Belief

A conservative Catholic was expelled from President Donald Trump’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission this week over remarks at a hearing on antisemitism in which she pushed back against those who conflate criticism of Israel and its genocidal war on Gaza with hatred of Jewish people.

Religious Liberty Commission Chair Dan Patrick, who is also Texas’ Republican lieutenant governor, announced Wednesday that Carrie Prejean Boller had been ousted from the panel, writing on X that “no member... has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue.”

“This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America,” he claimed. “This was my decision.”

Patrick added that Trump “respects all faiths”—even though at least 13 of the commission’s remaining 15 members are Christian, only one is Jewish, and none are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or other religions to which millions of Americans adhere. A coalition of faith groups this week filed a federal lawsuit over what one critic described as the commission’s rejection of “our nation’s religious diversity and prioritizing one narrow set of conservative ‘Judeo-Christian’ beliefs.”

Noting that Israeli forces have killed “tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza,” Prejean Boller asked panel participant and University of California Los Angeles law student Yitzchok Frankel, who is Jewish, “In a country built on religious liberty and the First Amendment, do you believe someone can stand firmly against antisemitism... and at the same time, condemn the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, or reject political Zionism, or not support the political state of Israel?”

“Or do you believe that speaking out about what many Americans view as genocide in Gaza should be treated as antisemitic?” added Prejean Boller, who also took aim at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which has been widely condemned for conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry.

Frankel replied “yes” to the assertion that anti-Zionism is antisemitic.

Prejean Boller also came under fire for wearing pins of US and Palestinian flags during Monday’s hearing.

“I wore an American flag pin next to a Palestinian flag as a moral statement of solidarity with civilians who are being bombed, displaced, and deliberately starved in Gaza,” Prejean Boller said Tuesday on X in response to calls for her resignation from the commission.

“I did this after watching many participants ignore, minimize, or outright deny what is plainly visible: a campaign of mass killing and starvation of a trapped population,” she continued. “Silence in the face of that is not religious liberty, it is moral complicity. My Christian faith calls on me to stand for those who are suffering [and] in need.”

“Forcing people to affirm Zionism as a condition of participation is not only wrong, it is directly contrary to religious freedom, especially on a body created to protect conscience,” Prejean Boller stressed. “As a Catholic, I have both a constitutional right and a God-given freedom of religion and conscience not to endorse a political ideology or a government that is carrying out mass civilian killing and starvation.”

Zionism is the movement for a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine—their ancestral birthplace—under the belief that God gave them the land. It has also been criticized as a settler-colonial and racist ideology, as in order to secure a Jewish homeland, Zionists have engaged in ethnic cleansing, occupation, invasions, and genocide against Palestinian Arabs.

Prejean Boller was Miss California in 2009 and Miss USA runner-up that same year. She launched her career as a Christian activist during the latter pageant after she answered a question about same-sex marriage by saying she opposed it. Then-businessman Trump owned most of Miss USA at the time and publicly supported Prejean Boller, saying “it wasn’t a bad answer.”

Since then, Prejean Boller has been known for her anti-LGBTQ+ statements and for paying parents and children for going without masks during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) commended Prejean Boller Wednesday “for using her position to oppose conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and encourage solidarity between Muslims, Christians, and Jews,” calling her “one of a growing number of Americans, including political conservatives, who recognize that corrupted politicians have been trying to silence and smear Americans critical of the Israeli government under the guise of countering antisemitism.”

“We also condemn Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick’s baseless and predictable decision to remove her from the commission for refusing to conflate antisemitism with criticism of the Israel apartheid government,” CAIR added.

In her statement Tuesday, Prejean Boller said, “I will not be bullied.”

“I have the religious freedom to refuse support for a government that is bombing civilians and starving families in Gaza, and that does not make me an antisemite,” she insisted. “It makes me a pro-life Catholic and a free American who will not surrender religious liberty to political pressure.”

“Zionist supremacy has no place on an American religious liberty commission,” Prejean Boller added.

Donald Trump's forceful and brutish handling of his foreign and domestic policies saw him likened to a "pagan king" in a new analysis in The New York Times, with documentary filmmaker Leighton Woodhouse arguing that he has abandoned the true ideals at the heart of "Christian values."

In a piece for the Times published Wednesday, Woodhouse took inspiration from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's comments about Trump's leadership style, which he summed up as, "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." Woodhouse delved extensively into the philosophies of ancient, pre-Christian societies, which he argued more closely resemble the operating philosophy of Trump's second presidency.

Trump, Woodhouse wrote, operates as is if "the weak and the vanquished" have no "inherent moral value at all," meaning that the U.S. can do whatever it likes, so long as it has the power to do so. He also cited comments last month from Trump's controversial adviser, Stephen Miller, in which he justified the president's desire to take Greenland by arguing that the world is "governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power," and that the U.S. can not be bound by "international niceties" if it has the power to do something it wants.

All of that flies in the face of the core principles of Christianity, which Trump and many others in his administration have claimed to fight for. The true values of the religion, Woodhouse explained, are based on the notion that even the weak have inherent worth, and that assaults on them are an affront to God. In this way, he concluded, Trump's conduct puts him more in line with Ancient Greek or pre-Christian Roman rulers.

"By brazenly jacking Venezuela for its oil and threatening to acquire Greenland against its will, the U.S. is acting as the ancient Greeks, the ancient Persians and the Germanic tribes conducted themselves: brutishly, without shame or apology," Woodhouse wrote.

He continued: "And the abdication of Christian values is already shaping the conduct of our government toward its citizens, as in Minneapolis, where immigration agents have killed two protesters. The Trump administration appears unconstrained not only by the limits imposed by the Constitution but by the standards of an average American’s conscience. Federal agents’ treatment of both immigrants and U.S. citizens in Minneapolis is the reflection of a government that has abandoned the moral instinct that it is wrong for the powerful to abuse the weak."

Similar analysis also recently came from The Bulwark's Andrew Egger, who wrote that Trump seems to view himself "as Christianity’s Punisher," someone willing to do the "dirty work" of committing violence to protect the faith. This, Egger argued, runs directly against the religion's core values.

"This is part of what makes Trump-brand Christianity as a cultural and political force so dangerous," Egger concluded. "Trump’s political project is seen by the MAGA faithful as utterly righteous, the work of God on earth against the forces of Satan. But he has broad license to transgress all moral boundaries as he does that work... None of this, it should probably go without saying, is compatible in the slightest with the teachings of actual Christianity. Sin is sin, the faith teaches, no matter whom it’s directed against..."

Addressing far-right white evangelicals and Christian nationalists, President Donald Trump repeatedly attacks Democrats, liberals and progressives as anti-Christianity. But it isn't hard to find Trump critics who are known for being devout Christians, from Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock (a Baptist minister) to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (a Catholic) to former Transportation Secretary Pete Butigieg (an Episcopalian).

Another critic of Trump and the MAGA movement is Bishop William J. Barber II, who chairs the NAACP's legislative political action committee. Barber is a member of the Disciples of Christ, a Mainline Protestant denomination. And during an interview with Religion News Service (RNS) published in Q&A form on February 9, Barber described the role that faith can play in activism this midterms year and laid out some things that MAGA evangelicals — including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) — get wrong about Christianity and scripture.

Barber told RNS interviewer Amanda Henderson, "In every battleground state, there should be a massive gathering in the state capitol where the clergy and impacted people and other moral activists come together. No politicians taking the stage…. It's not what I'll fight for because Trump's in office, it's what I will fight for, what I believe in regardless, and what I'm calling this government and nation to be about, irregardless. We're trying to follow that kind of moral Holy Spirit vision of mobilization."

During the interview, Henderson noted that Johnson said, "What's also important in the Bible is that assimilation is expected and anticipated and proper…. Sovereign borders are biblical and good and right. They're just, because it's not because we hate people on the outside. It's because we love the people on the inside."

Barber told Henderson he would be "proud to host" a debate with Johnson about immigration and other subjects.

Barber argued, "First of all, he reveals that he doesn’t know the Bible. He reveals that he certainly doesn't know Jesus. There’s no Jesus in anything he just said. They don't like Jesus. That's why they never call his name. They don't quote Jesus. They don't like Jesus. Jesus undermines them. They would call Jesus a socialist, a communist. They would crucify Jesus. Let's be up front. They don't deal with Jesus…. To do what he's talking about doing, you literally have to take about 2000 scriptures out of the Bible and tear them apart and throw them away — and the Bible, of course, would fall apart."

Although President Donald Trump maintains a strong bond with far-right white evangelicals and Christian nationalists, his relations with Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Jews and other non-fundamentalists are much more complicated. Some of Trump's most scathing critics are known for being quite religious, from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) to Sen. Raphael Warnock (a Georgia Democrat and Baptist minister).

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark in early February, journalist Lauren Egan reports that Democrats — with the 2026 midterms a little over nine months away — are ramping up their outreach to voters of faith.

"As Democrats scope out the emerging midterm landscape," Egan reports, "party strategists and officials have grown excited about the number of candidates for whom religion is a major part of their biography and identity. The most prominent so far is James Talarico, the middle school teacher turned Texas state representative running for U.S. Senate. The grandson of a Baptist preacher, Talarico is an outspoken Christian and an aspiring Presbyterian minister. But Talarico is far from the only Democratic candidate notable for the role of faith in his life. There is also Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister, who has a shot at flipping Iowa's 3rd Congressional District."

Egan continues, "Meanwhile, in the state's 2nd Congressional District, Lindsay James, an ordained Presbyterian pastor, and Clint Twedt-Ball, a United Methodist pastor, are both vying for the party's nomination. Matt Schultz, the head pastor of Anchorage's First Presbyterian Church, is running for Alaska’s sole congressional seat. Chaz Molder, a small-town mayor and Sunday school teacher, is running in Tennessee's fifth district. The list goes on."

Many of the people of faith running in the 2026 midterms, according to Egan, reflect "the public recoiling at the immorality and cruelty of the Trump Administration."

Schultz, a Mainline Protestant, told The Bulwark, "All of these people are coming to me and saying, 'Please, won't you help me? Please, won't somebody do something to stop this onslaught of cruelty? We're crying out in pain.' And as a pastor, it's my duty to stand between the abusers and the abused."

Michael Wear, who oversaw former President Barack Obama's faith-based outreach during the 2012 presidential race, believes that the challenge for Democrats is to excite their religious voters without alienating those who are not religious.

Wear told The Bulwark, "The Democratic Party contains some of the most religious people in America and some of the least religious people in America. It's not just (that) there's a God gap between Democrats and Republicans — there's a God gap within the Democratic Party itself. One of the ways to navigate that is to just take it off the table. But the problem when you take it off the table is you leave a pretty profound lane for someone like Donald Trump to say, 'Well, they don't care about you. They don't hear you, but I do.' And that's a lot of what has happened over the last 12 years."

Lauren Egan's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

In a survey released in March 2023, Pew Research Center examined Americans' views on different religious groups. Pew found that 27 percent of respondents had a "very" or "somewhat unfavorable" view of evangelicals, while only 10 percent had that view of Mainline Protestants and 6 percent felt that way about Jews.

But the fact that evangelicals fared badly in Pew's survey doesn't mean that they are going away.

In an article published by The New Republic on February 1, journalist Sarah Stankorb compares the visibility of fundamentalist evangelicals to the visibility of non-evangelical Mainline Protestants. And Stankorb stresses that among Protestants, many Mainline churches are struggling.

Stankorb makes her points by referencing the Rev. Ryan P. Burge's new book "The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us."

"His latest, 'The Vanishing Church,' is about the hollowing out of moderate congregations," Stankorb explains. "It isn't just the heartbreak of his own church's collapse that nags at Burge. It's the broader trends of which his church was one part, making it a data point for how the Christian Right's more extreme influence bifurcated American religion and relationships. Mainline churches, which Burge notes once represented much higher degrees of American political, ideological, and economic mixing, are disappearing as Americans shift to the extremes."

Stankorb emphasizes that 70 years ago — before the rise of the Christian Right —

Mainline Protestant churches were much more prominent than they are now.

"In the 1950s," the journalist explains, "more than half of Americans were associated with Mainline churches, also known as the 'Seven Sisters' of Mainline Protestantism: the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, American Baptist Church, and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Burge describes what used to be a common scene: a thriving house of worship with factory workers taking communion right after lawyers and doctors; little kids sitting a row ahead of elders in their nineties; near-even odds of sitting next to a Republican or a Democrat."

Stankorb continues, "Through the 1970s, large swaths of Americans belonged to these Mainline churches, but according to General Social Survey data, that cross-section of Americans has been thinning out for decades. By the early 1990s, only 19 percent of Americans were Mainline Protestants. By 2022, the figure had dropped to 9 percent."

Far-right Christian nationalists, according to Stankorb, are turning many Americans off to religion in general.

"While progressive Christians certainly do still exist in this country," Stankorb observes, "their left-leaning political kin are far more likely to be religiously unaffiliated. As more conservative believers tended to become evangelicals, right-wing Christianity repelled a lot of progressives and moderates from church altogether. The rise of the Religious Right may have grown white evangelicalism, gutted Mainline Protestantism, and started pulling Catholicism further right, but it also 'pushed a growing number of Americans, especially young adults, to no longer align with any religious tradition at all,' Burge writes."

Read Sarah Stankorb's full article for The New Republic at this link.

Roughly two and one-half weeks after the fatal January 7 shooting of motorist Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) agent, yet another Minneapolis resident was fatally shot during a protest in the city: 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti, who worked in an internal care unit in a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House adviser Stephen Miller are claiming that Pretti was shot by U.S. Border Patrol agents in self-defense, noting that he was carrying a concealed weapon. But critics of President Donald Trump's ICE raids in Minneapolis are countering Pretti never pointed the gun at Border Patrol agents and that he was shot after being forced onto the ground and disarmed.

In an article published on Monday, January 26 — two days after Pretti's death — Salon's Amanda Marcotte offers a blistering critique of the response that far-right white evangelicals have had to the unrest in Minneapolis.

"The Christian Right will never turn down an opportunity to make false accusations of religious persecution," Marcotte argues. "These days, they're especially eager to play the victim. Doing so allows them to distract from the ugly reality that they, in voting for Donald Trump, have helped to unleash in Minnesota: A woman killed in front of her wife, children ripped from their parents, a baby nearly killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents firing tear gas at a family driving home from a basketball game. On Saturday, there was another unjustifiable shooting. Video appears to show 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive-care unit nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, helping a woman to her feet when Border Patrol agents swarm and pepper-spray him — and then shoot him in the head."

Marcotte adds, "All this, though, apparently pales in comparison to a more serious form of oppression: right-wing Christians being told it's immoral to support a brutal, racist assault on their neighbors."

The Salon journalist is referring to a Sunday, January 18 protest in which activists disrupted a service at the evangelical Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota because one of the pastors, David Easterwood, is an ICE field director in the area. MAGA Republicans, from Noem to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, described that disruption as an attack on religious freedom — an argument Marcotte considers disingenuous.

Tim Whitaker, a former Christian nationalist, told Salon, "Cities Church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which was founded in 1845 over the right to own slaves. This church should be disrupted. As far as I'm concerned, Jesus would've been right with those protesters…. (Cities Church) is home to a pastor that works for a federal agency kidnapping brown-skinned immigrants and killing unarmed citizens."

Marcotte notes that one of the protesters arrested during the January 18 protest at Cities Church is herself an ordained Christian minister.

"Unfortunately, the right's histrionic language about 'religious freedom' has cowed many centrists and even liberals into thinking the protesters who interrupted a single church service are in the wrong," Marcotte writes. "Instead, they should be applauded as following the tradition of Jesus himself confronting the moneychangers in the temple."

Religious freedom means the right to worship as you see fit. By the same token, it also allows everyone else the right to question what churches are teaching — especially when they impact people and communities outside the church doors."

Marcotte adds, "In an era when Christian churches are condoning outright evil actions such as ICE’s deadly rampage through Minnesota, it’s more important than ever to not allow this dishonest definition of 'religious freedom' browbeat the rest of us into silence over spiritual oppression."

Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

Over the years, traditional religious practice has declined in both the United States and globally, according to one political scientist.

Speaking to The New York Times' "Interesting Times" podcast, Ryan Burge, an ordained Christian minister who became a professor, analyzed data trends for his new book, "The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us."

The number of people declaring they aren't affiliated with any church appears to have stalled, Burge said, but this has not benefited traditional Christian churches.

Burge argues that polarization and sorting are central to the trend, with moderate, mainline Protestant churches hollowing out while more intense, ideologically defined communities remain. White evangelical congregations on the right remain comparatively stable.

Burge emphasizes that "nones" are not secretly spiritual seekers in disguise. Many are neither religious nor particularly spiritual. Instead, they reject the institutions themselves, reflecting a broader anti-establishment sentiment in the U.S.

"I think education, social trust, and institutional trust are all locked together in this matrix of things that make you either more willing to engage in polite society, or less willing to engage in polite society. Educated people have a level of trust that less educated people do not," Burge said on the podcast.

One consistent theme is that "dropping out begets dropping out." Those who drop out of church also have lower educational attainment rates. Only about 25 percent have four-year college degrees.

"So they're dropping out of education, they're dropping out of religion, and they're dropping out of politics. They're basically isolating themselves from American society," Burge said.

Unlike in previous decades, politics is shaping the religious mindset of those who do not return to the churches in which they were raised. While churches were once places where Democrats and Republicans could sit in the same pews, today people seek out others who are largely similar to themselves. Families are seeking out churches based on political alignment rather than other factors.

"What's happened in America, especially with white Christianity, is that it is coded as Republican — and that's not always been the case," Burge said. "I think this is a point that people forget: Even in the 1980s, among the white evangelical church, the share who were Republicans and the share who were Democrats was the same."

The sorting of people by similar beliefs has increased the decline of politically mixed, moderate congregations, while reinforcing the perception that white evangelical churches are an extension of the Republican Party.

"So what we're seeing here is a unique moment. The number one predictor of whether you're going to be religious or not in America — besides the religion question itself — is: What is your political ideology? If you're a liberal, there's a 50-50 chance you're a nonreligious person. If you're a conservative, it's about a 12 percent chance that you're a nonreligious person," Burge said.

Young people are most affected by political ideologies in determining religious behavior.

"Young people think, 'I'm a liberal, so I'm going to be irreligious,'" Burge said. "They don't even accept the possibility that you can be a liberal Christian anymore."

Burge noted that responses to right-wing churches have included setting up left-wing alternatives. However, mainline church members want a completely non-political space. While the Covid lockdown brought many people to watch services online, once it ended, Burge said people wanted in-person attendance. He has observed this with young people as well: only 15 percent preferred online learning, and 15 percent had no preference. The rest preferred to meet in person.

Burge concluded by saying, "Listen, religion's endured for all of Western civilization because it works for lots and lots of people. And no matter how much we try to remake it with technology and A.I. and the internet, showing up on an average Sunday with a bunch of people and singing some songs and saying some creeds and hearing a sermon is transformative and will be for all of human history, as far as I can tell."

Read or listen to the full interview here.

Although President Donald Trump's overall approval ratings are weak, he continues to poll well among his hardcore MAGA base — including far-right white Christian fundamentalist evangelicals. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her allies in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are using Christian nationalist arguments to recruit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, quoting scripture in videos posted on Instagram.

But Never Trump conservative Peter Wehner, in an article published by The Atlantic on January 20, argues that the Trump Administration's militarized ICE raids are inconsistent with traditional "Christian values."

To make his point, Wehner references Tobias Cremer — a member of the European Parliament and author of the 2023 book, "The Godless Crusade."

"Right-wing populists don't view Christianity as a faith; rather, Cremer suggests, they use Christianity as a cultural identity marker of the 'pure people' against external 'others,' while in many cases remaining disconnected from Christian values, beliefs, and institutions," Wehner explains. "Many right-wing populists, despite being secular, are successfully recruiting Christians to their cause. And rather than Christians leavening the secular right-wing movements, those movements are prying Christianity further and further away from the ethic and teachings of Jesus."

Wehner continues, "The Trump Administration has gone one step further, inverting authentic Christian faith by selling, in a dozen different ways, cruelty and the will to power in the name of Jesus. It has welcomed Christians into a theological twilight zone, where the beatitudes are invoked on behalf of a political movement with authoritarian tendencies."

The Never Trump conservative notes that Christianity, over the years, has had "glorious moments" as well as "some very dark turns."

"Huge numbers of American fundamentalists and evangelicals — not just cultural Christians, but also, those who faithfully attend church and Bible-study sessions and prayer gatherings — prefer the MAGA Jesus to the real Jesus," Wehner laments. "Few of them would say so explicitly, though, because the cognitive dissonance would be too unsettling. And so, they have worked hard to construct rationalizations. It's rather remarkable, really, to see tens of millions of Christians validate, to themselves and to one another, a political movement led by a malignant narcissist — who is driven by hate and bent on revenge, who mocks the dead, and who delights in inflicting pain on the powerless."

Wehner adds, "The wreckage to the Christian faith is incalculable, yet most evangelicals will never break with him. They have invested too much of themselves and their identity in Trump and what he stands for. This moment, and what it reveals about American Christianity, will be studied for a long time to come."

Peter Wehner's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

The full panel of judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could require Louisiana public schools to feature posters with the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

Attorney Liz Murrill sought a rehearing with all 17 judges from the 5th Circuit after a three-judge panel ruled in June that the 2024 state law requiring the displays was “plainly unconstitutional.” A group of parents of public school students had filed a lawsuit against the state to block the law, which includes the text of a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments, from being enforced.

The case, Roake v. Brumley, could hinge on whether the law violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits governments from endorsing a specific religion. Whether a comparable law in Texas takes effect will likely depend on the outcome of the Louisiana case.

The plaintiffs in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Judges grilled their lawyers with questions about basing their arguments on the long-standing precedent from the case Stone v. Graham, a 1980 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned a similar law in Kentucky. Justices decided then that the First Amendment bars public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

Some 5th Circuit judges said they believe the Stone decision was effectively nullified because it relied on a precedent from the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman, which the Supreme Court overturned in 2022. The so-called Lemon test has been applied for five decades to decide what amounts to a violation of the Establishment Clause.

The 2022 case, Kennedy v. Bremerton, involved a Washington state high school football coach who was fired for praying at midfield after games and allowing students to join him. Joseph Kennedy got his job back after conservative justices prevailed in a 6-3 decision, saying the post game prayers do not amount to a school endorsement of Christianity.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs told the 5th Circuit judges that the Kennedy decision might have overturned Lemon but did not nullify the Stone ruling. Still, some judges questioned how an 11-inch by 14-inch poster amounts to coercion of religious beliefs.

In a news conference after the nearly two-hour hearing, Murrill expressed confidence in the state’s arguments but predicted the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court regardless of the 5th Circuit’s decision.

“We believe that you can apply this law constitutionally,” Murrill said.

Gov. Jeff Landry, who attended Tuesday’s hearing, called the Ten Commandments one of the nation’s foundational documents.

“I think Americans are just tired of the hypocrisy,” Landry said. “I just think that it’s high time that we embrace what tradition and heritage is in this country, and I agree with the attorney general. I like our chances.”

The Rev. Jeff Sims, one of the plaintiffs and a Presbyterian minister in Covington, issued a statement after the hearing saying he wants to be the one to decide on the religious education that his children receive.

“I send my children to public school to learn math, English, science, art, and so much more — but not to be evangelized by the state into its chosen religion,” Sims said. “These religious displays send a message to my children and other students that people of some religious denominations are superior to others. This is religious favoritism and it’s not only dangerous, but runs counter to my Presbyterian values of inclusion and equality.”

Christian Reconstructionism is a theological and political movement within conservative Protestantism that argues society should be governed by biblical principles, including the application of biblical law to both personal and public life.

Taking shape in the late 1950s, Christian Reconstructionism developed into a more organized movement during the 1960s and 1970s.

It was born from the ideas of theologian R. J. Rushdoony, an influential Armenian-American Calvinist philosopher, theologian and author. In his 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” Rushdoony argued that Old Testament laws should still apply to modern society. He supported the death penalty not only for murder but also for offenses listed in the text such as adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, witchcraft and idolatry.

As a scholar of political and religious extremism, I am familiar with this movement. Its following has been typically very small – never more than a few thousand committed adherents at its peak. But since the 1980s, its ideas have spread far beyond its limited numbers through books, churches and broader conservative Christian networks.

The movement helped knit together a network of theologians, activists and political thinkers who shared a belief that Christians are called to “take dominion” over society and exercise authority over civil society, law and culture.

These ideas continue to resonate across many areas of American religious and political life.

Origins of Christian Reconstructionism

Rushdoony’s ideas were born from a radical interpretation of Reformed Christianity – a branch of Protestant Christianity that follows the teachings of John Calvin and other reformers. It emphasizes God’s authority, the Bible as the ultimate guide and salvation through God’s grace rather than human effort.

Rushdoony’s ideas led him to found The Chalcedon Foundation in 1965, a think tank and publishing house promoting Christian Reconstructionism. It served as the movement’s main hub, producing books, position papers, articles and educational materials on applying biblical law to modern society.

It helped train Greg Bahnsen, an Orthodox Presbyterian theologian, and Gary North, a Christian reconstructionist writer and historian, both of whom went on to take key leadership roles in the movement.

At the heart of reconstructionism lies the conviction that politics, economics, education and culture are all arenas where divine authority should reign. Secular democracy, they argued, was inherently unstable, a system built on human opinion rather than divine truth.

These ideas were, and remain, deeply controversial. Many theologians, including conservatives within the Reformed tradition, rejected Rushdoony’s argument that ancient Israel’s civil laws should apply in modern states.

Christian dominionism and different networks

Nonetheless, reconstructionist ideas grew as people who more broadly believed in dominionism began to align with it. Dominionism is a broader ideology advocating Christian influence over culture and politics without requiring literal enforcement of biblical law.

Dominionism did not begin as a single, unified movement. Rather, it emerged in overlapping strands during the same period that Christian Reconstructionism was developing.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, Christian Reconstructionism helped turn dominionist beliefs into an explicit political project by grounding them in theology and outlining how biblical law should govern society. Religion historian Michael J. McVicar explains that Rushdoony’s work advocated applied biblical law as both a theological and political alternative to secular governance. This helped in influencing the trajectory of the Christian right.

At the same time, parallel streams – especially within charismatic and Pentecostal circles – advanced similar claims about Christian authority over society using different theological language.

The broad network of those who believe in Christian dominionism includes several approaches: Rushdoony’s reconstructionism, which provides the theological foundation, and charismatic kingdom theology.

Charismatic kingdom theology, which emerged in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, teaches that believers – empowered by the Holy Spirit – should shape politics, culture and society before Christ’s return.

Unlike reconstructionism, it emphasizes prophecy and spiritual authority rather than formal biblical law; it seeks influence over institutions such as government, education and culture.

What unites them is the idea that Christian faith should be the basis of the nation’s moral and political order.

Taken together, I argue that these strands have reinforced one another, creating a larger movement of thinkers and activists than any single approach could achieve alone.

From reconstructionism to the New Apostolic Reformation

Christian reconstructionist and dominionist ideas gained wider popularity through C. Peter Wagner, a leading charismatic theologian who helped shape the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, by adapting elements of Christian Reconstructionism. NAR is a charismatic movement that builds on dominionist ideas by emphasizing the use of spiritual gifts and apostolic leadership to shape society.

Wagner emphasized spiritual warfare, prophecy and modern apostles taking control of seven key areas – family, church, government, education, media, business and the arts – to reshape society under biblical authority. This is known as the “Seven Mountains Mandate.”

Both revisionist and dominionist movements share the belief that Christians should lead cultural institutions.

Wagner’s dominion theology, however, adapts Christian Reconstructionism to a charismatic context, transforming the goal of a Christian society into a spiritually driven movement aimed at influencing culture and governments worldwide.

Doug Wilson and homeschooling

Another key bridge between reconstructionism and contemporary dominionist thought is Doug Wilson, a pastor and author in Moscow, Idaho.

Though Wilson distances himself from some of reconstructionism’s harsher edges, he draws heavily from Rushdoony’s intellectual framework. Wilson’s influence can be seen in publications such as “Reforming Marriage,” where he argues for applying biblical principles to law, education and family life.

He has promoted Christian schools, traditional family roles and living out a “Christian worldview” in everyday life, bringing reconstructionist ideas into new areas of society.

Through his writings, teaching and leadership within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches – the CREC – network, Wilson encourages a vision of society shaped by Christian values, connecting reconstructionist thought to contemporary cultural engagement.

Wilson’s publishing house, Canon Press, and his classical school movement have brought these ideas into thousands of Christian homes and classrooms across the U.S. His local congregation – the Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho – numbers around 1,300.

The Christian homeschooling movement offers parents a curriculum steeped in reformed theology and resistance to secular education.

Enduring influence

Some critics warn that the fusion of dominionist and reconstructionist theology with political action can weaken pluralism and democratic norms by pressuring laws and policies to reflect a single religious worldview. They argue that even moderated forms of these visions challenge the separation of church and state. They risk undermining the rights of religious minorities, nonreligious citizens and others who do not share the movement’s beliefs.

Supporters frame their mission as the renewal of a moral society, one in which divine authority provides the foundation for human flourishing.

Today, Christian Reconstructionism operates through small but influential networks of churches, Christian homeschool associations and media outlets. Its reach extends far beyond its original movement.

Even among those unfamiliar with Rushdoony, the political and theological patterns he helped shape remain visible in modern evangelical activism and the ongoing debates over religion’s place in American public life.

Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Christian nationalist themes were alive and well at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2025 gathering at the Phoenix Convention Center, which found Vice President JD Vance declaring that the United States "always will be a Christian nation." But that claim was debunked by MS NOW's Steve Benen, who noted what the Founding Fathers had to say on the subject — for example, John Adams, in 1797, writing that "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion," and Thomas Jefferson saying, in 1802, that the U.S. Constitution created "a wall of separation between church and state."

Another prominent Christian nationalist theme at AmericaFest 2025 is that the U.S. is seeing a widespread evangelical renaissance, which is also what the Moral Majority's Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. claimed during the 1980s. But Salon's Amanda Marcotte, in an article published on January 7, counters that the U.S. is moving in a more "secular" direction — not converting to evangelical Christian fundamentalism in huge numbers.

"For decades now," Marcotte explains, "the Christian Right has been the most powerful and influential force in the GOP, and yet even by their standards, this marked a dramatic shift toward the theocratic impulse. From a purely rational perspective, this is bad politics. Only 23 percent of Americans identify as evangelicals. Trump was able to win in 2024 only by convincing large numbers of people outside of evangelical Christianity that he has a secular worldview. This was aided by the fact that he quite clearly doesn't believe all the Christian language, both coded and overt, his aides coax him to say."

The Salon journalist continues, "But none of that seems to register with MAGA leadership right now. They've convinced themselves — or at least are trying to persuade their donors and followers — that the U.S. is undergoing a massive religious revival. Right-wing media has been pushing the view that huge numbers of Americans, especially young Americans, are converting to fundamentalist Christianity."

Right-wing media, Marcotte observes, are claiming that the murder of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk in September is fueling a "tidal wave of Americans, especially young Americans, discovering or returning to Christianity." But that "imaginary religious awakening," she stresses, isn't materializing.

"There is no evidence-based reason to believe there's a religious revival among the young that is about to create massive election windfalls for Republicans," Marcotte writes. "On the contrary, a December report from Pew Research found that, 'on average, young adults remain much less religious than older Americans. Today's young adults also are less religious than young people were a decade ago.'"

Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

In rural Appalachian areas of Tennessee and Kentucky, Josh Abbotoy operates a real estate company called Ridgerunner. And he uses socially conservative rhetoric to promote his company, declaring, "Faith, family and freedom — those are the values that we try to celebrate."

According to BBC reporters Ellie House and Mike Wendling, some of Abbotoy's clients are far-right Christian nationalists who openly push extreme ideas like repealing the U.S. Constitution's 19th Amendment — which gave women the right vote — and overturning civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

"Initially, he didn't attract much local attention after setting up shop in Jackson County, (Tennessee)," House and Wendling explain in a late December article. "But in late 2024, a local TV news report broadcast controversial statements made by two of Mr. Abbotoy's first, and most outspoken, customers: Andrew Isker, a pastor and author originally from Minnesota, and C. Jay Engel, a businessman from California. They are self-described 'Christian nationalists' who question modern values, such as whether female suffrage and the civil rights movement were good ideas, and call for mass deportations of legal immigrants far in excess of President Donald Trump's current plan. Another thing they sometimes say: 'Repeal the 20th Century.'"

The BBC reporters note that although "Abbotoy himself does not identify as a Christian nationalist," his tenants' extreme views are worrying their neighbors."

House and Wendling quote Jackson County resident Nan Coons as saying, "You don't know who these people are, or what they're capable of. And so, it's scary."

Engel has even called for deportations of legal non-white immigrants, writing, "Peoples like Indians, or South East Asians or Ecuadorians or immigrated Africans are the least capable of fitting in and should be sent home immediately."

Gainesboro, Tennessee resident Diana Mandli, however, is calling Isker's church out.

Mandli told the BBC, "I believe that they have been attempting to brand our town and our county as a headquarters for their ideology of Christian nationalism."

Read the full BBC article at this link.