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Open in TheBrain

Focus on the Family

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Tyler O'Neil of The Daily Signal reports that he has been speaking with member of Congress about launching investigations into the Southern Poverty Law Center, which MAGA has been targeting in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk.

TONY PERKINS SPLC WORKING WITH ANTIFA

Tyler O’Neil, Managing Editor of The Daily Signal, covers the breaking news about the FBI’s decision to cut all ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Our friends over at the Daily Signal

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reported some very, very welcome news to

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get our Friday off and running.

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According to their exclusive reporting,

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the FBI confirmed that it has severed

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all ties with the Southern Poverty Law

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Center. Now, you may recall that just

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before the assassination of Charlie

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Kirk, the SPLC actually had placed his

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organization Turning Point USA on their

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so-called hate map, which by the way,

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FRC is also on their list as well. But

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now, the FBI is severing relationships

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with the SPLC. And what does all that

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mean in practice? Well, here now to

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discuss more is Tyler O'Neal. He is

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actually the one who broke this story.

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He's a senior editor at the Daily Signal

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and author of Making Hate Pay, the

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corruption of the Southern Poverty Law

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Center. Tyler, welcome back to

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Washington Watch. We appreciate you

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joining us.

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Thanks again for having me, Jody.

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All right, this is this has been a long

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time coming. Uh so for those who may not

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be aware, share with us the impact that

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the SPLC has had on the FBI and others

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for that matter. Yeah. So I think many

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of your viewers will probably remember

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when the FBI's Richmond office released

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that memo targeting radical traditional

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Catholics and telling agents to develop

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sources inside houses of worship. uh

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particularly targeting those specific

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Catholics, more traditional Catholics.

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They were citing the Southern Poverty

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Law Center in that memo. And this is

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just one of many instances where the

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Biden Justice Department had been

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working closely with the Southern

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Poverty Law Center. Uh just today, uh

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actually, America First Legal MILLER is out

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with even more evidence, more documents

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showing this relationship. One of the

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things that really stood out to me most

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was that RG Craravens, who is a staffer

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at the SPLC, who recently was the guy

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they picked to defend their decision to

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add Focus on the Family to the hate map

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earlier this year. RG Cravens was

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himself advising the Department of

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Justice and prosecutors at one of these

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Department of Justice gatherings under

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the Biden administration. So the SPLC

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has had tremendous impact in the Biden

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administration and now we are finally

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seeing I mean thank god Cash Patel is

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coming out there and saying this. By the

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way the statement is not just that they

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cut off ties with the SPLC now but that

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they have not been using SPLC data or

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engaging with the SPLC since the

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beginning of the administration.

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So this is this is a great step forward.

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This reminds me of when Attorney

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General, then Attorney General Jeff

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Sessions, told a group of us who had

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gathered for a free religious freedom

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summit with ADF back in 2018 that the

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DOJ would never work with the SPLC

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again. Unfortunately, that promise was

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broken by the succeeding administration.

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But hopefully we can see a DOJ and an

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FBI that will completely distance

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themselves and remain distanced from

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such a horrific organization.

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Absolutely. Tyler, do you think that the

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assassination of Charlie Kirk was uh the

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the straw that broke the camel's back,

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so to speak, in regard to finally

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removing the SPLC influence from the

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FBI?

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Yes. I think that the fact that and I

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mean, you know, talking with you about

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this, the Family Research Council was

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first targeted after the SPLC put it on

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the hate map and then you had the

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horrific terrorist attack against you.

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Then of course there was the act of

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violence at the congressional baseball

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game where the shooter had liked the

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SPLC on Facebook and now the SPLC puts

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Turning Point USA on the hate map and

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then a couple months later Charlie Kirk

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is assassinated. I mean, this this

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really raises important questions and I

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think the Southern Poverty Law Center

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needs to stop defaming conservatives and

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Christians and this moment have of has

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been an awakening of how dangerous the

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SPLC is and the FBI is now officially se

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separated ties from them. By the way,

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this is also when the FBI is cutting

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ties with the Anti-Defamation League,

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which I I don't know if you'll remember

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this, but back in 2024,

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u they had they were doing a report on

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terrorism in the past year, and they

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said that the transgender shooter who

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targeted the Nashville uh that Nashville

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church was not the Nashville school,

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sorry, the Christian school in

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Nashville, uh was not an instance of

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left-wing terrorism. and they really

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bent over backwards to rewrite history.

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Meanwhile, the ADL was also saying that

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critics of gender ideology are a threat

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to other Americans and they were going

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and going to the FBI and other law

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enforcement saying you need to monitor

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these critics of gender ideology.

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Wow. Really is great great news. We've

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got less than a minute. Uh what happens

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next? What do you think needs to happen

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next?

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Well, I've already been speaking with

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senators and with congressmen who are

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reiterating uh concern that Senator Tom

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Cotton had back in 2019. Tom Cotton

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wrote a letter to the IRS asking them to

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revisit the SPLC's tax status. We also

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have more evidence of the SPLC uh

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working kind of hand in handinand glove

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with Antifa. uh not just keeping Antifa

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off their hate map, but also hiring a

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woman who was described as Antifa's

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secret weapon. And then of course, an

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SPLC attorney was arrested at an Antifa

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riot in 2023 and charged with domestic

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terrorism. So, we might be hearing an

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investigation into the SPLC. And I'm I'm

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hoping that we can have some real

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accountability and some real answers to

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what else they're doing.

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We are all hoping that and I think your

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idea of an investigation is in big

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order. Tyler O'Neal, senior editor,

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Daily Signal.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/global-christian-right/

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an investigation by the media outletopenDemocracy revealed Friday that the dark money groups masterminding the far-right assault on reproductive freedoms in the U.S. have also spent at least $28 million in recent years on efforts to roll back the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people worldwide.

The new analysis shows that prominent anti-abortion groups including the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Federalist Society, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family and Heartbeat International have "been involved in recent efforts to limit reproductive rights in Europe and Latin America."

The organizations form what openDemocracydescribes as "the 'dark money' global empire of the U.S. Christian right," which is exporting its legal strategy, army of lawyers, and resources overseas to forestall and reverse international progress on abortion access.

ADF, a far-right Christian legal advocacy group with ties to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, has spent years laying the groundwork for the draconian Mississippi abortion ban at the heart of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a Supreme Court case that could imperil reproductive freedoms across the U.S.

But ADF's influence extends well beyond its home country. According to openDemocracy, the organization—whose global arm is called ADF International—spent $15.3 million between 2016 and 2019 on efforts to gut abortion rights overseas.

"The European offices of ACLJ and ADF have intervened in dozens of European court cases against sexual and reproductive rights," the outlet notes. "Last year, Poland's constitutional court voted to ban abortion in cases of fetal defects. [ACLJ] submitted arguments in favor of the new restrictions, condemned by the Council of Europe as a grave 'human rights violation.'"

"The European branch of ACLJ also intervened for the first time at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights," openDemocracy observes. "The government of El Salvador, where abortion is illegal in all circumstances, was sued for the imprisonment and death of a woman who had experienced a miscarriage."

As for the Federalist Society—of which all six current right-wing Supreme Court justices are either current or former members—"Europe was the main destination of foreign spending," openDemocracyfinds.

"Europeans are too naive in thinking that achievements in women's rights and sexual and reproductive health are irreversible," said Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, told the outlet. "The anti-choice movement does not only have a lot of money, they also have a plan and the determination. Europe should wake up, and it should wake up fast."

While under U.S. tax law the far-right groups have largely succeeded in keeping their funding sources hidden from the public, openDemocracy examined "financial information disclosed by grantmakers" showing that the National Christian Foundation (NCF) and Fidelity Charitable donated $93 million to the organizations between 2016 and 2020.

Feminist researcher Sonia Corrêa of Sexuality Policy Watch said openDemocracy's report "exposes once again the long-running organic connections between anti-abortion forces in the U.S. and Latin America."

Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, similarly argued that the findings "further demonstrate the growing trend of religious extremists forging cross-border alliances to advance... pseudo-legal arguments and engaging in formal legal processes aiming to unstitch the fabric of human rights protection."

In an op-ed for the New York Times on Thursday, openDemocracy's Mary Fitzgerald argued that if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds Mississippi's abortion ban and undercuts Roe v. Wade, the nation will "join of a small cadre of increasingly authoritarian countries that have become more restrictive on abortion in recent years."

Fitzgerald went on to cite specific examples:

Poland's constitutional tribunal ruled on a retrograde abortion ban last year which effectively banned abortion in all cases apart from rape, incest or threat of life or health to the mother, after the ruling Law and Justice party packed the court.

Hungary's Viktor Orban is ramping up its talk on "family values," and a 2016 United Nations report criticized the country for obstructing abortion access.

Vladimir Putin's Russia has just joined the misleadingly titled Geneva Consensus Declaration: a document co-sponsored by the United States under the Trump administration with repressive governments including Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Mr. Orban's Hungary, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's Egypt, and signed by dozens more of the world's most repressive regimes from Saudi Arabia to Uganda. (President Biden announced in January that the United States would withdraw.) The declaration's authors also claim that there is no international right to abortion.

"Later this month President Biden will host the Summit for Democracy, with a key focus on promoting human rights around the world," Fitzgerald noted. "But as U.S. courts continue to dismantle basic rights enjoyed in countless other modern democracies, the most pressing question must be: How can democracy do its job at home if only half the population is granted full human rights?"

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2010

https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/an-evangelical-backlash-against-environmentalism/

over the last decade, many evangelical Christians have embraced the doctrine called creation care, which uses a scriptural basis to promote good stewardship of the earth and its resources. For these believers, problems like climate change threaten to greatly intensify third-world poverty, making actions to reduce global warming emissions an urgent Christian issue.

“We are convinced that evangelicals must engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or humanity’s responsibility to address it,” hundreds of evangelical leaders declared in a 2006 statement on climate change.

But while a growing number of local and national nonprofit groups have formed to spread the “creation care” message, an increasingly fierce backlash against the mingling of Christianity and environmentalism has emerged from other quarters of the evangelical movement.

Leading the Christian counterargument on the environment is the Cornwall Alliance, an evangelical nonprofit that strenuously opposes action on climate change and describes the environmental movement as a “false religion” that Christians must avoid at all costs.

This December, the group released a 12-part educational video series, “Resisting the Green Dragon,” warning Christians that radical environmentalism “is striving to put America, and the world, under its destructive control.”

The video series includes appearances by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Focus on the Family; and other conservative evangelical Christian leaders.

The series takes direct aim at the “creation care” movement, citing a “well-funded effort to infiltrate churches” by groups with beliefs that are “deadly to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“Some of what goes under the name of ‘creation care,’ even in evangelical circles, is infected by the false worldview and theology of secular and pagan religious environmentalism,” Calvin Beisner, founder of the Cornwall Alliance, said in a statement accompanying the videos.

In an e-mailed response to questions, Mr. Beisner said that “creation care” environmentalists and evangelical politicians, like Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mike Huckabee, the former presidential candidate and Arkansas governor, who have advocated for action on climate change, probably did not understand the science behind the positions they were advancing, and were parroting alarmist views propagated by radical environmental groups and the mainstream media.

Mr. Beisner wrote that he had so far not met a single evangelical “who has been able to rehearse the most basic arguments pro and con regarding the most important physical issue” in the global warming debate, “which is climate sensitivity.”

He added, “That suggests to me that most are embracing conclusions without understanding the arguments.”

Mr. Beisner, a former professor of theology and a ruling elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, argued that the science is still unsettledon whether greenhouse gases are warming the climate and that projections of dangerous human-driven warming in the future are flawed and unreliable. But an “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming” on the Cornwall Alliance’s Web site urges all evangelicals to accept that recent global warming is natural and that mankind is incapable of altering the climate.

“We believe Earth and its ecosystems — created by God’s intelligent designand infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence — are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory,” the group’s declaration reads. “Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.”

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https://theconversation.com/faith-and-politics-mix-to-drive-evangelical-christians-climate-change-denial-143145

US Christians, especially evangelical Christians, identify as environmentalists at very low rates compared to the general population. According to a Pew Research Center poll from May 2020, while 62% of religiously unaffiliated U.S. adults agree that the Earth is warming primarily due to human action, only 35% of U.S. Protestants do – including just 24% of white evangelical Protestants.

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Politically powerful Christian interest groups publicly dispute the climate science consensus. A coalition of major evangelical groups, includingFocus on the Familyand the Family Research Council, launched a movement opposing what they describe as “the false worldview” of environmentalism, which supposedly is “striving to put America, and the world, under its destructive control.”

Studies show that belief in miracles and an afterlife is associated with lower estimates of the risks posed by climate change. This raises the question: Does religion itself predispose people against climate science?

Surveys of people around the world, as well as social science research on denial, suggest the answer to this question is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.

Where religion and science can’t be reconciled

An automatic resistance to science would seem to make sense for some religious believers.

There are several ways that core aspects of modern scientific knowledge tend to undermine literalist or fundamentalist readings of religious texts. In particular, evolution by natural selection, the central concept underlying the biological sciences, is utterly incompatible with most creationist faith traditions.

Religion offers the comforts of a measure of control and reassurance via an omnipotent deity that can be placated by ritual. In contrast, the scientist’s naturalistic universe offers neither an intrinsic moral order nor a final reward, which can be unsettling for the devout and in conflict with their faith.

Because of these mismatches, one might expect those with a strong religious affiliation to be reflexively suspicious of scientific findings. Indeed, in a large international survey, 64% of those who described religion as an “important part” of their life said they would side with their religious teachings in a disagreement between science and their religion. Other studies find that, for the faithful, religion and science are at odds as ultimate explanations for natural phenomena.

Climate science denial may stem more from politics than religion

Social scientist Dan Kahan rejects the idea of an automatic link between religiosity and any anti-science bias. He argues that religiosity only incidentally tracks science denial because some scientific findings have become “culturally antagonistic” to some identity groups.

According to Kahan’s data, identification as a political conservative, and as white, is much more predictive of rejecting the climate consensus than overall religiosity. He argues that anti-science bias has to do with threats to values that define one’s cultural identity. There are all kinds of topic areas wherein people judge expert qualifications based on whether the “expert” confirms or contradicts the subject’s cherished view.

Social scientist Donald Braman agrees that science denial is context dependent. He points out that while conservative white males are more likely to be skeptics on global warming, different demographic groups disagree with experts on other particular topics.

For example, where a conservative person invested in the social and economic status quo might feel threatened by evidence for global warming, liberal egalitarians might be threatened by evidence, say, that nuclear waste could be safely stored underground.

As I explain in my book, “The Truth About Denial”, there’s ample evidence for a universal human tendency toward motivated reasoning when faced with facts that threaten one’s ideological worldview. The motivated reasoner begins with a conclusion to which he or she is committed, and assesses evidence or expertise according to whether it supports that conclusion.

White American evangelicals trend very strongly toward political conservatism. They also exhibit the strongest correlation, among any faith group, between religiosity and either climate science denial or a general anti-science bias.

Meanwhile, African-American Protestants, who are theologically aligned with evangelical Protestants but politically aligned with progressives, show some of the highest levels of climate concern.

North America is the only high-income region where people who follow a religion are substantially more likely to say they favor their religious teachings over science when disagreements arise. This finding is driven mainly by politically conservative U.S. religious denominations – including conservative Catholics.

A major new study looking at data from 60 countries showed that, while religiosity in the U.S. is correlated with more negative attitudes about science, you don’t see this kind of association in many other countries. Elsewhere, religiosity is sometimes even correlated with disproportionately positive attitudes about science.

And the U.S. is generally an outlier in terms of attitudes toward human-caused global warming: Fewer Americans accept the climate science consensus than residents of most other countries.

All this would suggest that climate science resistance has more to do with cultural identity politics than religiosity.

Which comes first?

But the available evidence cuts both ways. A landmark study from the 1980s suggested that fundamentalist religious traditions are associated with a commitment to human dominion over nature, and that this attitude may explain anti-environmentalist positions.

Even after controlling for political ideology, those committed to an “end-times theology” – like U.S. evangelicals – still show a greater tendency to oppose the scientific consensus on environmental issues.

Perhaps some specific theologies bias the believer against the idea that human beings could be responsible for the end of humanity. This bias could show up as an automatic rejection of environmental science.

We are left with something of a “chicken and egg” problem: Do certain religious communities adopt politically conservative positions on climate change because of their religious tradition? Or do people adopt a religious tradition that stresses human dominion over nature because they were raised in a politically conservative community? The direction of causation here may be difficult to resolve.

It wouldn’t be surprising to find either religious dogmatism or political conservatism linked with anti-science attitudes – each tends to favor the status quo. Fundamentalist religious traditions are defined by their fixed doctrines. Political conservatives by definition favor the preservation of the traditional social and economic order.

Consider that perhaps the single essential aspect of the scientific method is that it has no respect for cultural traditions or received views. (Think of Galileo’s findings on the motion of the Earth, or Darwin on evolution.) Some would argue that scientific inquiry’s “constant onslaught on old orthodoxies” is the reason both conservatives and frequent churchgoers report a decreasing overall trust in science which continues to this day.

Even if politics and culture rather than religion itself may be driving climate science denial, religious communities – as some religious leaders, including the Roman Catholic Pope, have recognized – bear a responsibility to exercise some self-awareness and concern for well-being rather than blindly denying the overwhelming consensus on a civilization-ending threat like human-caused global warming.

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But students who have been convinced to sign up for Liberty, MacGillis reports, have little recourse when things go wrong. The Obama-era crackdown on for-profit degree mills — including requirements that graduates be able to attain “gainful employment” — only served to help Liberty’s enrollment numbers by putting many of its competitors out of business. And new Trump-era policies under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have only made things easier for Liberty; DeVos is expected to roll back Obama-era regulations establishing higher standards for online-only learning.

Liberty isn’t the only evangelical institution whose nonprofit status allows it to operate with less financial transparency than it would otherwise. Just this year, the conservative lobbying group Focus on the Family— which heavily advocates for anti-LGBTQ and anti–sex education policies, among others — filed its 2017 taxes as a church, allowing it to avoid laws about financial disclosure and to, for example, claim property tax exemption for its “clergy.”

Whether the federal government intends to crack down on this intersection of religion and finance remains to be seen. But Trump’s repeated invocation of his desire to repeal the Johnson Amendment — a provision prohibiting 501(c)(3) nonprofits, including churches, from explicitly endorsing political candidates — suggests that as far as the Trump administration is concerned, religious institutions should be granted as much tax-related leeway as possible.

Read MacGillis’s full article here.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/05/09/christian-right-groups-wage-crusade-capture-courts/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=5c5ed87e-0075-4ed8-aad0-19dc7ba0c82b

big-budget religious-right organizations are waging a sustained crusade to advance their controversial social agenda by rigging the rules in state courts, according to a new report released by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

Ten of the largest groups with a combined annual budget of more than $220 million have spent millions over the past decade to mount a relentless attack on traditional safeguards designed to insulate judges from politics, including merit selection, campaign finance laws, and judicial codes of conduct that limit what judges can say about legal issues likely to come before their courts.

The Christian right groups oppose same-sex marriage and adoption rights, promote gay conversion therapy, oppose reproductive rights, and fight for broad religious exemptions. Some have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Emboldened by the successful ousting of three state Supreme Court justices in Iowa in 2010, as retaliation for the Court’s unanimous decision overturning a ban on same-sex marriage, those conservative religious groups have used legal challenges, legislation, and dark-money election spending in more than a dozen states to politicize state courts.

Religious Right Assaults on Judicial Indipendence

“All courts are under attack by conservative warriors,” said Arn Pearson, CMD’s executive director and the report’s author. “But since Iowa, those most at risk are in the states.”

“The organized Christian right thinks judges should be accountable to ‘values’ voters, and does not believe in the separation of church and state,” Pearson said.

While the religious right has not been able to replicate its Iowa rout, it has successfully teamed up with corporate and partisan players to abolish merit selection in Tennessee, win a conservative majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, and mount a major 2016 challenge against four Kansas Supreme Court justices based on their rulings on abortion, the death penalty, and school funding.

Those efforts have been bolstered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed corporations–including nonprofits–to pour money into judicial elections for the first time in more than a century.

“The influence of big money–already pervasive in federal and state elections–increasingly casts a shadow over how state judges handle controversial cases concerning equal marriage or privacy rights,” Pearson said. “Million-dollar-plus campaigns against sitting judges have become the new normal and can intimidate judges, who are supposed to be neutral arbiters of the law, even when unsuccessful.”

Outside spending on state supreme court elections has more than tripled since 2010, reaching a record $28 million in the 2015-16 judicial elections.

Outside Spending in Supreme Court

Citizens United and many of the state attacks on judicial independence have been masterminded by James Bopp, an Indiana attorney and GOP insider who has represented groups like Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, National Organization for Marriage, and National Right to Life.

Focus on the Family and its advocacy partner, the Family Policy Alliance, have been major players in that effort. The groups spent a combined $93 million in 2016 and funneled nearly $7 million to a network of local partners in 38 states between 2012 and 2015.

Focus on the Family recently declared itself a church and announced that it will no longer file informational tax returns with the IRS.

“The religious right wants to win ‘Christ-centered’ courts that reflect their extreme religious views, and they will continue to wage a series of small battles until they get there,” Pearson said. “Ensuring that courts will protect the constitutional and civil rights of all Americans, regardless of their religious views, will take an equal commitment from supporters of an independent judiciary.”

Read the report: Conquering the Courts

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/focus-on-the-family-has-declared-itself-a-church-avoiding-irs-disclosure-rules/

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The Evangchr4 Trust is a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt nonprofit. According to documents filed with the IRS, its mission is "to develop, disseminate and apply Biblical principles to economics, politics and society as a whole in order to make the United States a country where spiritual and economic prosperity flourishes."[1]

The Washington Post describedthe trust as "a pastor outreach effort that gave nearly $1.2 million to CitizenLink, an advocacy arm of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. CitizenLink spent more than $2.5 million on ads on behalf of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republicans in 2012."[2]  ^501c4

^

Promoting Government Intervention in Private Affairs

Although the Kochs have recently been on a PR blitz framing themselves as "classical liberals" who oppose government intervention into private affairs, both Gardner and Ernst are vehemently opposed to a woman's right to choose.

The Kochs also directly funded organizations that oppose abortion rights and same sex marriage, but which work to elect candidates who—like Ernst and Gardner--will support deregulatory efforts that benefit the Kochs' bottom line.

Freedom Partners gave over $1 million to CitizenLink, the political arm of the religious right group Focus on the Family.

CitizenLink is currently campaigning to defund Planned Parenthood and has been a big supporter of anti-LGBT candidates who "work against basic civil rights and legal protections," according to the Human Rights Campaign. Freedom Partners also reported giving $1.3 million to CitizenLink in its previous tax filing.

Freedom Partners additionally gave $5.7 million to "EVNGCHR4 Trust," another evangelical religious right entity that in past years has passed most of its Koch funding to CitizenLink.

Freedom Partners also gave $225,000 to Susan B Anthony List, another anti-abortion group.

Complex Web of Interlocking Entities

===

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/christian-right-donald-trump

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The so-called alt-right may have grabbed most of the attention since Donald Trump’s victory, but it’s the Christian right that got him over the line. And experts say they are much more likely to influence how he governs.

Frederick Clarkson, a senior fellow at Political Research Associates, has studied the Christian right for decades. He says that when it comes to their relationship with the morally erratic Trump, it’s all about the art of the deal.

“The Christian right has matured as a political movement. They recognize that you can’t always get political leaders who conform with your beliefs as consistently and wholly as you’d like.”

“Even though he doesn’t appear to be their guy, they can make deals with him that would make him into their guy in a way that no one else has ever been.”

Ralph Reed, chairman of the evangelical Faith and Freedom Coalition, appeared to confirm Clarkson’s analysis when he spoke to Fox News. “They were never under any illusions that Donald Trump was one of them,” he said [3] of his evangelical flock. “And by the way, they never asked him to be. All they asked was that he shared their issues agenda and that he would fight for it. He persuaded them on both of those points.”

A lot of post-election coverage (some of it unnecessarily fawning [4]) has considered the newer, shinier, openly white supremacist alt-right movement. And people are right to be concerned about the influence of its White House sympathizers like Steve Bannon [5]. But the fascist core of the movement likely numbers around 10,000 or less. Trump, ever the opportunist, has already cut loose some of the more outre leaders, like Richard Spencer [6]. Also, the wide variety of right-wing actors who lay claim to the alt-right tag are already riven by infighting.

The upsurge of hate crimes [7] around the country should be monitored and resisted, but it seems possible that the “hipster fascists” have already peaked in terms of their national political clout. Recent bizarre speeches[8] by Richard Spencer presage a future of increasing isolation.

The Christian right’s adherents, on the other hand, include tens of millions of the most disciplined voters in the country. And there’s a very good case to be made that they won Trump the election. Just look at the numbers.

In 2016, white evangelical Christians composed [9] 26 percent of the electorate—just as they did in 2012, 2008, and 2004.

And their quarter of the total vote in 2016 went 81-16 percent for the Republican. This gave Donald Trump a slightly bigger share of evangelicals than Mitt Romney, the pious Mormon, in 2012, or war hero John McCain in 2008. Trump even slightly outdid George W. Bush’s 2004 share, even though W identified as a born-again Christian. 

According to exit polls, these numbers and proportions meant that the evangelical vote alone almost entirely negated Clinton’s advantage among nonwhites. (Of the 29 percent of voters who were nonwhite, Clinton got 74 percent of the vote.)

And while there’s been a lot of talk about the “white working class” and its grievances, other figures suggest that the combination of race and religious identity may have been even more potent.

According to the Public Religion Research Institute [10], “the proportion of white Christians in each of the 50 states is more strongly correlated with support for Trump than is the proportion of white residents without a college degree in the state.” If we use education as a proxy for class, in the states that flipped Trump it mattered less than religion.

The places where Trump outperformed expectations to clinch the election—like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa—all have white Christian majorities.

As the PRRI’s CEO Robert P. Jones points out, in 2016, when we measure the United States as a whole, white Christians (a category that includes white evangelicals, but is not limited to them) are only 43 percent of the population.

His recent book, The End of White Christian America [11], predicted that white Christians would, on the whole, decline in their demographic and electoral dominance. He stands by the overall argument, but admits 2016 didn’t exactly bear out his conclusions.

“Where I was wrong, where I was surprised, is that I said in the book that Mitt Romney’s campaign was the last one in which you could plausibly stack up enough white Christian voters to get you over the line.”

“I would say that what you are seeing is that last gasp of this particular group, rather than any reversal of major trends.”

The key this year was turnout. The Obama coalition, faced with an uninspiring Democratic candidate, stayed home in droves in key states. The Christian right—losing ground demographically and in the culture wars—came out to vote. While Clinton piled up redundant votes in safe states like California, evangelicals helped to pry loose the upper Midwest for Trump.

The fact that they did may seem puzzling. Trump is on his third wife, cheerfully admits to serial adultery and even sexual assault [12], and has been inconsistent over time on the kinds of moral issues—abortion, homosexuality—that exercise evangelicals. His own expressions of faith seemed pro forma; he generally gives the appearance of being the most godless candidate in living memory.

As a result, some evangelical leaders, like Russell Moore [13], were firmly in the #nevertrump camp, seeing the candidate’s moral flaws as disqualifying. (Moore declined the opportunity to comment on this story.)

Millions of evangelicals were able to get past this, in part, because of their fear and loathing of Hillary Clinton. Clarkson says they voted from similar sentiments to many other voting blocs, choosing, as they saw it, the lesser of two evils.

“One candidate was beyond the pale and another candidate was acceptable to them.”

Despite Trump’s apparent “lack of a serious religiosity,” and a very mixed record on abortion and homosexuality, Clinton was more feared on the grounds of policy.

“She was not just pro-choice but seen as pro-abortion, she was seen as pro-marriage equality, she was seen as pro-gay rights, she was seen as anti-family. She represented the kind of demonized feminism that has animated their movement for a couple of decades now. It’s hard for liberals to see how people are affected by those issues, but they are.”

Clinton has held her place as a bete noire of the Christian right for decades.

Carin Robinson, a political scientist who coauthored Onward Christian Soldiers? The Christian Right in American Politics [14] recalls that when she was studying the Christian right in the 1990s, “On numerous occasions I received mailings from these groups that said Hillary Clinton was going to take away my Bible. She has been used as a means of mobilizing, inspiring fear and getting evangelicals to vote.“

Having her appoint a Supreme Court justice was the worst propsect of all. Robinson says that “The evangelicals I have spoken to, it just came down to that Supreme Court nomination, and having that crystallized by the death of Scalia. It was all about that empty chair.”

But even with this hostility to Clinton as a baseline, how did they come to terms with Trump? How did they come to select him in the primary above candidates with other Christian candidates? Jones thinks it was because his campaign messages were not in fact at odds with evangelicals’ values—in fact he was speaking straight to them.

“It was really this bigger argument Trump was making about turning the clock back. If you’re a white evangelical your numbers are slipping due to immigration, and because your children and grandchildren are leaving the church. Trump’s rhetoric gave a sense of turning the clock back to a time when your values, your demographic had sway in the country.”

“He converted values voters into nostalgia voters.”

He says “the data doesn’t really support” the idea that these voters were holding their noses as they voted for Trump. In pre-election surveys, white evangelicals expressed opinions that chimed with Trump’s key messages. The evinced hostility to migrants, and a belief in pervasive “reverse” racism and a sense that the country is adrift.

“When you look at him on the stump, he was saying to evangelicals, ‘your numbers used to be increasing, now they’re decreasing. If you elect me, you’ll have a friend in the white house who will restore power to the Christian churches. I’m you’re last chance, folks.’

But Clarkson instead points to Trump’s concrete offerings.

“To some extent it didn’t matter who the non-Hillary candidate was. The question was, what kind of deal could they strike? This was the most openly transactional electorate for the Christian right we have ever seen. What did they get? We don’t know the answer exactly, but let’s look at the results so far.”

During the campaign, Clarkson said, Trump made all the right noises about easing Christians’ sense of persecution in an increasingly liberal cultural and legal climate. One key issue carried a particular weight. “He said he was going to be very forceful about religious liberty, and particularly the Johnson Amendment.”

This was a change President Johnson made to the tax code, preventing certain kinds of nonprofits, like churches, from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Trump has called for its repeal.

It’s not just the tax code that concerns them, though. “There’s a deeper agenda” for the big evangelical organizations, according to Clarkson.

“They don’t want to comply with civil rights and labor laws, or “complicit,” as they see it, with abortion in any way, or see taxes go into things they don’t support.”

These beliefs frame attitudes from everything from healthcare to gay marriage. Evangelical organizations and their adherents don’t want to participate in healthcare plans that fund birth control or abortion, any more than they want to bake cakes for gay couples or be forced to consider them for employment.

Religious liberty so defined “is a banner they are willing to follow. If he is prepared to appoint Supreme Court justices that support that view, cases like the Bob Jones decision would be vulnerable.”

That was the decision made back in 1983, where the Supreme Court ruled that the IRS could revoke Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status for banning interracial relationships.

Trump’s promises on these issues have been taken very seriously by Christian right leaders.

Jim Daly, of Focus on the Family, wrote in a newsletter [15] the day after the election, “We are grateful for Mr. Trump’s pro-life pledge and look forward to his promise of a pro-life administration, which includes de-funding Planned Parenthood. We’re also optimistic about the president-elect’s pledge to champion pro-religious liberty policies and once again welcome faith in the public square.”

The elevation of Mike Pence as Trump’s running-mate was a big reassurance to leaders like Dobson, and his millions of followers. Pence identifies as an evangelical Christian, and according to Robinson, “has great credentials among Christian right leaders.” Clarkson says that during the campaign, Pence “personally reassured” evangelical voters. “He spoke to voters at the values voters summit and reassured of them of Trump’s bona fides. He told them that he is in favour of religious liberty. And he had the standing to say that.”

Trump has put Pence in charge of the transition team, giving him enormous power over determining the shape of Trump’s cabinet. His decisions have already pleased the faithful.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition has issued statements welcoming the appointment of Tom Price as Health and Human Services Secretary, anticipating [16] that, “he will lead the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare and its unconstitutional mandate.” Similarly, they welcomed [17] Jeff Sessions as someone who would “to make our country a better place and ensure that the concerns of people of faith are upheld at the highest level of our government.” (AlterNet reached out to the Faith and Freedom Coalition for further comments, but its spokesman did not respond to emails before the deadline for this story.)

As for Jerry Falwell Jr., who heads up the evangelical Liberty University, he says that the transition team offered him the Education Secretary gig, before handing it off to billionaire ideologue Betsy DeVos [18]. He was a strong backer of Trump during the campaign, and even censored anti-Trump material in the University’s newspaper.

But Pence may wind up with even more heft after Inauguration Day.

Reports that Trump offered John Kasich [19] a slew of hitherto presidential powers when he was wooing him as a potential running mate gives Frederick Clarkson pause. If Pence got the same offer, “that would make him the most powerful vice president in American history.”

Meanwhile, the things the administration doesn’t do might be as significant as its positive moves. For example, any relaxation of enforcement of the Voting Rights Act by a Sessions Department of Justice will only give white Christian voters greater relative sway. And refusing to fund Planned Parenthood will just make it harder for women to maintain control over their reproductive rights, especially in red states that aren’t inclined to make up the shortfalls.

Trump owes evangelicals, and the early signs are that he will deliver. He will need them again in 2020, and again they might be crucial to the election result.

While it’s true that America is no longer a majority white Christian country, and is grinding toward a minority-majority future, what counts in elections is voters. While Jones thinks that white Christian America is on the slide, Clarkson points to their resiliency, and the way that in spite of population changes, they are still able to make themselves a part of winning electoral coalitions.

“There is a certain wishful thinking that has attended the rise and continuation of the religious right.”

“Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing sector of American Christianity. It is a grouping of people who have gone from being the least political to the most political. They are organized.”

They may be a much more serious long-term danger than the outright fascists, because one of the things they are best at organizing is the vote.

Jason Wilson is a writer and photographer based in Portland, Oregon. His internationally published work has appeared in many outlets including The Guardian (where he is a columnist), AlterNet, The Atlantic, and Religion Dispatches.

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Focus on the Family is a right-wing public pressure organization created by Dr. James Dobson in 1977. It claims to be dedicated to creating and sustaining strong families based on what they call "traditional" values. Former Reagan administration cabinet secretary Don Hodel has been president of this organization since 2003.

Dobson's wife heads the National Day of Prayer campaign.

Former Focus on the Family Senior VP Gil Alexander-Moegerle wrote a book entitled James Dobson's War on America in which he reveals the dark side of this organization.

Focus on the Family publishes Citizen Magazine.

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Focus on the Family founder and chairman James Dobson is perhaps the most influential right-wing Christian leader in the country, with a huge and loyal following that he can reach easily through an impressive media empire.

Click [here for Right Wing Watch posts about Focus on the Family]

:{:{Focus on the Family}:

8605 Explorer Drive

Colorado Springs, CO 80920

Website: http://www.family.org/}:

Founder: Dr. James C. DobsonPresident/Chief Executive Officer:James D. Daly

Established: 1977 

Finances: $137,848,520 (2004 Focus on the Family revenue); $24,988,036 (2004 Focus on the Family Action revenue) 

Board of Directors: Ted Engstrom, Bobb Beihl, Lee Eaton, Shirley Dobson, Don Hodel, Stephen W. Reed, Robert Hamby, Anthony Wauterlek, Daniel Villanueva; Lt. Gen. Patrick P Caruana, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, Steve Largent, Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr., Dr. Kathleen Nielson (2004)

Staff: approximately1,300 employees

Publications: 2.3 million subscribers to ten monthly magazines. Magazine titles include: Focus on the Family, Citizen Magazine, Parental Guidance, Clubhouse and Clubhouse Jr. Focus on the Family also publishes a wide variety of books, tapes, films and videos. 

Media: Dr. Dobson is heard daily on more than 3,400 radio facilities in North America, in 15 languages, on approximately 6,300 facilities in 164 countries. Dobson's estimated listening audience is over 220 million people every day, including a program translation carried on all state-owned radio stations in the Republic of China. In the United States, Dobson appears on 80 television stations daily.

State affiliates: FOF is affiliated with 36 state groups such as the Pennsylvania Family Institute, the North Carolina Policy Council and the Rocky Mountain Family Council. 

Affiliate groups: Focus on the Family Institute, FOF's college program, and Focus on the Family Action, which is FOF's cultural action organization formed under the IRS section 501(c)(4). FOF has 74 different international ministries and has established conservative Christian ministries for attorneys, doctors, teachers, and other groups.

Principal Activities

Funding

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About Founder James Dobson

About President Jim Daly

Before coming to FOFJim Daly worked at International Paper, where he gained experiences in banking, insurance, and product sales. He joined FOF in 1989, when he started out as the assistant to the President of Public Affairs. He eventually moved on to manage the International Field Director position which address relations in Asia, Africa, and Australia. His position now as President is the result of his experienced corporate and business skills, coupled with his ability to make cross-cultural ties.

Quotes from Dr. James Dobson

:{:{In response to 9/11: "Question: Has God withdrawn His protective hand from the US?" }:

James Dobson responds: "Christians have made arguments on both sides of this question. I certainly believe that God is displeased with America for its pride and arrogance, for killing 40 million unborn babies, for the universality of profanity and for other forms of immorality. However, rather than trying to forge a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the terrorist attacks and America's abandonment of biblical principles, which I think is wrong, we need to accept the truth that this nation will suffer in many ways for departing from the principles of righteousness. "The wages of sin is death," as it says in Romans 6, both for individuals and for entire cultures. " 

– Focus on the Family website}:

:{:{"[The homosexual] agenda includes teaching pro-homosexual [sic] concepts in the public schools, redefining the family to represent "any circle of people who love each other," approval of homosexual adoption, legitimizing same-sex marriage, and securing special rights for those who identify themselves as gay. Those ideas must be opposed, even though to do so is to expose oneself to the charge of being "homophobic." }:

– "Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide" by James Dobson}:

:{:{"Does the Republican Party want our votes, no strings attached—to court us every two years, and then to say, 'Don't call me; I'll call you'—and to not care about the moral law of the universe?...Is that what they want? Is that the way the system works? Is this the way it's going to be? If it is, I'm gone, and if I go, I will do everything I can to take as many people with me as possible."}:

– Statement from 02/07/98 Council for National Policy meeting, Washington Times, February 17, 1998}:

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Updated: September 2006

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