WASHINGTON (RNS)—Jessie Johnson, teaching pastor at Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Va., rejects the idea of a Christian nation.

“The government doesn’t establish churches nor should it,” he said.

But Johnson also believes the Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth, Mass., in 1620 were on the right track when they made a covenant with God to establish a Christian society.

“There has to be a moral compass for society,” he added.

Because Johnson and his wife believe American public schools lack that compass, they homeschool their three children.

A movement that originated among educators on the left in the 1970s, homeschooling was increasingly adopted through the 1980s and 1990s by conservative Christian families seeking to instill traditional values in their children and protect them from an increasingly secularized public school system.

The homeschooling population consistently hovered at around 2 million students since then—a little more than 3 percent of the national student body—until the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered in-person school and forced children into Zoom classrooms.

In September 2020, six months into the pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the share of homeschooled children had shot up to 11 percent of households. With the escalated numbers has come increased attention to homeschooling.

Debates, meanwhile, have arisen over what children are being taught about American history, partly in response to the 1619 Project, a recounting of U.S. history that stresses the story of Black America, beginning with the arrival of the first slaves.

Culture war led to politically charged curriculum

The surrounding culture war picked up on the controversy, resulting in book bans and accusations that teachers are instructing elementary students using a legal and academic framework known as critical race theory.

These controversies have prompted the release of new, politically charged homeschool curricula such as Turning Point Academy, a product engineered by pro-Trump talk show host Charlie Kirk that promises to deliver an “America-first education.”

Another, the Christendom Curriculum, touts itself as “America’s only Christian Nationalist homeschool curriculum” and includes “battle papers” that tell children how to argue with the liberals who supposedly hate white Christians.

Some of these programs have tiny reach—Christendom Curriculum only had 100 current subscribers as of September. But critics of religious homeschooling say the same Christian nationalist messages, if not the same partisan divisions, have been present in the most popular and long-established curriculums used by Christian parents.

“The ideology has been taking root for at least a generation,” said Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor in Minnesota and executive director of Vote the Common Good, a progressive voting-rights organization. Christian nationalist ideas are “all over the place” in Christian education companies’ materials, Pagitt said.

“It’s in there in theology. It’s in there in history. It’s in there in current events,” he said.

Some of the most popular homeschool curriculum textbooks, produced by publishing giants Abeka, Accelerated Christian Education and Bob Jones University Press, teach that the first Europeans to arrive in Virginia and Massachusetts made a covenant with God to Christianize the land.

The History of the United States in Christian Perspective, a textbook from Abeka, promises students: “You will learn how God blessed America because of the principles (truths) for which America stands.”

Those truths made America “the greatest nation on the face of the earth,” the book says, before issuing a warning: “No nation can remain great without God’s blessing.”

Homeschooling texts stress American exceptionalism

These companies’ books offer students an “unproblematic and unquestionably exceptional America,” said Kathleen Wellman, professor of history at Southern Methodist University and author of Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters, in a column for RNS.

Abeka’s history injects conservative values into more recent history as well, noting that, “since the 1960s, decisions of the Supreme Court and other judges have contributed to the moral decline of our country.”

Abeka, ACE and BJU Press declined to comment to RNS.

The Abeka curriculum was born at Pensacola Christian Academy, a K-12 school on Florida’s panhandle founded in 1954. Working initially from outdated public school textbooks, the school’s Southern Baptist founders, Arlin and Rebekah Horton, began publishing their textbooks in 1972 to supply the Christian schools that had proliferated after Supreme Court rulings ended segregation in public education and banned religious expression in the classroom.

Today, Pensacola Christian Academy’s website boasts every class is taught from a biblical perspective, and science instructors are explicit about “God’s wonderful design,” but students also learn the basic principles of chemistry and dissect frogs, much as secular students do.

‘Nationalist propaganda’

It is in the humanities, especially history, that former PCA students say they were indoctrinated into a form of Christian triumphalism, in which American society was at its best when it hewed to Christian faith.

 “It was just pure propaganda—nationalist propaganda,” said Tyler Burns, a graduate of Pensacola Christian Academy. Former Republican President Ronald Reagan was treated as practically the “fourth member of the Godhead,” Burns recalled.

An African American, Burns remembers feeling disoriented while being taught slavery was a “blessing in disguise” for introducing enslaved Africans to Christianity. Burns, now president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, has spoken extensively about the ways Christian education affected his ability to embrace his Black identity.

The white supremacist ideas that dismayed Burns can be found in Abeka’s home history curriculum as well. It implies that Southern land owners had little choice but to buy slaves to keep up with the demand of raising cotton and tobacco.

“The Southern planter could never hire enough people to get his work done,” it reads, noting at the same time that “only one out of 10 Southerners owned slaves.”

Some parents design personalized reading lists

In practice many homeschooling parents fashion their own reading lists to suit their views or their children’s abilities. Stephanie Rotramel, who has homeschooled her three children off and on since her oldest, now 17, was in preschool, said homeschooling allows her flexibility to meet specific educational needs.

This year, as her kids head back to school at home, she’s using mostly Christian curricula, though none of the ones mentioned in this article. She wants to expose her kids to diverse perspectives, though, and plans to supplement the curricula with YouTube videos from Trevor Noah and with a “year of nontraditional lit”—books such as Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri and I Am Malala by the Pakistani education activist.

She doesn’t see giving a warts-and-all account of the country’s history while sharing a Christian worldview with her children as contradictory.

Rotramel said, as a Christian, she sees America as a place “full of sinners who need Jesus.” That includes the Founding Fathers. It includes Ronald Reagan, too.

“I feel like that’s the message of the Bible,” she said. “We’re all messed up. We need Jesus.”

Jessie Johnson agrees. He said he and his wife try to teach their children about the ways the United States has fallen short of the values of Christianity, in particular when it comes to race.

So, while the Johnsons have their children read the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims’ charter for their new society that would honor the glory of God and the “advancement of the Christian faith,” the family has traveled to Charleston, S.C., to study the history of slavery and have made repeated trips to the Manassas National Battlefield Park, not far from where they now make their home, where two major Civil War battles were fought.

“We know whose side we are on,” said Johnson, adding that slavery violated the Christian ideal that all people are made in God’s image—a founding American principle, he said.

Some curriculum providers revise materials

The drumbeat of white supremacy and Christian nationalism in the past few years has also convinced some conservative Christian curriculum writers that they should revise their materials.

Charlene Notgrass, who runs Notgrass History with her husband, Ray, a retired pastor, from their home in Tennessee, has been writing U.S. history and civics lessons for Christian homeschool families since the early 1990s.

 At the time, most homeschoolers were either “conservative Christians or hippies,” said Charlene, 68. Most of the early homeschool textbooks reflected that.

Today, they say, homeschooling is more diverse—both politically and ethnically. The couple said they’ve had to keep learning about overlooked parts of history and to reflect that new knowledge in their products.

In 2020, amid the George Floyd protests and a contested election, Charlene Notgrass finished a new revision of America the Beautiful, their high school history text.

“Too often,” it reads, “people have not believed that we are all equally valuable creations of God. Therefore, sometimes people treat people who are different from themselves—in skin color, in nationality, in political party, in the amount of money they have—as less valuable.

“No two Americans are likely ever to think exactly alike about everything,” it concludes, “but we still must respect each other.”

The Notgrasses describe themselves as “patriotic Americans” and want students who read their lessons to love their country, but they also want them to know the truth.

“We don’t think Americans are God’s chosen people, the way the Israelites are God’s chosen people,” said Charlene Notgrass. “The Bible tells us point-blank that God chose the Israelites. It does not tell us point-blank that God chose America.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Faith leaders joined members of Congress on Capitol Hill Dec. 15 to voice support for the expansion of the child tax credit, urging lawmakers to reinstate a broader version of the anti-poverty benefit before the end of the year.

“For many of us, this is a season of miracles—the miracle of Jesus’ birth, the miracle of Hanukkah,” said Abibat Rahman-Davies of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker group. “But expanding the [child tax credit]? That shouldn’t take a miracle.”

The event was part of a sustained advocacy push by a group of faith leaders from across the theological spectrum who joined forces to push for lawmakers to embrace an expanded version of the credit that helps combat child poverty.

Earlier this year, the group published an advertisement in Politico Magazine and sent a letter to all 535 members of Congress and to the White House asking them to make the child tax credit “fully refundable and available to low-income families on a permanent basis.”

Lawmakers allowed the expanded version of the credit, which was created as part of the American Rescue Plan, to expire last year, sparking frustration among anti-poverty advocates. Members are currently wrangling over competing last-minute proposals put forward by both parties in hopes of passing something as part of an omnibus bill before the end of the year.

Rep. Rosa Luisa DeLauro of Connecticut, who has often invoked her Catholic faith in policy discussions, voiced passionate support for an expanded version during Thursday’s event.

“I’m so proud of being a part of a living Catholic tradition,” DeLauro said. “A tradition that unfailingly promotes the common good, expresses a consistent model framework for life and highlights the need to provide a collective safety net for our community’s most vulnerable—and that includes our children.”

DeLauro appeared to reference proposals floated by some Democrats that include tax breaks for businesses in an attempt to accrue Republican support.

“If we can provide tax cuts for America’s corporations, we can certainly provide a tax cut for America’s kids,” she said.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Lutheran, tied his support for the credit to Matthew 25, a Bible passage in which Jesus says when his followers care for the sick and feed the hungry, they are caring for him.

Brown said he was once given a Poverty and Justice Bible, and noted how its translation of the passage’s final line—“What you did for those who seem less important, you did for me”—resonated with his faith.

“It’s so clear that that’s our calling,” said Brown, an Ohio Democrat.

People impacted by the child tax credit also addressed the gathering, explaining how the credit benefited their families. Rabbi Jonah Pesner offered a prayer, asking God to forgive the United States for a “year of suffering of our children” because of the expired credit.

The expanded version of the credit allowed families to receive as much as $3,600 per child in 2021, a marked increase over the previous $2,000-per-child payments. Advocates argue the increase made a significant difference to struggling families, and that its disappearance resulted in dire consequences. Researchers at Columbia University found that child poverty increased 41 percent a month after the credit expired.

The event included the voices of theologically conservative evangelicals.

“It is an important time to speak up,” said Eugene Cho, an evangelical pastor and head of the anti-poverty group Bread for the World. “If you ask us why we should speak up, I can think of 12 million reasons,” he added, referring to the millions of children who struggle with poverty.

Galen Carey, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, also addressed the gathering. He argued the credit resonates with his group’s religious commitments, such as “safeguarding the sanctity of human life.”

“For those who are concerned about the sanctity of human life and protecting the unborn child, the child tax credit provides welcome reassurance to expectant moms and dads who wonder if they could afford to raise a child,” Carey said.

“It tells them that they’re not alone. And that if they choose life, they will not have to shoulder the costs and burdens of parenting on their own.”

He was echoed by Steffani Thomas of the Mormon Women for Ethical Government.

“As a woman of faith, I am guided by the scripture that I consider which policies will allow the largest number of God’s children to thrive, have self-determination and opportunities,” she said.

In addition to the Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice—whose executive director, Mary Novak, offered the closing prayer—other groups that sponsored the event included the National Council of Jewish Women, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, Jewish Federations of North America, National Council of Churches, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference.

Before she left, DeLauro repeatedly urged faith leaders to mobilize their networks, calling on them to “overwhelm the Senate and overwhelm the White House” with calls from supporters.

“Congress is an institution that responds to internal pressure,” she said.

President Joe Biden signed into law Dec. 13 a measure mandating federal protection for same-sex marriage and interracial marriage.

The Respect for Marriage Act repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of a man and woman. It also grants federal recognition to interracial marriage.

The law does not require states to legalize same-sex marriage, but it mandates states to recognize such unions if they take place in a jurisdiction where they are legal.

It provides legal protection for same-sex marriage even if the Supreme Court at some point overturns the landmark Obergefell v. Hodge ruling, which granted same-sex couples the right to marry.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 258-169 on Dec. 8 to give final approval to the amended Respect for Marriage Act. A few days earlier, the Senate approved a version of the bill amended to include religious liberty protections.

The amended version of the Respect for Marriage Act includes language saying nothing in the bill “shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection” available under the U.S. Constitution.

The amended bill—which passed with bipartisan support—states: “Diverse beliefs about the role of gender in marriage are held by reasonable and sincere people based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises. Therefore, Congress affirms that such people and their diverse beliefs are due proper respect.”

It specifically says churches and other nonprofit organizations will not be required to provide same-sex marriage ceremonies. It also states it does not “require or authorize” federal recognition of polygamous marriage.

The bill grants private individuals, as well as the U.S. attorney general, authority to bring civil action in federal court against anyone who violates its protections.

Faith-based groups that supported the amendments that added religious liberty protections to the Respect for Marriage Act included the National Association of Evangelicals, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Some religious groups voice objections

The Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission opposed the Respect for Marriage Act, and its president, Brent Leatherwood, expressed disappointment the bill had become law.

“Since our work opposing this bill began in July, the ERLC has remained consistently clear: Marriage is an institution that cannot be defined by the government. God has intentionally established it as a life-long, covenantal union between one man and one woman for the purpose of human flourishing,” Leatherwood told Baptist Press.

“Unfortunately, now that this act has become law, more people will be led astray and deceived by the false promises of the sexual revolution. We are prepared to meet these challenges and continue our advocacy to ensure that people of faith are able to hold to their most fundamental beliefs about marriage and sexuality in the public square.”

Ryan Bangert, senior vice president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, asserted the Respect for Marriage Act represented “blatant hostility against people of faith.”

“The First Amendment protects every American, including the many millions of us who hold decent and honorable beliefs about marriage. The president and Congress have intentionally threatened free speech and religious liberty with enactment of the ‘Respect for Marriage Act,’ continuing a pattern of blatant hostility against people of faith,” Bangert said.

“Sadly, the president chose virtue-signaling over protecting millions of Americans, churches and faith-based organizations that spoke out for months about the undeniable harms of this unnecessary bill. This law is a solution in search of a problem that provides no additional protection or benefits to same-sex couples. However, it does undermine the constitutional freedoms that belong to each of us.”

In addition to the ERLC and the Alliance Defending Freedom, other groups that remained opposed to the amended Respect for Marriage Act included the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Religious Freedom Institute and the Family Research Council.

In a recent “Respecting Religion” podcast, Holly Hollman, general counsel and associate executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, rejected the premise that expanding the rights of some necessarily endangers the rights of others.

 “What we see in this debate is that there is still a powerful temptation to equate rights for others, for LGBTQ people, as an attack on religious liberty, and that’s disheartening,” Hollman said.

“The rights recognized by marriage equality should not be perceived as taking away religious beliefs or the way religious marriages are performed or recognized in any religious tradition, religious congregation or other religious entities.”

Christian nationalism “provides cover” for white supremacy by offering racists a veneer of respectability, Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, told a Congressional hearing.

“Understanding Christian nationalism is imperative to both dismantling white supremacy and preserving religious freedom for all,” Tyler said.

Christian nationalist ideology represents “a gross distortion of the Christian faith” that seeks “to merge American and Christian identity,” she explained to members of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

“The ‘Christian’ in Christian nationalism is more about ethno-national identity than about religion,” Tyler told a Dec. 13 hearing on “Confronting White Supremacy: The Evolution of Anti-democratic Extremist Groups and the Ongoing Threat to Democracy.”

“Christian nationalism uses the language, symbols and imagery of Christianity—in fact, it may look and sound like Christianity to the casual observer. However, closer examination reveals that it uses the veneer of Christianity to point not to Jesus the Christ but to a political figure, party or ideology,” she said.

“Christian nationalism often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. It creates and perpetuates a sense of cultural belonging that is limited to certain people associated with the founding of the United States, namely native-born white Christians.”

Tyler took issue with what she called “the Christian nation myth” that ignores people of color and religious minorities in favor of “the false narrative that the U.S. is special because it was founded by and for white Christians.”

The “myth of a Christian nation” and the merging of Christian and American identity directly contradict Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits religious tests for public office, she noted.

Concern about attacks on houses of worship

“As a Baptist, I became a leader in the fight against Christian nationalism because of my increasing alarm about the violence it has inspired at our country’s houses of worship,” Tyler said.

She pointed to attacks on Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.; Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Pa.; and Chabad of Poway near San Diego, Calif.

She also noted how “Christian nationalism inspired white supremacist violence in public spaces,” such as the attack on Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y.

“Christian nationalism helped fuel the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, uniting disparate actors and infusing their political cause with religious fervor,” she added.

Tyler urged members of the Congressional committee to reject the notion that confronting Christian nationalism is anti-Christian.

“All across this country, Christians are deeply alarmed by this [Christian Nationalist] ideology—especially the way it gives an illusion of respectability to white supremacy and undermines our nation’s foundational commitment to ensure religious freedom for all,” she said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, asked Tyler why Baptists historically have championed religious freedom.

“It really goes back to the beginning of the Baptist movement in the early 17th century and Thomas Helwys, who wrote the first defense of universal religious freedom in the English language and was imprisoned by King James I for his advocacy,” she explained.

From Helwys to Roger Williams, founding pastor of the First Baptist Church of Providence, R.I., to the BJC, the common thread is a “theological commitment to soul freedom and our living out of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor as ourselves,” she said.

“We protect the religious freedom of our neighbors as we protect our own religious freedom,” she said. “And we do it in our constitutional democracy by defending the First Amendment.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A church choir sang. Marine Band members played. And the president of the United States pressed a button to light the first National Christmas Tree under the gaze of thousands of onlookers on Christmas Eve 1923.

For 100 years, the tree has represented a symbol of civil religion as Americans mark the Christmas season.

On Nov. 30, President Joe Biden did the honors just as President Calvin Coolidge did at that first lighting, and contemporary gospel singer Yolanda Adams sang for the crowds gathered on the Ellipse in the shadow of the White House.

Though the tree was not lit from 1942 to 1944—due to the Second World War—it is the second-oldest White House tradition, after the Easter Egg Roll, which began in 1878.

“A hundred years is a fairly significant milestone to reach for consistently practicing a tradition,” said Matthew Costello, senior historian of the nonprofit White House Historical Association. “This is really part of the customs and the traditions of the White House and living in the White House.”

Whether the tree will continue as a symbol of civil religion—a Christian tradition but also a generic celebration of the holiday known for Santa and reindeer—is an open question, said Boston University professor of religion Stephen Prothero. In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the tree’s intersection of politics and religion may be seen as too fraught.

“At this point, these Christian symbols in the public square feel very different to me and to many other Americans, than they have in the past,” he said. “And that’s precisely because of the increasing power of white Christian nationalism in American society.”

Already, the tree can seem like a relic of an America that is now past.

“You would think, based on separation of church and state, that the federal government wouldn’t get into the Christmas tree business, but we have been doing these kinds of things for a long time,” Prothero said.

But the tree has always been part of America’s balancing act of alternately welcoming or rejecting religion in the public square.

“It used to be that there was a kind of a gentleman’s agreement—and I say, gentleman on purpose, because it was men who were making this agreement. And the agreement was that you could have religious symbols in the public space, but that they would have to be generic, that they wouldn’t be explicitly Christian,” Prothero said.

Five facts about the National Christmas Tree

1. It’s been a place for God-talk by Democrats and Republicans.

In 1940, before the United States entered the conflict in Europe, Franklin D. Roosevelt used the tree lighting to condemn the war, referring to the Beatitudes of Christ, and urging “belligerent nations to read the Sermon on the Mount,” a National Park Service timeline notes.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan offered a different interpretation of the holiday. “For some Christmas just marks the birth of a great philosopher and prophet, a great and good man,” he said. “To others, it marks something still more: the pinnacle of all history, the moment when the God of all creation—in the words of the creed, God from God and light from light—humbled himself to become a baby crying in a manger.”

More recently, Barack Obama, referring to baby Jesus, said at a 2010 ceremony that “while this story may be a Christian one, its lesson is universal.”

Donald Trump said in 2017 that the “Christmas story begins 2,000 years ago with a mother, a father, their baby son, and the most extraordinary gift of all, the gift of God’s love for all of humanity.”

2. The Christmas tree was joined by other symbols of faith.

At times, there has been a Nativity with life-sized figures near the National Christmas Tree. An Islamic star-and-crescent symbol also made a 1997 appearance on the National Mall not far from the White House, but it was vandalized, losing its star.

“This year for the first time, an Islamic symbol was displayed along with the National Christmas Tree and the menorah,” said President Bill Clinton that year in a statement. “The desecration of that symbol is the embodiment of intolerance that strikes at the heart of what it means to be an American.”

A public menorah first appeared near the White House in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter walked to the ceremony in Lafayette Park. The candelabra moved to a location on the Ellipse in 1987, and a 30-foot National Menorah has continued to be lit annually as a project of American Friends of Lubavitch.

3. Its lighting continued amid difficult times.

Roosevelt lit the tree weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill standing behind him.

After the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his successor waited until a 30-day mourning period was over before lighting the tree. “Today we come to the end of a season of great national sorrow, and to the beginning of the season of great, eternal joy,” said Lyndon Johnson on Dec. 22 of that year.

A few months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush rode in a motorcade to the nearby Ellipse for the ceremony.

Costello contrasted these “people-oriented” instances to the more “policy-oriented” rhetoric of State of the Union speeches.

“We see after these moments of national catastrophe, disaster, tragedy, where this can be a really uplifting time for presidents to deliver a message directly to the American people, to remind them about what the season is all about, but also forward-looking,” he said.

4. While it’s kept its name, others have switched to ‘holiday.’

The neighboring Capitol Christmas Tree was a Capitol Holiday Tree for a time. It reverted back to the “Christmas” title in 2005.

“The speaker believes a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree, and it is as simple as that,” Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, told The Washington Times that year.

Matthew Evans, then landscape architect of the U.S. Capitol, told Religion News Service in 2001 the tree is “intended for people of all faiths to gather round at a time of coming together and fellowship and celebration.”

Around that time, some state capitols and statehouses also opted to name their pines, firs and spruces “holiday trees” instead. But the National Christmas Tree has retained its longtime imprimatur.

5. The tree ceremony is really about kids.

An ailing 7-year-old girl asked that President Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan grant her “Make a Wish” program request that she join them for the tree lighting in 1983.

“The Christmas tree that lights up for our country must be seen all the way to heaven,” Amy Bentham wrote to the program, according to the U.S. National Park Service website. “I would wish so much to help the President turn on those Christmas lights.”

The Reagans granted her wish.

“The bottom line is what the president says and does, it matters; obviously, people listen,” Costello said. “But really, this is about kids, it’s about children and sort of the magical time of the year. And that was just one example, I think, that was especially poignant about why the ceremony matters.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—David Lane, a Texas-based political operative and leader of the American Renewal Project, described former President Donald Trump as out of touch, driven by personal grievances and self-importance.  

“Unfortunately, the former president’s penchant for settling political scores and his compulsion to keep the spotlight upon himself have both become threadbare and trite,” Lane wrote in his biweekly email to evangelical Christian pastors.

Titled “Why did the red wave die on the vine?,” the email was sent Nov. 29 to about 70,000 subscribers of the American Renewal Project, which is dedicated to mobilizing evangelical pastors to run for office.

Lane’s email was a sign of a growing willingness on the part of evangelicals to criticize the former president. In Trump’s 2016 run for the White House and throughout his failed 2020 campaign, white evangelicals were his most stalwart supporters, with about 80 percent voting for him.

Despite leaked tapes capturing sexual indiscretion and the rank and file’s general reluctance to describe him as morally upstanding, evangelical ministers especially presented a near united front in support for Trump.

Praise Trump’s vision but not his ego

In the weeks since Trump announced he is running for election again in 2024, however, it appears something has changed.

Lane lauded Trump’s accomplishments in his email, including his “blue-collar patriotism” and “his fight to place constitutional traditionalists on the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Courts of Appeals.”

But Lane added, “His vision of making America as a nation great again has been put on the sidelines, while the mission and the message are now subordinate to personal grievances and self-importance.”

Lane isn’t the only one to take a step back.

Shortly after Trump announced he was running again, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and one of Trump’s evangelical advisers during the 2016 campaign, said he wasn’t going to endorse the former president unless or until he became the Republican nominee.

Mike Evans, a Christian Zionist activist from Texas and another former member of the evangelical advisory board, went so far as to tell The Washington Post he would not vote for Trump again. Evans recalled how he once left a Trump rally “in tears because I saw Bible believers glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol.”

Texas televangelist and onetime Trump adviser James Robison, president of Life Outreach International, told a meeting of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers in mid-November that the former president has the tendency to act “like a little elementary schoolchild,” focusing on minor spats at the expense of larger goals.

Finding fault with personality

John Fea, a historian at Messiah College who studies evangelical culture and politics, said it may be too early in the election cycle to draw any conclusions about evangelical attitudes toward Trump.

Fea noted none of the evangelical leaders who have criticized Trump said they were doing so because of the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol, nor the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen or the multiple criminal cases against Trump winding through the courts.

“There’s a huge silence,” Fea said. “They’re not turning away from Trump for the reasons why millions of Americans didn’t vote for (candidates backed by) Trump in 2022.”

What’s new is a willingness to find fault with Trump’s personality—his “self-importance,” his “elementary schoolchild” behavior, his need to command the spotlight—criticisms most evangelicals had not aired publicly, despite being questioned often about Trump’s behavior.

On the heels of the GOP’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, in which many Trump-endorsed candidates lost their elections, other segments of the GOP have expressed exasperation with Trump. Many evangelicals may be peeved at the losses as well.

There is evidence Trump’s support among rank-and-file evangelicals may still be strong, and even those leaders whose passion for Trump seems to have cooled hold his presidency in high regard. Jeffress told Religion News Service the former president delivered for evangelicals in a big way.

“I still say, without apology, he is the greatest president we’ve had since Ronald Reagan,” Jeffress said in a telephone call.

Still, he reiterated, he had no desire to engage in Trump’s presidential bid—yet.

“If there’s a prolonged primary fight, I don’t see the need to get into that right now,” Jeffress said. “If he’s the nominee, I will support him enthusiastically and happily.”

‘Off his game’

Neither Jeffress nor Lane criticized Trump for dining last week with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, both of whom have a history of antisemitic remarks. Lane said he didn’t know anything about Fuentes, and Jeffress said he’s been secluded in the past week and hasn’t talked to “anybody.”

Several Republican lawmakers and former Vice President Mike Pence have rebuked Trump for the dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table,” Pence told NewsNation. “I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”

Lane, whose emails reach Southern Baptist, charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, peppers his notes with biblical quotes and appeals to Christians eager to claim a Judeo-Christian heritage in America’s governance and culture.

To that end he has spent nearly $50 million since 2005 to mobilize evangelical pastors to run for school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures and beyond.

In a telephone call, Lane said he didn’t see his missive as criticism as much as advice he hoped the former president would take.

“I think I’m doing him a favor,” Lane said.

He said he didn’t think Trump could win by re-litigating the 2020 election results or by mocking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom the former president recently called “Ron De-Sanctimonious” at a rally.

“His personality disorder causes him to combat and war over everything he doesn’t like,” Lane said. “That’s got him off his game. He’s no longer delivering the message of the American people and what’s in the culture.”

In his email to pastors, Lane concluded with a quote from Proverbs: “Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.”

The U.S. Senate voted 61-36 to approve the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill to codify same-sex marriage as law, but faith groups differed on whether the amended bill includes adequate religious liberty protections.

The bipartisan bill drew the support of all Democrats present to vote on Nov. 29, along with 12 Republicans and two independents. Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas both voted against the bill.

The amended bill now goes back to the U.S. House of Representatives for approval. The House already had approved an earlier version in July by a 267-157 vote.

The Respect for Marriage Act—a legislative version of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage—repeals the Defense of Marriage Act. That 1996 law defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and also allowed individual states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage granted under the laws of other states.

As amended, the Senate version of the Respect for Marriage Act—which also protects interracial marriage—states nothing in the bill “shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection” available under the U.S. Constitution or federal law.

It specifically states:

• Churches and other religious entities will not be required to provide services, facilities or goods for a same-sex marriage.
• The bill does not allow the federal government to recognize polygamous marriages.
• The bill cannot be used to deny or alter benefits or tax-exempt status to an otherwise eligible person or entity.

In a mid-November tweet, Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, affirmed bipartisan efforts by lawmakers to “advance civil rights protections for same-sex and interracial couples, while reaffirming existing religious freedom protections.”

“Lawmakers are right to recognize a diverse range of views on marriage among religious traditions as they work to pass legislation to ensure every American is equal in rights and dignity,” Tyler tweeted. “We believe marriage equality and religious freedom are compatible.”

The Center for Public Justice issued a statement Nov. 29 commending the Senate “for adding vital religious freedom protections before passing the Respect for Marriage Act.”

“We salute the Senate for providing multiple protections for organizations that are committed to one man-one woman marriage, including security for their tax-exempt status and their eligibility for government funding, accreditation and licensure,” the statement read.

However, other faith-based organizations voiced continued opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act, saying the religious liberty protections were inadequate.

In written comments to Baptist Press, Hannah Daniel, policy manager for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, expressed disappointment the Senate failed to “amend this bill further to bolster religious liberty protections for people and institutions of faith.”

“In the lead-up to this vote, we expressed our opposition to the bill to senators, and now that it moves back to the House, we will continue doing so,” Daniel stated.

Catholic News Service reported the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said even as amended, “religious objectors are likelier to be denied exemptions under the First Amendment and [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] in cases where they would have prevailed but for the passage” of the Respect for Marriage Act.

“The amended act will put the ministries of the Catholic Church, people of faith and other Americans who uphold a traditional meaning of marriage at greater risk of government discrimination,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan and Bishop Robert E. Barron of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote in a Nov. 23 letter to all members of Congress.

WASHINGTON (BP)—An alliance of 15 attorneys general have warned Secretary Denis McDonough they will “act decisively” if the Department of Veterans Affairs uses a new rule to violate their states’ restrictions on abortion.

Led by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, the coalition wrote McDonough Nov. 17 to object to a V.A. interim final rule that provides abortions in certain cases for military veterans and family members.

The attorneys general told the secretary they will not permit him to use the rule, which was issued by the V.A. in September, “to erect a regime of elective abortions that defy state laws.”

The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission filed public comments Oct. 11 that called for the V.A. to revoke the rule, which explicitly lifts a 30-year-old restriction on abortions by the department.

The ERLC said the interim final rule forces taxpayers to fund the taking of preborn human lives, disregards a congressional ban on abortions by the V.A. and violates the religious freedom of health-care workers.

“These state attorneys general are right to push back on this unconstitutional move from the Biden administration that circumvents pro-life state laws,” ERLC Policy Manager Hannah Daniel told Baptist Press.

“As the ERLC’s October public comments argued, this [interim final rule] is antithetical to our nation’s principles and forces pro-life Americans to fund the horrific practice of abortion,” she said by email. “It is our continued hope that this rule will be repealed or stopped in the courts.”

The interim final rule permits the V.A. to provide abortions in its medical benefits package under specific conditions, as well as abortion counseling, for pregnant veterans and V.A. beneficiaries. Under the rule, the V.A. will perform abortions when the life or health of the mother is threatened and when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

The rule’s guidelines, however, can be interpreted to grant a right to abortion that is more extensive than it appears at first glance, opponents assert.

Thirteen states have “total/near total limits on abortion” in effect as of Nov. 16, Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America reported. In addition, Florida has a ban in effect on abortion beginning at 15 weeks’ gestation. “Total/near total” restrictions on abortion in nine states await a final ruling in the courts, according to the report.

With the exception of Nebraska, the 15 attorneys general who wrote McDonough represent states that already have enacted some form of abortion prohibition.

In their letter, Fitch and the attorneys general described the new V.A. rule as “unlawful” and “deeply flawed.” The interim final rule “rests on a claim of legal authority that the VA does not have and it purports to override duly enacted state laws on matters within traditional state authority,” the letter said.

The attorneys general asserted:

• The V.A. lacks authority to provide abortions because the 1992 Veterans Health Care Act does not authorize abortions and the department’s assertion a 1996 law “effectively overtook” the earlier law is without merit.
• The interim final rule “would not simply displace the many state laws regulating and restricting abortion” even if the V.A. has the authority it alleges.
• They “will be watching closely the VA’s use of this rule and we will be ready to act if the VA defies the law.” The attorneys general also emphasized the rule must be administered in a way that is consistent with a health-care worker’s right to refuse to participate in an abortion on the basis of “conscience or religious belief.”

Joining Fitch on the letter were Mark Brnovich of Arizona, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Ashley Moody of Florida, Christopher Carr of Georgia, Todd Rokita of Indiana, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Douglas Peterson of Nebraska, Drew Wrigley of North Dakota, Dave Yost of Ohio, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee, Ken Paxton of Texas, Sean Reyes of Utah and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia.

According to the interim final rule, decisions regarding what constitutes endangerment of life and health will be made case by case through consultation between a V.A. medical professional and a woman. The V.A. will accept a report by a veteran or beneficiary as satisfactory proof of rape or incest, the department said.

The rule’s language regarding the “health” of the mother is open to a potentially expansive understanding, opponents asserted. In the past, “health” has been interpreted to include not only physical well-being but such factors as the emotional and psychological condition of the mother.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—When Donald Trump launched his 2020 reelection bid in Orlando, Fla., three years ago, the event was riddled with faith-speak.

Both Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly referenced God, arguing the Almighty had blessed America.

Trump’s closest evangelical adviser, Florida pastor Paula White-Cain, opened up the event with a passionate invocation in which she insisted the “hand of God” would work for Trump.

But when Trump announced yet another White House bid from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Nov. 15, he did so with a speech devoid of overt religious references.

It was unclear if the event included an invocation, and while some of Trump’s stalwart evangelical supporters were seen milling about the resort’s carpeted floors—namely conservative commentator Eric Metaxas, pastor Mark Burns and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell—many of the former president’s longtime religious defenders were nowhere to be seen.

Sound of silence

Instead, most have remained silent about his new campaign, while others have hinted at allegiances to other potential 2024 presidential contenders such as Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Pastor Robert Jeffress from First Baptist Church in Dallas, one of Trump’s most stalwart religious supporters, who preached a sermon to Trump on his Inauguration Day titled “When God Chooses a Leader,” signaled the former president may not be his candidate in the primary.

“Donald Trump was a great president, and if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024 I will happily support him,” Jeffress told Religion News Service in a statement.

But hours before Trump’s speech on Tuesday, Jeffress encouraged his Twitter followers to buy Pence’s new book, So Help Me God, and described the former vice president as “a great friend, a committed Christian, and a true American hero.”

In his daily podcast “The Briefing,” Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Trump critic in 2016 turned Trump supporter in 2020, briefly mused on Trump’s reelection bid. But Mohler said, with the late hour of the announcement, “it is sufficient to say he made the announcement in what was described as a rambling one-hour speech.”

“By the way, the last candidate to have served as president, lost an election and come back to win another election was Grover Cleveland. Well over a century ago,” Mohler added.

Another of Trump’s former evangelical advisers, Tony Suarez, chief operating officer of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, encouraged fellow conservatives to rally around Trump but stopped short of declaring his ascendancy inevitable.

“Tonight’s announcement was the worst kept secret in recent memory. If recent history had taught us anything it’s that there’s no such thing as a ‘sure thing,’” Suarez, who recently praised DeSantis, said in a text message.

“That said, I expect President Trump to be our nominee. Now is not the time for conservatives to be divided. We need a unified front to take back the White House and Senate.”

Burns, a South Carolina pastor and an early devotee of Trump, posted a video of himself in the Mar-a-Lago crowd.

“I believe that we will bring God back to the center of American politics and American culture,” he said. “We’re about to continue to Make America Great Again. … All of America who loves freedom, who loves smaller government, who loves God, who wants to make sure faith is at the center of our nation, they are here tonight in Mar-a-Lago.”

It was unclear whether White-Cain attended Trump’s announcement. She was silent about his announcement on Twitter, despite running a national faith advisory board seen as an effort to reinvigorate Trump’s conservative Christian base.

Meanwhile, influential conservative voices such as Princeton University professor and legal scholar Robert George have declared their support for DeSantis.

“This seems like just the right moment to announce my endorsement of Ron DeSantis of Florida for President,” George tweeted on Tuesday evening.

PHOENIX, Ariz. (RNS)—Phoenix pastor Caleb Campbell has a theory about the growing number of Americans who are labeled as Christian nationalists.

Most would rather go to Cracker Barrel than storm the Capitol.

Many see themselves as good Christians who love their country. But somewhere along the way, they began to think being a good American and being a Christian were one and the same.

“Their whole life has been the intermingling of their American civil religion and their Christian religion,” said Campbell, pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church and a self-described missionary to Christian nationalists.

To help his fellow Christians make a clearer distinction between their faith and their identity as Americans, Campbell founded a group called Disarming Leviathan. He spent the last year reading Christian nationalist books and attending events like Turning Point USA’s monthly Freedom Night in America, held at a Phoenix megachurch.

He also signed up to teach a “biblical citizenship class” run by Patriot Academy, founded by Rick Green, a former Texas state legislator turned Christian “Constitution coach.” The class mixes details about America’s founding and the Constitution with Bible verses and conservative politics.

God-and-country patriotism remains popular in the United States, according to a recent report from Pew Research. Nearly half of Americans (45 percent) believe America should be a Christian country, including 78 percent of white evangelicals and 62 percent of Black Protestants.

Fear religion losing influence

Though few want the U.S. government to adopt Christianity as the country’s official religion, according to Pew, many Americans fear religion is losing influence in the culture.

That fear, says Campbell, has led a growing number of his fellow believers to embrace a more extreme form of God-and-country patriotism, one more focused on winning the culture war than following Jesus.

Campbell expected many of the people in Christian nationalist settings he met to be angry political partisans. Instead, most were good-hearted people who thought they were doing the right thing for God.

“That was an aha moment,” he said.

At the time, Campbell had been focused on arguing with Christian nationalists, trying to convince them their ideology—popularized by politicians, pastors and online activists—is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.

Misguided and fearful

But that approach did not work. He began to think of them as “Aunt Betty”—a loved one who is misguided and fearful.

“Aunt Betty is watching a whole generation of Americans deconstruct their American civic religion, and it’s freaking her out,” he said.

Campbell decided instead to approach Christian nationalists as a missionary, “leading with kindness and generosity.” What Christian nationalists needed, he decided, was conversion, not confrontation.

“I started thinking, how do I actually bring Jesus into this person’s life, because they’re being sold a version of Jesus that is not accurate biblically and is going to end up disappointing them,” he said.

He particularly is concerned about what he called “seeker-sensitive Christian nationalism” that seeks to attract new churchgoers through worship services that praise Jesus and “own the libs” at the same time.

“It’s a brilliant church-growth strategy,” Campbell said.

“I’ve been at this for long enough to know if I got a car dealership-size American flag, put it in front of my building and did a ‘why biblical justice is not social justice’ sermon series, I could get 1,000 people,” he said.

Christian nationalism fuels anger

Rather than helping people deal with their anxieties about cultural change or focusing on people’s faith, Campbell argues, this strategy fuels anger by giving believers someone to blame for their problems.

This kind of seeker-sensitive Christian nationalism has been on display over the past year at Freedom Night in America, a monthly revival and political rally hosted by Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA, at Dream City, a Phoenix megachurch not far from Campbell’s congregation.

Freedom Night services, which are streamed by both Dream City and Turning Point, have featured Kirk and conservative figures like writer Eric Metaxas, “Fox and Friends” host Pete Hegseth and John Cooper, lead singer of the Christian band Skillet.

The events look like a typical megachurch service, beginning with a few worship songs, followed by some announcements, an offering, and even an altar call. But instead of a sermon, there’s a talk by Kirk, who often is joined by a guest.

At the Freedom Night in October, Dream City pastor Luke Barnett took to the stage as the band finished their set, repeating the last line of an old-school worship tune, singing, “You alone are my heart’s desire, and I long to worship you.” Barnett then introduced Kirk that night as a religious teacher rather than a conservative activist.

“If there’s anyone who I believe that God has raised up in America, to share about life inside the kingdom, and what it looks like, what it can look like to our nation today, it’s our guest tonight, Charlie Kirk,” he said.

‘Demand the welfare of the nation’

As Kirk began, he quoted Jeremiah 29:27, a popular Bible verse, giving it a new twist. The verse, addressed to the people of Israel during their captivity in Babylon, is often translated as, “seek the welfare of the city where I sent you into exile,” followed by a command to pray. For Kirk, the verse became a call to political action.

“Demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation’s welfare,” he told attendees.

Joanna Kline, assistant professor of Old Testament at Gordon College in Massachusetts, questioned the accuracy of Kirk’s translation. For one thing, it leaves out the command to pray. It also missed the original context of the verse, which was intended to tell the Israelites that they’d be in exile for decades. That group of people also had no power to make demands.

“Who would they make demands to?” she said.

A spokesman for Turning Point USA said Kirk sees himself as a lay Christian trying to do his part, rather than a pastor or religious leader. In that role, Kirk is trying to get his fellow Christians involved in shaping the broader culture.

That’s very different than Christian nationalism, the Turning Point spokesman said, and has long been a Christian practice.

The spokesman also said Kirk was concerned about the pandemic shutdowns that affected many churches and, in Kirk’s mind, interfered with the right to worship. That showed him the need for political involvement by churches, because even if churches stay clear of politics, government officials don’t leave churches alone.

“His main point is that churches should preach the gospel,” the spokesman said. “His second point is to make sure that churches are able to do this.”

Author Victor Marx, who spoke at a Freedom Night in April, said holding an event to discuss politics at a church on a Wednesday night was much different from holding a discussion of politics on a Sunday morning.

A friend of Kirk’s who has also spoken at a Turning Point USA event for pastors earlier this year as well as other conservative gatherings, Marx rejected the label of being a Christian nationalist.

Personal reason for concern

“To say that our country needs to be run at every position by Christians—that is not what I believe,” he said.

For Campbell, his concerns about Christian nationalism have a personal side.

A former skinhead, Campbell first showed up at Desert Springs Bible Church in his early 20s, when he was invited to play drums in the band. The friendship and welcome he found at the church changed his life, he said, and he abandoned the hate he’d felt as a young person.

He eventually joined the church staff and in 2015 became senior pastor. At the time, the church was mostly white and did not reflect the diversity of its community. Campbell began working to change that—building close ties with Black and Hispanic churches and working on issues like immigration.

Things went well at first. But Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and the accompanying MAGA Christianity began to split his church. People he’d known for decades left to find a congregation that better fit their politics. Some of them ended up going to Freedom Night at Dream City, which led him to attend one of the services there and made him aware of the growth of Christian nationalism.

Campbell wants to help people like his former church members find a better way to live their faith. Currently, he is working on a book project modeled after the Alpha program—a popular evangelistic method centered on kindness, hospitality and conversation.

“This is the Alpha program for Christian nationalists,” he said.

Dennae Pierre, a Phoenix pastor and executive director of the Surge Network, which helps churches from different ethnic backgrounds, believes Campbell is on to something.

Pierre has worked closely with Campbell in the past and watched him lead his congregation through a difficult transition. Though many church members have left, she said, Campbell’s congregation also attracted new people who felt ostracized by the fusion of faith and politics in other churches.

She, too, thinks conversion rather than confrontation will help people find something better than Christian nationalism.

“When we think about Christian nationalism, I think there needs to be an intentional discipleship process, to dismantle what is unhealthy and to rebuild people with a more gospel-centered vision of what it means to be a Christian,” she said.

This story was produced under a grant from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—In a new advertisement, black-and-white images of Gov. Ron DeSantis and his family fade in and out as a narrator declares that “on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter.”

The ad, unveiled Nov. 4 on the Twitter feed of Casey DeSantis, the Florida governor’s wife, is the latest sign he may be making a play to become the anointed candidate of conservative religious voters.

Doing so would likely challenge the electoral ambitions of former-President Donald Trump, who may end up facing off against DeSantis in the Republican presidential primaries.

Perhaps feeling a threat to his status as the vanguard of conservative Christian politics, Trump dubbed DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” at a rally in Florida over the weekend.

‘Trying to position himself as God’s chosen’

Anthea Butler, chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said the ad appears to target the framework for Trump’s political success with conservative Christians, in which God was thought to have chosen Trump for a special purpose.

Some compared the former president to biblical figures such as Cyrus, a Persian king who liberated the Israelites from Babylonian captivity. Still others invoked prophecy to insist leaders of Trump’s administration were agents of God tasked with instilling the government with “kingdom values.”

Now DeSantis is “trying to position himself as God’s chosen man,” Butler said. “That’s really coming up to challenge Trump on one of the things that makes him palatable to the QAnon people and all his loyal followers. They feel like God picked Donald Trump.”

Marie Griffith, head of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed. “If it worked for Trump, maybe it’ll work for him—to be seen as almost a prophet and someone sent by God,” Griffith said.

Griffith said the ad hints at other critiques of Trump that DeSantis may use to appeal to conservative religious voters. While Trump has expressed support for COVID-19 vaccines developed while he was in office, DeSantis has repeatedly cast doubt on the effectiveness of the lifesaving shots and pandemic restrictions in general, a view shared by many of the most conservative parts of Trump’s base.

“It’s reminding people of how he handled the pandemic,” said Griffith.

And while DeSantis is Catholic and the “fighter” advertisement appears to be a riff on broadcaster Paul Harvey’s 1978 speech “So God Made a Farmer”—substituting “fighter” for Harvey’s encomiums about farmers—Griffith said the narrator’s voice has the overtones of a mid-20th century Protestant preacher.

Conservative religious support

Several prominent conservative religious voices have begun to line up for DeSantis and used both the ad and Trump’s jibes against the Florida governor to speak out.

Matt Walsh, a conservative Christian commentator, came to DeSantis’ defense after the Florida rally, writing on Twitter: “DeSantis is an extremely effective conservative governor who has had real policy wins and real cultural wins. Trump isn’t going to be able to take this one down with a dumb nickname.”

Pastor Tom Ascol—a leader among the most conservative faction of the Southern Baptist Convention, who forced a runoff for the SBC presidency earlier this year—offered the invocation at a DeSantis event over the weekend and later characterized DeSantis similar to how Trump was framed by some during his time in Washington.

“I’m grateful for the privilege to pray for my governor (DeSantis) & his family,” Ascol said in a tweet. “God has blessed the state of Florida by placing him in this office as His servant for our good.”

Meanwhile, other conservative figures have begun to outline support for DeSantis. Conservative Christian writer Rod Dreher, who recently moved to Hungary, responded to Trump’s name-calling by referring to the former president as an “idiot.”

Tony Suarez, the COO of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference who was among Trump’s evangelical advisers and now also counts himself a “huge Ron DeSantis fan,” said he was impressed by the ad.

“My first reaction was: someone on the media team needs a raise, because it’s impacting,” he said. “Wow, it’s strong.”

Reservations about timing

But Suarez questioned the timing of the ad. Describing it as a possible “teaser” for DeSantis’ presidential bid, Suarez expressed ambivalence about anyone running against Trump in 2024. Rumors have already begun to swirl the former president may announce a third White House bid soon.

“This is not the moment to divide the party, and the support behind Trump—and I have no reason to believe he won’t run again—is so incredibly strong,” Suarez said.

Instead, Suarez outlined a scenario where Trump runs and wins the White House in 2024, with DeSantis running the next cycle.

“I fully expect to one day vote for DeSantis to be president. I just don’t know if it’s in 2024,” he said. “I do think DeSantis has the potential to be the president of the United States, biblically speaking, ‘in due season.’”

But Butler and Griffith agreed Trump may have reasons to be concerned if DeSantis decides to jump in earlier.

“What DeSantis has that Trump doesn’t have is an appeal to ‘positive family values,’” Griffith said, referring to a phrase long common in conservative Christian politics. “He’s a family man, he doesn’t have all this divorce in his past, he doesn’t have women, to my knowledge, suing him for sexual harassment and rape.”

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (RNS)—North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has a message for the state’s evangelical pastors: Run for office.

Robinson has repeated his message at least eight times over the past few months at church luncheons across North Carolina hosted by the American Renewal Project, a group dedicated to mobilizing evangelical pastors to run for school boards, city councils, county commissions, the state legislature and beyond.

The project, which has hosted similar events in Iowa, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas, takes the now decades-long effort to get evangelicals engaged in electoral politics one step further. It seeks to bring pastors into elected office.

Robinson, a 54-year-old Republican and a first-time officeholder himself, said the nation needs pastors willing to fight a spiritual war in the halls of power.

“Step up,” he thundered to some 200 pastors and their wives munching on boxed lunches of Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches in Winston-Salem last month.

“Join the fight. Don’t join the fight under man’s power. Join the fight under God’s power. Bring the principles of God, not the principles of politics. Bring his words with you.”

If Jerry Falwell Sr. founded the Moral Majority to get evangelicals to lobby Congress on issues of morality, and if the Christian Coalition mobilized Christians to cast ballots, then the American Renewal Project wants pastors to run as candidates on the Republican Party ticket up and down the ballot.

Now in its 17th year, the project reorganized two years ago to focus on regional pastor luncheons in a handful of states. This year, eight of its 19 luncheons were held in North Carolina, drawing more than 1,500 pastors and their wives. The events were free, and no offerings were taken.

In addition to the lieutenant governor, each luncheon featured North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley, who promised the pastors that if they run, the party will provide them the logistical support they need.

“You’re really good at public speaking,” Whatley told the pastors at each meeting. “You’re great herding cats. God knows, you can raise money. You’re perfect.”

Asserts departure from ‘biblically based culture’

Driving the project is the Christian nationalist notion that America has strayed from its origins and needs to be restored to its Christian foundations.

“America was founded on the Judeo-Christian heritage and established a biblically based culture,” said David Lane, a Dallas political operative who founded American Renewal Project. “We no longer have that. Secularism was officially crowned in the mid-20th century.”

Lane said evangelical donors have given him nearly $50 million since 2005 to support his project and convince pastors to take up the cause.

Those invited to recent luncheons come from various denominations. Most are Southern Baptist, charismatic or Pentecostal. The men—there are few women pastors—are overwhelmingly white. And despite the commonly used term Judeo-Christian, there are hardly any Catholics and certainly no Jews.

Among those who spoke at most of the eight events across the state were two Baptist pastors on the Nov. 8 ballot. One is running, unopposed, for commissioner in Bladen County; the other is running for the North Carolina House in heavily Republican-leaning Randolph County. Barring a disaster, both will win.

The two pastors peppered their on-stage appeals with biblical references. One cited Peter, Jesus’ disciple, finding the courage to get out of the boat during the storm. The other paraphrased the Book of Esther so beloved by evangelicals: “You’ve been brought into the kingdom for such a time as this.”

Project claims strategy is working

A common refrain at the American Renewal Project is that Jesus’ saying, “Upon this rock I will build my church,” is commonly misconstrued. The Greek word “ecclesia,” often translated as “church,” actually means “assembly.” American Renewal’s supporters take this as a sign that Jesus wanted Christians to have influence in the public square, not just inside the walls of a church.

Project leaders think the strategy is working. They claim 50 pastors ran for various North Carolina offices in this year’s primaries, and 25 won their nominations and will appear on this November’s ballots.

The Renewal Project did not, however, provide a list of those vying for public office, and only a handful could be independently verified. The group does not fund any of the pastors’ campaigns.

One reason, for the middling response? Pastors haven’t seen public office as part of their call.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson campaigned to become the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 1988. Mike Huckabee, formerly a Baptist pastor and also former governor of Arkansas, also ran for president in 2008 and 2016. Neither came close to clinching the nomination.

It wasn’t until 1978 that it was even possible for pastors in all states to run. Historically, some states had clauses in their constitutions prohibiting clergy from running for office, a holdover from English common law.

In McDaniel v. Paty, the Supreme Court struck down the last of those clauses, ruling a Tennessee law prohibiting clergy members from serving as political delegates violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

“For much of the 19th and 20th centuries there was a general idea that ministerial service was a separate profession from politics, and it was incompatible with running for office,” said Daniel K. Williams, professor of history at the University of West Georgia.

Black pastors have, at times, been the exception, and almost exclusively on the Democratic ticket. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., onetime pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, served as a Democratic U.S. congressman from 1945 until 1971. Jesse Jackson ran unsuccessfully for president in 1984 and 1988. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, is now running for reelection to the U.S. Senate. In local races there have undoubtedly been many more.

Culture warriors welcome

Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, who is Black, is an exception. He captured the state’s second-highest elected office after a 2018 video that captured him admonishing the Greensboro City Council for attempting to cancel a biannual gun show went viral.

Since winning office in 2020, he has defined himself as a culture warrior, decrying “transgenderism and homosexuality” as “filth,” calling for eliminating the state Board of Education and opposing abortion (though he acknowledged that he and his future wife terminated a pregnancy in 1989).

Most recently, Robinson mocked a brutal attack on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in a Facebook post. “I’m sorry Paul I don’t believe you or the press!!!!” he wrote underneath an image of a Halloween costume for an “attacker” featuring a shirtless, grinning, hammer-wielding man wearing underwear.

Robinson, who is not a pastor, shares the same vision of America’s founders as the American Renewal Project. At a pastor’s luncheon at a church in Jamestown, near Greensboro, he rhapsodized about the faith of the Mayflower Puritans and the pioneers who traveled west in covered wagons in search of land. There was no mention of the displacement of Native people or the enslavement of Blacks.

“Those people were made of something different,” Robinson bellowed. “Look at us now. You got people that can’t get around the corner of Walmart without GPS. We have literally forgotten how to do anything.”

At the end of Robinson’s 15-minute testimony, Gary Miller, the project’s director, asks pastors to get up and lay hands on the lieutenant governor and pray for him. For about two minutes, the pastors crowd around the stout, broad-chested Robinson. They lay hands on his back or lift their arms up in the air and pray out loud.

Renewal Project leaders do not take a public stand for former President Trump or unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Lane, the group’s founder, said he is not involved in helping reelect Trump and does not believe the election was stolen.

His fight, as he wrote in his weekly email, which he says is emailed to 80,000 pastors, is against “profane secularists and cultural Marxism.”

“If North Carolina Christians stay home on election day, then those in active rebellion against God will get the chance to elect their representatives,” he wrote in a recent email to followers, in which he also castigated the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina for holding its annual meeting on Election Day.

The last of this year’s luncheons were held this week. But Lane’s work is not done. Immediately after Election Day, Lane is headed for Israel with a delegation of pastors he wants to convince to run for office. A frequent traveler to Israel, Lane has taken Huckabee and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul along on these trips.

Cameron McGill, the Baptist pastor and Bladen County commissioner who traveled to Israel with Lane in 2019, is returning  this year to help convince a new crop of pastors to step up and run for office.

“God has called us not just to build our church but to impact the culture,” McGill said. The trip to Israel, he said, may help U.S. pastors see how Jesus himself did so.

This story was produced with a grant from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.