4 days ago
Are Christian nationalists targeting women's right to vote?
Happy Friday. Thanks for keeping up with us! As always, reach out with thoughts, questions, offerings: ecordover@ and klong@ This week we examine the theocratic, patriarchal movement making waves in Washington.
Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a CNN interview of his pastor, Christian nationalist Doug Wilson, writing 'All of Christ for All of Life.' In the video, church members discussed why they believe women shouldn't be allowed to vote — a tenet of Wilson's main church, Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.
In the CNN segment, Wilson, who founded a network of churches in the late 1990s called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, said 'women are the kind of people that people come out of.' He has written several books on marriage, masculinity and childrearing, along with blog posts with titles like 'The Lost Virtues of Sexism.' He has referred to various women as 'small-breasted biddies,' 'lumberjack dykes' and 'cunts' and extolled the 'benefits' of slavery.
The pastor's views are coming under scrutiny as he gains influence within the Republican Party. Last year, he declared that his church was seeking to make inroads with 'numerous evangelicals who will be present both in and around the Trump administration.' Since then, he's appeared at congressional events, cheering when Hegseth — one of his congregants in Tennessee — was confirmed. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought also has ties to the church.
Christian nationalism is the belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and should remain so in the future — and that our laws should reflect Christian values. A 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center found that half of U.S. adults think the Bible should have some influence on federal laws, even though the First Amendment prohibits the government from 'establishing a religion.'
The public support for Christian nationalism from high-ranking members of the White House cabinet is alarming for civil rights advocates, political scientists and Christians alike who say it could impact policy, further gender inequality and promote fear among women.
'To have the Secretary of Defense repost this message is especially worrisome ... because it resonates so strongly with this notion of threat. What role does Pete Hegseth see the military playing in carrying out, in enforcing, in reinforcing this Christian nationalist understanding of women's submission?' Traci West, professor emerita of Christian Ethics and African American Studies at Drew University Theological School, tells Women Rule.
A 2024 study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that a 'key aspect often linked to Christian nationalism is adherence to patriarchal ideals.' According to their research, 33 percent of Americans agree that 'in a truly Christian family, the husband is the head of the household, and his wife submits to his leadership,' while 51 percent of Christian nationalism sympathizers and nearly seven in 10 adherents to Christian nationalism agree with that statement.
Also, 'there is a very, very high correlation between support for Christian nationalism, and those who voted for Trump in 2024,' says Diana Orcés, director of research at PRRI.
According to Samuel Perry, a professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma, with Hegseth and others in the Trump administration, there's a 'reassertion that 'No, patriarchy is not just an option, I think it's a good thing.''
Perry says that the Christian nationalist ideology has already influenced Trump administration policy, particularly regarding childbearing and fertility.
He says that data shows that 'conservatives, even when they're quite pronatatalists,' i.e. promote having more babies, 'are actually the least likely to support things like paid leave and childcare, even tax credits — which, he says could make it 'more difficult for women to go back to work.'
Jared Longshore, a minister of Wilson's church, tells Women Rule he personally supports President Donald Trump and is 'very grateful for what he's doing. … I'm certainly grateful for what he did with Supreme Court justices. … I know Pete has done things' related to women in combat roles.
'Scripture calls the husband the head and then the woman the body,' Longshore says. 'When you hear that the husband has a hierarchy in the home, we should think in the same way that we think about the relationship between our heads and our bodies.'
Longshore says repealing the 19th Amendment is 'not something I'm pressing for, but when asked would I support that, I said yes, I would. … from the beginning of our nation up until the time of the suffrage movement, we had one vote per household and I think that would be a good thing.'
Women Rule reached out to Hegseth to ask if he supported his church's belief that women should not vote or participate in government.
In response, Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in an emailed statement, 'The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson's writings and teachings.'
POLITICO Special Report
'My Life Became a Living Hell': One Woman's Career in Delta Force, the Army's Most Elite Unit by Seth Harp for POLITICO: 'Courtney Williams was 24 years old when she learned of an intriguing job opportunity at an unnamed 'special mission unit' at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the headquarters of the top secret Joint Special Operations Command. It was 2010, and she was coming off a four-year enlistment in the Army, in which she'd been an interrogator and Arabic linguist but never deployed. She was recruited at a job fair by K2 Solutions, a contractor in Southern Pines, North Carolina, run by former members of Delta Force, the Army component of JSOC.'
Eleanor Holmes Norton Keeps a Low Profile as Trump Takes Aim at DC by Nicholas Wu for POLITICO: 'Washington's locally elected government is under attack from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. But the capital city's self-proclaimed 'warrior on the Hill' is nowhere to be seen on the front lines.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's nonvoting House delegate, issued a written statement Monday after Trump seized control of the city's police force and moved to send in National Guard troops, calling it 'counterproductive,' a 'historic assault on D.C. home rule' and 'more evidence of the urgent need to pass my D.C. statehood bill.'
Donald Trump Took Over DC's Police. Why Is the City's Mayor So Zen? By Michael Schaffer for POLITICO: 'Muriel Bowser has given Donald Trump everything a blue-city mayor could possibly give a MAGA president. And he kicked her in the teeth anyway.
But what's most telling about the power dynamics between Washington's mayor and Trump's administration is that the Bowser allies I spoke to think Trump's furious White House press conference on Monday actually represented a victory of sorts.'
Number of the Week
Read more here.
MUST READS
Trump Has Said Abortion Is a State Issue. His Judicial Picks Could Shape It Nationally for Decades. by Christine Fernando for The Associated Press: 'One called abortion a 'barbaric practice.' Another referred to himself as a 'zealot' for the anti-abortion movement. Several have played prominent roles in defending their state's abortion restrictions in court and in cases that have had national impact, including on access to medication abortion.
As President Donald Trump pushes the Senate to confirm his federal judicial nominees, a review by The Associated Press shows that roughly half of them have revealed anti-abortion views, been associated with anti-abortion groups or defended abortion restrictions.'
A Right-Wing Influencer Tried to Be a Tradwife. It Almost Broke Her. by Michelle Goldberg for The New York Times: 'Lauren Southern, one of the most well-known right-wing influencers during Donald Trump's first term, first went viral with a 2015 video titled 'Why I Am Not a Feminist.' Then 19, beautiful and blond, Southern argued that women are advantaged in many areas of life, including child custody disputes and escaping abusive relationships. 'Feminists are unintentionally creating a world of reverse sexism that I don't want to be a part of,' she said.
But being an antifeminist, it turns out, is no shield against abusive male power. Southern's new self-published memoir, 'This Is Not Real Life,' is the story of conservative ideology colliding with reality.'
How One Oregon Activist Is Using a Decades-Old Liberal Policy to Stall Green Energy Projects in Rural Areas by Tony Schick for ProPublica: 'During the outcry against nuclear power in the 1970s, liberal Oregon lawmakers hatched a plan to slow an industry that was just getting started. They created a burdensome process that gave the public increased say over where power plants could be built, and the leading anti-nuclear activists of the day used appeal after appeal to delay proposed nuclear plants to death. It had a huge impact: Oregon's first commercial nuclear plant, the one that spurred lawmakers into action, was also the state's last.
What those lawmakers didn't plan for was that 50 years later, an Oregon citizen activist would use that same bureaucracy to hinder some of the very energy projects that today's liberals want: wind farms and the new high-voltage lines needed to support them.
They didn't plan for Irene Gilbert.'
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Read more here.
on the move
Families Against Mandatory Minimums President Shaneva D. McReynolds has been appointed as a voting member of the United States Sentencing Commission's newly formed Sentence Impact Advisory Group.
Dezenhall Resources has added Katie Runkle and Steffen Newman as associates, Amma Boateng as senior director of coalitions, Mary Grace Lucas as vice president and Jana Spacek as managing director of organizational development and operations. (h/t POLITICO Playbook)
Meghan Green is now general counsel for the Senate Budget Committee. She most recently was general counsel for the House Intelligence Committee. (h/t POLITICO Playbook)
