee Republicans of the world, or the book banners, or the abortion banners (no exceptions), and so on, do all the damage they’re doing in statehouses, and not even face opposition in elections that could be referenda on their extremist actions if we made them that.

The Louisiana map above is an object lesson. Of 64 Louisiana parishes in 2020, only 11 Democratic committees had a website, active Facebook page, or published email address for For The Win or the public to contact. Random newspaper stories suggest some exist, but how would anyone know or find them?

Run everywhere, Pepper insists. Don’t let Republicans walk into seats of power unopposed! Bring accountability.

Until we do, all this will keep happening. Mike Johnsons and Jim Jordans and MTGs will keep emerging everywhere, along with hundreds of others like them we will never hear of, we will not run against, but who will be doing great damage every step of the way, while rising through the ranks.

Run everywhere, yes. But running everywhere is easier said than done. At my 2022 review, roughly one-third of Georgia’s 159 counties had no Democratic committees, no party infrastructure to either recruit or support potential candidates willing to make local elections at least nominally a contest. Democrats Joe Biden, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won in Georgia statewide in the 2020 cycle on the strength of Atlanta and environs, but Republicans hold a trifecta in state government.

Pepper insists:

Of course they’re going to be extremists when they thrive in a world where they CAN be extremists, never facing any real opposition (often no opposition at all) despite taking positions that only a few years ago were soundly rejected by their own party.

Ending the GOP’s hold in state governments and ultimately in Congress may seem a prospect as slow as eroding the Appalachians, but without making that effort, we could be living before then in the United States of Ameristan.

QAnon seemed mostly harmless too

QAnon appeared to be just a loose network of conspiracy crackpots until a bare-chested guy wearing horns and face paint stood on U.S. Senate’s dais on Jan. 6. Fred Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, has worked to draw attention to another loose network of believers with political designs on the country: The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). This network of nondenominational churches aligned with Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has aspirations for replacing our “demon-infested bastions of ungodly government,” he Clarkson writes.  

Clarkson provides an overview at Salon:

The NAR seeks to consolidate those Christians it recognizes as “the Church” in what it believes to be the End Times. Although many NAR leaders have been closely aligned with Donald Trump, they insist that they aim for a utopian biblical kingdom where only God’s laws are enforced. Most therefore hold to a vision of Christian dominion over what they call the “seven mountains“: religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and business. (This is what is meant by Dominionism.) 

But as with any religious movement, the NAR’s notion of what God requires is a matter of interpretation, and in this case God’s intentions are said to be revealed through modern-day, mutually recognized apostles and prophets, some of whom lead vast networks of believers, whom they often call “prayer warriors.” These dynamic networks seek to dissolve traditional Christian denominations and institutions, peeling away members and sometimes whole congregations. When pundits speak of non-denominational Christianity, this is mostly what they mean.

The NAR’s long-term plan is to transform all of institutional Christianity to their vision of how the church was organized in the first century A.D. In their view, the only legitimate church offices, as described in the Book of Ephesians, are apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors (but no popes, bishops or presidents). This is called the “fivefold ministry.”

The “interpretation” Clarkson references flows from a selective reading of cherry-picked Bible passages that fit into not just a right-wing theological framework but a political one. As messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio said to Lawrence O’Donnell, “motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug.”

Pastor and musician Sean Feucht partnered recently with TPUSA for a “Kingdom to the Capitol,” 50-state revival tour. Apostle Clay Nash of Arkansas hosted “a series of 50 prayer conference calls staged by leading apostles in the first four months of 2023″ to rally the faithful, Clarkson reports. The transcripts may be found here.  

Lots of blustery “sword of the Lord” and “full armor of God” and “take back the Kingdom” stuff. Nothing new there. For over half a century that rhetoric has fueled what Dr. Anthea Butler, a historian of African-American and American religion at the University of Pennsylvania, describes as an evangelical Christianity “captured by Pentecostals and Charismatics.”

What has added spark to the fuel is the Internet. As with QAnon and the white nationalist movements, that network has allowed this religious network to grow and spread. Clarkson offers much more at Salon.

NAR leaders … will likely continue to stoke distrust in the normal function of elections and government. The struggle between what actually happens and conspiracy theories about what doesn’t happen will almost certainly continue. There will always be someone to blame — Freemasons, Communists, witches, antifa, Black Lives Matter or someone else from the long menu of potential scapegoats. The responses will not necessarily be peaceful.

UPDATE: You think I’m kidding?

A little bit after that clip, Lance comes out with this gem. Incidentally, this was at Tim Sheets’ Oasis Church in Ohio. pic.twitter.com/e2DivxggtZ

— Rob Rogers (@electrobrogers) June 19, 2023

Culture wars are real ones

We should have taken her more seriously. It was the summer of 2018 when a Twitter user named Amanda Blount inadvertantly launched a viral meme mocking Alex Jones’ claim that Democrats were planning to launch a second civil war over the July 4th holiday to unseat President Trump. Mimicking the Ken Burns miniseries, lefties had a field day with #secondcivilwarletters.

My Dear John,

The war isn't going as planned. Our supply trucks are limited. I'm out of wine and sunscreen. The enemy burned all the books and there is no place to recharge my Kindle. The only music is an old CD of Justin Bieber. – All is lost. #secondcivilwarletters

— Amanda Blount 🇺🇸🌻 (@amandablount2) July 2, 2018

Since then, “every accusation is a confession” has gained traction on the left. What conservatives accuse the left of doing is often what the extremist right is actually doing. A second civil war by “patriots” could look like the scattered, low-grade terrorism actually playing out across the country every day.

Jeff Sharlet’s “January 6 Was Only the Beginning” appeared in the July/August 2022 issue of Vanity Fair. But hearing his audiobook reading in “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War” delivers more punch. He lived it. He was there. At a Sacramento rally for MAGA martyr Ashli Babbitt. At Glad Tidings, a “militia church” in Yuba City afterwards, to hear David Straight, a guy from deep down the MAGA/QAnon rabbit hole, deliver the faithful the true facts:

Hillary, we learn, has secretly already been executed. You’ve seen her since? Green screens. There are, we learn, two United States: the one that “lives in our hearts” and the wicked one in Washington. Trump’s not only still president of the real one, he’s the 19th president, because most of the others since Lincoln, including Honest Abe, were illegal. 

[…]

We learn that by signing our birth certificates, our mothers unwittingly made us slaves. Yes, slaves. It goes back to the 14th Amendment. You may think that’s the one that ensured the rights of formerly enslaved people—“equal protection of the laws.” That’s what they want you to think. “It’s not your fault,” Straight says. You were fed fake news. Critical race theory. You don’t know that the 14th Amendment made you—true American “you”—a slave.

Listening to Sharlet’s narration the other day creeped me out. The suspension of disbelief at Glad Tidings to Straight’s ravings parallels the mysticism in vogue at 90s New Age conventions I studied. The empowering thrill of possessing secret knowledge delivered by “internationally recognized” grifters. There were crystals and unspecified “energies,” angels and aliens (benign and malign), UFO cranks, and outlandish tales of dark conspiracies lapped up without question by attendees who checked their brains at the door. I witnessed it 30 years ago. Except New Agers weren’t stockpiling guns, ammo and body armor.

Revisit Digby’s Monday post, “The Education War.” Jonathan Chait does not name-check Seven Mountains Dominionism in “Indoctrination Nation,” but that’s the source of the right’s “existential need to use their political power to seize the commanding heights of the culture,” as Chait puts it. Because in their view, the enemy (that’s you) “permanently controls the cultural high ground.” Thus, “Republicans lose even when they win.”

Culture war is not a metaphor. Neither is “slow civil war.”

Preparing to wreck the constitution to save it

What is the difference between armed “patriots” and armed Taliban? Choice of personal weapon, perhaps? Laura Jedeed attended the Patriot Academy’s “Constitutional Defense” training camp last summer in New Mexico and writes about it for The New Republic. “The handgun course is a loss leader,” she came to see. “The ideology is the product.”

Founder Rick Green’s trainees are not preparing so much for armed insurrection as for getting 34 state legislatures to petition for an Article V convention of the states to rewrite the Constitution to better align with biblical principles. Many familiar conservative names and organizations back the efforts of Convention of States Action (COSA): the Mercer family, former Senator Jim DeMint, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), David Barton, and more.

In 2016, COSA organized a mock convention of the states in Virginia. The results delivered “the libertarian goods“:

After three days, the delegates emerged with six proposed amendments that abolished the federal income tax, imposed congressional term limits, and made it more difficult for the federal government to take on debt. They closed the commerce clause loophole and passed something Feingold described as the “John C. Calhoun amendment”: nullification of any federal law or regulation if 30 state legislatures vote to overturn it.

Underlying the effort, for the foot soldiers, if not for the funders, is the belief that the country must return to an imagined 18th-century utopia. They believe they are engaged in an existential struggle against evil. Only Christian principles, however defined, can save the U.S. from destruction. Yes, the Seven Mountains mandate is in there, too. Plus a staggeringly brazen claim that freedom is not possible without Christianity, a shoddy syllogism trainers expect inductees to accept without question:

“Benjamin Rush said if you don’t teach the Bible in every generation to the children, a constitutional republic will not survive,” Rick Green told my Constitutional Defense course in his opening lecture. “Because, without religion, you don’t have morality. And without morality, you don’t have liberty.”

“Biblical principles are what produce freedom of society,” Barton proclaims in Patriot Academy’s Biblical Citizenship class. “But you won’t have biblical principles in society in which you don’t have citizens with a biblical worldview.”

COSA means to ensure they do via a convention of the states:

This may sound like a theocracy to the untrained ear. Green wants you to know that it is not. “I don’t know a single person in our movement that wants a theocracy or wants a nation where everybody’s got to be a Christian,” he tells me. “Whether you’re atheist, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish … everybody benefits from the freedom principles that came from a Christian society.”

I am beginning to get the picture. You will not be forced to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior in Biblical America. You will not be forced to attend church. But there will be prayer in school, and our history will be highly sanitized. Trans people will not have access to gender-affirming care, and marriage will be between a man and a woman. No one will force you to be a Christian in Rick Green’s America. But you will largely need to live like one.

Green hopes to construct a sprawling compound for year-round constitutional training,

… a combination of education facility and vacation destination that, for lack of a better phrase, he describes as “Disneyland for Patriots.” The campus will feature a full-scale replica of Independence Hall, where visitors can take constitutional classes (“without having to go to Philadelphia and get shot,” Green tells the class during his introductory lecture), and a mock-up of the Rotunda, where visitors can look at replica art (“without going to D.C. and getting arrested and having to spend a year and a half at the gulag”).

Once they finish retooling the Constitution, that dripping paranoia will turn to bliss.

Their remade America will not be like the Taliban’s Afghanistan, no. The Taliban carry AK-47s. Christian America carries AR-15s.