Latest news with #ChristianRight
BBC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Southern Baptists move to end same-sex marriage in the US
Southern Baptists, whose faith includes over 12 million members in the US, have endorsed a ban to end same-sex marriage in moment marks the first time the group has officially opposed the ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 landmark Supreme Court case backing same-sex marriage. The votes on Tuesday came during the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas, attended by over 10,000 church say the evangelical group's values have increasingly shifted to align with the Christian right, a branch of conservatism that has gained momentum under US President Donald Trump. The Southern Baptists' resolution does not use the word "ban" directly. Instead, it calls for the "overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family". The resolution also calls "for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman".Any legal reversal of the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision would not lead automatically to a nationwide ban of same-sex marriage. Thirty-six states already have legalised same-sex marriage at the time of the ruling, and nearly 70% of Americans still support it, polls show. "What we're trying to do is keep the conversation alive," Andrew Walker, an ethicist at a Southern Baptist seminary in Kentucky who wrote the resolution, told the New York the resolution is non-binding, it comes from a large, influential faction of President Trump's base and sends a direct message to the White percent of white evangelical Protestants are likely to be Republican voters, according to a 2024 Pew Research survey. "I think there is a confidence that (Trump) will have their backs," Kristin Du Mez, a Calvin University history professor specializing in religion and politics, told the BBC. "In some ways, it's an uphill battle," she said. "But I do think they sense that there's been this shift, that there may be a window opening, and that they think this is the right time to press this issue." She described a "transactional element" to the relationship between evangelicals and Trump, whose Supreme Court nominations helped end national abortion also played a "very prominent" role overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that protected abortion for nearly 50 years before it was overturned in 2022, said Ms Du said she believes evangelicals may be using the same blueprint to end same-sex marriage. "I know some of the leaders have pointed to Roe v Wade as a model of the need to play the long game," she said. Trump's message on same-sex marriage has been mixed over the years, telling CNN in 2015 that he supported "traditional marriage" then, in a 60 Minutes interview in 2016, saying he was "fine" with same-sex marriage. In his second term, however, he has launched a campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) with multiple directives targeting LGBTQ groups. This includes banning transgender people from serving the military, and revoking a Biden-era executive order preventing discrimination "on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation".Fear and anxiety in LGBTQ communities have grown as a result, leading some international organisations to boycott World Pride in Washington DC this although public support largely remains behind same-sex marriage, the Southern Baptists' resolution has added to LGBTQ groups' sense of alarm. "This is a very visible example of how attacks on the LGBTQ+ community as a whole have intensified, even as politicians take aim at transgender people as a tactic to divide us," Laurel Powell, Human Rights Campaign communications director, said in a statement to the BBC."We will never stop fighting to love who we love and be who we are."
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Southern Baptists endorse repealing the legalization of same-sex marriage in the US
Human rights groups spoke out on Wednesday against an overwhelming vote by Southern Baptists, the US's largest Protestant denomination, to endorse a resolution that would seek to overturn the legalization of same-marriage by the US supreme court. 'Marriage equality is settled law. Love is love, and the right for LGBTQ+ couples to marry is supported by an overwhelming majority of the American public,' said Laurel Powell, communications director of Human Rights Campaign, in a statement to the Guardian. Powell called the proposal – which included language that legislators have a duty to 'pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law – about marriage, sex, human life, and family' – an example of newly boldened attacks from the Christian right. 'This is a very visible example of how attacks on the LGBTQ+ community as a whole have intensified, even as politicians take aim at transgender people as a tactic to divide us,' Powell said. 'We will never stop fighting to love who we love and be who we are.' At the Southern Baptists annual convention in Dallas this week, delegations passed a wide-ranging resolution calling for the 'overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family'. While a reversal of Obergefell, the supreme court case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in June 2015, wouldn't itself enact a ban on gay marriage, the resolution also called 'for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one women'. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which has long opposed same-sex marriage, has around 13 million members and about 47,000 cooperating churches. And despite the SBC's beliefs, a 2022 public poll found that same-sex marriage has the support of over 70% of Americans. Still, this week was the first time that the convention has voted to end the right to same-sex marriage. Andrew Walker, an ethicist at a Southern Baptist seminary in Kentucky who authored the convention's resolution titled 'On Restoring Moral Clarity Through God's Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family', told the New York Times that 'what we're trying to do is keep the conversation alive'. The non-binding resolution also called for a defunding of Planned Parenthood, for 'parental rights in education and healthcare', and took in other issues vexing conservatives, including transgender women's participation in women's sports. The resolution called for 'safety and fairness in female athletic competition'. The resolution also criticized 'willful childlessness', while others called for banning pornography and condemnation of sports betting. Each resolution suggests that the Baptists are moving beyond generic support of 'family values' toward specific cultural issues. Denny Burk, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, told the Times that the resolution 'puts Southern Baptists on the record … We know that we're in a minority in the culture right now, but we want to be a prophetic minority.' Notably, the gathering in Dallas was overshadowed by the recent death of Jennifer Lyell, a former Christian publishing executive who became a whistleblower on the Southern Baptists' scandal of sexual abuse. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Lyell went public in 2019 with allegations that she had been sexually abused by David Sills, her seminary professor while she was a student. Lyell died on Saturday aged 47 after a series of 'massive strokes', according to Rachael Denhollander, an activist and lawyer who has represented her. Lyell had been a Southern Baptist success story and joined the faith after attending, at 20, a Billy Graham crusade. She went to a seminary and became a vice-president at Lifeway, the Southern Baptist Convention's publishing arm. But her disclosures of alleged sexual and spiritual abuse by Sills, including allegations that he had coerced her into sexual acts without her consent, and then asked her to join him at family meals afterward, cast a dim light over the SBC. Lyell claimed in a deposition that after they had sex, Sills instructed her to clean her face and repent. An attorney for Sills told the Religion News Service that their client 'denies and has always denied each and every allegation made by his accuser, including the content of the very limited deposition testimony released by counsel'. The convention's executive committee apologized in 2022, acknowledging 'its failure to adequately listen, protect, and care for Jennifer Lyell when she came forward to share her story' and voted to create a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse. Committee president Jeff Iorg said earlier this year that creating a database is not a focus and that the committee instead plans to refer churches to existing databases of sex offenders while focusing on education about abuse prevention.
Hindustan Times
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
A multi-front war to remake US & world
In his quest to remake America and the world, Donald Trump is deliberately sharpening contradictions with forces he sees as obstacles to his ability to exercise power and fulfill ideological goals. The big question is whether he succeeds in shifting the balance of power in his favour or whether his multi-pronged assault results in a multi-pronged backlash or whether he advances in some domains and retreats in others. President Trump's first domestic battle is against the US judiciary. In his first term, Trump already remade the American judiciary with a plethora of nominations of arch conservatives at different levels. When he was out of power, Trump benefited from the Supreme Court judgment on abortion (the order won him the Christian Right's loyalty) and presidential immunity (by offering a wide definition of what constituted official actions, the order absolved him of January 6-related crimes and gave him unchecked power in this term). However, to counter the work done to hold him to account for his alleged crimes, Trump sowed doubts about the legitimacy of the judiciary throughout the campaign. Trump's second battle is against the US legislature, a battle that gets obscured by the slim Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. This battle has two dimensions. The first is Trump's clear move to usurp Congressional authority with the relentless use of executive orders in a range of areas from tariffs to immigration, from government spending to the very existence of Congressionally mandated government institutions. The second dimension is the unprecedented pressure and threat that the White House is bringing to bear on legislators on the Hill to toe its line. For now, in both cases, Trump is prevailing, but how the battle evolves will answer a fundamental question: Will the Congress remain a co-equal branch of the American government or a subservient one? Will legislators hold the executive to account or be an instrument of the executive? Trump's third battle is with the administrative State. What we have witnessed is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)'s work, the dismantling of agencies and departments, the downsizing of personnel, the plans to dramatically whittle down the State Department, and the weakening of regulatory institutions. Its consequences are yet to fully play out. And there will be resistance in some form eventually. But this battle will answer a key question: Can a US, without the architecture of the current American State, remain stable and effective internally, and powerful and dominant externally? And after the demolition, is there an agenda for construction? Trump has opened a fourth front against business, markets and the Federal Reserve with his tariff policy. Both American and international capital remain shaken by the policy uncertainty induced by Trump's swings on the subject. The markets are regularly sending a negative message about tariffs and US credibility. Trump wants Fed chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates; Powell has refused to be bullied and has flagged risks of unemployment and inflation. The markets took another beating as it witnessed this executive breach into central bank turf. These are serious institutional strains at a time when the economy faces real risk of not just a downturn but recession. And that has political implications: Can Trumpian economic shock and Trumpian political dominance coexist? On the fifth front, Trump has openly targeted American civil society, universities, and independent professions. His ideological world sees these as liberal bastions controlled by a tiny few whose doors were closed for conservatives. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that Trump's actions represent a direct assault on America's knowledge infrastructure, on science and independent thought, on lawyers and academics, on the non-profit world — all because they are not seen as politically pliable. Can America retain its democratic and knowledge advantage while eroding mechanisms of democracy and sources of knowledge? Trump's sixth front is against allies both in the Americas and Europe, with his contempt highest for those most dependent on the US. This has caused a fundamental rupture in the Trans-Atlantic strategic alliance, opened doors for a major break in the West's internal economic relationship, and led allies in Asia to doubt American commitment to their security. At the same time, allies, partners and even most antagonists are keen to cut bilateral deals with the US rather than face Trumpian wrath. So, will this battle result in a break in the US-led alliance system or its consolidation with a reset of terms of ties in the US's favour? Seven, whether it was planned or imposed to lend retrospective coherence to the tariff policy swings, Trump has opened an economic front with China. He will hurt China's exports but will also hurt American consumers and business. The economic war can spill over to the strategic space anytime. The challenge of both competing and maintaining peace with China will become harder. This will open opportunities but also create new threats for other players. Alternatively, if the two sides arrive at a deal, the terms of the deal may well be to the detriment of other stakeholders in the region. How this battle plays out will determine whether the US and China can live in peace and on what terms. Then there are Trump's battles against diversity and inclusion, climate and environment, international law and multilateral order. In his first 100 days, Trump has clearly waged an all-out war. It can help consolidate his power or invite a backlash. This story has just begun.
Associated Press
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
In Texas, Christian right grows confident and assertive
Testifying this month against bills that would put more Christianity in Texas public schools, the Rev. Jody Harrison invoked the violent persecution of her Baptist forefathers by fellow Christians in colonial America. Harrison hoped the history lesson would remind Texas senators of Baptists' strong support for church-state separations, and that weakening those protections would hurt people of all faiths. Instead, she was rebuked. 'The Baptist doctrine is Christ-centered,' Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, responded sharply. 'Its purpose is not to go around trying to defend this or that. It is to be a disciple and a witness for Christ. That includes the Ten Commandments. That's prayer in schools. It is not a fight for separation between church and state.' Harrison was not allowed to reply, but in an interview said she was stunned that a lawmaker would question a core part of her faith. The exchange, she said, perfectly encapsulated why she has fought to preserve church-state separations — the same religious protections that Campbell said are a distraction from bills that might bring school kids to Christ. 'It was a wake up call,' she said. 'I don't think people — even many churches — realize that this is going on right now, and that is alarming.' Efforts by the Christian Right to put more of their religion in public schools are not new. But the tone of those debates in Texas has shifted this session, with bill supporters and some lawmakers openly arguing that such legislation is crucial to combating dropping church participation rates and what they say is a directly related decline in American morality. Last month, a Texas Senate education committee advanced two bills that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms and allow school districts to set aside optional prayer time during school hours. And last week, that committee also heard testimony on a bill to mandate that schools teach an anti-communist curriculum — which supporters said is crucial to reaffirming that America is a Christian nation. Throughout those hearings, lawmakers and bill supporters frequently said that church-state separation is a myth meant to obscure America's true, Christian roots. They argued that many of America's ills are the natural consequence of removing Biblical morality from classrooms. And they framed their legislation as an antidote to decreasing church attendance, communism or eternal hellfire. 'To realize that only 25% of our kids in schools today have been in a church is absolutely horrific and something that we all need to work on to address,' said Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, repeating a statistic offered by one bill supporter during testimony. 'That should make everybody listening absolutely scared to death,' he added. Such statements have struck even longtime scholars and observers of the Religious Right as setting a new, more strident tone after years in which terms like 'religious freedom' were the norm. Many in the movement had avoided explicitly centering Christianity in bills because doing so could prompt court challenges and discrimination complaints. The shift, experts said, reflects a Religious Right emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the second Trump administration and the broader normalization of Christian nationalism in the GOP. 'Christian nationalist leaders think they've been handed the keys to the kingdom,' said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in schools. 'Now they're trying to unlock as many locks as they can.' The growing influence Recent polling from the Public Religion and Research Institute found that, of all Americans, about 10% adhere to Christian nationalism and 20% sympathize with aspects of it. Experts say that, despite accounting for a small segment of the broader country, Christian nationalists and their allies have been able to incrementally accumulate power through a long-term political strategy and a well of deep-pocketed donors. In Texas, the Christian Right's rising influence has coincided with the state GOP's alignment with two West Texas oil billionaires, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who have given tens of millions of dollars to push their far-right religious and social views. And groups like Project Blitz, a coalition of Christian groups with deep Texas ties, have used that long-term approach to steadily normalize their views and chip away at church-state separation without drawing widespread opposition. 'Part of their legislative strategy is to be additive,' said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee For Religious Freedom, which advocates for a strong church-state wall. 'The idea is that you start lawmakers out with what appear to be lower-stakes legislation, and then once they take votes on that, they will move to more and more extreme versions of the legislation.' 'What we're seeing now is that strategy really coming to bear in Texas,' she added. In 2010, the State Board of Education approved a sweeping curriculum overhaul in order to weed out what it called ' liberal bias. ' With advice from prominent evangelicals such as David Barton, a Project Blitz leader and self-described 'amateur historian' who has popularized the idea that church-state separation is a 'false doctrine,' conservative board members framed the move as a way to reaffirm 'that this was a nation founded under God.' In 2022, the Texas Legislature approved a law that required classrooms to display 'In God We Trust' signs that were donated by Patriot Mobile, a self-described Christian nationalist cellphone company that also funds school board candidates. The law quickly drew controversy — at one Dallas-area school district, the board declined to also display donated 'In God We Trust' signs that were in Arabic, saying it already had enough for all its buildings. In 2023, state lawmakers allowed school districts to replace mental health counselors with untrained religious chaplains, overriding a proposed amendment that would have barred them from evangelizing to students. Ahead of the vote, The Texas Tribune reported that a main backer of the bill had run an organization that, until a few months prior, was open about using classrooms as a way to recruit children to Christianity. Barton also testified in favor of the bill. By 2024, the theories espoused by Barton and his allies were mainstream in the Texas GOP. Prominent figures — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas GOP Chair Abraham George and numerous state senators — have called church-state separation a 'myth.' And at the state party's convention that year, lawmakers framed themselves as engaged in an existential struggle with communists, socialists and others trying to indoctrinate children; delegates called for the state to require instruction on the Bible; and state education board Chair Aaaron Kinsey vowed in a speech to fight for 'these three-letter words: G-O-D, G-O-P and U-S-A.' A few weeks later, state education leaders proposed new curriculum that paired grade-school teachings with lessons on the Bible and other religious texts. The curriculum was approved late last year despite concerns by religious historians and other experts who said it whitewashed the role that many white Christians played in opposing Civil Rights, upholding slavery and persecuting religious minorities, including Baptists and other fellow believers, during the country's founding period. The 2025 legislative session began with some Republican lawmakers calling for 'spiritual warfare' against political opponents, and leading worship inside the Capitol to ward off demonic spirits that they believe control the legislature. In addition to the Ten Commandments and school prayer bills, state senators have also approved sweeping legislation that would allow taxpayer money to be directed to religious and other private schools. Tyler, the Baptist leader and church-state wall advocate, said the last 15 years in Texas show how successful Religious Right groups can be in steadily mainstreaming their political views and advancing their agenda. 'We have seen, over several years, a definite strategy to target public schools,' she said. 'Now they have become bolder and have been emboldened, and are being more explicit about their aims.' The new rhetoric For decades, David Brockman has closely monitored the rise of Christian nationalism in Texas for Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, where he is a non-resident scholar. A few years ago, he said, he wanted to quantify how many adherents or sympathizers worked in the Texas Legislature by analyzing their comments and speeches for tell-tale signs of Christian nationalist rhetoric. Even then, he said, it was difficult to find many concrete examples of the ideology, or of bills that explicitly privileged Christianity. But that's changed. 'What they were doing instead was either carving out exceptions for 'sincerely-held religious beliefs' or protecting religion overall,' Brockman said. 'Now, it's a new landscape for them.' Central to that shift has been a series of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including 2022's Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In that case, the court ruled with a high school football coach whose employer, a public school, asked that he stop leading prayers at midfield after games. In a 6-2 decision, the court found that the coach's prayers were within his First Amendment rights and that his actions did not amount to government support of religion. The ruling neutered the so-called Lemon Test, which for decades had been used by courts to determine if a law or practice amounted to an unconstitutional government act establishing or preferring a religion. Conservative Christians have taken the 2022 ruling as a greenlight to put more Christianity into public schools, arguing that things such as the Ten Commandments are the basis for American law and governance, and therefore have educational value. This session, lawmakers and their supporters have also argued that such legislation is imperative to reverse what they say is a decades-long moral decline. 'I think our kids are just crying out for moral clarity,' said Sen. Phil King, a Weatherford Republican who authored the Ten Commandments bill. 'I think they are crying out for a shared heritage.' Other lawmakers have explicitly said that they have a duty to bring kids to Christ. 'There is eternal life,' said Campbell, the senator who rebuked Rev. Harrison earlier this month. 'And if we don't expose or introduce our children and others to that, when they die they'll have one birth and two deaths. Because they will know nothing about the afterlife, the eternity with God. But exposing them or introducing them to Ten Commandments, prayer – it asks other questions and they then have a choice in their future: Two births and one death.' Last week, a Texas Senate panel heard testimony on a bill that would require public schools to adopt anti-communist curriculum. On its face, the bill does not seek to put more Christianity in classrooms. But supporters argued that the bill is crucial to combating godless ideologies that they say have crept into American education and undermined the nation's true, Christian heritage. Such fears have been a driving force of Christian Right movements since the 1950s, when Christians, believing their faith a key bulwark against Red influence, successfully lobbied to add 'under God' to the pledge of allegiance and to make 'In God We Trust' the national motto. Those fears are still pronounced today. Last week, lawmakers heard testimony from Rafael Cruz, a pastor who is the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's and an adherent of Christian dominionism, which argues Christians must dominate society to usher in the End Times. Cruz repeatedly argued that America – and thus, Christianity — are under threat from communist and socialist forces who seek to indoctrinate children through Critical Race Theory, diversity initiatives and other things that Republicans have targeted in recent years. 'In many instances our classrooms are failing us, because they're following an agenda,' Cruz said. 'It is not our agenda. It is a communist agenda that has, like tentacles, immersed itself into our education system. So we need to retrieve our educational system from that evil agenda.' Throughout his testimony, Cruz took aim at a litany of things that he said are quietly advancing communist influence in America, be it atheism, evolution, college professors or campus protesters who 'don't like it here' and should be deported. Fighting that menace, he said, required lawmakers to legislate Christianity into public schools across the nation. 'America is a Christian country,' said Cruz, who was invited by lawmakers to testify. 'And we need to build upon that foundation, because if we build that foundation in our children, everything else will fall into place.' Texas has for years been an incubator for Christian Right policies that are exported to other states or codified into federal law by courts. Lawmakers and their supporters have said they are confident that the current slate of Christian-centric bills will pass and then survive expected court challenges — though some legal experts are less sure. Rev. Harrison, meanwhile, said she has frequently ruminated on her recent exchange with Sen. Campbell, and what it portends for Americans who are not conservative Christians. To her, it's so much more than a debate about schools or the church-state wall. 'I believe we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ most powerfully without words, and for me, that means to follow the example of the way of Jesus,' she said. 'Often the most powerful example we can set for others in preaching the gospel as Christians is by our actions. We are called to love one another, and that means speaking up for those whose voices are not heard and or are silenced.'
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Texas, Christian right grows confident and assertive
Testifying this month against bills that would put more Christianity in Texas public schools, the Rev. Jody Harrison invoked the violent persecution of her Baptist forefathers by fellow Christians in colonial America. Harrison hoped the history lesson would remind Texas senators of Baptists' strong support for church-state separations, and that weakening those protections would hurt people of all faiths. Instead, she was rebuked. 'The Baptist doctrine is Christ-centered,' Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, responded sharply. 'Its purpose is not to go around trying to defend this or that. It is to be a disciple and a witness for Christ. That includes the Ten Commandments. That's prayer in schools. It is not a fight for separation between church and state.' Harrison was not allowed to reply, but in an interview said she was stunned that a lawmaker would question a core part of her faith. The exchange, she said, perfectly encapsulated why she has fought to preserve church-state separations — the same religious protections that Campbell said are a distraction from bills that might bring school kids to Christ. 'It was a wake up call,' she said. 'I don't think people — even many churches — realize that this is going on right now, and that is alarming.' Efforts by the Christian Right to put more of their religion in public schools are not new. But the tone of those debates in Texas has shifted this session, with bill supporters and some lawmakers openly arguing that such legislation is crucial to combating dropping church participation rates and what they say is a directly related decline in American morality. Last month, a Texas Senate education committee advanced two bills that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms and allow school districts to set aside optional prayer time during school hours. And last week, that committee also heard testimony on a bill to mandate that schools teach an anti-communist curriculum — which supporters said is crucial to reaffirming that America is a Christian nation. Throughout those hearings, lawmakers and bill supporters frequently said that church-state separation is a myth meant to obscure America's true, Christian roots. They argued that many of America's ills are the natural consequence of removing Biblical morality from classrooms. And they framed their legislation as an antidote to decreasing church attendance, communism or eternal hellfire. "To realize that only 25% of our kids in schools today have been in a church is absolutely horrific and something that we all need to work on to address,' said Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, repeating a statistic offered by one bill supporter during testimony. 'That should make everybody listening absolutely scared to death," he added. Such statements have struck even longtime scholars and observers of the Religious Right as setting a new, more strident tone after years in which terms like 'religious freedom' were the norm. Many in the movement had avoided explicitly centering Christianity in bills because doing so could prompt court challenges and discrimination complaints. The shift, experts said, reflects a Religious Right emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the second Trump administration and the broader normalization of Christian nationalism in the GOP. 'Christian nationalist leaders think they've been handed the keys to the kingdom,' said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in schools. 'Now they're trying to unlock as many locks as they can.' Recent polling from the Public Religion and Research Institute found that, of all Americans, about 10% adhere to Christian nationalism and 20% sympathize with aspects of it. Experts say that, despite accounting for a small segment of the broader country, Christian nationalists and their allies have been able to incrementally accumulate power through a long-term political strategy and a well of deep-pocketed donors. In Texas, the Christian Right's rising influence has coincided with the state GOP's alignment with two West Texas oil billionaires, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who have given tens of millions of dollars to push their far-right religious and social views. And groups like Project Blitz, a coalition of Christian groups with deep Texas ties, have used that long-term approach to steadily normalize their views and chip away at church-state separation without drawing widespread opposition. 'Part of their legislative strategy is to be additive,' said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee For Religious Freedom, which advocates for a strong church-state wall. 'The idea is that you start lawmakers out with what appear to be lower-stakes legislation, and then once they take votes on that, they will move to more and more extreme versions of the legislation.' 'What we're seeing now is that strategy really coming to bear in Texas,' she added. In 2010, the State Board of Education approved a sweeping curriculum overhaul in order to weed out what it called 'liberal bias.' With advice from prominent evangelicals such as David Barton, a Project Blitz leader and self-described 'amateur historian' who has popularized the idea that church-state separation is a 'false doctrine,' conservative board members framed the move as a way to reaffirm 'that this was a nation founded under God.' In 2022, the Texas Legislature approved a law that required classrooms to display 'In God We Trust' signs that were donated by Patriot Mobile, a self-described Christian nationalist cellphone company that also funds school board candidates. The law quickly drew controversy — at one Dallas-area school district, the board declined to also display donated 'In God We Trust' signs that were in Arabic, saying it already had enough for all its buildings. In 2023, state lawmakers allowed school districts to replace mental health counselors with untrained religious chaplains, overriding a proposed amendment that would have barred them from evangelizing to students. Ahead of the vote, The Texas Tribune reported that a main backer of the bill had run an organization that, until a few months prior, was open about using classrooms as a way to recruit children to Christianity. Barton also testified in favor of the bill. By 2024, the theories espoused by Barton and his allies were mainstream in the Texas GOP. Prominent figures — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas GOP Chair Abraham George and numerous state senators — have called church-state separation a 'myth.' And at the state party's convention that year, lawmakers framed themselves as engaged in an existential struggle with communists, socialists and others trying to indoctrinate children; delegates called for the state to require instruction on the Bible; and state education board Chair Aaaron Kinsey vowed in a speech to fight for 'these three-letter words: G-O-D, G-O-P and U-S-A.' A few weeks later, state education leaders proposed new curriculum that paired grade-school teachings with lessons on the Bible and other religious texts. The curriculum was approved late last year despite concerns by religious historians and other experts who said it whitewashed the role that many white Christians played in opposing Civil Rights, upholding slavery and persecuting religious minorities, including Baptists and other fellow believers, during the country's founding period. The 2025 legislative session began with some Republican lawmakers calling for 'spiritual warfare' against political opponents, and leading worship inside the Capitol to ward off demonic spirits that they believe control the legislature. In addition to the Ten Commandments and school prayer bills, state senators have also approved sweeping legislation that would allow taxpayer money to be directed to religious and other private schools. Tyler, the Baptist leader and church-state wall advocate, said the last 15 years in Texas show how successful Religious Right groups can be in steadily mainstreaming their political views and advancing their agenda. 'We have seen, over several years, a definite strategy to target public schools,' she said. 'Now they have become bolder and have been emboldened, and are being more explicit about their aims.' For decades, David Brockman has closely monitored the rise of Christian nationalism in Texas for Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, where he is a non-resident scholar. A few years ago, he said, he wanted to quantify how many adherents or sympathizers worked in the Texas Legislature by analyzing their comments and speeches for tell-tale signs of Christian nationalist rhetoric. Even then, he said, it was difficult to find many concrete examples of the ideology, or of bills that explicitly privileged Christianity. But that's changed. 'What they were doing instead was either carving out exceptions for 'sincerely-held religious beliefs' or protecting religion overall,' Brockman said. 'Now, it's a new landscape for them.' Central to that shift has been a series of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including 2022's Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In that case, the court ruled with a high school football coach whose employer, a public school, asked that he stop leading prayers at midfield after games. In a 6-2 decision, the court found that the coach's prayers were within his First Amendment rights and that his actions did not amount to government support of religion. The ruling neutered the so-called Lemon Test, which for decades had been used by courts to determine if a law or practice amounted to an unconstitutional government act establishing or preferring a religion. Conservative Christians have taken the 2022 ruling as a greenlight to put more Christianity into public schools, arguing that things such as the Ten Commandments are the basis for American law and governance, and therefore have educational value. This session, lawmakers and their supporters have also argued that such legislation is imperative to reverse what they say is a decadeslong moral decline. 'I think our kids are just crying out for moral clarity,' said Sen. Phil King, a Weatherford Republican who authored the Ten Commandments bill. 'I think they are crying out for a shared heritage.' Other lawmakers have explicitly said that they have a duty to bring kids to Christ. 'There is eternal life,' said Campbell, the senator who rebuked Rev. Harrison earlier this month. 'And if we don't expose or introduce our children and others to that, when they die they'll have one birth and two deaths. Because they will know nothing about the afterlife, the eternity with God. But exposing them or introducing them to Ten Commandments, prayer – it asks other questions and they then have a choice in their future: Two births and one death.' Last week, a Texas Senate panel heard testimony on a bill that would require public schools to adopt anti-communist curriculum. On its face, the bill does not seek to put more Christianity in classrooms. But supporters argued that the bill is crucial to combating godless ideologies that they say have crept into American education and undermined the nation's true, Christian heritage. Such fears have been a driving force of Christian Right movements since the 1950s, when Christians, believing their faith a key bulwark against Red influence, successfully lobbied to add 'under God' to the pledge of allegiance and to make 'In God We Trust' the national motto. Those fears are still pronounced today. Last week, lawmakers heard testimony from Rafael Cruz, a pastor who is the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's and an adherent of Christian dominionism, which argues Christians must dominate society to usher in the End Times. Cruz repeatedly argued that America – and thus, Christianity — are under threat from communist and socialist forces who seek to indoctrinate children through Critical Race Theory, diversity initiatives and other things that Republicans have targeted in recent years. 'In many instances our classrooms are failing us, because they're following an agenda,' Cruz said. 'It is not our agenda. It is a communist agenda that has, like tentacles, immersed itself into our education system. So we need to retrieve our educational system from that evil agenda.' Throughout his testimony, Cruz took aim at a litany of things that he said are quietly advancing communist influence in America, be it atheism, evolution, college professors or campus protesters who 'don't like it here' and should be deported. Fighting that menace, he said, required lawmakers to legislate Christianity into public schools across the nation. 'America is a Christian country,' said Cruz, who was invited by lawmakers to testify. 'And we need to build upon that foundation, because if we build that foundation in our children, everything else will fall into place.' Texas has for years been an incubator for Christian Right policies that are exported to other states or codified into federal law by courts. Lawmakers and their supporters have said they are confident that the current slate of Christian-centric bills will pass and then survive expected court challenges — though some legal experts are less sure. Rev. Harrison, meanwhile, said she has frequently ruminated on her recent exchange with Sen. Campbell, and what it portends for Americans who are not conservative Christians. To her, it's so much more than a debate about schools or the church-state wall. 'I believe we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ most powerfully without words, and for me, that means to follow the example of the way of Jesus,' she said. 'Often the most powerful example we can set for others in preaching the gospel as Christians is by our actions. We are called to love one another, and that means speaking up for those whose voices are not heard and or are silenced.' Disclosure: Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and Southern Methodist University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. We can't wait to welcome you to the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas' breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Step inside the conversations shaping the future of education, the economy, health care, energy, technology, public safety, culture, the arts and so much more. Hear from our CEO, Sonal Shah, on TribFest 2025. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
