Christian Nationalism and the Project to Rollback Progress
Co-host Jared Yates Sexton sits down with Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, to discuss the destructive Christian Nationalism project that's overtaken the GOP and the evangelical project that overturned Roe V. Wade. Links: Katherine Stewart's The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism - https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/power-worshippers-9781635573435/ Support The Muckrake Podcast at http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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Nick Halsman is not here today, but we have a really important interview that we're really excited for you to hear.
I got a chance to talk to Catherine Stewart, who is a journalist and the author of The Power Worshippers Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.
We had a really good chat, like we always do, and Catherine and I talked about the forces that were behind the overtaking of the Supreme Court, eventually the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as well as the rise of Christian nationalism, which, you know, we've been warning about for a while now.
You know, it's sort of been hiding a little bit behind the power structure of the Republican Party.
But now it's just completely out there in the wide, wide open.
It's terrifying stuff.
And Catherine and I talk at length about what that means and what these people are actually planning to do should they gain power over the system.
Before we get to that interview, a couple of bits of housekeeping.
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We did one last week.
We had a heck of a time.
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That also goes ahead and makes sure that the next episode of our audio documentary, A Certain Route to Failure, that that gets supported.
Next up, Ronald Reagan and the rise of the evangelical right.
Already looking forward to that.
Also, on a personal note, pre-orders are open for my new book, The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.
This is coming out in January of 2023, but if you want to support my work, a pre-order goes a long, long way.
This definitely helps when it comes to Books and the campaigns that are being launched with them.
That book, The Midnight Kingdom, is coming out from Dutton Penguin Random House in January.
Basically, this is the story of how the modern world, this crisis that we're currently living through, was created by the forces of white supremacy, capitalism, Christian mythology, and fascist conspiracy theories.
Basically, it talks about the echoes of In the past of what we're going through now.
Hopefully to explain not only how we got here, but what we might actually do to escape this crisis and make a better world.
I'm really, really excited about this thing.
One of the hardest things I've ever had to write and I can't wait for this to come out.
I wish it was coming out before January, but you can go and preorder that whether you want to get that from Dutton Penguin Random House.
your local bookstore or any of the places you get your books.
That is The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.
Alright everybody, here's this conversation with Katherine Stewart, the author of The Power Worshippers, Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.
We will be back on Friday with The Weekender.
If you need us before then, you can find me at J.Y.
Saxton.
You can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me, SMH.
Stay safe, everyone.
As promised, we are here with the one, the only, Catherine Stewart, a journalist and the author of Power Worshippers Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.
I tell literally everybody who is interested in what's going on in modern politics and what's happening with this rising authoritarian threat, Power Worshippers is absolutely required reading.
It's on the syllabus.
Pick it up, read it, devour it.
But you know, Catherine, as much as I appreciate your work, I just I have no idea what there is for us to talk about right now at this moment in history.
I guess we've got nothing to talk about.
Yeah, there's nothing happening with religious extremism and Christian nationalism, right?
I mean, that just sort of went away.
It just sort of tuckered itself out and now we don't have to deal with it anymore, right?
Well, you know, the good news, if there is good news, is that I think some of the denial has been shattered by this most recent spate of Supreme Court decisions.
Which pushes, makes it possible for school officials to proselytize children, other people's children in public schools.
Of course, it takes a direct attack at the most private decisions and important decisions that people face in their lives regarding the reproductive choices.
Yeah, and you know, we've chatted a little bit about this in the past.
and other features as well.
So I think some of that has really shocked people.
A lot of folks thought, where on earth did this come from?
How is this possible?
But we're really seeing the consequences of a plan that was laid out decades ago. - Yeah, and we've chatted a little bit about this in the past.
We're currently living in a moment that I think the two of us sort of expected to happen.
We hoped that it wouldn't, but we kind of expected, you know, we sort of saw where this was going and none of it was actually hidden.
You know, most of it was pretty out in the open, particularly if you paid attention to it.
So as of right now, there are some people I feel like who are sort of waking up almost as if out of a bad dream and suddenly realizing that like things haven't gotten better and that the bad dream is actually part of their reality.
And I have to tell you, for anybody keeping track, Catherine is absolutely on fire right now.
I think that you have been writing some of the most important and pressing things.
And I want to talk about a couple of these articles that you've had come out recently.
And I want to talk about that plan particularly.
You wrote for the New Republic, and this is another required reading, how Leonard Leo became the power broker of the American right.
And I want to talk about Leonard Leo in just a second, but I want to point out that If this country worked in any way, shape or form, Leonard Leo would be a household name at this point.
And in the midst of everything that's been happening with the Supreme Court, particularly rolling back the progress of this last century, Leonard Leo is an architect of this and is a figure who has carried out this long, long project.
Can you give the listeners a little bit of an insight into who Leonard Leo is?
Sure, Leonard Leo is one of the key players in the very powerful, very well funded right wing legal sphere.
He took a leadership role with the Federalist Society.
It serves as a kind of an organization that grooms and promotes judicial candidates with their sort of supposedly correct bona fides, you know, the sort of far right positions in the so-called culture wars and are who are in agreement with the sort of far right positions in the so-called culture wars and are who are in agreement with the Minimal rights for the workforce, certainly anti-abortion in the most extreme ways.
And, you know, he just has commanded a tremendous amount of money.
He was between 2014 and 2014.
He is the Federalist Society and a sort of related network of organizations of which he took a very important part, took in hundreds of millions of dollars.
There was actually a terrific article about Leonard Leo in The Washington Post by the journalist Robert O'Haro that kind of lays it out and traces the money.
So he's he's he's one of the sort of key leaders of the I would say right wing judicial sphere.
Another key organization is the Alliance Defending Freedom.
It's an organization whose present budget has increased from what was something like 60 million dollars a year in 2018 to I believe it's one hundred and two or one hundred and six million dollars in 2021.
They just have so much money all devoted to a very Sort of right wing sort of agenda.
Most of the most of the decisions that are intended to destroy and degrade the principle of separation of church and state.
You know, we talk a lot on this show about the difference between sort of how current events are portrayed in the media.
Like when you look at the Supreme Court, like, of course, everybody looks at Mitch McConnell stealing the court and taking that nomination and then changing the balance of things.
But the thing that always falls by the wayside is sort of the deeper politics, the larger explanations of how these things happen.
It's not as if this was a spontaneous overtaking of the court.
And one of the terrible parts here is that Leonard Leo and the people around him, this is many, many years in the making.
I mean, they, you know, to describe it in sort of flippant terms, I mean, they have lapped the opposition in terms of this project to take over the judiciary from the top to the bottom.
Can you talk a little bit about what that project looked like?
Yeah, listen, Leonard Leo recognized a long time ago that America would never voluntarily submit to the so-called moral medicine that he thought was necessary to bring about a kind of I would say a hyper conservative counter revolution in our culture.
And he recognized people would never go along with it at the ballot box.
And he recognized that if you can get the courts, you can get the country.
So he and folks along with him invested a tremendous amount of money and time and effort into building a kind of right wing judiciary at the He spoke to the Akden Institute and I believe it was 2017 he said we would like to I would like to see the courts unrecognizable.
And he said Trump is the change we've been waiting for.
So he was all in on Trump.
I mean, as were other movement leaders.
And, you know, Trump, for his part, held up his end of the bargain.
He gave them the judicial nominees that they want, wanted.
And I remember I was at this event where he was trying to sort of endear himself to the religious right.
It was like a road to majority conference or a values voters conference, one of those big Right-wing activist conferences.
And he got up there and he held up a list of Supreme Court justices, like potential Supreme Court justices, as though they were like a bunch of shiny new bonds.
And he said, I'm going to choose Supreme Court nominees from this list.
And these nominees are all pro-life.
And pro-life, of course, was not just anti-abortion, but also in agreement with all of these other positions that they want.
Yeah, and you know, there's a line in the takedown that you'd written there, the, you know, the dive on this.
And it was the idea that there were 20 years of conservative losses in the culture wars.
And, you know, as I was writing my most recent book, unfortunately, I had the privilege of reading some Rod Dreher.
I don't know if you've spent any time with good old Rod.
And for people who don't know it, Rod is this An arch conservative who is now weighing heavily in a lot of what we would call national conservatism, a lot of the rolling back of the progress of the past few decades.
Dreher's book, The Benedictine Option, basically said, you know, with the legalization of gay marriage, that that was it.
There's no room in America whatsoever for conservatives, particularly conservative Christians.
You know, roll it up, say goodbye.
Best we can do is leave America or find a little place where we can do whatever.
Now, all of a sudden, what Leonard Leo has done and what all of these regressive reactionary movements have put together has actually, I think, subverted the idea that a lot of Americans have, which is we're always heading forward.
We're always going to have more and more progress, but the idea of rolling any of these rights back or pushing back in these 20 years that Leo has said that we've lost.
And in fact, what we're looking at right now is the beginning of the pulling of the string of those 20 years and possibly of the last century, right?
This is about literally rewinding time and being able to carry out a project with that as the final goal.
That's right.
A lot of Americans don't know that all six of this supposedly conservative, I frankly think they're radical, but let's call them conservative.
All six of them, justices on the Supreme Court are either current or former members of the Federalist Society.
And some 90% of Trump's appellate judge nominees or other nominees, judicial nominees, have some association with the Federalist Society.
So this is an organization with an extraordinary amount of political power.
But what you said about Dreyer and sort of complaining about, you know, we're so persecuted, you know, no one gives us any respect, is really part of how the larger Christian nationalist movement works.
They have a disproportionate influence in our politics.
Most American Christians, I believe, reject the politics of conquest and division that this movement represents.
And yet they're constantly claiming to be the most persecuted members of society.
Anything that sort of fails to affirm their their viewpoint and affirm their agenda and further their agenda is somehow they see as oppressive.
But here's the interesting thing about Christian nationalism.
They're not really arguing for a seat at the table, the noisy table of American democracy, you know, where there are all these, they're not just trying to sort of have their issues considered in a democratic context.
This is a movement that frankly doesn't believe in democracy.
They don't believe in the legitimacy of elections.
They deny the consequences of elections that they disagree with.
They stood behind the January 6th people who Uh, stormed and committed horrific, disgraceful assault on our Capitol.
So there's a kind of normalization of violence and political violence.
Um, there's implementation of violent rhetoric.
Um, there's a lack of, uh, I'd say they reject the principles of equality and pluralism that represent the best of the best of the American promise.
And yet they're a minority of the population, but they have disproportionate political power, disproportionate legal power.
But that sort of persecution narrative is really essential for them in rallying their base around, um, around their agenda.
Yeah, it's really disturbing.
I was, again, some of the stuff I had to read, uh, in terms of my own research, like I was spending so much time with St.
Augustine and you know, you, you look at St.
Augustine who is talking constantly about righteous persecution.
The idea that you because you hold the capital T truth, right?
And that's the entire point of it.
Like they, they literally don't care if they're the majority.
That's not the concern.
They've got capital T truth on their side.
And as a result, because they have that revealed knowledge, anybody who stands in their way is their enemy.
And whether intentional or not is serving the interest of capital evil.
Right.
And so as a result, democracy isn't just something to critique.
Democracy is literally dangerous.
Right.
This is this is something that has to be addressed because man, you know, women are wicked.
They can't possibly know what's best for them.
There are larger laws and forces that they should obey.
And that actually like fits in very naturally with that.
And I think you're right.
It's conservative, but it's actually more than conservative.
It's reactionary.
It's regressive.
It's authoritarian in nature.
And those sort of elements of both of those movements fit together well, even if they're not totally in sync or lockstep in terms of like religious worldview. - That's absolutely true.
You're right about the sort of lack of coherence This is a movement that draws in representatives of a variety of both Protestant and non-Protestant religious traditions, including hyper-conservative Catholics, conservative evangelicals.
The Pentecostal and neo-charismatic world, I think, is a very underappreciated element in this alliance.
The movement even draws support from people who don't identify as Christian at all.
Um, what unites them is more of a common political vision than any particular theological doctrine, even though, you know, there's sort of general agreement with them.
Uh, you know, some of the, if you go to the road to majority conferences or, uh, pray vote stand, there's a lot of prayer, but they're still drawing in people from variety of religious and largely large, you know, over the overwhelming majority of Christian traditions.
But of course they save.
Many of their most poisonous words for those who dare to identify as Christians of a different sort.
The folks who are religious moderates, liberals, progressives are considered demonic.
And there's something else you said that's really interesting, Jared, and that's a sort of normalization of Um, of really not just contemptuous language towards those who are different, but actually literal demonization.
So I was at this last Road to Majority Conference in Tennessee a couple of months ago, and I heard Democrats described as satanic, demonic.
The consequences of political loss were cast as too, like, too, like, absolutely apocalyptic, you know, horrible to imagine.
And I heard the word fight a lot.
And I heard people talk about battles and, you know, armor and And, you know, like metaphors of battle are very common in political arenas of all type.
But this year it seemed even more kind of specific and literal than I've heard in the past.
And it was alarming.
I mean, when you are in I would say progressive or moderate or liberal spaces.
You really don't hear people with differences of opinion or Republicans described as demonic or satanic.
You always hear how can we talk to them?
How can we help reach across the aisle?
You really don't hear that in this sort of right wing context anymore.
We know that makes me think about something.
So there's the there are these twin sort of parallel functions in Christianity.
There is martyrdom.
And then there is the crusader idea right it's it's when you are either you are either being oppressed and or you need to carry out the oppression in order to carry forward the capital T truth right and I was thinking about.
So when I was a kid, I was growing up in a very, very extremist type of Baptist indoctrination, right?
And, you know, I'm talking about like the 80s, early 90s.
And at that point, I think a lot of the conversations we had were mournful.
Right and martyrdom.
It was the idea that culture was wicked, that it had been overtaken by really disgusting foul forces.
Satan was everywhere on every television set and in every conversation your friends were possibly satanic.
And the best you could hope for was that you would die fighting against it, right?
You would martyr yourself against that existence.
And what I've noticed in the past couple of years, I think, is we've been like really paying attention to the rise of Christian nationalism is that now it's moved from martyrdom into an aggression.
Right.
Which is there is an apocalyptic situation that's taking place.
I think some people, of course, have talked about this in terms of like United 93, Flight 93.
You have to storm the cockpit or else everybody's doomed.
In this case, the apocalyptic idea is if the Democrats, if the leftist, if, you know, all these people are able to get their way, we're doomed.
We have to fight them now.
It feels like there's been a switch in terms of language, right?
It really has.
I mean, when I was at that Road to Majority conference, I heard Americans described, Democrats described as an internal political enemy.
Donald Trump was there and he spoke and he said, the greatest danger to America is not our enemies from outside, as powerful as they may be.
The greatest enemy or greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from within.
And other people described Democrats as evil and tyrannical and the enemy within engaged in a war against the truth.
And that kind of demonization is frankly really dangerous.
It reminded me of a couple of months ago when the war against Ukraine began.
I was watching some Russian state television and there was a clip where one of the most sort of popular newscasters or hosts was saying, Ukrainians are little devils.
They're evil.
They're demons.
And you good Orthodox Russian soldiers, you need to finish them off.
And so this kind of demonization of the political other is is really the language of genocide.
And it's it's preceded some of the most disgraceful, disgraceful episodes and tragic episodes in our history, in the history of the world.
This kind of political demon is the literal demonization of one's political enemies and foes within our have preceded the war in Rwanda.
We can see the sort of story of the Amalekites, which is a, you know, the biblical story about, you know, kill all of them, the children, the babies, whatever, because they're nonbelievers that was used in that language that Bible story was used in Northern Ireland and.
And so many other places around the world that sort of taking the idea of battle from the Bible and the idea that you have to sort of destroy an internal enemy or or non-believers because or people who don't believe rightly.
I actually think it's really dangerous.
And I think that, you know, democracy itself is is at stake right now.
And I'm just really hoping that some of these latest Supreme Court decisions will get people to understand that voting really matters.
Judges really matter.
You know, when you vote, it's not just about the personality of the person you're voting for.
Maybe you don't like something that they said, you know, a few years ago.
You don't like, you know, the way they walk or whatever, or you don't like this, you know, policy here or that one there.
It's really about, you know, What judges are they going to put on the courts?
Who are they going to put in charge of different divisions and different departments?
Are they going to put someone in charge of the Department of Education who doesn't believe in public education, as Trump did?
So I'm hoping that people kind of, you know, it turns people out and gets them to the polls.
I hope so, too.
Because, you know, when I look at this, there are so many echoes, like you just said, of things that have happened in the past that have just been massive tragedies.
I mean, when you look at the idea of grooming, right, this idea that there's like an entire populace out there that is preying on children, this idea of CRT is an echo of, you know, all these Marxist ideas and Jewish conspiracies, you know, of controlling culture and trying to Degenerate nations from, you know, the inside out, you know, and all of these things are, there are always stories.
This ideology is a way of creating a story in people's minds that prepares them for actions that are going to take place, right?
Like whether or not it's overthrowing an election or possibly hurting or killing or imprisoning other people.
I mean, a lot of the signals we're seeing right now from Christian nationalism look a lot like what happened before the coup in Chile.
You know, where it's like the leftists are out to destroy Christianity and hurt the children, and these things keep playing themselves out.
This is very obvious for anyone who pays attention.
Why do you think there's still a disconnect with all of this stuff happening?
It's very out in the open now, and we got to talk in a minute about Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert.
We got to talk about this.
Now they're even embracing the label of Christian nationalism, which we need to talk about in a minute.
What do you think is the disconnect for some people in actually understanding that this isn't, it's not rhetoric, it's not pretend, it's actually the way that these people interact with the world and is actually an article of faith as disturbing as that may be?
I think that it's really hard for people to contend with the issue of religion because most Americans would like to think of religion as belonging to this private realm.
We all want to be tolerant of one another's faith.
This is a pluralistic country.
And we all want to get along with our neighbors and find common ground in spite of our religious differences and ethnic backgrounds and the like.
But, you know, this is more than just a matter of personal faith.
These are actually folks who are not just trying to so-called, you know, as they say, express our faith in the public square.
They're actually, you know, when you're this is a leadership driven movement and the leaders are Um, promoting an ideology that is radically intolerant, um, fundamentally anti-democratic and has seized control of our, one of our two major political parties.
And, um, so that's one of the things that's really hard for people to grapple with because they're accustomed to thinking of, of faith as belonging to that private realm and would prefer to think about politics and policy without having to sort of touch upon that private realm.
I think that's accurate because it's, you know, when I talk to people, um, I'll do an interview with someone and they, they'll talk about my background in the evangelical church.
And it's almost like pressing their face against the glass at the zoo.
They're like, there's no way you talked about that.
And it was like every Sunday we talked about the new world order and Satan's plans and you know, all this.
I feel like in part there's a disconnect there because some of the people I think That's true.
the media or politicians, when they think about religion, they think about maybe something they do on a Sunday to see their neighbors and to see their friends.
And it's a big disconnect between that and sort of this poisonous faith that I think has taken hold in a lot of parts of America that I think have been overlooked for a while.
That's true.
Yeah, I agree with you.
You know, the way our democracy is supposed to work is that we agree to advocate for policies based on things other than our particular, you know, what we think God tells us to do.
We, we can use things like facts and evidence and reason.
And of course, you know, we're all free to practice our faith if any, and we can, you know, I think there's nothing wrong with expressing your faith.
in the public square, even if you're a politician, as long as you respect the fact that we live in a very pluralistic country, And if you want to persuade people across religious divides, if you're not just trying to appeal to your own particular sector, you can use these other means of advocating for policies and frame things in universal terms.
That's much more appealing in a pluralistic society.
But one thing that authoritarian movements do is try to divide people.
And many authoritarian leaders, I'm thinking about people like Putin in Russia, Or Viktor Orban in Hungary or Erdogan in Turkey, or if you look, they're actually trying to divide people and they bind themselves very tightly to hyper conservative religious figures in their own countries in order to sort of consolidate a more authoritarian form of political power.
So all of that sanctimony, they're like bubble wrapping themselves in sanctimony because it makes it harder to sort of To criticize them, and they're using that sanctimony to insulate themselves from investigation into into their corruption, you know, and into their authoritarianism.
So when I think about the religious right or the Christian nationalist movement, I actually think what they're doing is, you know, I make the distinction that it's a, you know, it's a leadership driven movement.
You need to distinguish it between the leadership and the rank and file.
And the leaders are actually exploiting the rank and file with all this sort of sanctimony and rhetoric.
They're exploiting them in order to exploit all the rest of us.
Yeah.
And I think that's something that always gets missed in coverage of Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban, which is, The conspiracy theories that make their authoritarian regimes possible are the exact same conspiracy theories that are currently animating this Christian nationalist movement.
It's the same thing every time.
There is a devilish New World Order that is being carried out by outsiders who are working with internal traitors and unwitting servants of it.
And on top of that, it is a literal battle between good and evil.
And I mean, it's a Christian narrative.
I mean, it's Book of Revelation.
I mean, that's what we're talking about here.
And it just feels like, again, it's very, very obvious, but I don't think most people really want to I don't know.
Maybe they don't want to trouble these conspiracy theories.
Maybe they don't think they're important.
I'm not sure, but it's the same story that just keeps perpetuating itself.
I think a lot of people feel, frankly, overwhelmed.
Yeah.
So feel under attack.
I mean, you're right about how there's sort of focus on an internal enemy and the targets can shift.
I mean, it's LGBT agenda, the gays, that's a frequent target, religious minority groups.
Are often targeted, secularists are a common target.
Progressive Christians are frequently targeted.
And sometimes it's sort of Democrats, you know, now is a huge, massive targeted group.
And sometimes the targets shift.
Sometimes it's all of the above.
But yeah, that sort of targeting of an internal enemy in order to sort of divide Americans between the us and the them, the pure and the impure.
Frankly, I hear a lot of both sides.
You know, and that's disturbing because, you know, a lot of folks I hear criticize, you know, the excesses of the far left, blah, blah, blah.
There is one group, there is, the thing is, this is a movement that just does not believe in democracy.
It doesn't operate the way, say, Christian democratic parties work in a place like Germany now, where they form coalition with other political parties and they're working within the democratic system and accepting their political opponents as legitimate.
This is a movement that does not accept their political opponents as legitimate, does not engage in the politics of give and take and compromise, and frankly, doesn't believe in democracy itself.
Yeah, and on that note, I want to get your opinion on this, because this is something, you know, only the people who actually pay attention to this, I think, are actually thinking about this stuff.
So I wanted to get your opinion on it.
Right now, there is a strange coalition happening in terms of what we would call Christian nationalism.
You know, and I think history gives a hint about what I'm getting ready to ask you, but right now we're looking at not just Protestant denominations, We're looking at people who are suddenly converting to Catholicism and talking about, uh, dominionism and, and suddenly trying to talk about how, you know, the church deserves to have dominion over, over secular matters again.
If they were to be successful, because I think anybody who understands this knows that these are not groups that have traditionally gotten, you know, gotten along together.
What do you think would happen because if the project comes to fruition, because some people feel like, well, you know, if maybe we allowed prayer back in schools, maybe it'll stop.
Or maybe if we got rid of gay marriage, maybe that would stop.
And maybe if we stop with trans people and pronouns and it keeps going and going and going.
What do you think this looks like if this project actually comes into fruition?
Well, I don't think we're going to get the Handmaid's Tale.
I don't either.
Yeah, we're not going to get a pure theocracy.
What actually we're going to get is an authoritarian political order where the people whose policies, like the religious, look, it's a marriage between, I would say, those who promote far-right economic policies.
And those are many of the big funders, I think, to a largely underappreciated degree.
You have these Hyper wealthy funders who are as motivated or if not more motivated by the sort of far right economic positions as they are in the right wing position, the so-called culture wars.
They want tax policies that favor them.
They want minimal rights for the workforce.
They want minimal regulation of business so that their minimal environmental regulation and things like that.
I think they're really a lot of the folks funding the movement.
There was a terrific Report recently in CNN about the Wilkes brothers and another fellow in Texas who are these billionaire funders of the movement.
And it really shows how how much money talks, you know, these folks have poured so much money into all of these different features of the organization.
I've also done reporting on various families, the sort of Prince DeVos family juggernaut, the the Lindsay family, so many others that I've covered in my book and that you've written about as well, these very hyper wealthy funders who are pouring their money into these various organizations.
And, you know, I think of the culture war, culture war sometimes is these shiny baubles that don't dangle in front of the rank and file.
Oh, here, look at the gays, look at what they're doing.
And oh, you got to worry about CRT in public schools, this thing that actually isn't taught in public schools, but they get people upset about it.
And, you know, it's a form of race baiting, right?
And they get people sort of grasping at that stuff.
They know if you can get people to vote on a single issue, you can control their vote.
So they get people to, you know, they say it's always abortion.
That's always like the, you know, one of the number one issues.
And, you know, the irony is that most Americans, a very clear majority of Americans, support abortion rights, at least in some form, you know, far beyond what the right is.
is advocating for, which is from the moment of fertilization or conception or what have you.
But when you go to those like conferences, like, you know, I went this year to the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, D.C., they're saying, oh, Democrats want abortion up to the minute of birth and even beyond birth.
Beyond it.
Yeah.
Nobody does this.
This is just not a thing.
I don't, you know, So, but they have to lie in order to mischaracterize what pro-choice position actually is and where most Americans sit with regard to access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care.
So something that's actually very personal to me is the issue of miscarriage care.
Something like 20 percent of known pregnancies, 20 to 25 percent of known pregnancies ends in miscarriage.
And of course, even larger, you know, a certain number of unknown pregnancies and a very substantial number of those pregnancies that end in miscarriage require some medical intervention, including abortion, a DNC, or methotrexate, a medication, an abortion medication that helps the body to complete the miscarriage.
Otherwise, women risk sepsis.
You know, bleeding out and other forms of complications.
And we're already seeing it's grotesque what we're seeing across the country in states where abortion is so difficult or impossible to access.
Women who are experiencing these miscarriages are not able to access miscarriage care and are suffering, you know, dire health consequences as a result.
And I think this is absolutely barbaric in a civilized society.
Frankly, all of it is barbaric.
But this is something that people need to understand when you're, you know, when you're banning abortion, you're also banning effective reproductive care across the board.
And most Americans agree that those positions are absolutely barbaric.
Yeah, they absolutely are.
And by the way, one of the best things that I've read that it really summarized all of this.
And every time there's a new Catherine Stewart article out, I do a quick little fist bump.
I clear my desk.
I'm like, I'm ready to go.
This was a New York Times op-ed.
Christian nationalists are excited about what comes next.
I wanted to talk a little bit about this summation.
I wanted to talk about, unfortunately, Seven Mountains Dominionism.
Basically, where this thing is going, what is expected from it, and it seems like every single day that passes, Catherine, that Christian nationalism gets mentioned by the most influential Republicans that you can name.
It's on the tip of all their tongues.
Do you see this being something that is embraced in totality?
It's brought out in front almost as a brand?
Or do you see this as being sort of a creeping menace that you look up one day and suddenly it's everywhere?
Like, how do you how do you sort of wrap your head around this thing?
I mean, are you talking about how they see the term, the Christian nationalist term?
Yeah.
Do you think that this is going to end up becoming something that is just out there in front?
Or is this going to be sort of an ideology that works in the background?
Well, listen, I think that Christian nationalism is a movement that has taken over the Republican Party for many years.
The Republican Party sort of thought they could make use of the movement because it functions as a massive voter turnout machine.
It consists of right wing policy groups, legal advocacy groups, data organizations, legislative initiatives, a far right messaging sphere.
Networking organizations like the Council for National Policy that get the different heads of the key organizations on the same page, or a lot of them on the same page.
And it also turns out like a very large proportion of the rank and file to vote in disproportionate numbers.
So like to look at what happened in 2016, George Barna, he's an evangelical pollster and he's sort of part of that movement.
He said he identified the most devoted sort of, I guess, you know, members of the rank and file.
He said they're only, you know, 10 percent of our country, but 91 percent turned out to vote 2016 and 93 percent of those turned out to vote for Trump.
So in a country where 40 to 50 percent of people don't turn out to vote.
And an additional number have their votes essentially stolen from them through these Republican-led things like, you know, race-based gerrymandering, gerrymandering that disproportionately affects other people in Democratic-leaning districts, voter suppression tactics and the like.
You don't need a majority of the country to win.
All you need is a disproportionate minority.
So I think that the, I guess, to return to your larger, your question, the movement has You know, for many years, the Republican Party thought they could make use of this movement.
Now it has basically taken over the Republican Party.
So it's ever present in our politics.
It's sort of the background of everything that happens.
And you see a lot of reporting now on stuff that the Republican Party, the GOP is doing.
And you wonder why has it become so extreme?
A lot of folks say, well, what happened to the Republicans of old, the Rockefeller Republicans who sort of stood for fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility and things like that?
Well, that party doesn't frankly exist anymore.
And then you've got all the never Trumpers who sort of like, wait, what happened?
And the funny thing about a lot of those folks is they actually helped build up the situation that we're in.
Um, you know, I'd love to.
I mean, some folks are starting to sort of look at their past behavior and take a bit of responsibility and others aren't.
But, you know, for a long time, there was sort of, yeah, yeah, those people, but we're really going to do what they want.
But now what's happened is because of gerrymandering, a lot of Republican politicians are in safe in the states like they're in safe districts.
Thanks to gerrymandering.
So they they're never going to run against a Democrat.
So the only way they can lose is if somebody runs to the right of them.
So they're almost like in competition with one another to sort of endorse the sort of furthest right policies because the movement is demanding it.
At the last National Pro-Life Summit that I went to, Chris Dan Hawkins, she's the head of Students for Life of America.
It's like one of the key organizations of the anti-abortion movement.
And also she's very connected to Leonard Leo and many other folks in this in this in this movement, many of the other leaders.
She described how, you know, if there are all these Republican politicians, she's like they say they're pro-life, but they don't.
And if they don't endorse the policies that we want them to, we will devote X number of dollars to to, you know, to running somebody against them, to primary them.
She talked about the money and she talked about the man and woman power that they'll devote to actually primarying somebody who doesn't agree with those far-right policies.
So you sort of wonder, like, where has, you know, how has the Republican Party just gone so far off, you know, and to the right?
And that's how it's done.
It's because of this movement and its influence.
Well, I wanted to ask you one quick thing before we let you go.
Um, one of the things, so, you know, I come from this background where there are diehard evangelicals and I think we, we know this group, right?
Like that, that, that, that is like the motivating animating factor in almost every facet of their lives.
That's what they're dedicated to.
You ask who they are.
They say, I'm an evangelical Christian, right?
It's the identity there.
I've also started to notice something else, which is what I would call a cultural evangelical or a cultural Christian, which, you know, from where I'm from, it's a lot of people that religion or Christianity was not like a regular thing.
You know, they'd go to church maybe a couple times a year.
Maybe they would say grace, you know, over Christmas dinner.
Of course, they celebrated, you know, Christmas.
But in the past couple of years, there's become this Bizarre link in a lot of different ways.
I think Trump is part of it, right?
They started to identify themselves as Trump supporters.
You know, they wear the hat, they wear the shirts, they've got the signs.
Then, of course, you start to see on social media, they start falling for QAnon.
They start, you know, sort of peddling these conspiracy theories.
The next thing you notice is that the Christian, the cultural Christian identity that they had, it starts to turn up.
And all of a sudden the church attendance starts to go up and maybe they're even starting to go to Patriot churches, you know, these pop-up churches.
They're starting to if people don't know about this look it up.
They are terrifying.
They are absolutely political bodies that that are Christian nationalism almost on steroids at this point and they start going to that and all of a sudden that identity starts to turn up a few degrees and it feels like that is part and parcel of this thing gaining momentum.
It's the ability for all those sort of tendrils to come together.
Is that check out?
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, I was lucky enough to go to Reawaken America, stop in the Reawaken America tour, where all of it, you walk in there, there's a ton of conspiracism, ton of anti-vax, QAnon stuff.
Then, you know, people are there.
Trump is there like their god.
He's like he occupies a sort of superhuman place in their imagination.
And you know, you you're right.
A lot of folks did not identify as weren't particularly faithful.
They, you know, didn't really go to church or really studied the Bible.
But Trump, he he did this sort of thing that authoritarian leaders do.
He wrapped bubble wrapped himself in sanctimony.
He has these rallies and he always has these hyper political preachers, you know, people like Robert Jeffress or Mark Burns speaking on his behalf and sort of endorsing him.
And and all of a sudden, the rank and file who sort of connect to his, you know, he represents the sort of lawlessness of the authoritarian.
He's like, you know, I'm going to fight for you.
You know, you've been unfairly treated.
I'm going to fight for you.
And they connect to that.
But then they see all of this kind of religiosity and sanctimony.
And so he actually, I think, you know, That that was that was a key.
And so when, you know, I was for people who don't know what the Reawaken America tour is, it's stops and does they do these events, drawing in thousands of people at megachurches all around the country.
And Mike Flynn is involved in, you know, Trump's son spoke at the one that I went to.
And you have people like, you know, a lot of the sort of Trumpy folks, the religious elite, if you will, the truest of true believers.
Well, it's really interesting because I saw it in a way, I sort of saw it as Trump trying to draw people to himself and sort of, you know, I think he wants to be president again.
I'm not sure, you know, no one can see into the future.
Is it going to be him?
Is it going to be DeSantis or somebody else?
But he is really considered, like, the leader.
Remember, this is a movement that compared him to a biblical king, like King Cyrus, you know, agent of God.
Yeah.
An agent of God.
He was called, I think, by David Barton, God's guy.
Other people said, you know, you got to get behind what God wants.
You know, others said, you know, we're not looking for a messiah.
We already have a messiah.
You know, we need a leader who's going to fight for us.
And if if if you were Persuaded that you're engaged in an apocalyptic struggle between absolute good and absolute evil.
You don't want the nice guy.
You want the mean guy is going to like crack heads as long as those heads belong to your political enemies.
I mean, it's it's really alarming.
The contempt for which this movement views fellow Americans.
And and I think it's very dangerous.
Well, I think it's one of the most dangerous things out there.
But I got to tell you, Catherine Stewart, I'm so glad every day.
It's one of the few things that gives me a little bit of confidence that you're on the beat.
So thank you for that.
So everybody, we've been talking with Catherine Stewart, a journalist and the author of The Power Worshippers Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.
Catherine, will you tell the good people where to find you?
Sure.
You can follow me on Twitter at Cath S. Stewart.
There are two S's there.
And I archive, I'm pretty bad about maintaining my website, but I archive some of my pieces on KatherineStewart.me.
