S6, Ep. 17: Christian nationalism and the Texas public sphere

What’s the difference between religious privilege and religious freedom? How does Christian nationalism spread? Why do so many ideas that start in Texas expand to other parts of the country? On this episode, we bring you a special panel discussion on Christian nationalism in the Texas public sphere, recorded live on April 8. It features BJC Executive Director (and Respecting Religion co-host) Amanda Tyler, scholar David Brockman, professor Mark Chancey, and journalist Robert Downen. Moderated by Jack Jenkins, it was part of an all-day event focused on telling the story of religion in Texas through journalism, hosted by the Texas Tribune in partnership with Religion News Service, the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life, and Southern Methodist University’s Religious Studies department.

SHOW NOTES

Segment 1 (starting at 00:33): Introducing today’s show and the panelists

Learn more about the Texas Tribune’s April 8 event titled “Telling the story of religion in Texas through journalism” on the website of the Texas Tribune. The website page dedicated to the event includes YouTube videos of each speaker and panel presentation. 

The day-long event was held in partnership with the Texas Tribune, Religion News Service, the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life, and Southern Methodist University’s Religious Studies department.

 

Segment 2 (starting at 02:51): Panel presentation

You can watch a video of this presentation on YouTube, including a Q&A following the conversation.

The panelists are:

• Amanda Tyler, executive director of BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty), lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, and co-host of this podcast
• Dr. David Brockman, a non-resident scholar in religion and public policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute who also serves as an adjunct professor at Texas Christian University
• Dr. Mark Chancey, professor of religious studies at SMU
• Robert Downen, senior writer at “Texas Monthly” 

The moderator is Jack Jenkins, national reporter at Religion News Service.

NOTE: After this panel was recorded, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did sign legislation requiring every Texas public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments. Read more in this piece by Sameea Kamal for the Texas Tribune: Texas will require public school classrooms to display Ten Commandments under bill signed by governor

Amanda and Holly talked about the Texas Bible curriculum in episode 2 of this season: Oklahoma and Texas try to force Bible teaching in public schools

Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC’s generous donors. Your gift to BJC is tax-deductible, and you can support these conversations with a gift to BJC.

Transcript: Season 6, Episode 17:   Christian nationalism and the Texas public sphere (some parts of this transcript have been edited for clarity)

DR. MARK CHANCEY: News flash: The Ten Commandments are actually religious in nature. Right? You know, when it starts off and says, “I am the Lord your God,” some people would say that seems to be a religious claim.

 

Segment 1: Introducing today’s show and the panelists (starting at 00:33)

HOLLY: Welcome to Respecting Religion, a BJC podcast where we look at religion, the law, and what’s at stake for faith freedom today. I’m Holly Hollman, general counsel of BJC.

While we prepare to review the Supreme Court’s final decisions at the end of the term — waiting for those few last decisions to come down — we wanted to bring you a special program for today’s show. It’s a panel discussion of Christian nationalism in Texas, featuring my co-host Amanda Tyler.

While this is in Texas and about Texas, the discussion has implications far beyond the Lone Star State. The panel was part of an event hosted by the Texas Tribune, focused on telling the story of religion in Texas through journalism. It was held on April 8 in partnership with Religion News Service, the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life, and Southern Methodist University’s Religious Studies department.

The full-day program offered a variety of speakers and panels that examined the religious diversity of Texas and how journalism shapes the public’s understanding of faith. The panel you are about to hear was the first panel of the day, titled “Christian nationalism and the Texas public sphere.”

It featured Amanda, along with three other guests: Dr. David Brockman, a non-resident scholar in religion and public policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute who also serves as an adjunct professor at Texas Christian University; Dr. Mark Chancey, professor of religious studies at SMU and someone we’ve worked with at BJC quite a bit through the decades, especially in recent work to stop Bible-based public school curriculum in Texas; and Robert Downen, who is a senior writer at the publication Texas Monthly.

The conversation was moderated by Jack Jenkins, who’s a national reporter at Religion News Service.

This panel’s a great chance to hear from people working to identify and root out Christian nationalism in a variety of contexts, and it’s not limited to issues just in Texas — you’ll hear why. They do get into some topics that we’ve discussed in previous episodes of this podcast. If you’d like to watch the program, it’s also available on YouTube, and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

But let’s get to the discussion. After the music, the first voice you’ll hear is moderator Jack Jenkins as he kicks off the conversation.

 

Segment 2: Panel presentation (starting at 02:51)

MR. JACK JENKINS: I’m just going to go ahead and jump in, because the great thing about this group of people is that they’re experts on the eternal rabbit hole that is Christian nationalism, so we — I will ask questions, but it’s very possible we could just talk about this for days.

So to lead off with that, I wanted to start with Amanda. You know, this panel is on Christian nationalism, and while a lot of people here are probably aware of what that is and what that looks like, there are a few different definitions floating around, and so for anyone who doesn’t have — you know, spend the amount of time that this panel does on this issue, could you help us understand what Christian nationalism is? And other panelists, feel free to jump in on some minutiae here if you want to.

AMANDA TYLER: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll say, this definition is something that I’ve worked with at Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty — or BJC — and specifically the campaign that we lead called Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

We define Christian nationalism as a political ideology and a cultural framework that tries to merge American and Christian identities into one. Or put another way, Christian nationalism suggests that to be a “real” American — or in the context of our conversation here today, a “real” Texan — that one must be a Christian, and not just any kind of Christian but usually a Christian who holds fundamentalist religious beliefs that are often in line with conservative political priorities.

Now, hear me well. Just to hold fundamentalist religious beliefs or just to hold conservative political priorities does not necessarily mean that one is embracing Christian nationalism. But to believe that to be a real American that one has to agree with one on their religious beliefs and on their conservative political priorities, that is a definition of Christian nationalism.

I don’t think that we can understand Christian nationalism in the U.S. context without acknowledging and understanding the overlap with white supremacy and racial subjugation. And so often — I heard Robby Jones earlier [during a speech at the same event] used “white Christian nationalism.” I use “white Christian nationalism” and “Christian nationalism” interchangeably in the U.S. context.

So Christian nationalism both creates and perpetuates a sense of cultural belonging that’s limited to the very narrow group of people who held full rights of citizenship at the beginning of the country. That’s white Protestant Christian men who owned property. Christian nationalism suggests that still today, those are the people who are most deserving of full citizenship rights and full belonging in the U.S. context.

Christian nationalism is not new. It’s a relatively new thing to be studied in social science, and it’s a relatively new term for a very old idea. And, you know, I think in the world context, Christian nationalism dates back to the time of Constantine. To the U.S. context, it dates back before the founding to the doctrine of discovery. And in the U.S. context as well — we have so many examples of white Christian nationalism from the past — I think most starkly the KKK being an example of Christian nationalism, with the toxic mix of violence, of Christianity, of white supremacy, all rolled into one.

Just some markers of Christian nationalism that really correlate with the statements from the PRRI polling, so this is how we can measure it. Markers are a heavy reliance on this mythological founding of the country as a, quote/unquote, “Christian nation,” not in a demographic sense but rather in a sense that it was founded by Christians in order to privilege Christianity in law and policy. Of course, this is a departure from the founding principles of the country that are founded on disestablishment of religion, on keeping government neutral when it comes to matters of government.

And as a Christian myself, I want to talk about how Christian nationalism is also not reflective of Christianity, the religion. It is a gross distortion of the teachings of Jesus, Jesus who was always on the side of the marginalized and the oppressed. Christian nationalism, on the other hand, is all about power, about amassing power, holding on to power at all costs. And so it uses a white Jesus as a mascot for power, but it actually doesn’t reflect the teachings of Jesus.

And then finally just to think about how is Christian nationalism different from patriotism, patriotism being a love of country that can be expressed in a number of different ways, including loving our country enough to tell the truth about it and its history; Christian nationalism being about an allegiance to country and to power that requires allegiance over everything else, including religious convictions.

So hopefully those kind of parameters of what we mean when we talk about Christian nationalism provide a good basis for the rest of the conversation.

MR. JENKINS: Thank you. And as you can imagine, debates around Christian nationalism often involve heated debates around the separation of church and state, both a cultural and social norm, as well as a kind of legal principle that’s shown up in Supreme Court rulings.

David, I want to ask you: Could you speak to a little bit about how church-state separation interplays with Christian nationalism, particularly, you know, how the perspective of Christian nationalists themselves can butt up against that principle.

DR. DAVID BROCKMAN: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that question. As Amanda has very ably discussed here, Christian nationalism is kind of a multifaceted movement. There are a lot of aspects to it. The one I want to emphasize is the notion among Christian nationalists that Christianity should somehow be privileged in American law and public policy, okay that particularly. And that’s where it runs up really against the concept of separation of church and state. In fact, it runs headlong into the concept of separation of church and state.

So the notion is that Christianity should somehow be privileged, promoted in United States law and public policy, and that it should somehow be the religious identity of the nation, as Robby Jones put it in his keynote address. I want to tell you a little story here. I think we’re going to be talking about public education shortly.

Here in Texas, as you probably know, we have a state board of education which really determines a lot of the education policy in the state, and for years — he’s not with the board any longer, but for years — there was a board member, a member of the state board of education, named David Bradley who rather famously would pull out his wallet, take out a hundred dollar bill, and say, I’ll give this hundred dollar bill to anyone who can find the words “separation of church and state” in the Constitution. Okay.

Well, so that was a very safe bet, because the words “separation of church and state” are not in the Constitution, and David Bradley, a Christian nationalist, was attempting to make that point very graphically with his hundred dollar bill tactic, we’ll put it.

Another tactic that Christian nationalists sometimes use to deflect the problem of separation of church and state is to classify separation of church and state as a myth. That’s the tactic used by David Barton, an amateur historian who’s written a lot about Christian nationalism. He’s one of the major apologists, and he’s from right here in Texas, in fact, from Aledo, Texas.

So before I get to the tactics that Christian nationalists use to either deny or redefine Christian nationalism to allow for the advocacy of their position, which is to privilege Christianity in some sense in law and public policy, let me first talk about what I mean by Christian nationalism — I’m sorry — what I mean by separation of church and state — what I mean by separation of church and state.

It’s just a very minimal definition here, one that’s broadly recognized in the Constitution. It’s a principle like separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism. Those are also not found anywhere — the words are not found anywhere in the Constitution. But they’re there. Liberals, conservatives agree on that. Separation of church and state is very much like that, so it’s a constitutional principle.

And you can find it in its most basic form in a couple places. One is in the main body of the Constitution, and that is in the prohibition on religious tests for public office. So that’s one. So you don’t have to confess a belief in the Holy Trinity, for example, in order to serve as secretary of state, let’s say, as in some countries where you have an established church.

The second place, probably more important for our purposes, is the First Amendment to the Constitution, the two religion clauses in that First Amendment, the first, the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing an official or state religion, and secondly, the Free Exercise Clause, which basically, all things being equal, prohibits the government from interfering with the free exercise, people freely exercising their religion.

So these are the aspects, the minimal aspects, of what we call separation of church and state. As with any part of the Constitution, there are lots of different interpretations of that separation of church and state, but it ain’t a myth. Okay. So it’s there. It’s just that — Anyway, let me talk about then how Christian nationalists deal with that, how they confront that. One, of course, is the idea that separation of church and state is a “myth,” Barton’s strategy. Another way is — Thomas Jefferson once used his famous metaphor of a wall of separation of church and state. That was in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. That’s also sometimes used in discussions of separation of church and state.

The father of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Rafael Cruz, an itinerant evangelist, talks about — and a very noted Christian nationalist apologist — talks about the wall of separation as a one-way wall, which I struggle to kind of imagine what that would look like, but, anyway, a one-way wall in which government is supposed to stay out of religion but religion is not supposed to stay out of government. Okay. So it’s only to protect religion from government, not the other way around.

Then there’s another tactic that other Christian nationalists use, this one in particular by the Rev. Robert Jeffress from First Baptist, Dallas, here who argues that when the Founders were talking about religion in the sense of not establishing a religion, they meant Christian denomination. They didn’t mean Christianity. They meant denominations of Christianity, so no particular denomination should be the established denomination, so Presbyterianism then or Methodism, something like that.

Let me just briefly talk about some problems with that, and maybe we can talk about this a little bit more. First of all, I hope that I’ve established that — no pun intended — that separation of church and state is not a myth, first of all, so it has to be confronted. Secondly, the idea that it referred either to a one-way wall or to Christian denominations is contradicted by a lot of different historical evidence.

If you look back at the writings of Madison and Jefferson, for example, you’ll find that I think they really did have a kind of separation of religion and government in mind. I won’t go into that here, as we don’t have time, but I would refer you to some historians on that account, particularly Steven K. Green’s Inventing a Christian America, an excellent book that goes into the history of this. Kathleen Wellman, who’s an SMU faculty member here, has also written about this issue.

But I want to basically talk about kind of what I would call a normative problem with this idea of contradicting separation of church and state, and that has to do with this data that Robby Jones gave us before. At the time of the founding, the United States was already religiously diverse, already many different religious groups, many of which differed drastically over theology, over polity, over ethics, and so forth.

We are even more diverse today, and Christians are now just sort of a slight majority of the population, even here in Texas, nowhere near the 90 percent or so that they probably were in the past. We have about a third of the country who are religiously unaffiliated, and 7 percent, 6 percent, whatever the percentage is of non-Christians.

If the country would have been ungovernable, as James Madison feared, by establishing one particular religion over others back in 1787 or 1789, just imagine how much more ungovernable it would be today to establish one particular religion and one particular slice of one religion as the official religion. So I’m raising that as a real problem for governance in the United States.

MR. JENKINS: Thank you for that. And I want to turn to Rob. You already listed for us several kind of concrete examples here in Texas. But, Rob, you have the unusual distinction of being one of the only reporters that I know of in which Christian nationalism is literally enumerated as part of your beat to cover that. I know you’ve been doing this for a while. If I recall correctly, you were the guy who staked out the building where white nationalists and Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes went in for a meeting.

You’ve been covering this for a while, so two-part question. I’m just curious what you’ve encountered on the ground more recently in your reporting in terms of perspectives on Christian nationalism.

And more specifically, you know, he was talking about David Barton and other figures that I know you’ve like sat next to while doing reporting in the last few months. Here in Texas, you know, many things that have been criticized as Christian nationalism have come up in the state legislature, particularly around education. I know you’ve been doing some reporting around curriculum and some debates around that here in Texas, so I’m curious if you could speak to how Christian nationalism interplays with that as well.

MR. ROBERT DOWNEN: Yeah. I mean, you know, I will defer to Mark on some of the curriculum stuff, because he has so much wonderful stuff to say there. But, you know, just on the ground kind of, I’ve been covering, you know, first with Southern Baptists where you started to see a little bit more of a foray into the Southern Baptist Convention, I think a more normalization in some parts of it, in the more right-wing parts of the SBC towards kind of, I guess, Christian nationalist adjacent. Obviously they have their own history when it comes to their tie-in to groups like Council for National Policy, the Paul Presslers and Paige Pattersons of the world but that’s a whole other conversation.

But, anyway, so, within the Texas GOP, I think, over the last few years, there’s really been a growing, I think, acceptance — I don’t want to say growth in and of itself — of Christian nationalism, but a growing acceptance of the kind of key ideas pushed by the David Bartons and the Robert Jeffresses of the world, you know, this idea of church-state separation being a myth.

But not only that. We’re also seeing a real infusion of, I guess, kind of spiritual warfare, kind of New Apostolic Reformation type language that is really pitting our politics, not just as a question of, you know, a return to Judeo-Christian roots, but as part of this broader cosmic battle, in which your political opponents are not just people who disagree with you on whether or not we should put the Ten Commandments in school, but are, you know, actively evil.

You mentioned Rafael Cruz. He recently testified in favor of a bill in Texas that would require anti-Communist curriculum in schools. And, again, even something like that is not in and of itself on its face Christian nationalist, but the way that it’s framed in these hearings is very overtly — you know, we have to teach about the evils of Communism because Communism is part of a global cabal that is trying to indoctrinate our children as a means of destroying the American church — which is a stand-in for Christianity globally and God’s kingdom on earth.

And we see that same thing with these Ten Commandments bills, the two bills currently in front of the legislature right now involving, you know, requiring the Ten Commandments in schools but also allowing the school districts to set aside prayer time.

Last session we saw a bill that passed that allowed school districts to replace mental health counselors with unlicensed religious chaplains. As Jack and I have both written, that bill was supported by a group who, only a few months prior, had been very open about using school chaplaincies as a tool for evangelism.

And so what we’re seeing really, you know, in Texas particular but I think just across the country, too, is a real not just normalization of Christian nationalism but within the debates around the policies that are advancing that agenda, a kind of a more openness — particularly in the wake of Kennedy, a more openness — to talk about these things not as, you know, under — as religious liberty, but as being overtly Christian-centric.

And, you know, within hearings this legislative session, we’ve seen a number of lawmakers openly talking, citing the numbers about religious decline and talking about these bills as part of a package that would really re-Christianize America in their mind. And I think that that is a really important thing to note, just the way that, you know, everyone on this panel has noticed, too, you know, just the kind of more overt agenda that a lot of these groups have had.

I think that in Texas obviously we have a handful of very, very, very far right billionaires who are funding a lot of this, and, you know, I’m sure we’ll get kind of into this more as well.

But I also do think it’s important to remember that, you know, the kind of, I guess, as a movement, this Christian nationalist movement has really thought in terms of decades, if not even longer, and have been able to really just incrementally push the envelope, normalize certain things without drawing a lot of widespread pushback, to the point where I talk to, you know, I guess, other Christians all the time who are just now coming to realize like how overt some of these groups have gotten.

And, when they’re caught flat-footed, you have to really wonder how ignorant, I guess, or unaware of this is the average person who’s not even engaged in politics or faith in any meaningful way, so —

MR. JENKINS: Thank you. And, Mark, Rob kind of called you out there. I did want to ask you kind of about this curriculum fight and how Christian nationalism kind of touches on public education and public schools. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to how that conversation has happened here in Texas.

DR. MARK CHANCEY: Sure. Well, thanks for asking about that. So public education is a very important part of the picture, to be sure. Right? I mean, public schools are where most children receive their education. Right? The number of people attending public schools is much higher than those attending private schools or those who are being home-schooled.

And public schools, thus, are where most children receive their civic education. They learn what it means to be an American, how to be an American, and they’re prepared for future citizenship and leadership roles. So that is where some Christian nationalist groups have made it their intention to try to shape young people by teaching children that America was founded as a Christian nation, founded to be a Christian nation, that it has lost its way and it should return to those roots.

And I should emphasize — I mean, I fully support teaching about religion in public schools. I think that’s essential, and teaching about religion, of course, means teaching about Christianity in public schools. That’s a big part of world history. It’s a big part of American history. And so none of that is problematic in and of itself. It’s the way that it’s done. It’s the way that it’s done.

And what we’re seeing is not a new movement, but it’s a movement to privilege attention to Christianity above every other tradition and above all other viewpoints, and to present an inaccurate portrayal of America as having been founded specifically as a Christian nation, blending together religious identity and national identity in the way that Amanda talked about, and urging that Christianity infuses our system of government and our legal system.

Those are inaccurate claims, but that’s what some want our students to know. So a couple of ways in which we see that here in Texas right now at this moment, one way is through a new reading curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade, the so-called “Bluebonnet Curriculum,” which is a series of lessons.

It’s over 700 lessons to be taught over those six years, and those lessons talk about a lot of things. They talk about science. They talk about the arts. They talk about biography. They talk about history. They include some attention to religion. Not most lessons, but some of those lessons do.

The ones that are about religion focus primarily on Christianity. It’s a clear emphasis, just in terms of counting out the numbers and looking at the depth of coverage — those lessons clearly privilege Christianity over every other religion, in ways that are not helpful — right? — because it’s conveying the message to students that Christianity is more deserving of attention than other perspectives, whether other religions or nonreligious perspectives.

Christianity is more important. Christianity is worthy of our study. Other religious traditions are not, and the perspectives of the nonreligious don’t have to be named, acknowledged, and taken seriously. So very, very preferential.

A number of those lessons focus on Bible stories. There’s nothing problematic with talking about the Bible in public schools if it’s done for legitimate academic purposes and handled carefully and sensitively. But these lessons present the Bible as just straightforward history. They present Jesus as an authoritative moral teacher that young children should turn to, which is not a position that all Texans hold.

They bend Bible stories to their own ideological ends, which is also quite interesting, so that you have the story of Esther being portrayed as a story of the defense of religious freedom. There are certain versions of religious freedom that are being touted by Christian nationalists right now, and so Esther’s basically claimed as a Christian-right heroine in that case.

So school districts across the state are debating whether or not to adopt these lessons. Some will and some won’t, but those that do, if they teach those lessons, will be teaching children that Christianity is more worthy of study than other religious traditions.

Another way is obviously the Ten Commandments bill. Right? Louisiana passed a law in 2024, requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms, K through 12 and college, and mandating a particular version of the Ten Commandments to be displayed. And it’s worth noting, where did Louisiana get that bill to begin with? Well, they got it from Texas. So that particular bill is a Texas bill that failed here in 2023, that Louisiana then adopted and passed into law, that’s now undergoing legal challenge.

And now Texas has another Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are back. It’s one of 19 states that have Ten Commandments bills under consideration, and of those 19, 15 are modeled on Louisiana, which is modeled on Texas. So the Texas Ten Commandments is having a big impact in that regard.

And, of course, you know, news flash: The Ten Commandments are actually religious in nature. Right? You know, when it starts off and says, “I am the Lord your God,” some people would say that seems to be a religious claim. Right? Or, “Thou shalt have no other gods before you.” Some would say that’s a claim of religious exclusivity.’

MR. DOWNEN: And the bill author in Texas would argue that some Hindus do believe in the Ten Commandments, so that was a real thing that was said on —

DR. CHANCEY: Well, this brings us back to the need for religious liberty — right? — because, you know, I’m for the Ten Commandments in my own family and faith community. I want to know about them within my faith community. But not everybody accepts the Ten Commandments. Right? Other religious groups outside of Jews and Christians do not, and certainly the nonreligious might acknowledge them for being historically important, but the idea that we’re going to put them up in every classroom in the state is a very clear signal of religious privilege.

And it’s framed with this restorationist impulse that we’re talking about. “We need to get back to our roots as a Christian nation by posting the Ten Commandments,” which clearly send a message of religious privilege. And then you have the accompanying claim that the Constitution and our way of life is built on the Ten Commandments, which is historically inaccurate.

So public education is a major arena for the Christian nationalism debate to play out, and Texas is ground zero.

MR. JENKINS: Thank you for that. And you kind of preempted my next question which was that Texas has kind of played a role with regard to Christian nationalism and legislation as sort of a preview of coming attractions for the rest of the country. And some of you already touched on this, so if you already talked about it, that’s fine.

But I’m curious if anybody here is seeing things in these communities that you think will be the next big conversation, the next big debate within Christian nationalism circles, within state legislatures. Amanda, I know you work nationally, so I don’t want to keep it only to Texas. It could be coming out of Idaho. It could be coming out of any number of states. I’m just curious if there’s something that we haven’t brought up yet on this panel that you’re starting to see bubble up within these communities that you think might be the next big thing.

 MR. DOWNEN: I’ll just say one. I’ve been spending a little bit of time with — at the Capitol every Tuesday right now, there’s — for the last two sessions, they’ve been doing worship nights there. It’s pretty ecumenical. I mean, it kind of depends on, you know, every week they have a new church come.

We’ve had everything from Mercy Culture in Fort Worth –which is pretty like NAR-adjacent, praying over the walls to ward off spirits against earth on behalf of lawmakers — to, you know, Black church from Beaumont that I was with last week. So, you know, it has been a fairly diverse coalition of groups there.

But the group running it is called My God Votes, and they are a group out of Houston that was founded in response to COVID lockdowns, and they are pretty explicit about, you know, supporting Christian dominionism. They’ve had Tim Barton, David Barton’s son, speak, and they really have a lot of allegiance or alliances or are very allied with a lot of Republican lawmakers.

So they are already trying to take that model — they’ve already taken it to Oklahoma, Louisiana, and they’re looking to take it to a few other states, basically making the argument that you should be able to worship on Capitol grounds as a First Amendment issue, but also, you know, while the worship in and of itself isn’t necessarily pushing a dominionist theology, the group behind it is certainly — you know, their leadership have definitely espoused those things, so —

AMANDA: Well, and I would add — you know, I do speak nationally, but because I live and work in Dallas, I often use Texas as an example. And I often say, Texas is an incubator for bad ideas that then get exported across state lines.

And, the chaplain bill, which you alluded to — someone alluded to earlier was an example that, you know, it passed first here, and then similar legislation has been introduced in more than a dozen other states around the country.

Ten Commandments in the same way. The Ten Commandments bill and law in Louisiana is an attempt, really a direct attempt, to try to overturn Supreme Court precedent. There is a Supreme Court precedent, just from 1980, that said really a case directly on point, posting the Ten Commandments violates the First Amendment’s No Establishment Clause.

Because of the recent case of Kennedy v. Bremerton — I think a misreading of that case, but they’re really trying to test that principle and try to overturn Supreme Court precedent in much the same way that they overturned Roe v. Wade — right? — just recently, so to go after long-standing precedent and this delicate balance between Free Exercise and No Establishment rights and how to work those out in public schools.

I will say that balance had been worked out in a bipartisan way, in a way that really pleased most people. And now all of that work is trying to be rolled back in a lot of these efforts.

From a national level — and I do want to pick up on something that Robby said in his closing remarks, in some of what’s happening in Washington that I think should be concerning to all of us, no matter where we live, but the executive order setting up the task force to try to eradicate anti-Christian bias, which was announced on the same day that the president opened, for the first time ever, a White House office of faith. Right?

There have been faith-based offices in the past for partnerships, but the fact that the federal government actually has some kind of theological role to set up what is and is not faith, and so this anti-Christian bias task force, I fear, is really a kind of way that will try to enforce a kind of theological conformity on everyone else, that there will be some kind of standard of what is and is not Christian — so not just what is and is not American or what is and is not religion, but what is and is not Christianity.

And that we’re seeing that play out in a lot of ways here in Texas as well. We have people of faith testifying against, for instance, posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, and legislators, like Senator Donna Campbell, actually going toe-to-toe and questioning the person of faith who’s testifying before them about whether or not they really understand Christianity.

So this kind of government arbiter of what is and is not religious is, I think, kind of a move towards authoritarian theocracy that’s happening not just in Washington but in Texas and in other states as well.

DR. BROCKMAN: If I could dovetail on that, the point that Amanda raises about normalizing a particular kind of Christianity is also important with regard to this Ten Commandments bill. The text — the Ten Commandments bill, SB 10, I think it is, actually prescribes a particular text of the Ten Commandments. Okay. And Mark already talked about how the Ten Commandments as a whole are not recognized by other religions, Buddhists, Hindus, and so forth.

But the text that is contained in the bill that would be required to be posted in all public schools, public school classrooms, is also a sectarian text. Okay? It contains, for example, the prohibition on graven images. Okay? And so that’s in the text that would be required to be published in classrooms.

That particular version of the Ten Commandments is not found — or that prohibition is not found in the Catholic Catechism version of the Ten Commandments, nor is it found in the Lutheran Small Catechism version of the Ten Commandments as well. So this is basically normalizing or promoting a particular version of Christianity or of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

And that also then serves not only to make, as Mark mentioned, outsiders of those who don’t subscribe to the Ten Commandments, whose faith traditions do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments, but also outsiders of Catholics and perhaps other Christians who don’t follow that particular text of the Ten Commandments as well, to make all of these folks outsiders in their own public schools, which should be concerning, I think, to anyone.

DR. CHANCEY: It also puts the state in the position of deciding what is the Ten Commandments. So you have the state deciding, This is what’s included in the Ten Commandments, this is not; this is the official wording; this is the state-approved wording of the Ten Commandments, and this is not. And that is very, very unsettling.

MR. DOWNEN: I was going to just piggyback off that. You know, we talked earlier about kind of the incremental ways that they have kind of pushed this agenda. The actual text that they are using for that is the text that is currently on the monument outside of the Texas Capitol that was litigated, I believe, in 2006-ish or something, around then.

So, again, you know, there’s been a lot of conversation even with regards to some of these bills among lawmakers that I have amongst people who are kind of not supporters in and of themselves but don’t necessarily see — you know, don’t want to engage in a slippery slope argument, I guess.

But when you kind of look at the way that even like — they litigated which version of the Ten Commandments was allowable 15, 20 years ago, and now it is — because that precedent has been set, they can move forward with a different type of thing. So when we talk about the kind of incremental push to move this agenda, this is a very good example, I think.

DR. CHANCEY: Can I ask a quick question?

MR. JENKINS: Sure.

DR. CHANCEY: I’m not trying to open a can of worms. I really am trying to do a quick question. It’s a definition of terms. So, you know, we’ve got Christian nationalism 1.0 — right? — which is historical revisionism — right? — the claim that the nation’s Founders established America to be a Christian nation whose government and political system and laws are based on Christianity and based on the Bible. That historical reconstruction paints in broad strokes, glosses over difficulties, is — over-simplification — inaccurate. That’s 1.0. America was founded as a Christian nation.

I’m not sure if this is really 2.0, but I’m going to make it 2.0. We’ve got something different going on when we have terms like “dominion theology” that we’ve heard and “the New Apostolic Reformation,” which we’ve heard, or “the NAR.” These are all terms that come up. Now, I was wondering if somebody could briefly explain what we mean by dominion theology and New Apostolic Reformation, and how that is different from what Christian nationalism would have been even 30 years ago.

AMANDA: Well, I don’t know if —

DR. CHANCEY: I knew this would happen.

AMANDA: Yeah, yeah. So I will say, when I think about — so I kind of use these interchangeably, although I’m sure that there are subtle differences between all of them. But I also hear the term “Seven Mountain Mandate,” so this idea that it is a calling from God for Christians to take over every segment of American society.

And in the statements that Robby presented earlier, that is one of the five statements. There’s a statement that talks about dominion. And so when I think about — on the one hand, it’s encouraging that only 10 percent of Americans are in that “adherence to Christian nationalism” category. On the other hand, it’s discouraging that 10 percent of Americans evidently would identify with some aspect of dominionism.

So when I think about how Christian nationalism — again, the definition I started us out with is intentionally broad: an ideology that tries to merge American and Christian identities into one. I still stand by that definition, and I think about dominionism, New Apostolic Reformation, Seven Mountain Mandate, as one particularly extreme manifestation of it but that is being normalized because of access to power.

So if we think back just a couple of years, there was an Alabama Supreme Court case that invalidated IVF treatments for a short amount of time in the state of Alabama. And the Supreme Court justice, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court himself was an adherent to New Apostolic Reformation theology and actually used Bible verses as legal authority for his decision.

And so I think that’s an example of how this very extreme manifestation of Christian nationalism has access to power and is using that power to impose a particular theological view, which has become a political view, on citizens in Alabama or in the United States.

DR. BROCKMAN: Could I jump in right quick? On the New Apostolic Reformation, besides what Amanda has said, I do want to underscore that there’s an aspect to New Apostolic Reformation — which is, by the way, led by mutually recognized apostles and prophets, people who believe that they’re hearing dictation from God or new revelation from God, and that authorizes what they’re saying. Often it authorizes a political message as well.

And one thing that this extreme version — I want to underscore what Rob said earlier about that for the New Apostolic Reformation, unlike some of the traditional Christian nationalists, this is not a battle over the Founders’ intent. What we’re going through right now is not a battle over the Founders’ intent or whether the United States is supposed to be an explicitly Christian nation in law and public policy. It’s actually a cosmic battle between good and evil, and it’s meant to trigger, at least for some of these prophets, it’s meant to trigger the end time, basically to release Jesus from heaven and allow Jesus to come to earth.

So the stakes are much higher with the New Apostolic Reformation than they are with sort of garden variety Christian nationalism.

MR. DOWNEN: It should come as no surprise either that NAR folks were leading the charge up and on the day of the January 6 insurrection, too.

MR. JENKINS: And just as a quick note, from my own reporting, there are fissures within the broader context of Christian nationalism. There are Catholic versions that are mutually exclusive to Protestantism and vice versa.

However, you know, one thing that struck me recently is NAR kind of came out of charismatic, Pentecostal Christianity. One of the critics of some of the leaders of that movement are folks that identify as reformed, so like Doug Wilson out of Moscow, Idaho. However, the school that Doug Wilson founded — and as an aside to that aside, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of Defense, attends a church in the denomination that Doug Wilson co-founded.

He identifies as Christian nationalist, Doug Wilson does. And in the advertisement for the college he founded, they have a video now that says, Yeah, like Seven Mountain Mandate. You know, maybe not that exact language, but basically same thing. Right? So I think there’s a shared antipathy towards the same enemies in a lot of these communities.

And I want to get to Q&A, but really quickly, you know, one of the things that I’ve seen a lot on the ground is significant and sustained pushback to Christian nationalism. I mean, I know you were launching the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign back in 2019. Can you say a little bit about how that movement has manifested, any energy and energizing elements around it. I know you already talked about people testifying in these places kind of against it, even getting pushback from lawmakers. I know you have testified on Capitol Hill. Can you speak a little bit about that, Amanda, and anybody else who wants to jump in.

AMANDA: Yeah, absolutely. And so in the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign, for the last few years, we’ve been putting more and more of our resources into mobilizing people to action and also to grassroots organizing.

And when we looked at the whole country and we thought, Where do we want to put our pilot project, we chose North Texas for the first ever local organizing project for Christians Against Christian Nationalism. We now are working with people in communities across the country to stand up local projects as well, and we’re taking our learnings from here and applying them elsewhere.

But because we were here first, we were able to organize and to help people mobilize to action against some of these bad ideas. So, for instance, back in 2023 with the chaplain law and at the time a bill, right after it passed actually — we did oppose it at the legislature, but there were a lot of bad ideas that year, and so there wasn’t enough time to mobilize to actually defeat the bill.

But the way that the law was written, it didn’t automatically take effect. Instead, it called on school districts within six months to have a vote on whether or not they would have a school chaplain program, and we helped organize with a number of other groups in the state, a group of professional chaplains, to explain why this law was actually insulting to the profession of chaplain, but also why the public schools were not the correct context of chaplains.

And I’ll bring in journalism. Because of the letter and we were able to get it out in the press, there were stories in more than 30 different media places in Texas, talking about how chaplains opposed the chaplain law. That was for many people the first time that Texans even learned that this was a law. And so that helped, I think, motivate people to go to their school districts to explain why they didn’t want to have a chaplain law, and the vast majority of school districts in Texas declined to start a chaplain program because of that resistance. Right?

And then with the curriculum that we’ve talked about, it was because of journalism that I even first learned about this proposal from the Texas Education Agency. An online [outlet] called The 74 reported on it. I heard about it for the very first time on Texas Public Radio. Texas Tribune started reporting on it. That helped raise the awareness of people in the community, and then our organizing project — along with a number of other groups across Texas — we actually trained people on how to read the curriculum, on how to find this really damaging parts of it.

A lot of us filed public comments. At the public comment period, those of us who opposed the curriculum outnumbered those who were for it, ten to one. And then when we actually showed up in Austin to testify, we outnumbered in September those who were there to testify by three or four to one, to the point that some of the people in our coalition — there was a group from Moms For Liberty there, and they said, Where did all these people come from and how do we get more people to show up for this curriculum in the future?

And so I think that helps show that there is — you know, and Robby’s numbers showed this. Those of us who are concerned about Christian nationalism in the state outnumber those who are for it two to one. And so it’s really about how do we mobilize people, both make them aware of the threat but then mobilize people to action.

And we’re finding that even though the curriculum ended up passing by one vote, there were Republicans on the State Board of Education who voted against the curriculum. And, again, now that it’s being implemented, we’re seeing a lot of school districts who are actually opting not to adopt that curriculum, and we’re continuing to get the word out about it.

DR. BROCKMAN: One quick note. I do want to mention one community that’s been really instrumental in pushing back against — particularly against the Bluebonnet Curriculum and fighting for church-state separation, and that’s the Jewish community in Texas. They have really turned out to advocate for church-state separation.

Amanda and I were at a synagogue in North Dallas talking about the Bluebonnet Curriculum back last year, and then just a weekend ago, I was down in San Antonio with a packed house at Trinity University of mostly Jewish folks. It was put on by the National Council of Jewish Women, San Antonio Chapter, to talk about church-state separation and the Bluebonnet Curriculum there.

They have been — they also testified in large numbers at the State Board of Education as well, so there have been people of faith in this, not just a secular crowd against it, but people of faith as well.

 

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HOLLY: That brings us to the close of this episode of Respecting Religion. Our thanks to the Texas Tribune, Religion News Service, the Institute for Diversity in Civic Life, and Southern Methodist University’s Religious Studies department for letting us bring you this presentation.

If you want to watch the panel discussion and see the Q&A session following the conversation, visit our show notes for a link to that video and additional information.

Respecting Religion is produced and edited by Cherilyn Guy. You can learn more about our work at BJC defending faith freedom for all by visiting our website at BJConline.org.

And we’d love to hear from you. You can contact both Amanda and me by email. Write to us at [email protected]. We’re on social media @BJContheHill, and you can follow Amanda on X, Bluesky and Threads @AmandaTylerBJC.

All of us want to thank you for supporting this podcast. You can donate to these conversations by visiting the link in our show notes.

Amanda and I will be back soon with a new episode, so join us then for a new conversation Respecting Religion.