This column was originally published by Sheila Kennedy on her blog, “A jaundiced look at the world we live in.”
By Sheila Kennedy
January 14, 2025
A few days ago, I participated in a panel discussion following a showing of “Bad Faith,” a documentary film about Christian Nationalism. Coming so soon after reading “The Kingdom, The Power and The Glory,” it was even more traumatizing.
The film began with videos of the violent January 6th insurrection, and focused in on the multiple signs of “religious” motivation–placards linking Jesus to Donald Trump, crosses, rioters waving bibles and numerous other bits of Christian iconography. The rest of the documentary alternated between films of mega-church pastors preaching fire and brimstone to huge adoring audiences and anguished commentaries from scholars and clerics, including many religious figures who–like Tim Alberta–are devout Evangelicals appalled by the White Christian Nationalism that has replaced authentic Christianity for millions of believers.
The film underscored the dimensions of the religious war these “believers” are waging.
• The sheer number of “soldiers” who have substituted White Christian
Nationalism for Christianity is stunning. The videos showed “sermons” of wellknown
pastors (many of who have benefitted monetarily from the movement)
and panned over huge audiences. According to the scholars interviewed, the
movement numbers hundreds of pastors whose names are less familiar than
those of the usual subjects, but whose messages are equally strident,
intemperate and theocratic.
• The movement is thoroughly racist and misogynist. Adherents are men and
women who are threatened by social change and who express strong
disapproval of the emerging “non-biblical” social equality of women and Black
people. (Especially Black people.) The audiences for the diatribes about
America’s “decline” were virtually all white, and the rhetoric employed left little
room for alternative explanations.
• This phenomenon is not just a fundamentalist tantrum against diversity and
feminism; it’s leadership is strategic, well-planned and and coordinated. The role
of Paul Weyrich in forming and growing the movement was amply documented,
but what really struck me was the longevity of the effort. Weyrich and the
others–Falwell, Robertson, Ralph Reed, etc.–began many years ago putting
together a political movement intent upon replacing the government with a
Christian theocracy. They made common cause with the very rich by promising
to protect them from “confiscatory taxation.” They created a number of not-forprofits
and think tanks that have worked in tandem for many years. Weyrich’s
original manifesto has basically been reproduced in Project 2025.
• Movement leadership accomplished their planned takeover of the GOP,
expelling traditional Republicans and conservatives, and turning the party into a
White Christian Nationalist cult.
• The widespread belief that Evangelical political activity was sparked by Roe v.
Wade is a myth. As I’ve previously noted and multiple religious historians have
confirmed, initial Evangelical responses to that ruling were positive or neutral. It wasn’t until five years later that movement honchos decided to use “baby
killing” as a tool to motivate activism from previously non-political Evangelicals–
although their real trigger was withdrawal of tax-exempt status from the
segregation academies they had established in the wake of Brown v. Board of
Education.
• The pastors have sold Trump to their Christian Warriors by insisting, variously,
that he is a flawed “tool” of the Almighty and/or that he found God and was
“born again” during his first term.
• The movement substitutes country for God and far-Right politics for religion,
using bogus history to claim that the United States was established as a
“Christian country.” Evangelical clergy who focus on the essence of Jesus’
message–for example, the Sermon on the Mount–lose church members who tell
them that such sentiments are “woke” and then decamp for more belligerent
congregations.
There was much more, and if you get a chance to see the film, it is definitely worth your time. It will increase your understanding of the threat we face, and will underscore the imperative of reaching the millions of Americans who don’t bother to vote.
What is sobering is the realization that this effort to replace America’s Constitutional democracy with a psuedo-Christian theocracy has been active for over fifty years. Those of us in the larger, “woke” American culture have, for the most part, been blissfully unaware of its well-financed and strategically-sophisticated leadership, or the significant danger it poses to tolerance, individual liberty and the rule of law.
Like Micah Beckwith, these biblical literalists think they–and only they– own God. They are certain that they, and only they, are “on God’s side.” They are convinced that there’s a bright line between (their definition of) Godliness and sin (which is pretty much everything in modern culture), and that God wants them to impose His rules (as they understand them) on the rest of us.
They are the core of Trump’s base. They vote. And he knows he owes them.
Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 1th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
