Every Knee Shall Bend

Faith, Fear, and the Free Gift of Propaganda

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 20:01:45 GMT

Screenshot of Intercessors for America’s email after signing-up for its “Propaganda: The Dangers of the Information Age” report, presented as a resource to “combat the twisting of truth.” (Screenshot of Email inbox)

Intercessors for America promises a “library of free resources” to everyone who joins its prayer network. The welcome email arrives within minutes of signing up, written in the bright, earnest tone familiar to Christian nonprofits. “Here’s the resource you requested!” it announces, offering a glossy download titled Propaganda: The Dangers of the Information Age (Intercessors for America). The language of generosity does double work. It signals benevolence and creates instant reciprocity. You get a gift, therefore you owe attention.

At first glance, the twelve-page report looks like a civics handout. It defines propaganda, traces its Latin roots, and quotes George Orwell on the dangers of state-controlled truth (Intercessors for America). The design borrows the aesthetic of a media literacy guide, with red and black typography, vintage propaganda posters, and bold subheads that suggest analytical rigor. Readers learn to identify techniques such as “name-calling,” “glittering generalities,” and “bandwagon appeals.” One page lists examples of negative labeling that range from “libtard” to “demoncrat,” warning that such language deters people from examining evidence.

The appearance of neutrality lasts about three pages. By the midpoint, the examples shift from broad principles to explicitly partisan grievances. Propaganda, readers are told, includes claims about “the unvaccinated spreading COVID,” “climate emergency warnings,” and “government officials declaring domestic terrorism threats tied to misinformation.” The report introduces legitimate historical figures such as Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels, then moves without transition to twenty-first-century political controversies. Bill Gates is accused of manipulating the news through philanthropic grants. Fact-checkers are described as “co-opted” agents of censorship. Vaccine statistics are presented without sources, attributed instead to “studies estimating more than 100,000 deaths.” The structure of academic exposition remains, but the evidentiary standard collapses.

By the final section, civics has given way to prayer. “Pray Psalm 91 over those who expose propaganda,” the report urges, “as they battle invisible principalities which seek to hinder or destroy their mission.” Propaganda is no longer a civic or media problem; it is a demonic one. The act of discernment becomes a form of warfare. To recognize propaganda is to join the battle against it, armed with Scripture rather than skepticism.

This move, from intellectual critique to spiritual mobilization, is not accidental. It is a rhetorical pattern visible across Christian nationalist and spiritual warfare networks. As religious-political movements adapt to the digital age, they borrow the language of scholarship to legitimize theological combat. The result is what communication scholar Barry Brummett (1988) called “transfer rhetoric,” appeals that exploit reverence for sacred texts or intellectual authority to motivate secular commitments. The Intercessors report looks like a textbook example.

Scholars have documented how such movements frame their missions as divine mandates. Ernest Chitando (2005) and Dana Matar (2008) both describe religious leaders who appropriate sacred narratives to justify political action, turning faith into national duty. Ruth Marshall (2016) shows how charismatic movements use prayer as political praxis, blending apocalyptic visions with calls for direct action. David Domke and Kevin Coe (2008) trace how American politicians deploy religious language strategically, sanctifying partisan goals. And as Susan Diamond (1989) argued decades ago, the Christian Right’s “spiritual warfare” rhetoric blurs the line between inner faith and public struggle, inviting believers to see politics itself as a cosmic confrontation.

The Propaganda Special Report sits squarely in that lineage. It opens with definitions that signal objectivity but quietly primes readers for a battle between truth and deception, light and darkness. Once that dualism is in place, the document does not need to persuade; it only needs to identify enemies. By calling its distribution a “prayer resource,” Intercessors for America fuses civic participation with spiritual obligation. To doubt the report’s claims is to risk siding with the deceiver.

The report even directs readers to The Stream for “further understanding,” citing Sharyl Attkisson’s “Ten Principles of Propaganda.” The site, founded by televangelist James Robison, is a Christian commentary outlet that describes itself as promoting a “biblical worldview.” Its content functions less as journalism and more as advocacy, echoing the same themes of media deception and spiritual discernment that define the IFA report. Attkisson’s program Full Measure airs through the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative media company known for inserting partisan editorials into local newscasts. Media analysts at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting note that Sinclair “sneaks right-wing spin into millions of households” through mandated commentaries (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 2024). The link from IFA to The Stream to Sinclair reveals a closed circuit of messaging in which each outlet validates the others while warning readers to distrust all competing sources. For more watch this 2017 segment from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about Sinclair.

The organization’s emails reinforce this logic. In one message, subscribers are told that propaganda is “a coordinated attempt to influence people so they will adhere to a certain agenda or belief system.” Another promises “tools to help Christians pray for the nation” and “apply God’s Word” to current events (Intercessors for America). The pairing of political analysis and prayer instruction eliminates any boundary between public reasoning and private devotion. The believer becomes both citizen and soldier.

This rhetorical hybrid, scholarship plus scripture, performs what might be called faux-intellectualism. It mimics the texture of critical thought while directing all conclusions toward a predetermined worldview. The report’s citations to Orwell, Bernays, and history lend it the credibility of research, but its argumentative method relies on omission, insinuation, and repetition, the very traits it warns against. By condemning propaganda, the organization models it.

Such inversion is effective because it flatters the reader. It suggests that true believers are the only ones capable of discernment, that mainstream media audiences are “hypnotized” while the faithful see through the lies. IFA’s president, Dave Kubal, is quoted describing “isolation, daily bombardment of fear, and the presentation of only the endorsed truth,” a process that supposedly produces “zealous individual propagandists in every corner.” The implication is clear: others are the hypnotized masses; IFA readers are the awakened minority.

The educational tone conceals a recruitment mechanism. Every definition of propaganda is mirrored by a demonstration of it. “Name-calling” is illustrated by the word “demoncrat,” and later the report portrays journalists, scientists, and political opponents as demonic actors. “Card stacking,” the selective presentation of information, appears as the report cites only evidence aligning with its worldview. “Fear appeals” are embodied in warnings that censorship, technocracy, and globalism threaten Christian survival.

This is what makes the piece more than a curiosity. It is an example of how spiritual warfare networks operationalize media literacy language to fortify ideological boundaries. The guide does not teach critical thinking; it teaches mistrust of all external sources except those sanctified by the movement. In doing so, it performs what Graham and Svolik (2020) call the erosion of democratic accountability, the substitution of partisan loyalty for empirical judgment.

What Intercessors for America offers new subscribers is not simply a PDF. It is an interpretive lens. Through it, every political disagreement becomes a contest between divine truth and satanic deceit. Every press release becomes suspect, every scientific study a potential trap. The faithful reader is encouraged to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears, the very warning Orwell once wrote into fiction, but now rebranded as spiritual discernment.

This fusion of scholarship and scripture is the movement’s most durable innovation. It allows leaders to condemn propaganda while deploying it, to quote Bernays while echoing Goebbels, to dismiss secular manipulation while practicing theological spin. It is propaganda baptized as prayer.

For outsiders, the pamphlet might look absurd, an overwrought mash-up of civics and apocalypse. But for those inside the network, it functions as a catechism of suspicion. It assures readers that their vigilance is righteousness, that rejecting mainstream information is an act of faith. The “free gift” language conceals its true cost: the surrender of critical trust to spiritual authority.

The irony holds. Intercessors for America warns believers not to be deceived by emotional appeals, then closes by commanding them to pray against the deceiver himself. It promises education and delivers indoctrination. The group does not merely critique propaganda. It perfects it.

The Politics of Fear and the Liturgy of Hope

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:30:37 GMT

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks to gathered generals in Quantico, Virginia on September 30th, 2025. Credit: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Aiko Bongolan, DOW (public domain).

This morning President Trump stood before more than 800 generals and admirals at Quantico and declared American cities “training grounds” for the military. It was theater designed to showcase power and summon fear. Yet only days earlier in Chicago, Catholics marched toward a naval base singing “We are not afraid,” and in Washington Cardinal Robert McElroy asked Catholics to see the faces of migrants as neighbors. The contrast could not be sharper. Fear was on stage at Quantico. Hope was on the streets and in the pulpit.

President Trump summoned the gathering with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at his side. Together they railed against “woke garbage,” praised deportations, and described the military as once again the “Department of War” (Schmitt, Cooper, & McCreesh, 2025). It was not strategy so much as spectacle, with troops staged as props for grievance. Fear was the instrument.

Fear is not an accident of authoritarian politics. It is deliberate. Fear tells immigrants to stay home, critics to stay quiet, officers not to dissent. Fear makes survival itself feel like the highest good.

But hope contests fear.

In Chicago, two hundred Catholics walked toward the Great Lakes Naval Base singing hymns of courage. Heidi Schlumpf’s piece in Commonweal captured the scene: a bilingual People’s Mass, yellow T-shirts quoting Mary’s Magnificat, and banners reading “Blessed are the peacemakers, not the deporters” (Schlumpf, 2025). They knew the risks. ICE raids had already claimed lives. National Guard troops loomed. Yet they chose hope made public.

Chalk messages protesting ICE and deportations, Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC on September 1, 2025. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In Washington, Cardinal Robert McElroy pressed the same truth. Preaching for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, he called the deportation campaign “a comprehensive governmental assault designed to produce fear and terror among millions of men and women” (Clarke, 2025). Against that assault he placed the Gospel’s most pointed question: Who is your neighbor? He named mothers, Marines’ fathers, and caregivers. Fear turns neighbors into categories. Hope insists on faces.

Research underscores how much is at stake. Studies show religious leaders can help communities resist extremism by redirecting fear into solidarity, as in Pakistan’s Swat Valley during the War on Terror (Ahmed, Hayat, & Yusufzai, 2021). Yet leaders can also exploit fear, framing threats that protect dominant group power (Lio, Facchini, & Deckard, 2008). McElroy and the People’s Mass embody the constructive role. Quantico’s theater models the destructive one.

Martha Nussbaum argues that overcoming fear-based intolerance requires expanding our moral imagination through empathy and consistent civility (Nussbaum, 2012). That is what McElroy attempted with the Good Samaritan. It is what the Chicago marchers did by singing. Authoritarian politics shrinks imagination. Prophetic hope expands it.

What unfolded in Chicago and Washington is not only religious witness but democratic practice. Public liturgy that names migrants as neighbors and insists “we are not afraid” is a form of pluralism in action. It creates space where diverse communities can stand together across language, race, and status, and it models a civic imagination where human dignity is the measure. That is the opposite of Christian nationalism, which fuses religion with state power to enforce exclusion. Where authoritarian religion seeks to collapse faith into a single partisan agenda, pluralist religion strengthens democracy by expanding empathy and enlarging who counts as neighbor.

Fear spreads quickly. Hope spreads slowly. Both are contagious. What happened at Quantico shows how fear operates by spectacle, projecting inevitability. What happened in Chicago and Washington shows how hope contests that inevitability, insisting the Gospel still has something to say when power demands silence.

Scripture repeats the command: do not be afraid. Not because danger disappears, but because courage is possible even in danger. Today at Quantico, fear was on stage. In Chicago and Washington, the Church offered another script. The question now is whether we will join it, and whether we will recognize our neighbors when they need us most.

Picking Up Serpents

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:03:41 GMT

Photo by Floris Van Cauwelaert on Unsplash

Sometimes my academic work feels like living inside Mark 16:18. The New American Bible: Revised Edition (NABRE) translates it this way: “They will pick up serpents [with their hands], and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Scholars of religion spend long hours handling venom, parsing through rows of rhetoric that casts opponents as demons, reframes violence as holy, and replaces evidence with claims of divine persecution.

The responses in the comment sections around the internet are not engagement with evidence or acknowledgment of complexities, just accusations that authors are “deceived by powers of darkness.” These comments mirror prayer requests and narratives found in groups like Intercessors for America, a group who portrayed January 6th defendants not as perpetrators of violence but as “mostly peaceful protestors” or “unfairly jailed protestors.” (Intercessors for America, 2025; Dinulescu, 2021). To contrast, the same network also boosted narratives of 2020 demonstrations as “radical leftist militias” animated by “demonic ideology”, even though Democratic leaders from Joe Biden to James Clyburn to Nancy Pelosi repeatedly condemned violence linked to those protests (Caldera, 2020).

January 6 attacker assaults police with bear spray Source: United States Department of Justice

The point is not whether evidence exists — it does. The problem is that within this narrative, context itself is erased. Once context disappears, what fills the void are faith claims that recast civic events as cosmic battles, seeing “good as evil and evil as good” (Isaiah 5:20).

When facts are replaced with faith claims

Kucinskas and Stewart (2022) show that spiritual practice can function as a substitute for civic duty, redirecting energy away from public engagement and into private or communal spiritual activity. Perry (2025) shows how religious and political sorting leaves Americans less informed about civic life, yet more confident in their misperceptions. Gorski and Perry (2022) trace the “deep story” of Christian nationalism that recasts democratic opposition as demonic threat.

Nearly 18 percent of white weekly churchgoers fall into this high-risk cluster, representing millions of Americans living inside a different map of reality (Armaly, Buckley, & Enders, 2022). The problem is not simply disagreement about policy. It is the creation of parallel worlds where the images broadcast live to the nation are recast as deception or “media lies”. Taylor (2024) shows how leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation described the 2020 election and January 6 as part of a “governmental war,” framing insurrection as divine destiny. This is the substitution at work: civic responsibility displaced by cosmic battle, violence reframed as holy obligation.

The frustration of engaging online

The reality, of course, is that most of these venomous exchanges do not happen in churches or civic organizations. They happen online. Comment threads become pulpits for spiritualized grievance. Campbell (2012) describes this shift as part of “networked religion,” where digital media extends religious identity, authority, and practice into online spaces. The result is a blurring of the sacred and the civic, where prayer requests and political commentary circulate together in ways that reinforce partisan worldviews.

Her later work with Evolvi (2019) shows that digital religion research highlights how online platforms provide new arenas for negotiating authority and constructing religious identity. In polarized environments, this means that grievances framed as spiritual warfare can spread quickly, unmoored from traditional checks of congregational or denominational life. Instead of dialogue, networked spaces can amplify suspicion and embolden communities to recast political disputes as battles against evil itself.

This is disheartening for those of us who study religion out of love for its ecumenical promise. We recognize the beauty of traditions that call people to healing, forgiveness, seeking, and solidarity. Yet we find those same scriptures weaponized into partisan slogans. As Rev. William Barber III has put it, “They are so loud on what God says so little, and so quiet about what God says so much about.”

Why meeting fire with fire fails

The temptation in polarized times is to meet fire with fire. When confronted with an opponent who insists an election was stolen and claims violence to overturn a democratic election was “holy,” the instinct is to fact-check harder and argue louder. Research confirms that fact-checking alone rarely changes minds (Broockman & Kalla, 2016). Holliday, Lelkes, and Westwood (2025) show that even the best-designed depolarization interventions shift partisan animosity only modestly, and those effects fade within weeks. What does move opinion is trust, especially when grounded in empathy across divides (Santos, Voelkel, Willer, & Zaki, 2022).

Yet empathy itself is under attack. Voices like theologian Joe Rigney in The Sin of Empathy, argue that empathy is a liability, leaving Christians vulnerable to the so-called “progressive gaze.” As Huckabee (2025) observes in a review, this reframes empathy as weakness rather than humility, recasting even attempts at perspective-taking as compromise.

Servant leadership offers a counter-vision. Greenleaf (2002) described leaders whose legitimacy flows from service rather than dominance. Liden et al. (2014) found that such leadership fosters trust, fairness, and psychological safety. Eva et al. (2019) synthesized evidence that servant leadership strengthens resilience against polarization by creating rare spaces where dialogue continues across disagreement. At its best, this approach is marked by listening before judging, treating authority as stewardship rather than dominance, and committing to the growth of others so that flourishing, not fear, defines community life.

Ways forward

Perry (2025) warns that when citizens cluster into camps that filter facts through ideology, democratic accountability weakens. Yet he also points to the possibility of pluralistic spaces where cross-cutting ties interrupt polarization. Cassese (2019) finds the same dynamic in her study of gender and religious cross-pressures, showing that even strong identities do not fully determine political choice when people remain embedded in diverse networks. Holliday, Lelkes, and Westwood (2025) add that bottom-up interventions alone cannot scale without systemic reforms that reshape elite incentives and institutional structures. Taken together, their work suggests that building pluralistic spaces is necessary but not sufficient. It requires leaders who embody listening, stewardship, and commitment to others, modeling a politics that resists demonization not by erasing differences but by insisting that dignity is never conditional.

Picking up serpents, again

There is no guarantee this approach will eliminate polarization. Serpents still bite. Poison still circulates online. Comment sections are filled with declarations, not dialogue by voices more animated by end-times drama than the slow work of community. This theology thrives outside the checks of church or neighborhood, sustained instead by political tribes that reward certainty over humility. In that world, the person at Starbucks who says “Happy Holidays” becomes a deceiver, and the journalist who omits partisan talking points is condemned as a liar. To some, empathy itself is treated as sin.

That ordinary recognition of humanity is exactly what is missing in these digital pulpits of grievance. I think of my own friendships with Christians who differ theologically. We work together, tease each other, watch professional wrestling, and even discuss politics without denying one another’s good faith. I do not think they are less human. They do not think I am less human. Even when people would call me evil for practicing empathy, I feel empathy for them, because a worldview that only sees demons is exhausting, disheartening, and misses the point.

As Thomas Bolin (2025) argues, no one reads the Bible neutrally. Every community approaches scripture through a particular lens, and the danger comes when those lenses collapse complexity into absolutes, leaving no space for discernment or dialogue. It is telling that the verses most often invoked in these digital pulpits of grievance come from the Old Testament. Prophetic texts provide stark binaries of good and evil, blessing and curse, chosen people and condemned enemies, lifted into modern politics as if America itself were ancient Israel.

What gets lost is the counterweight of the New Testament, where Jesus commands his followers to love enemies, bless those who curse them, and build friendship rooted in humility and service (John 15:13–15; Philippians 2:3–4). The result is a selective canon within the canon, privileging imagery of conquest and judgment while muting the call to compassion and reconciliation.

Jonathan Sammut (2017) reminds us that authentic friendship has a deeper foundation than politics. In the Gospel of John, Jesus calls his disciples not servants but friends, a relationship rooted in love that mirrors his communion with the Father. Friendship of this kind is a trustworthy basis for building community because it arises from the love of God and is sustained by peace that “passes all understanding.” That vision resists the suspicion of online polemics and insists that the work of democracy, like the life of the church, rests on friendship rather than fear.

To retreat from the venom would be to concede the public square to those who substitute conspiracy for fact. The vocation, then, is to keep handling the serpents without becoming poisoned ourselves and to keep laying hands through service, dialogue, and leadership on a body politic still in need of healing.

When Christian Nationalism Makes Violence Holy

Tess Starman — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:03:48 GMT

Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash

Gun violence in the United States continues at a rate unmatched among peer nations (Commonwealth Fund, 2024). While Charlie Kirk was not the only person to be killed by gun violence (even within the same week), his tragic death has captured the nation’s attention. Yet the focus around Mr. Kirk’s death has not included renewed calls to stem the uniquely American scourge of gun violence. What allows this violence to continue?

One might reasonably expect those who are most public about their Christian faith, to be strongly in favor of all efforts to curtail such violence. Yet, it is a puzzling fact that over half of self-described Christians oppose stricter gun laws and favor nearly unfettered access to firearms, a pattern Obery Hendricks (2021) traces to the entanglement of evangelical politics and gun ideology. Empirical research confirms this dynamic: Christian nationalism is one of the strongest predictors of opposition to federal gun reform, even more than religiosity or education (Whitehead, Schnabel, & Perry, 2018).

The larger culture has become inured to violence, such that shootings—or mass shootings, Mr. Kirk excepted-rarely sustain national attention. Indeed, among mainstream media and government officials, there has been very little coverage of or expressions of outrage about, other recent shootings, such as the August 27^th mass shooting of Catholic school children in Minneapolis.

While it may seem puzzling that many self-described Christians prioritize the protection of guns, for those who do, the motivation seems clear. In their 2020 study, Vegter and Kelley find the motivation of Christian gun ownership stems from a deep sense of duty to protect and defend. We may simply assume this means protecting one’s family and possessions; however, Christians posit it as something greater. The rhetoric suggests they must protect themselves from a menacing “other,” the embodiment of evil, an existential threat to their life, liberty, economic well-being, faith and way of life. Therefore, having a gun to protect one’s family is a sanctified action.

The transcendence of potential threats changes the conversation for Christian nationalists. No longer are disagreements about differing opinions. No longer can one “reach across the aisle” to find a common ground with someone who believes differently. No longer can concession be made. When someone who has different opinions from you is seen as evil, there is no debate. No longer is the other your neighbor—as mandated in the New Testament, the other is your enemy.

What then is the result? The result, as we have seen, is a belief that Christian nationalists are divinely ordained to do God’s work on earth, and particularly in the United States. This means going to whatever extreme is necessary to eradicate evil. The options are to remove the menacing other through deportation, decrease the other’s influence through gerrymandering, or destroy the other through the “war” rhetoric as voiced recently in some corners of the Christian right. Such violence is Divinely sanctioned. It is the way to save the self or the republic. Thus, violence becomes salvific in the manner of, well, Jesus’ death on the cross, or Holy Wars where the divine justification for such violence is permissive. Thus, violence becomes salvific, in the manner of Holy Wars, where bloodshed is recast as sacrifice and redemption (Gorski & Perry, 2022; Armaly, Buckley, & Enders, 2022).

Screenshot from @realannapaulina on X.com

Even the tragic death of Mr. Kirk is being transformed into a salvific moment. Take for instance an image that has been circulating on social media. An image circulating widely on social media placed him alongside Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus—men remembered as assassinated for words judged too radical in their time. The caption read “All Because of Words.” Among those amplifying it was Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL, 13th District), who pinned the image on her personal X account and posted it on her official Congressional account. Her single post drew more than 10.9 million views, a measure of how quickly the martyr narrative spread far beyond its original source.

Positioning Kirk as a martyr for his cause gives further weight to his words. On September 13^th, CNN reported that his social media has gained millions of followers since his shooting. In an address following days after Kirk’s death, Erika Kirk, his widow, encouraged his death to be just the start of his wisdom and voice being spread. The sentiment shared by others, reinforced by the above image, is not just that his death was not in vain, but that his death was necessary so that his message can reach even more people. Two great travesties are evident here—the travesty of sanctifying some of Mr. Kirk’s divisive words, and the other is the violence of his death is glorified, rather than condemned as a violent act that should never have occurred and need never occur.

The tragic case of Mr. Kirk illustrates one aspect of this permission structure for violence. Prevailing ideological commitments (in this case, 2^nd amendment rhetoric) prevent consideration of the negative consequences of such ideology. Illustratively, Congress has resisted federal funding for research into gun violence, and the DOJ website has removed their own study on the prevalence of right-wing political violence—far exceeding that of left-wing violence. Secondly, the theological center of gravity for Christian nationalism, veneration of the cross, allows for some violent acts to be transformed into an avenue for redemption or salvation. Refusal to recognize the causes and correlates of violence, and a reticence to address them, decouples the consequences of violence from the meaning one can make of violent acts. Violence, when perpetuated by or against Christian nationalists, may continue to be seen and interpreted as holy and salvific, rather than simply tragic, preventing discussion of consequences and any policies changes to quell the growing prevalence of all gun violence. The tragic case of Mr. Kirk shows how, in Christian nationalist hands, even bloodshed may become salvific—and why America’s cycle of gun violence endures.

Dr. Tess Starman is a sociologist who studies the relationship between religion, power, and politics.

Dr. Ronald Hopson is a psychologist and theologian whose work engages religion, sexuality, psychotherapy, and the Black church.

The Pentagon is Preaching

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 13:30:36 GMT

Screenshot from @DOWResponse on X (Department of War Rapid Response official account)

On September 7, the War Department’s rapid-response account pushed a 19-second clip of soldiers running drills and aircraft banking, overlaid with words from Joshua: “Be strong and of good courage … for the Lord your God is with you” (Josh 1:9). A month earlier on August 10, another clip used a conquest line from the Psalms: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them” (Ps 18:37). Reporting in Religion News Service described the posts in sober tones, noting that some link them to Christian nationalism, and quoted experts warning about the merger of scripture and state power (André, 2025).

Baptist scholar Brian Kaylor stressed that these verses were originally directed to “marginalized people under attack, not imperial armies.” To lift them out of context and stamp them on military imagery, he said, is a selective literalism that “turns scripture into a warrant for force.” Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation raised a related concern: using Bible verses in official channels “privileges one faith” and risks damaging “the cohesion and trust” of a pluralist military (André, 2025).

Civil religion or Christian nationalism?

There is an important distinction here. In his classic essay Civil Religion in America, Robert Bellah argued that the United States has long had a public religious grammar, a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that is neither sectarian nor in any specific sense Christian. Civil religion lets presidents invoke God in a way meant to bind a diverse people to moral purposes (Bellah, 1967). Bellah emphasized a division of labor. Churches do not control the state, the state does not control the churches, and officials operate within a broad, non-sectarian grammar rather than a denominational creed.

The War Department’s videos do not fall into that category. They are not metaphorical invocations of blessing. They are literal proof-texts superimposed on weapons and maneuvers. Comparative work on sacralized politics flags this as the sacralization of state violence, the shift from moral language to religious warrant for coercive power (Rouhana & Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2021).

This is not a new temptation. Bellah himself warned that the “American Israel” theme, the idea of America as a chosen nation, has often been used to legitimate imperial adventures and to consecrate conflict through the language of sacrifice. That language is embedded in the civic calendar through Memorial Day and national cemeteries (Bellah, 1967). Feminist theologian Kelly Denton-Borhaug later traced how U.S. officials, especially after 9/11, mobilized sacrifice language to sanctify war, converting military loss into a quasi-sacrament that renders dissent morally suspect (Denton-Borhaug, 2007).

The War Department videos sit squarely in that trajectory, but with an additional twist. They do not only memorialize loss or invoke unity. They overlay conquest texts directly onto images of combat. That is not civil religion. It is Christian nationalism.

Screenshot from @DOWResponse on X (Department of War Rapid Response official account).

Why this messaging matters

Population-level data help calibrate the stakes. PRRI’s 2024 American Values Survey shows the divide is sharp. Seven in ten Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction, with nearly all Republicans (94 percent) taking that view compared to four in ten Democrats (41 percent). Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to believe American culture has changed for the worse since the 1950s (68 percent vs. 31 percent). The gap extends to questions of democracy and violence. Nearly one in five Republicans (19 percent) said Trump should declare the 2024 election invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office if he loses. Almost three in ten Republicans (29 percent) agreed that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” By comparison, only 8 percent of Democrats agreed with that statement (Public Religion Research Institute, 2024).

Peer-reviewed studies trace the consequences. In Politics & Religion, Samuel Perry and Joseph Grubbs show that Christian nationalism predicts support for leaders who suspend democratic norms during national emergencies—especially when people feel their in-group power is threatened (Perry & Grubbs, 2024). In Political Behavior, Miles Armaly, David Buckley, and Adam Enders demonstrate that Christian nationalism, especially when fused with victimhood, racial identity, and conspiracism, predicts support for political violence, including justification of the January 6 attacks (Armaly, Buckley & Enders, 2022).

The official social media channels posting videos of scripture-over-war-footage is not a morale boost. In a country where millions already see politics through a Christian-national lens, these cues correlate with greater tolerance for democratic shortcuts and violence. That is why the distinction between civil religion and Christian nationalism is not academic hairsplitting. It is a democratic tripwire.

Personnel is policy

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has cultivated a crusader image, from the Deus Vult tattoo on his arm to speeches calling for an “American Crusade” to defend Western civilization. Reporting by Mike Baker and Ruth Graham documented those details in depth. When communications produced under his leadership overlay conquest verses on combat imagery, it looks less like a rogue social media post and more like a coherent project.

Screenshot from @DOWResponse on X (Department of War Rapid Response official account)

DHS and ICE as a mirror

The same trend appears across the Trump administration. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement feeds have been filled with videos and memes that borrow both biblical and pop culture references. Washington Post columnist Carolina Miranda describes one clip set to the verse from Isaiah, “Here am I. Send me,” paired with tactical raids and helicopters. Another cites Proverbs, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are as bold as a lion,” intercut with dialogue from The Batman (Miranda, 2025). The effect is a holy-war narrative where agents are cast as God’s soldiers against shadowy enemies.

The imagery does not stop there. ICE social media has borrowed Manifest Destiny art, slogans like “Which way, American man,” and even Bible verses to frame immigration enforcement as a spiritual crusade. As Gorski and Perry note, Christian nationalism always needs an enemy, whether Native Americans, Catholics, immigrants, or the political left. The enemy shifts, but the us-versus-them logic remains (Gorski & Perry, 2022).

A test for pluralism

One way to measure this is to flip the script. If identical clips were released with Qur’anic verses instead of biblical ones, how would they land? Most Americans would quickly recognize that as the state privileging one faith and redrawing boundaries of belonging. Comparative research on sacralized politics finds that this is what happens when religious claims fuse with national power. They draw hard insider and outsider lines and legitimize demonization (Rouhana & Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2021). Inside a pluralist military, those lines shape not just public opinion but the culture of the ranks.

Resisting this drift does not mean banishing religion from public life. It means insisting that biblical language in official communications serve universal purposes such as mourning the dead, binding wounds, and setting moral horizons. It means distinguishing chaplaincy, which cares for service members of all faiths, from messaging that brands the state with conquest texts.

The War Department and DHS examples reveal a consistent logic. America is cast as chosen, under siege, and authorized to fight. That is not civil religion. It is Christian nationalism, and it is being carried by the official voice of the state.

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André, F. (2025, September 9). Department of War quotes Bible in apparent embrace of Christian nationalism on social media. Religion News Service. https://religionnews.com/2025/09/09/department-of-war-quotes-bible-in-apparent-embrace-of-christian-nationalism-on-social-media/
Armaly, M. T., Buckley, D. T., & Enders, A. M. (2022). Christian nationalism and political violence: Victimhood, racial identity, conspiracy, and support for the Capitol attacks. Political Behavior, 44(3), 937–960. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09758-y
Bellah, R. N. (2005). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 134(4), 40–55. (Original work published 1967). https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027022
Denton-Borhaug, K. (2007). The Language of “Sacrifice” in the Buildup to War: A Feminist Rhetorical and Theological Analysis. The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 15(1), 2-2. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A167897642/AONE?u=creighton&sid=googleScholar&xid=c692c9a8
Gorski, P. S., & Perry, S. L. (2022). The flag and the cross: White Christian nationalism and the threat to American democracy. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197618684.001.0001
Miranda, C. A. (2025, August 26). Preposterous ICE videos have a holy war to sell you. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/26/dhs-social-media-religious-imagery-battle/
Perry, S. L., & Grubbs, J. B. (2024). Christian nationalism and support for leaders violating democratic norms during national emergencies. Politics & Religion, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048324000208
Public Religion Research Institute. (2024). Findings from the 2024 American Values Survey: Executive summary. https://prri.org/american-values-survey/
Rouhana, N. N., & Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. (Eds.). (2021). When politics are sacralized: Comparative perspectives on religious claims and nationalisms. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108768191

The Sacralization of Free Speech

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 13:06:46 GMT

Photo of Bishop Robert Barron by ARC Forum - https://www.flickr.com/photos/199491548@N07/53344455141/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=156835657

Bishop Robert Barron has long cultivated a reputation as the Catholic Church’s intellectual statesman. Through his Word on Fire brand, he has built a global platform of books, videos, podcasts, and conferences. His voice carries authority, especially among Catholics searching for cultural relevance and apologetics in a polarized age. Yet his recent reflections on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk reveal troubling contradictions that merit closer attention.

In First Things, Barron framed Kirk’s death as emblematic of courageous public witness: “Why has the murder of Charlie Kirk resonated so powerfully through the culture? … I am convinced there is something more, and it has to do with the fact that he died with a microphone in his hand—not a gun or a knife or a grenade, but a microphone” (Barron, 2025). He closed by urging readers to take “renewed inspiration from a courageous and religious man who died, not with a gun in his hand, but rather an instrument of communication” (Barron, 2025). Barron’s rhetoric placed Kirk in a martyr-like frame, using sacramental language around the microphone.

The Word on Fire brand reinforced this narrative through its website, where editor-in-chief Tod Worner published an essay on Kirk’s death. Worner is the head of Evangelization & Culture, the journal of the Word on Fire Institute, billed as the intellectual arm of Barron’s ministry and positioned as their equivalent to a cultural review. His reflections on Kirk are telling. Worner described the killing as “an act of brazen totalitarianism” and “a move of supreme censorship,” writing:

“This murder is an act of brazen totalitarianism. This killing is a move of supreme censorship. … This is the dark spirit of ideologically blinkered protestors who prevent events, intimidate crowds, drown out voices, and murder speakers. And they do this because they believe that using their freedom to restrain yours—in whatever way possible, even murder—is good for you” (Worner, 2025).

He went further:

“They hate their enemy more than they love the truth” (Worner, 2025).

And again:

“Ideology is a warped secular religion that leads adherents to murder in the name of a cause” (Worner, 2025).

This is not marginal commentary. As editor of Word on Fire’s flagship publication, Worner helps set the boundaries of what counts as serious reflection in Barron’s orbit. His piece on Kirk elevates the event into nothing less than a civilizational referendum on free speech.

Contrasts in Tone: From Floyd to Kirk

The contrast with Barron’s response to the killing of George Floyd is striking. In his June 2020 essay Why “What are the Bishops Doing About it?” is the Wrong Question, Barron acknowledged the brutality of Floyd’s death but quickly redirected responsibility away from bishops:

“The crisis precipitated by the brutal killing of George Floyd is one that involves many dimensions of our society: law, the police, education, government, neighborhoods, families, etc. Priests and bishops, to be sure, ought to teach clearly and publicly. The declaration mentioned above and the American bishops’ pastoral statement against racism from a year ago, Open Wide Our Hearts,are good examples of this. But I would argue that the lion’s share of the work regarding this massive societal problem belongs to those whose proper arena is the society and whose expertise lies precisely in the relevant areas of concern, namely, the laity” (Barron, 2020).

Barron’s comments on Floyd were sober, careful, and ultimately limited. Weeks later, his Canceling Padre Serra essay (Barron, 2020b) carried sharper urgency, warning against “the cancel culture impulse” and urging Catholics to defend Serra as a heroic evangelist. The juxtaposition is telling: Floyd’s death was framed as a problem primarily for lay action, while threats to a Catholic saint’s reputation elicited Barron’s direct passion.

By contrast, his language on Kirk is more impassioned, casting the activist’s death as a cultural and even civilizational moment. The unevenness can appear to turn free speech from a consistent principle into a posture applied selectively.

Passion, Selectivity, and Public Witness

This unevenness matters because it suggests a particular vision of the Church in public life. In his essay on Kirk, Barron frames free speech in terms that can sound almost sacramental. The effect parallels patterns scholars of Christian nationalism describe—where persecution and martyrdom narratives help bind communities and energize activism (Day, 2025). As Bishop of Winona-Rochester, he is entrusted with a diocese, yet his rhetoric often appears drawn into the orbit of the culture wars.

Once an online priest commenting on film and literature, he now appears more at home in conversation with figures such as Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Tucker Carlson. These platforms shape his public presence as much as, if not more than, his diocesan ministry. Pope Francis once urged priests to “be shepherds, with the ‘odour of the sheep,’ make it real, as shepherds among your flock” (Francis, 2013). Increasingly, Barron seems to smell more like an online personality than a shepherd among his flock.

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References

Barron, R. (2020a, June 24). Why “What are the bishops doing about it?” is the wrong question. Word on Fire. https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/why-what-are-the-bishops-doing-about-it-is-the-wrong-question/

Barron, R. (2020, July 20). Canceling Padre Serra. Word on Fire. https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/canceling-padre-serra/

Barron, R. [@BishopBarron]. (2025, June 14). A terrible tragedy occurred in my home state of Minnesota early this morning… [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/BishopBarron/status/1933951934660321546

Barron, R. (2025, September 9). He died with a microphone in his hand. First Things. https://www.firstthings.com/he-died-with-a-microphone-in-his-hand/

Day, J. (2025). Christian nationalism as a social practice: Prayer, violence, and the politics of public ritual. Terrorism and Political Violence, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2025.2555222

Fraga, B. (2024a, May 15). Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire again threatens Commonweal over article about Trumpism. National Catholic Reporter. https://www.ncronline.org/news/bishop-barrons-word-fire-again-threatens-commonweal-over-article-about-trumpism

Fraga, B. (2024b, May 1). Commonweal magazine edits article after legal threat from Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire. National Catholic Reporter. https://www.ncronline.org/commonweal-magazine-edits-article-after-legal-threat-bishop-barrons-word-fire

Francis. (2013, March 28). Chrism Mass homily. Vatican. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130328_messa-crismale.html

KTTC. (2025, June 14). Bishop Robert Barron reacts to shootings of Minnesota lawmakers, killing of DFL leader Melissa Hortman. KTTC. https://www.kttc.com/2025/06/14/bishop-robert-barron-reacts-shootings-minnesota-lawmakers-killing-dfl-leader-melissa-hortman/

Worner, T. (2025, September 11). The murder of Charlie Kirk and the fate of free speech. Word on Fire. https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-and-the-fate-of-free-speech/

Word on Fire. (2025, May 19). Bishop Barron responds to his critics [Video]. YouTube.

What Dutch Sheets Won’t Admit About Identity Politics

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 22:00:49 GMT

Author and speaker, Dutch Sheets teaching on prayer at a national conference in 2016. Wikimedia Commons.

My dissertation work focuses on Dutch Sheets, and so I cannot help but read his September 12, 2025 Give Him 15 post through the lens of both his theology and the academic literature on Christian nationalism. In that prayer, Sheets condemns “identity politics” as the root of division and violence in America. He argues that conservatives are falsely accused of hate and tyranny, that liberals deliberately weaponize race to divide the country, and that this politics of grievance produces anger, hatred, and violence. His solution is prayer for revival. What is striking is not simply the argument, but the irony. Sheets has built his career by employing the very politics of grievance and identity that he condemns in others.

Sheets’ model of leadership depends on what scholars describe as the politics of persecution. He repeatedly frames conservative Christians as a group under siege, portrays opponents as agents of evil, and sanctifies political conflict as spiritual war. This is not the rejection of identity politics but its amplification in religious terms. Gorski and Perry (2022) describe Christian nationalism as a “deep story” that fuses religion, nation, and race into a vision of who belongs and who does not. In this sense, Christian nationalism is itself one of the most powerful forms of identity politics operating in the United States today. Sheets embodies this by weaving biblical language with political grievance, presenting opposition not as disagreement but as evidence of persecution.

The consequences of this framing have already been made visible. Dinulescu (2021) documents how the January 6 rioters circled the Capitol with “Appeal to Heaven” flags and conducted rituals patterned on the Jericho march, treating the building as enemy territory to be conquered. Sheets’ Give Him 15 prayers leading up to that day explicitly cast the 2020 election as a spiritual battle and called for angelic intervention against demonic strongholds in Washington. Armaly, Buckley, and Enders (2022) show how Christian nationalism, when combined with victimhood, white identity, and conspiracy belief, was a strong predictor of support for the Capitol violence. Sheets’ narrative of a persecuted Christian nation aligns precisely with these dynamics. His words did not simply describe politics; they mobilized people to see political processes as warfare.

The September 12 post recycles the same frame. Sheets portrays Charlie Kirk not only as a conservative leader but as a martyr whose assassination will “galvanize a movement.” It must be said plainly: Kirk was the victim of political violence, and that is unacceptable in a democracy. Violence should be condemned without qualification, no matter the target or political alignment. But Sheets does not pause to sit in that truth. Instead, he quickly reframes Kirk’s death as proof of persecution and evidence that his movement must rise stronger. Martyrdom functions here not to mourn, but to mobilize. What might otherwise be a tragedy becomes evidence that Christians are under siege and must respond in kind. This is identity politics cloaked in prayer. It constructs group cohesion by turning suffering into sacred struggle. Whitehead and Perry (2020) describe this as the sacred canopy of Christian nationalism, where loss is recast as divine testing, and political opponents are seen as enemies of God. Sheets transforms tragedy into political grievance and then into theological destiny.

It is important to state unequivocally that political violence should be condemned and not tolerated under any circumstances. A recent PBS NewsHour analysis placed this moment in a long, dark history of political violence in the United States, but warned that targeted threats and plots have risen sharply in recent decades. Cynthia Miller-Idriss explained that the present environment is more dangerous than in past eras, precisely because divisive rhetoric fuels cycles of grievance and retaliation. Sheets’ framing of politics as persecution does not lower the temperature. It risks raising it further by normalizing the idea that Christians must respond as if under siege.

At the level of rhetoric, what we hear is not dialogue but antagonistic debate. Structured debate, as practiced in high school or college, is scored and bound by rules. Participants are expected to understand their opponent’s argument and respond with evidence. What passes for debate in politics today is reduced to talking points meant to provoke and score symbolic wins. This is not dialogue, which requires listening, empathy, and recognition of shared truths. It is performance designed to raise temperatures. Sheets critiques division, but his own framing mirrors this model of antagonistic debate, casting opponents as evil rather than engaging them as fellow citizens.

What makes this especially dangerous is the way it collapses pluralism into hostility. Perry and Grubbs (2024) show that Christian nationalism is the strongest predictor of support for leaders who violate democratic norms in national emergencies. Their data reveal that Christian nationalists are willing to suspend elections, suppress opponents, and disregard checks and balances in order to preserve their vision of a Christian nation. When Sheets prays against politicians and media who “seek to divide us,” he is not appealing to pluralism. He is drawing the boundaries of identity and delegitimizing dissent as evil.

Matthew D. Taylor (2024) argues that leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, where Sheets is a central figure, have reframed American politics as a “governmental war.” Apostles and prophets are depicted as rulers ordained to govern not just the church but the nation. In this frame, political disagreement is spiritual rebellion, and democracy itself is fragile. Sheets’ post reflects exactly this approach: opposition is demonized, grievance is sacralized, and revival is imagined not as renewal of pluralism but as the triumph of one identity over all others.

The irony of his September 12 post is clear. He denounces identity politics as an abomination while practicing it as his primary strategy. He condemns division while insisting that conservatives are victims of sinister forces. He calls for unity while building cohesion through exclusion and grievance. The danger is not simply hypocrisy. It is the normalization of a politics where faith and citizenship collapse into one identity, where pluralism is seen as persecution, and where violence becomes imaginable. Sheets is correct that identity politics can breed bitterness, resentment, and violence. What he cannot acknowledge is that his own rhetoric has done precisely that.

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References

Dinulescu, C. (2021). Religion and politics in the context of the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Congress. Strategic Impact, 79(2), 78-92. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/religion-politics-context-6-january-2021-assault/docview/2581875468/se-2

Gorski, P. S., & Perry, S. L. (2022). The flag and the cross: White Christian nationalism and the threat to American democracy. Oxford University Press.

Perry, S. L., & Grubbs, J. B. (2024). Christian nationalism and support for leaders violating democratic norms during national emergencies. Politics and Religion, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048324000208

Taylor, M. D. (2024). The violent take it by force: The Christian movement that is threatening our democracy. Broadleaf Books.

Whitehead, A. L., & Perry, S. L. (2020). Taking America back for God: Christian nationalism in the United States. Oxford University Press.

PBS NewsHour. (2025, July 17). Understanding the root causes and possible solutions for rising political violence. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/understanding-the-root-causes-and-possible-solutions-for-rising-political-violence

The Money Magisterium: Wealth, Media, and the Narrowing of the Catholic Church

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 13:31:29 GMT

Photo by Blogging Guide on Unsplash

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They say you should not meet your heroes. But you should definitely meet your references. One of the best things that happened to me this year was meeting Dr. Steve Millies at the Association for the Sociology of Religion conference in Chicago.

A close friend of mine is studying with Dr. Millies in the Doctor of Ministry program at Catholic Theological Union, and our text thread has been shaped by his teaching. Through that, I came across a post about EWTN, which deepened questions I was already wrestling with after reading Millies’ essay The Catholic Brand Is Under New Ownership (NCR, 2023). Both sharpened my sense of how Catholic media and donor networks present themselves as defending the faith while in fact remaking it in the image of wealth.

I had already presented on the dangers of this system at academic conferences, and part of what made Dr. Millies and I connect in Chicago was a shared concern about these dynamics. We both see the concentration of Catholic money and media as one of the most pressing forces reshaping the Church today.

Millies argues that EWTN functions less as a ministry than as a catechesis business. Over the past twenty years, it raised more than a billion dollars, far more than its modest cable revenues. That wealth gave it independence and allowed it to broadcast directly into parishes and homes, bypassing the authority of bishops. Mother Angelica’s fights with Bishop David Foley and Cardinal Roger Mahony revealed how emboldened she became. Even Pope Francis publicly criticized EWTN for being “funded by wealthy conservatives” and for promoting division (America, 2021). NCR described its voice as “powerful, partisan, and problematic” (NCR, 2020).

What EWTN most effectively sold was one narrow vision of Catholicism. It insisted there was only one authentic way to be Catholic, a claim both historically inaccurate and theologically shallow. Yet backed by money and media power, it shaped a movement that resisted Pope Francis and erected an alternative authority structure inside the Church.

EWTN is not alone. The Napa Institute, Word on Fire, and Legatus extend the same project in different forms.

The Napa Institute positions itself as the gathering place for Catholic elites. Every summer, it convenes hundreds of wealthy donors, bishops, business leaders, and apostolate directors in Napa Valley. The pitch is clear: bring money together with influence, share meals and liturgies, and align priorities for culture and Church (Catholic World Report, 2016). Napa does more than host retreats. It forges donor networks that fund ideologically coordinated initiatives. In 2021, revelations of Koch-linked funding sparked backlash from Notre Dame professors, showing how Napa’s reach extends beyond Church walls into public scholarship and debate (NCR, 2021).

Word on Fire works toward the same ends with a different strategy. Founded by Bishop Robert Barron, it has become one of the most powerful Catholic media brands in the United States. Between 2018 and 2022, donations grew nearly 500 percent, giving Word on Fire a scale rivaling many dioceses (NCR, 2023). Its polished books, films, and courses present Catholicism as a sleek brand identity.

Barron often casts himself as a kind of second coming of Fulton Sheen, the mid-century bishop whose preaching on radio and television made him one of the most visible Catholics in America. The comparison, however, underscores the differences. Sheen engaged questions of war, nuclear threat, and social justice with political courage that unsettled his audience. Barron narrows his public voice to culture-war themes, offering polished defenses of a branded Catholicism, complete with online rhetoric of the far-right, while avoiding the kind of complex moral witness Sheen embodied. His influence in this system flows less from episcopal ministry than from cultural capital, donor loyalty, and media visibility.

If EWTN supplies the content, Napa the capital, and Word on Fire the brand, Legatus provides the political muscle. Founded by Domino’s Pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan, it is a membership club for Catholic CEOs and executives (Legatus). The organization encourages members to bring their faith into civic and business realms. That mission translates into political influence. In Ohio, former Legatus chapter leader Senator Jerry Cirino sponsored legislation establishing an “intellectual diversity” center at public universities, a move widely criticized as anti-intellectual and partisan (Ohio Capital Journal, 2025). The Cleveland Legatus chapter’s honoring of Bishop Roger Gries underscored how tight these elite networks hold with ecclesial authority (Diocese of Cleveland, 2022).

Together, these four organizations form a system. Each is powerful alone, but together they create a closed circuit of wealth, media, formation, and influence that rivals the Church’s own structures of authority.

EWTN dominates media and catechesis. It frames the conversation and defines belonging. The Napa Institute convenes donors and aligns ideological strategy. Word on Fire packages theology as brand. Legatus channels all of it into policy and leadership.

Seen together, this is not Catholicism as lived by parishes, dioceses, or religious communities. It is Catholicism controlled by money: narrower, louder, wealthier, and less free.

This is a very particular Catholicism: wealthy, male, conservative, and white. It excludes women’s leadership, sidelines immigrant and global voices, and narrows theological diversity into ideological conformity. As Politico observed, U.S. Catholic networks exported this hard-right posture globally, fueling resistance to Pope Francis and spreading a homogenized identity of what it means to be Catholic (Politico, 2025).

The damage is not just institutional. It is deeply personal. I encounter faithful Catholics whose spiritual lives are confined by this boxed vision. They are told there is only one way to be faithful, were pressured to mistrust Pope Francis, encouraged to see fellow Catholics as opponents. In the name of orthodoxy, imagination is silenced.

The problem also occurs inside these institutions. In 2022, multiple staff resigned from Word on Fire amid reports of a “boys’ club” workplace culture and mishandled misconduct allegations (NCR, 2022). Two years later, Bishop Barron released a Word on Fire Show episode titled The Fall—and Rise?—of Men (Word on Fire, 2024), praising masculine renewal and even referring to men as ”often vilified by secular culture as ‘toxic’ merely for existing.” The contrast is striking. A ministry that sold itself as a refuge for men revealed itself as exclusionary and secretive. Their rhetoric about strength and generosity collapsed under their internal culture.

The through line is clear. Concentrated wealth and media power are reshaping Catholicism in the image of a few organizations. Donors believe they are supporting the Church, but in reality they are supporting brands and networks operating outside episcopal oversight. Their claim to defend the faith became, in practice, a force that undermined it.

Catholicism ought to be bigger, a living tradition marked by diversity, dialogue, and discernment. But wealth and media are flattening it. The Church shrinks even as its megaphone grows.

They say you should not meet your heroes. That may be true. But meeting your references helped me see how much is at stake when the Catholic voice is controlled by money, and how urgent it is to reclaim that voice for all.

Thanks for reading Every Knee Shall Bend! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Explainer: The story behind Pope Francis’ beef with EWTN — America Magazine (2021)
The man behind Catholic U.’s largest donation ever — Catholic World Report (2016)
Cleveland Legatus chapter honors Bishop Gries for two decades of service — Diocese of Cleveland (2022)
Napa, Koch funding sparks backlash at Notre Dame — National Catholic Reporter (2021)
Multiple resignations at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire after allegations from staffers — National Catholic Reporter (2022)
The Catholic Brand Is Under New Ownership — National Catholic Reporter (2023)
Head of Ohio State’s intellectual diversity center provides updates to Ohio Senate — Ohio Capital Journal (2025)
The ultra conservatives wanting to make the Vatican great again — Politico (2025)
The Fall—and Rise?—of Men — Word on Fire (2024)

When Worship Becomes Weaponized

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 14:02:41 GMT

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

“We’re not just singing songs—we’re sounding the alarm of our faith.” That is how Sean Feucht has built his career, and it is what makes his concerts more than music. A former Bethel Church musician and failed congressional candidate, he has recast himself as both revivalist and culture warrior. His image is carefully curated: long hair, evangelical charisma, and the consistent framing of himself as a martyr whenever his events are challenged. That posture makes him dangerous. His brand of praise is inseparable from politics, and the stage he carries from city to city is less about song than power. What looks like worship is also a rally. What sounds like revival is also recruitment. He embodies the politics of persecution on which this movement depends, presenting himself as both victim and warrior while channeling political energy through the language of worship.

Seattle saw this dynamic in sharp relief. Thousands of worshippers gathered downtown for one of Feucht’s outdoor concerts. Across the street, protesters held signs and blared kazoos to drown out the music. Feucht posted videos of the clash online, casting it as proof of hostility to Christianity. For his audience, the opposition was not just background noise but evidence that they were on the frontlines of a spiritual war.

That framing is deliberate. Feucht thrives on conflict. When his Canadian tour was canceled earlier this year, he didn’t chalk it up to business disputes. He called it persecution, warning of creeping tyranny and anti-Christian bias. What could have been a logistical failure became a rallying cry. The politics of persecution turns every obstacle into validation.

This strategy is not unique to Feucht. Christian nationalism has long depended on stories of believers under siege. From Cold War rhetoric about “godless communism” to today’s talk of “attacks on religious freedom,” persecution is a narrative that binds communities together. What Feucht adds is the performance and his “persecution” gets not only described but staged, recorded, and monetized. The louder the protest, the more compelling the story.

And there is money behind it. Investigations into Feucht’s nonprofit networks reveal significant donations routed through organizations like the Great Commission Foundation in Canada. Far from a scrappy grassroots revival, these concerts are sustained by donor pipelines and political allies.

Conservative media completes the loop. Fox News framed Feucht’s Seattle rally as worship under siege by intolerant activists. They offered no background or context into Sean Feucht other than that of the poor musician. Viewers weren’t just seeing a concert — they were watching a very familiar story where Christians were cast as victims and cultural liberals as aggressors. That narrative is sticky. Persecution, once broadcast, becomes proof.

The power of this politics lies in what it produces. Persecution stories forge identity. They energize participation. They delegitimize dissent by casting critics not as neighbors but as enemies of God. They create a community where citizenship and faith collapse into one.

Feucht is not the first to play this role. Revivalism in America has always blurred the line between religion and politics, from the Second Great Awakening’s role in fueling abolition and women’s rights movements to the Cold War evangelism of Billy Graham. This is pattern historians like Nathan Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity, argue is central to how faith movements have shaped public life. But his version is calibrated for an era of social media, polarized politics, and Christian nationalism. His concerts are not just worship but public theater, dramatizing the claim that Christianity is under siege and must fight back.

Faith shaping leaders and communities is not itself a danger. Many of America’s most important reform movements grew from religious conviction. What makes the current moment different is the way exclusionary narratives are elevated above empathy. The rhetoric of persecution and othering transforms faith into a zero-sum contest, where the presence of different beliefs, or no belief at all, is cast as a threat. None of this is illegal, and many of the actors may be animated by sincerely held convictions. But when those convictions are mobilized as battle cries, amplified through networks of money and media, the effect is not pluralism but division on a massive scale.

That is the warning. The politics of persecution conditions citizens to see democracy itself as hostile territory. It recasts pluralism as threat and disagreement as oppression. When every critique is persecution, the only legitimate response is resistance. And when worship becomes resistance, faith is no longer simply expressed — it is weaponized.

Gun Violence is a Pastoral Issue

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 18:01:28 GMT

Photo by Jomarc Nicolai Cala on Unsplash

Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among American children and adolescents, with more than 48,000 lives lost every year. Yet Catholic leadership in the United States has not built a sustained response to this epidemic. Bishops consistently organize advocacy campaigns, pastoral letters, and lobbying structures around abortion. On gun violence the pattern is different: grief is expressed, prayers are offered, and then the cycle fades without long-term institutional action.

Leadership studies draw a distinction between transformational and transactional leadership. Transformational leaders inspire sustained action and courage in the face of crisis. Transactional leaders rely on symbolic gestures or one-time responses. When it comes to abortion, the bishops act in transformational ways, mobilizing structures and communities for decades. On gun violence, their leadership remains transactional, issuing statements that lack the infrastructure to support real change.

The August 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis illustrated this imbalance. Two children were killed and seventeen parishioners wounded during morning Mass. Archbishop William Lori, speaking for the U.S. bishops, offered a heartfelt statement of sorrow. Yet Catholics were left to ask where the same persistence and organized action could be found that the Church routinely brings to abortion.

To be fair, there are bishops and dioceses pointing the way forward. After the massacre in Uvalde, Cardinal Blase Cupich asked a piercing question: “What do we love more, our instruments of death or our future?” In Baltimore, parishes have organized gun buybacks. The Michigan Catholic Conference supported new laws requiring safe storage and universal background checks. After Buffalo and Uvalde, the U.S. bishops called on Congress to strengthen background checks and framed gun violence as a public health crisis. These are powerful steps. They deserve recognition. They are also far too isolated. What remains missing is the infrastructure that would make them the organizing center of Catholic public life rather than exceptions to the rule.

The partisan dynamic is impossible to ignore. Gun regulation has been coded in American politics as a Democratic issue, and bishops often justify their quiet approach by saying they must avoid appearing partisan. Yet abortion is just as politically charged, aligned squarely with Republican priorities, and that has not prevented the Church from investing decades of advocacy, money, and organizational resources into it. The difference is revealing. By choosing silence on gun violence, bishops are not avoiding partisanship, they are embracing it. They have taken the risk of aligning with one side of the political spectrum while declining to challenge the other.

This selective courage shows how American politics has shaped the Church’s public witness. The bishops claim neutrality but in practice mirror the contours of partisan debate. The result is a distorted ethic of life where political calculations determine which threats deserve urgency. Pastoral leadership cannot be measured by partisan comfort. It must be measured by the willingness to defend life consistently, even when it means confronting entrenched political interests.

You can see the imbalance in practice. Diocesan offices and Parishes routinely mobilize seminarians and parishioners to pray outside abortion clinics and those vigils have become public symbols of Catholic witness. Yet where is that same presence outside gun shows, firearms conventions, or stores that profit from the sale of weapons? Why is there courage to confront and pray for vulnerable women but not those seeking to purchase firearms designed for killing? The answer tells volumes about partisanship. The Church is comfortable showing public opposition in a setting already aligned with Republican priorities, because it reinforces rather than challenges partisan expectations. Confronting the gun industry would mean stepping into conflict with Republican-aligned interests, and so silence becomes the safer choice.

Gun violence will remain a defining test of Catholic leadership. Sympathy matters, but it is not enough. Catholics deserve leaders who demonstrate a consistent witness to life and who embody the courage required of shepherds in a time of crisis. Until that happens, silence will continue to speak louder than words. However, on this issue, we don’t need to whisper.

Editor’s Note:
I write this as someone who has a complicated love of his Catholicism. After years working in progressive politics, I converted as an adult, took time away in frustration, and have since returned. I am not a perfect Catholic, but that history makes me both hopeful and restless. Hopeful because I know the depth of Catholic teaching on life, restless because I see how unevenly it is lived out.

Back to School with Christian Nationalism

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 15:45:27 GMT

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

The new school year has always been a time when families focus on teachers, supplies, and schedules. This year, however, it’s also about what children will see hanging above their desks. In Texas, every public school classroom must now display the Ten Commandments in bold print, legible from anywhere in the room. In Oklahoma, the state has ordered schools to teach both the Bible and the Commandments as core instruction. These aren’t isolated quirks of local politics. They are coordinated efforts to fuse public education with a Christian identity that excludes as much as it includes.

Supporters frame these mandates as heritage. State officials argue that the Ten Commandments are foundational to law, morality, and Western civilization. “Students should know right from wrong,” Texas lawmakers insist. But that argument collapses under scrutiny. There is no single “Christian” version of the Commandments. Jewish and Catholic traditions number them differently, while Protestant renderings dominate legislation. For Jewish parents in Houston who have joined lawsuits against the law, this is not neutral moral education. It is one sect’s theology being presented as civic truth.

This is where the broader pattern becomes visible. Christian nationalism has always sought to make the classroom a battlefield for identity. If children can be taught that America itself rests on explicitly Christian foundations, then pluralism can be redefined as a threat rather than a strength. In that framing, civic belonging is conditioned on religious conformity.

The leaders advancing these laws are explicit about their goals. Oklahoma’s superintendent Ryan Walters has repeatedly declared that schools must return to “biblical foundations.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton insists that the Commandments represent “our heritage” and has pledged to enforce the law statewide despite ongoing court battles. Some districts, like Conroe ISD, are already moving forward with displays despite a federal injunction. Groups like the Liberty Library Project and conservative women’s clubs are mobilizing private donations to ensure that every classroom has the mandated posters. This is not an afterthought. It is an organized movement.

Families and educators see what is happening. Muslim and Jewish students describe the sense of exclusion when their classrooms display another tradition’s sacred text as the standard for all. Parents have raised practical questions, like who should explain “adultery” to a third grader, but their deeper concern is about civic equality. If the walls of a public school declare that one faith is official, then students outside that faith learn that their belonging is conditional.

This moment fits a larger cultural and political trend. In Louisiana, a federal court blocked a nearly identical law last year, ruling it unconstitutional. But the setback has not stopped legislators in Texas, Oklahoma, and beyond from pushing similar bills. Christian nationalist thinkers see schools as the lever to reshape public life for generations. The Ten Commandments are not just about the text. They are symbols of who gets to define morality, authority, and order in a pluralistic democracy.

Opponents, from civil liberties groups to interfaith coalitions, argue that these laws are less about heritage than about power. They represent an attempt to collapse the distinction between religion and the state, with children as the proving ground. As Rabbi Joshua Fixler, one of the plaintiffs in the Texas lawsuit, put it: posting a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom is like hanging a neon sign that flashes “non-Christians not welcome.”

This is what makes the trend so significant. It is not simply about local culture wars or symbolic gestures. It is about defining who belongs in America, one classroom at a time. When the state enforces one tradition as the moral baseline for all, democracy itself is reshaped.

This is the warning. If Christian nationalism can normalize itself through schools, spaces meant to belong to every child, it signals a future where the rules of belonging are written not by democratic consensus, but by theological decree.

"Maybe We Like a Dictator"

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 15:02:14 GMT

Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

Pete Hegseth presents himself as a warrior for God. His tattoo reading Deus Vult, the medieval battle cry of the Crusades, adorns his arm. In his book American Crusade, he declared that leftists and Islamists stand in permanent conflict with "Americanism" and suggested that the only response is a holy war to preserve freedom. This type of rhetoric, the church as the last bastion of “Western Civilization” in a world that has gone towards multi-cultarism, pluralism, and secularism has been taken up by many men like Hegseth.

However, instead of just being someone in your church or that extremely online acquaintance, as Secretary of Defense Hegseth has brought that militant Christianity into the Pentagon. He hosted a Christian prayer service during working hours, invoking divine authority while praising Trump as divinely appointed. Meanwhile, recruitment videos emerging from the Pentagon blend scripture with combat imagery, signaling a melding of spiritual and military identity that veterans warn is dividing the ranks.

Hegseth is not acting in isolation. He belongs to a church network, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, co-founded by Doug Wilson, committed to a rigid patriarchal theology. Wilson has argued that women should not vote, must be subject to male authority, and that homosexuality is sinful. Hegseth reposted Wilson’s “All of Christ for All of Life” slogan, signaling theological alignment

This is not religion. It is a vision of faith that crowns masculinity as sacred. Within that worldview, this Gospel of the Strong Man, power is virtue, prayer tools are weapons, patriarchy is divine order, and Christians are warriors first.

Donald Trump has embraced this. In late August 2025, he signed an executive order empowering Hegseth to develop specialized National Guard units trained to quell domestic unrest and enforced under Title 32 without local consent. The order authorizes rapid-response forces—reportedly 600 troops ready to deploy within an hour. Trump even floated deploying troops to cities like Chicago and New York, bypassing state officials and framing his own authority as necessary in “crime emergencies” that often do not exist.

In Washington, D.C., Trump declared a public-safety emergency under the Home Rule Act, jumped the city’s police under federal control, and deployed 800 Guard troops—all while violent crime was at a 30-year low. Critics argue this federalization, unique to D.C., sets a dangerous precedent for other cities.

Trump’s public framing intensifies the strong-man mythology. At one rally he mused that “maybe we like a dictator,” calling it smart leadership rather than authoritarianism.

What emerges is a dangerous blend: presidential authority wrapped in crusader imagery, reinforced by patriarchal theology, and deployed through the machinery of the military. It signals that true strength is cast as masculine, divinely sanctioned, and unbound by democratic limits.

This is the warning. In a democracy, if this mindset has the numbers, the seats, and the power, it gets to interpret the rules. That is the gospel of the strong man.

The Cost of Turning Prayer Into Politics

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 14:03:16 GMT

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Spiritual warfare language has long been part of evangelical subculture. For most, it remains metaphor—prayers against unseen forces, sermons about moral struggle. But recent events show how quickly metaphor can become literal and how easily that language can be absorbed into politics.

Earlier this summer, a shooting in Minnesota revealed the darker side of this rhetoric. Vance Boelter, immersed in teaching from the New Apostolic Reformation, believed he was living in an apocalyptic battle. What began as prayer language for many in his circles became for him a justification for violence. The case is extreme, but it illustrates how spiritual warfare metaphors can condition people to see their neighbors as enemies in a cosmic struggle.

Few scholars have tracked this movement more closely than Matthew D. Taylor. In his recent book The Violent Take It by Force (2024), Taylor lays out how the New Apostolic Reformation has grown from a cluster of charismatic churches into a sprawling network with national political ambitions. He describes how self-proclaimed apostles and prophets claim authority not only over congregations but over governments, and how spiritual warfare language has become a political rallying cry. For Taylor, the movement represents a “spiritual oligarchy,” where leaders insist they speak directly for God in matters of culture and policy.

Taylor has also worked to make this research accessible outside academic circles. His podcast Charismatic Revival Fury offers a gripping primer on how the NAR rose to prominence and how its networks helped fuel the mobilization around January 6. Taken together, his work helps explain why rhetoric that once sounded like harmless revival talk now echoes in the language of militancy, with real consequences for American politics and public life.

Taylor’s scholarship has shaped the way I approach my own research into Christian nationalism and leadership. His framing of the NAR as a spiritual oligarchy offers a powerful lens for understanding how apocalyptic rhetoric and spiritual warfare metaphors are being weaponized to mobilize followers. It is a reminder that this is not fringe language but an influential current in American religious and political life — one that demands careful, public attention.

Other scholars point to the interpretive side of the story. In An Inspired Word in Season: Reading the Bible Responsibly in a Polarized World (2025), Thomas M. Bolin examines how Scripture itself is repeatedly invoked to sanctify political positions. He argues that Christians must learn to “read the Bible responsibly in a polarized world,” resisting the temptation to weaponize verses in support of partisan battles. If Taylor helps us see how leaders mobilize networks with apocalyptic urgency, Bolin shows how biblical texts become the raw material of polarization itself. Both perspectives illuminate why language, metaphor, and interpretation matter for democracy.

At the same time, Donald Trump’s movement has adopted this language and reshaped it into a broader political faith. Scholars describe it as a “religion of the nation” a civic theology where loyalty to America, defined by white, heterosexual, Christian identity, takes precedence over traditional religious practice. The theological details matter less than the rituals of allegiance: rallies, chants, and symbolic acts that fuse faith with nationalism.

The connection between these stories is not accidental. The spiritual battle frame provides the intensity; the national religion frame provides the structure. Together they transform politics into a sacred mission. A disagreement about policy becomes a matter of spiritual fidelity. Violence, in rare but tragic cases, becomes imaginable.

Christian nationalism thrives when political identity is cast as divine purpose and support for privileging Christianity in public life consistently correlates with acceptance of anti-democratic measures if they are seen as protecting the faith. Boelter’s story illustrates one endpoint of that logic; Trump’s rallies illustrate another. Both depend on the fusion of religion and nationalism, presented as spiritual destiny.

There is a cost for the church. When faith is enlisted into a nationalist project, dissent becomes treasonous. Christians who object to the rhetoric of holy war or who reject Trump as a spiritual figure are cast as weak, compromised, or even demonic. The internal diversity of American Christianity is erased in favor of a singular political theology. This reshaping of the faith community is not just cultural; it carries implications for democracy itself. If opponents are cast as enemies of God, compromise becomes impossible and pluralism becomes intolerable. When that view extends beyond church walls, it fuels restrictions on curricula, attacks on pluralist institutions, and efforts to privilege Christianity in law and policy.

What do you see in your own communities? Where do you hear prayer language shaping politics, and how do you think it affects our ability to live together across difference?

We are watching in real time as political strategy becomes religious devotion, and religious devotion becomes political strategy. The task is not only to trace the pattern but to recognize what is at stake for democracy, faith, and the possibility of common life.

Editor’s Note: An Inspired Word in Season is published by Liturgical Press, where I work on the periodicals side. I purchased my own copy and was not paid or asked to write about it. I highlight it here because I find the work especially relevant to this moment and valuable as an academic resource.

When Neighbors Become "Evil"

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 14:03:08 GMT

This is a special editor’s note about the mission and direction of Every Knee Shall Bend. I hope you’ll indulge this personal story about “why we write”.

I did something in 2019 that I had wanted to do my entire life: I entered the Catholic Church.

I came from a family of “nones.” We were not atheists convinced that God was dead. We just never cared much about religion. Church was never part of my life. But in 2019, I joined the Church because I was drawn to its mystery, its lineage, and its history.

Looking back, the seeds were planted when I was a kid at a Catholic middle school in suburban Detroit. It was the first place where I felt safe and where order gave me space to learn. I was the first in my family to attend college, and it took me twenty years to earn my undergraduate degree because I was working full-time to make it happen.

Most of that career was spent in politics. I ran for office. I managed campaigns. I trained people in how to stand up for the most disenfranchised members of our society. I cared about compassion, even when it was considered a losing message. That conviction has never left me. It shapes my life as a doctoral candidate, where my Jesuit training calls it cura personalis: care for the whole person.

As a researcher, I am drawn to numbers and patterns. I want to know what moves and motivates people. What are they telling us, even when they do not realize they are saying it? That is the lens I bring to the study of Christian nationalism.

The photo at the top of this post is from my own neighborhood. Someone took the time to hand-paint a giant sign declaring that opponents of Trump/Vance 2024 were “evil.” That word was not directed at corruption or violence. It was aimed at neighbors. People who mow their lawns a few houses away. People who live in the same community but hold different political views.

Seeing that sign was a jolt I had not felt since January 6th.

It made visible how the language of spiritual warfare has seeped into our daily lives. Politics becomes a struggle of good versus evil, and disagreement is cast as demonic. This is not just rhetoric, it reshapes how communities see one another. It convinces people that the family across the street is not just wrong, but dangerous. That is the kind of transformation Christian nationalism brings, and it is why I believe it must be understood and resisted.

Recent survey research underscores how timely this conversation is. The Pew Religious Landscape Study, released in 2025, found that the share of Americans identifying as religiously unaffiliated continues to grow, even as the overall decline of Christianity appears to have slowed. That mix of decline and persistence shows why struggles over religion in public life feel so sharp. The nation is plural, and pluralism is the condition in which these tensions unfold.

People often misunderstand the problem. Some think any critique of Christian nationalism is an attack on religion itself. I do not believe that. I am a religious person. I believe. My concern is not religion. My concern is what happens when faith becomes supremacist. What makes this country beautiful is its pluralism, the right to practice or not practice, the refusal to privilege one tradition above the rest.

That is what this Substack is about. When you read here, I want you to leave with a clear grasp of the facts on the ground. I want you to know you are not alone. I want you to have the language to talk with others in your church and community about the dangers of Christian nationalism, and about how fragile pluralism really is.

Pluralism is not just a political arrangement. It is a cornerstone of what makes this country unique. It is what has made us a light to others across history. And when that light begins to flicker, it is our responsibility to supply the oxygen to keep it alive.

This is just the beginning. If this resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe and share this newsletter with others who care about faith, democracy, and pluralism. Your voice matters in this conversation. Leave a comment, tell me what you are seeing in your own community, and join me in paying attention together.

Oklahoma is Writing a Lesson Plan for Christian Nationalism

Andrew Ambrose Mackey — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 12:02:53 GMT

Oklahoma’s top education official isn’t just rewriting the curriculum, he’s rewriting the boundaries between church and state.

I have been following Oklahoma for months because it offers a clear view of how an ideology moves from rhetoric to policy. The pattern is not subtle. State Superintendent Ryan Walters directed schools to incorporate the Bible in grades 5 through 12, warning of consequences for districts that did not comply. He issued a request for proposals for Bibles and Bible-led instructional materials, actions that were paused by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in March 2025.

The same office advanced new social studies standards that instruct students to look for discrepancies in the 2020 election. These curriculum changes incorporate debunked claims as subject for classroom analysis, and have faced immediate backlash from educators and lawmakers.

There is a broader agenda at play. An attempt to establish the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, was blocked. The U.S. Supreme Court ended in a 4–4 tie in May 2025, which left intact a lower court ruling against it while not setting a national precedent.

Walters also tried to normalize school-sponsored devotion. In November 2024, he directed districts to show students a video in which he announced a new department of religious freedom and patriotism and invited them to join him in prayer for Donald Trump. School districts pushed back, and the state attorney general said Walters lacked authority to make it mandatory.

I read these developments alongside scholarship on Christian nationalism, which shows that higher levels of Christian nationalist sentiment strongly correlate with support for privileging Christianity in public life even when it undermines pluralism.

In Oklahoma, the political structure helps explain how these policies advance with limited institutional resistance. The state has a Republican trifecta and veto-proof supermajorities in both legislative chambers, lowering the political cost of testing constitutional boundaries which we see in these initiatives.

There is also a cultural dynamic at work. Many people of faith are uncomfortable pushing back against policies presented as “religious freedom,” even when they apply only to one faith tradition. The Bible is framed as cultural heritage, with no parallel inclusion of the Quran, Torah, Bhagavad Gita, or sacred texts of other faiths. This is not pluralism: it’s preference under the guise of civics, reinforced through legal and social pressure.

So I keep returning to these urgent questions:

What does this mean for the country? States borrow. If Bible mandates, prayer videos, and election-doubt standards survive in one state, they will travel, adapted and repackaged in other conservative-controlled legislatures.

What does this mean for Christians who see these moves as unpatriotic or unchristian? Many feel silenced and reluctant to oppose policies that claim religious legitimacy. That silence cedes ground to ideological takeover. It is politically convenient for many who subscribe to conservative theology, whether Catholic, non-denominational, or Protestant, because the framing makes opposition feel like betrayal. Education policy is presented as part of a cosmic struggle. Leaders draw on imagery from Revelation, speak of battles against principalities and demonic forces, and portray their opponents as agents of evil.

This framing changes the nature of the debate. A disagreement over curriculum becomes a test of spiritual fidelity. Believers are told they are living in the Acts of the Apostles or standing on the front lines of a holy war. It creates a sense of urgency and excitement, as if every school board meeting is another step in a sacred mission. Samuel Perry’s research shows that Christian nationalism thrives when political identity is fused with religious purpose, especially when leaders frame their cause as divinely mandated. When the stakes are cast in these terms, compromise looks like surrender and neutrality is treated as complicity. In that environment, resisting the agenda is not just politically risky, it is framed as spiritually dangerous.

What happens to the church when faith becomes indistinguishable from a partisan political project? What does this mean for pluralism in the Trump era? The Supreme Court’s tie over the charter school case bought time, not resolution. Litigation and political maneuvering will continue in classrooms, governance structures, and funding mechanisms. The stakes are public education and civic equality.

This newsletter begins here because Oklahoma is a laboratory. I will trace these policies, the networks spreading them, and the research decoding them. Clarity and evidence are our tools. If we notice the pattern early, we can question it with precision and choose a different path for our schools and our country.

Further Reading

If you want to see the reporting and public records that informed this post, these articles and rulings offer essential context. They cover the Bible mandate, curriculum changes, legal fights over religious charter schools, and the broader political strategies at play in Oklahoma.

Every Knee Shall Bend

Faith, Fear, and the Free Gift of Propaganda

Further Reading & Sources

The Politics of Fear and the Liturgy of Hope

Further Reading & Sources

Picking Up Serpents

When facts are replaced with faith claims

The frustration of engaging online

Why meeting fire with fire fails

Ways forward

Picking up serpents, again

Further Reading & Sources

When Christian Nationalism Makes Violence Holy

Further Reading & Sources

The Pentagon is Preaching

Civil religion or Christian nationalism?

Why this messaging matters

Personnel is policy

DHS and ICE as a mirror

A test for pluralism

Further Reading

The Sacralization of Free Speech

Contrasts in Tone: From Floyd to Kirk

Passion, Selectivity, and Public Witness

References

What Dutch Sheets Won’t Admit About Identity Politics

References

The Money Magisterium: Wealth, Media, and the Narrowing of the Catholic Church

Further Reading

When Worship Becomes Weaponized

Further Reading

Gun Violence is a Pastoral Issue

Further Reading

Back to School with Christian Nationalism

Further Reading

"Maybe We Like a Dictator"

Further Reading

The Cost of Turning Prayer Into Politics

Further Reading (and Listening)

When Neighbors Become "Evil"

Further Reading

Oklahoma is Writing a Lesson Plan for Christian Nationalism