How a new generation of Christian nationalists explain Vance’s MAGA appeal

19 September 2024

Before 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump decided on a running mate, some GOP strategists were hoping he would pick North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) over Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) — who they feared would be overly divisive. And Vance, just as they predicted, has been surrounded by controversy ever since Trump picked him.

From all the criticism of Vance's "childless cat ladies" comments of 2021 and 2022 to promoting the debunked and racist conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants are kidnapping and eating resident's pets in Springfield, Ohio, Vance has been as divisive a running mate as those GOP strategists feared.

Although Vance is Catholic, not evangelical, his in-your-face social conservatism has made the MAGA Republican popular among far-right fundamentalist evangelicals.

In an in-depth article for Mother Jones' November/December issue, reporter Kiera Butler stresses that in order to understand Vance's appeal to the MAGA movement, one must understand young evangelicals who have been dubbed the "TheoBros."

"For all their youthful modishness," Butler explains, "this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don't think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth — and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who are obsessed with the U.S. Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments."

Butler points out that to a TheoBro like Stephen Wolfe, author of the 2022 book "The Case for Christian Nationalism," Baby Boomer evangelicals are remnants of a bygone era.

"In their place," Butler reports, "a group of young pastors hope to spearhead a Christian nationalist glow-up as they eagerly await a 'Christian prince' to rule America. These often bearded thirty- and fortysomethings have suits that actually fit. They are extremely online, constantly posting on myriad platforms, broadcasting their YouTube shows from mancaves, and convening an endless stream of conferences for likeminded followers. Let's call them, as one scholar I spoke with did, the TheoBros."

According to Butler, TheoBros "aim to convert small American towns into Christian enclaves."

"Vance, a Catholic convert married to a Hindu, would seem an unlikely hero for a movement of devout Protestants who believe in a homogeneous America," Butler observes. "But over the last few years, his political orbit has increasingly overlapped with that of the TheoBros — so much so that to careful observers, his public echoes of their ideas are beginning to sound less like coincidence and more like dog whistles."

Read Kiera Butler's full article for Mother Jones at this link.

From Your Site Articles