Latest news with #SeparationOfChurchAndState
Yahoo
04-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How Charlie Kirk turned to religion to level up his racism
Charlie Kirk initially made his name by being the most obnoxious of the 'debate me' bros. As far as titles go, it's like winning 'Most Stinky' at the Litter Box Olympics, but Republicans love men who are the worst, so it turned him into an overnight MAGA star. Kirk, who wanted to seem like a young and 'hip' Republican when he started out, claimed in 2016 to have a 'secular worldview.' Two years later, he criticized older Republicans for ignoring the 'separation of church and state.' His organization, Turning Point USA, cited their values as 'fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.' More recently, however, Kirk and TPUSA have undergone a dramatic Christian right makeover. As NBC News reported, he has 'become one of the nation's most prominent voices calling on Christians to view conservative political activism as central to Jesus' calling for their lives.' By 2022, he was falsely claiming the separation of church and state is 'a fabrication' made up by 'secular humanists.' (In fact, it was 'made up' by Thomas Jefferson.) Kirk's commitment to theocracy isn't half-baked. He believes in the Christian nationalist concept of the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on far-right Christians to control not just all government, but media, business and education. This idea drove many of the rioters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, where some displayed Appeal to Heaven flags to demonstrate their belief in total Christian right domination. There are many reasons that Kirk underwent this change. Religious fanaticism is central to Donald Trump's base of support; the Capitol insurrection was evidence of this. And while the religious right has steered Republicans for decades, the situation grew worse during Joe Biden's presidency, as right-wing media churned out ever-more-radical content denouncing LGBTQ rights and women's equality. By starting Turning Point Faith in 2021, Kirk was hopping on the 'trad' trend. He denounced the 'LGBTQ agenda,' and equated homosexuality with 'grooming' children for sexual abuse. (He said this while partnering with a pastor who did time in federal prison for attempted 'coercion and enticement' of a minor for sex.) He has called on women to forgo education and careers so they can instead focus on being submissive housewives. But another reason is deeply rooted in the history of white evangelicalism: Racism. Kirk, like decades of Christian right leaders before him, has found that loudly proclaiming your faith is an effective way to whitewash overt bigotry against people of color. And he has much to answer for when it comes to race-baiting. As Ali Breland of Mother Jones reported in 2024, Kirk has 'hosted far-right and white supremacist figures on his podcast and has tweeted in support of whiteness, earning praise from white supremacists.' This isn't by accident, either. Kirk routinely expresses his own racist views. He suggested Black pilots are unqualified. He blamed a Black fire chief in Austin, Texas, for flooding deaths that occurred a three-hour drive away from the city. He denounced the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act and tried to discredit the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as 'awful' and 'not a good person.' Last month, Kirk devoted a chunk of his podcast to honoring the influential evangelical pastor John MacArthur, who passed away on July 14 at the age of 86. Kirk called him 'one of the most influential Protestant minds since the Reformation,' and a 'legend' who 'never bowed to the gods of this age' and 'never apologized for Scripture.' Soaring language — but it's a euphemism. One of MacArthur's most famous old-fashioned beliefs was that slavery was godly. In 2001, MacArthur delivered an infamous sermon at his California megachurch. He argued that Black people are cursed by God to be 'servile people' who are 'doomed to perpetual slavery.' There have been twisted efforts to rationalize what he said here, but the context of his entire sermon made his meaning quite clear. He's invoking an argument that white Southerners used in the 19th century, claiming Black people were descended from the biblical figure of Canaan, who is cursed by God in the Book of Genesis to be a 'servant of servants.' MacArthur claimed the descendants of Canaan populated Africa and carried this curse with them. Eleven years later, he had not changed his mind. In an interview, MacArthur said, 'It is a little strange that we have such an aversion to slavery.' He agreed that some slaveowners committed 'abuses,' but then he noted our society hasn't outlawed marriage or parenthood, institutions that have also had abuses. MacArthur argued that 'working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds' for slaves who 'had no other opportunity.' Then he equated being enslaved to a white man to being an obedient servant of was no outlier in his views, which is why he's received such an outpouring of praise from the Christian right since his death. As historian Randall Balmer detailed in an influential POLITICO Magazine article published in 2014, the modern religious right was formed for 'protecting segregated schools.' Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority, the preeminent Christian right organization of the 1980s, got his start as an outspoken segregationist. Like Kirk, Falwell was a staunch opponent of King, preaching against him and other civil rights leaders as 'communists' who were 'exploiting every incident to bring about violence and bloodshed.' Early in his career, Falwell gave a sermon in which he declared that integration 'will destroy our race eventually,' warning that after school desegregation, legalized interracial marriage would be next. 'A pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife,' he declared, horrified. Falwell was wrong on the morals, but right on the facts. After Richard Loving, a white man in Virginia, was arrested for marrying Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, the couple sued the Commonwealth. Virginia, of course, is where Falwell lived and pastored the Thomas Road Baptist Church. In 1967, the Supreme Court declared interracial marriage legal nationwide. In the early '70s, he opposed the federal government's efforts to integrate private religious schools, saying, 'In some states it's easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school.' As historian Anthea Butler has argued, 'racism inflected almost every point of evangelicalism along the way.' That's the tradition Kirk is plugging into as he embraces both Christian nationalism and racist politics, which have always been deeply intertwined. In 2020, he and his favorite far-right pastor, Rob McCoy, released a podcast in which they denounced Black Lives Matter as 'malevolent,' 'anti-American' and 'anti-Christian.' He has argued that the proper Christian view on immigration is not to 'welcome the stranger' because 'foreigners can become your masters.' When New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani ate biryani with his fingers — which is a normal practice in India, where his parents are from — Kirk used it to imply that the Muslim politician cannot be a real American because 'we have utensils.' Using religion as a cover for racism has long held this appeal for a simple reason: It puts an ennobling gloss on ugly feelings. It dresses up bigotry as if it were about faith and philosophy, instead of cruelty. It's also about escaping responsibility. Since the racist cannot justify their views rationally, instead they blame God, who is conveniently never around to answer questions. It's a pathetic excuse for small-minded people. No wonder Charlie Kirk embraced it so wholeheartedly. The post How Charlie Kirk turned to religion to level up his racism appeared first on
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Several Cabinet secretaries sermonize at right-wing religious conference
Several top Trump administration officials and allies of the president attended a conference for Christian nationalists and other far-right evangelicals last week, raising serious doubts about how long the wall separating church and state can hold. Evidence abounds that Christian nationalism — specifically, the idea, advocated by some right-wing evangelicals, that the United States government ought to be structured around and advance their particular strain of Christianity — is an existential crisis for American democracy. But President Donald Trump has openly instructed his White House Faith Office to 'forget about' the separation of church and state. And prominent supporters of the president seem increasingly comfortable echoing that language. That was the case at last week's Road to Majority conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. The organization is a nonprofit founded by former Republican politician and evangelical activist Ralph Reed, who has downplayed the dangers of Christian nationalism in the U.S. and written a book (the original title of which was 'Render to God and Trump') telling Christians they have a moral obligation to support Trump's presidency. In a speech at the event, Jennifer Korn, the director of Trump's White House Faith Office, praised Reed and downplayed the separation of church and state. 'When they say 'separation of church and state,' separation of church and state just means that the government can't tell you what religion to be. It does not mean that you don't have a voice in this government,' she said. Korn also said the office is not the 'theological office' of the White House, although, as I wrote in May, the so-called Religious Liberty Commission is filled with far-right ideologues who have pushed policies that would erode the separation of church and state. As host, Reed introduced House Speaker Mike Johnson, who gave what amounted to a sermon about the need for a government ruled by Christian theology. Speaking about plans to keep control of the House of Representatives in 2026, Johnson remarked that 'providentially,' Republicans have favorable congressional maps next year. (Although, I'd note that it was conservative politicians, not God, who drew the gerrymandered maps that seem to be buoying the party's electoral hopes.) Johnson framed Republicans' potential electoral victory as if it were a means to implement God's will (or at least Johnson's perception of it): 'I don't know if this is an appropriate citation of the book of Matthew, but it says 'from the time of John the Baptist until today, the kingdom of God has been advancing at the hand of forceful men, and forceful men take hold of it. Can we apply that to politics? I guess. I'm going to. That's what we're gonna do.' Imagine the conniption that would play out across conservative media if a Muslim Democrat — say, Rep. Ilhan Omar — talked about forcefully imposing the will of Allah. This dubious merger of Scripture and secular politics was common at the conference, where some Trump administration officials wrapped controversial policies in chapter and verse, while others portrayed the president as ordained to fulfill God's earthly mission. Suggesting that his job at the Department of Veterans Affairs was akin to a spiritual calling, Secretary Doug Collins defended controversial staffing cuts at his agency and dismissed gender-affirming care for transgender people as a 'social experiment' in the almost same breath that he said 'taking care of our veterans' was his only concern. And Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner defended cuts to his agency and new work requirements for benefits — which at least one study has shown to be ineffective — during a sermon in which he says he wants his 'team' to promote 'faith in God and hard work.' The event also featured figures popular among the Christian nationalist crowd, such as activist Robert Jeffress, who has a history of claiming various government officials have been anointed by God, and Joe Kennedy, the former public high school football coach who won a Supreme Court case over his decision to lead his players in prayer before games. From start to finish, the message here seemed quite clear. Prominent Christian nationalists openly cheered what they believed to be the fall of church-state separations after Trump's victory last year. And now they, alongside the Trump administration, are hardly hiding their intention to bring about that outcome. This article was originally published on
