Imagine a world where conservative Christians are the most persecuted group in society; where a leftist government is bent on arresting true believers; where public schools are nothing more than communist indoctrination factories; where the past three and a half years of robust economic growth, low unemployment, and investment in new energy technologies has been an unmitigated hellscape and the worst period in American history; where depriving women and families of their most intimate and impactful reproductive decisions is the ultimate expression of religious freedom; where Donald Trump is not an isolationist and a criminal but the President our allies crave and the innocent victim of a diabolical conspiracy.

If you spend some time in the world of Christian nationalist activists today, you don’t have to imagine very hard, because that is the real world as they see it. “Weird” may work as a characterization of their views for those unfamiliar with the mindset of Christian nationalism, but it misses, among other things, the fear and sense of crisis that motivates its adherents.

If we are to diminish this movement’s forever-war on democracy, it is important to know something about its organization, psychology, and the ways in which it mobilizes millions.

What exactly is Christian nationalism? As a preliminary, let me say that I am referring to a political phenomenon, more specifically a political movement, and not just to an ideology or to a religion – because the movement contains a multitude of denominations and doctrines, not all of them mutually consistent. While the movement has changed significantly from the old days of the religious right and the Moral Majority, our understanding has not always kept up. So, I am going to draw some sharp – perhaps too sharp – distinctions for the sake of highlighting key aspects of this transformation.

First, this is a political movement, not just a social movement. I remember once a wealthy progressive asked me, “What if we just give them abortion—will that make them calm down?” Set aside for a moment the sad idea of trading away women’s rights for temporary political gain. What struck me was that my friend was working with an outdated understanding about the religious right. The common assumption is that this movement came together as a grassroots response to certain social issues, like abortion or gay marriage. It didn’t. This is a movement that came together when a set of reactionary political and religious leaders discovered the power of dividing the population by promoting these issues.

Today’s leaders of the Christian nationalist movement seek political power and the perks that it brings. Many of them speak explicitly of using that power to impose their vision on every aspect of government, society, culture, and education. Abortion politics is just one means to an end; give up on reproductive rights, and the movement leadership will quickly pivot to something else.

Some observers conflate Christian nationalism with white evangelicals. But rank and file supporters of the movement, along with some sectors of leadership, increasingly come from a wide range of religious and ethnic backgrounds. A cadre of ultraconservative Catholic leaders are vital to the movement’s strategy and direction. The movement receives robust support from a subset of Jews. Some movement leaders and funders are even atheistic, though they may adopt a quasi-religious identity for strategic reasons. And the movement draws new energy from certain Pentecostal and charismatic religious movements, such as the New Apostolic Reformation, which are multiracial and transnational, as Matthew D. Taylor’s article in this special issue describes.

Christian nationalism succeeds largely by cultivating and then exploiting a certain mindset. That mindset has four key features:

First, there’s the apocalypticism: Once America was great; now, thanks to the woke liberals and secularists, we are facing an absolute emergency. To borrow the language of contributors to Project 2025, the 900-page blueprint for the next right-wing administration, we have one shot to save our country – and if we fail, it is all over for America.

Then, there’s the persecution complex. It is easy to think of many types of people in today’s society who suffer some form of discrimination. Christian nationalists can often name only one such group: themselves. At their conferences one often hears that if they do not prevail in the political arena, the government will ban the Bible and outlaw churches.

Third, membership brings the privilege of identifying with an “in-group.” Christian nationalist leaders promote the idea that people like themselves are the only true and authentic representatives of the nation. Religious nationalism is an exclusionary form of nationalism; it’s about who gets to properly belong in a country and who does not.

And finally, there’s the strongman reflex. The movement’s leaders say nice words about “love” from time to time, but mainly they promote the idea that this world cannot be governed in a nice way. They reject the ideals of pluralism, equality, and rule of law upon which the institutions of democracy depend. In fact, they believe we are too far gone to follow the rules any more, and so they long for someone willing to flout the rules of democracy in order to defeat the “enemy within.”

More than just a mindset or a set of policy goals, Christian nationalism is also a complicated political machine. Like any such machine, it has deeply networked groupings of organizations and a powerful set of leaders—and they are the ones who set the agenda, not the grassroots. The movement also has a powerful set of funders. With the massive rise in wealth inequalities and luxury treatment now afforded to dark money in our political system, these funders have increasingly shaped the agenda.

To be sure, the rank and file matter too—they are the ones who have to turn up on election day—but they are at the receiving end of the leadership schemes, the plutocrats’ investments, and the disinformation system.

Among the underappreciated features of this political machine are the pastor networks that mobilize tens of thousands of conservative-leaning religious and community leaders, who then turn around and help turn out millions of voters for far-right candidates. The movement relies critically on an information sphere, or propaganda sphere, to spread its messaging. Movement leaders know that if you can segregate people into information bubbles and separate them from the facts, they are much easier to control.

At this year’s Road to Majority Policy Conference, an annual gathering organized by the Faith & Freedom Coalition and held in Washington, D.C., the thorough Trumpification of the GOP, as well as what used to be called the Religious Right, was clear. Introducing Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, said, “I just want you to know the Trump campaign and the RNC are now one joint entity.” Whatley added, “Our nation is at a crossroads. We are staring into the abyss,” and declared, “We need a candidate who is going to fight for us. Donald J. Trump is our champion.”

Like every other speaker at the conference, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott was all in for the convicted felon who encouraged the January 6^th attack on our Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. “How many here want Trump to be our next president?” he asked rhetorically, and the crowd cheered in response.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley also doubled down the narrative of political persecution. “[Trump] brought the truth forward and the Biden administration indicted him. If this is allowed to stand, the U.S.A. will not stand,” Hawley said. “I would just say this: To the attorney general of the U.S. government, Merrick Garland. To the FBI director, Christopher Wray. Preserve all of your documents. Preserve all of your decision papers. Because what has happened to this man is going to happen to you. We are coming for you.” To forceful applause, Hawley added, “We’re going to take back the Senate this fall, and when we do, there is going to be accountability.”

Movement leaders understand that their power derives from their ability to drive voters to the polls. But this does not mean they aim to satisfy expressed voter preferences or safeguard their best interests. On the contrary, they have exploited their power to safeguard their agenda from democratic influences. The best illustration of this point is their relentless focus on capturing the courts and then using the judiciary to impose policy that is unpopular and, by their own admission, would not stand a chance in democratic elections.

The right-wing legal movement in its current form really got its start in the early 1980s, when movement leaders created and began to invest in legal advocacy organizations.

Earlier court decisions that contributed to the start of this movement include Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the subsequent right-wing reaction to school desegregation. But from an organizational perspective, this movement didn’t line up to restructure the courts until the early 1980s to early 1990s. In that period, legal activists formed the Federalist Society, along with other right-wing legal organizations such as the American Center for Law and Justice. The 1990s saw the creation of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which now commands an annual budget of approximately $102 million a year. They, along with Becket, Liberty Counsel, the Pacific Justice Institute, First Liberty, and others, comprise an extraordinarily well-funded right-wing ecosystem that is set on commandeering the courts.

From the beginning, the right-wing legal movement set about picking the right cases to bring to judges favorable to their interests. They were strategic, patient, and long-range in their thinking. Over time they created novel legal building blocks that would lead to significant victories, eventually sidelining the Establishment Clause, turning Civil Rights law on its head, and expanding the privileges of religious organizations, including the right to taxpayer money.

As is clear from the colossal amounts of money pouring into right-wing legal organizations, the Christian nationalist movement is profoundly anti-democratic. To be sure, some money comes in through the grassroots fundraising machine that generates donations through individuals, churches, and other conservative and religious organizations and funnels it into partisan operations. But the weightiest piece of the pie comes from a small number of plutocratic donors. These people expect some pretty specific returns on their donations, which often have more to do with far-right and libertarian economic policies than right-wing positions in the so-called culture wars. Their aims include low taxes for the ultra-rich, minimal regulations of business, the evisceration of climate and consumer safety regulations, and the erosion of rights for the workforce. The oligarchs that fund the movement believe they and their fellow billionaires are destined to rule. They have been instrumental in shaping Christian nationalism into an anti-democratic, pro-oligarchic force.

Much is at risk in the outcome of the 2024 election, and I’m going to skip quickly over the obvious ones, like women’s rights, voting rights, public education, and of course the court system. Instead, I want to note four areas that Americans tend not to talk about as much.

The first is that Trump has promised to destroy what the right calls the “administrative state.” The big money interests that back the GOP love this plan because they resent the federal bureaucracy. More specifically, they loathe the regulatory parts that interfere with their monopolistic, anti-environmental, and anti-social business practices; however, they have great affection for those parts of the state that help protect their interests. On the ground, in the event of a second Trump Presidency, MAGA cronies will occupy positions in every major department of the federal government – and they will make sure that federal money and power is devoted not to improving life for all Americans but to enriching Trump’s political backers. This is the way corrupt dictatorships always work.

A second area we should consider is climate and energy policy. The climate and energy bills passed by the Biden/Harris administration have had a significant impact in changing the composition of our energy usage and have generated large numbers of jobs, particularly in red states. Trump, who is supported by the fossil fuel industry, has made it clear he intends to roll back these innovations.

A third arena Americans don’t pay enough attention to is that of international relations and international security. Today, many of America’s closest allies are horrified by the prospect of a second Trump term; they know he will undermine the relationships and agreements upon which our national security – and theirs – depends. A Trump win would be a major victory for Russian strongman Putin, Hungarian strongman Orban, and far-right populists and dictators around the world.

Finally, and most simply, Trump is the biggest national security risk the United States faces right now. He is a convicted felon who needs money and has zero respect for the handling of classified information. He could not get a job as a low-level operative in any national security organization in the United States. And yet, a large percentage of the electorate seems prepared to make him president.

With the stakes this high, we need to remember that the basic tools of democracy are still available to us. We need to make use of them, not just for ourselves but for future generations.

We can also learn something from the Right. They talk a good game about taking on the woke elite. And yet, they are the ones who have managed to create a well-connected and super well-funded elite in their own space. They have invested in the institutions and infrastructure of their movement and not just in political candidates, which is where a significant amount of democratic giving is directed. They support and promote the careers of young right-wing reactionaries through internship and fellowship programs and help them secure their economic futures through sinecures at think tanks and through other means. The movement cultivates leaders through training initiatives and fellowship programs, it unites and empowers those leaders through networking organizations, and it amply funds strategy-driven media and messaging as well as the legal advocacy space.

Those of us who oppose this movement will not wish to replicate its intellectual dishonesty, much less its politics. But we would do well to collaborate with those who share at least a majority of our common goals – the 80 percent friend, as Ronald Reagan put it – and commit to building the infrastructure of a pro-democracy movement at all levels.

 

Katherine Stewart is the author of the forthcoming Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (Bloomsbury). Her previous book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury), won first place for Excellence in Nonfiction Books from the Religion News Association.