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Open in TheBrain

Founding Fr Xian

myths are resistant to facts/correction bc they have an important function.

real americans are white xian

see xian nat theocracy

see david barton see debunked repeated

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RWW

10 26

Rob McCoy Keeps Spreading False Christian Nationalist History

In the span of one minute, Christian nationalist pastor Rob McCoy managed to make at least five demonstrably false claims about the Founding Fathers and the creation of the Constitution.

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RWW

07/07/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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an 4 26

In theory, “A Great Awakening” could have been a fascinating film. It depicts the real-life friendship between American founding father Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield, one of the founders of the evangelical movement. Franklin was a deist intellectually and a lapsed Puritan emotionally, while Whitefield was Calvinistic.

Yet “A Great Awakening” has no interest in exploring their relationship in any thoughtful or dramatically interesting way.

It’s easy to see why that happened. Despite focusing on religion, “A Great Awakening” is not a good faith movie, at least in the sense that it exists primarily to entertain, enlighten or in some other way enrich the lives of its audience. Director Joshua Enck and his co-writers Jeff Bender and Jonathan Blair, have created a bad faith film, a Trojan horse of Christian nationalist propaganda packed inside as a supposedly poignant tribute to two 18th century luminaries. Blair also stars as Whitefield, and the film’s lone virtue is that his performance is so horrible, it becomes unintentionally hilarious (more on that later). Blair’s costar John Paul Sneed, alongtime veteran of Christian Right schlock, plays Benjamin Franklin with such blandness that I laughed when my autocorrect tried to change his surname to “Snooze.” Sneed could learn a lot from cinema’s greatest Franklin, Howard Da Silva in “1776.”

The propaganda behind “A Great Awakening.”

:{The movie’s central plot is the claim that George Whitefield inspired Benjamin Franklin to support human equality; for this reason, I cannot talk about it with any semblance of intellectual honesty and not dive into the story. While Franklin did ask the 1787 Constitutional Convention to open its daily sessions with prayer, he was not particularly religious and seems to have done so because — like millions of Americans today — he could simultaneously want to be on God’s good side without also being a theocrat. Yet the movie draws from a controversial account by a man named William Steele, written almost 40 years after the event occurred and relying entirely on Steele’s unverified second hand recollections supposedly relayed by New Jersey delegate Jonathan Dayton.

Steele was later contradicted by Virginia delegate, future president and the Constitutional equivalent of influencer James Madison, who recalled that Franklin, who represented Pennsylvania (where much of the movie is set), had not asked for that prayer in quite the dramatic fashion that Steele relayed. Madison was confident that Franklin’s “proposition was received and treated with the respect due to it; but the lapse of time which had preceded, with consternations growing out of it, had the effect of limiting what was done, to a reference of the proposition to a highly respectable Committee.”}:

Madison added, “That the communication [Steele’s account of Dayton’s testimony] was erroneous is certain; whether from misapprehension or mis-recollection, uncertain.”

"We know little of relevance about either William Steele or Jonathan Steele,” scholar Louis J. Sirico, Jr., wrote in 2018 (Benjamin Franklin, Prayer, and the Constitutional Convention: History as Narrative, 10 Legal Comm. & Rhetoric 89 (2013)). “We know that William Steele was a Revolutionary War veteran who was born in New York, lived in New Jersey, married Mary Dayton, possibly a relative of Jonathan Dayton, and moved to upstate New York. He was an active Presbyterian and often wrote poetry for his family. Jonathan D. Steele became a wealthy businessman and served as president of the Niagara Fire Insurance Company."

Sirico added, “Nothing in the available historical record offers any insight into the genesis of the false narrative.”

Sirico is not the lone voice casting doubt on the credibility of the Steele account. John Fea, Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at a private Pennsylvania Christian college called Messiah, wrote for Commonwealth Magazine in 2024 that “the Awakening had nothing to do with the American Revolution (and, in fact, may never have happened in the first place),” and that indeed there is a “twenty-five-year gap between the First Great Awakening and the Revolutionary Era.” He concluded that a 1981 thesis by historian Jon Butler disproving any link between the two events (to the extent that the former occurred at all beyond a few local incidents) was “groundbreaking and convincing.”

Yet with powerful Christian nationalists like informal President Trump adviser Steve Bannon and longtime theocrat David Barton spreading the lie that the Great Awakening inspired the American Revolution, “A Great Awakening” is guaranteed a built-in audience, especially with it being distributed by a mainstream studio like Roadside Attractions.

Which brings us back to the movie on screen.

Christian Right movies are notoriously second-rate.

The only people who enjoy these movies are either those who deliberately dull their tastes to insensitive nubs in order to “own the libs” or those who enjoy laughing (often with gallows humor) at the fact that these movies exist at all. The most notable entries in the genre include “Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas,” “War Room” and the five “God’s Not Dead” movies. None of them amount to much as serious or even unironically funny films, but like “A Great Awakening,” each is rip-roaringly hysterical if you have a taste for the specific type of cheese produced by these particularly talentless people.

“A Great Awakening” has plenty such moments, at least when Blair is gnashing his teeth, contorting his face and otherwise mugging as the most unlikeable and histrionic Whitefield ever performed by an actor. There is a maudlin scene of foot washing in which Blair and an extra seem to compete to overact, a narcissistic so-called “self doubt” set piece that had me agreeing with a John Wesley put-down and several blatant uses of African Americans as props, even though Whitefield in real life had a very complicated relationship with race. My favorite moment was when Blair’s Whitefield insults the clerical establishment in a scene intended to come across as free-thinking but instead seems needlessly rude. He is given a command that he may no longer “preach inside.” With a look of triumph he declares, “Then I will preach outside!”

I try to be polite during movies, but at that moment I couldn’t stop myself from guffawing so loudly my voice literally reverberated against the auditorium walls. Where else is he going to go? Fortunately, the theater was empty except for me, so I wasn’t technically rude.

:{Yet I don’t think those theaters will remain empty (I was at an early morning screening and paid because it is the film critic’s tax, so to speak), as much as I hope my cynicism is misplaced. I’ve seen advertisements for “A Great Awakening” everywhere, and if you go to my earlier list of Christian Right films that normal people laugh at, you’ll see that several of them were box office successes.

The audience for these films are not the early 21st century equivalents of Franklin or Whitefield or either man’s many contemporary followers in the 18th century, but rather of the people from that era too mediocre to be remembered. The individuals who earnestly support “A Great Awakening” or any similar slop films own themselves as the world laughs that such insipid material can economically support itself at all. Unfortunately, because they believe they're owning their ideological opponents, millions of such mediocrities are out there, happy to part with their money to prove a point.}:

The sad thing is, as I mentioned earlier, it didn't have to be this way. I think back to "Cinema Twain," an obscure play-turned-movie directed, written by and starring Val Kilmer as an American secularist as iconic as Benjamin Franklin, author Mark Twain. The 19th/early 20th century novelist had a respectful-yet-critical epistolary relationship with Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy. Kilmer (who busted my balls when he saw there was a journalist in the audience) did a poignant job of vividly bringing to life both the brilliant personalities and the sharply different ideas of his two central figures. Kilmer's passion project, which sadly was never adapted into a film, moved me because it came from a place of authentic curiosity and was executed with talent. By contrast, "A Great Awakening" strives only to manipulate, and it does so ineptly.

Like all movies made by the Christian Right that intend to proselytize, “A Great Awakening” is full of lazy exposition, flat dialogue and cringey pandering to reactionary self-glorification. This movie is so dumb that it has the gall to insert in one character’s mouth the line “How long will you hide behind your wit?”, as if any substantial amount of that precious commodity exists in this motion picture.

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RWW

Christian Nationalist Pastor Dale Partridge Says Freedom Of Religion Is 'A Really Bad Idea'

01/12/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

On Friday, filmmaker Tobiah Powell released a documentary called "What is Christian Nationalism?" The film featured a variety of far-right activists and pastors—including Andrew Isker, Joel Webbon, Joshua Haymes, Stephen Wolfe, Calvin Robinson, and Brian Sauvé—offering up their thoughts on the need to impose Christian nationalism on the country.

The general message of the film was aptly summed up by Christian nationalist pastor Dale Partridge, who asserted that it was "a really bad idea" for the Founding Fathers to create a nation that guaranteed the freedom of religion.

"I think that when the Founders founded America, the unfortunate reality is they used the word 'religion' instead of Christianity," Partridge said. "I believe when they talked about freedom of religion, they're talking about freedom of denominational choice ... The focus wasn't a freedom over choosing which gods to worship."

"Freedom of religion is, in all intents and purposes, a really bad idea," he continued. "I don't want freedom of religion because I don't think Jesus wants freedom of religion. I don't believe he's interested in the freedom of religion. I think it's a violation of the first commandment to have the freedom of religion. There shall be no worship of any other gods."

"A great way to love the culture is to make sure that society is ruled by Christian rulers and under a Christian government,'" Partridge asserted. "A great way to hate your neighbor is to make sure that they are ruled by godless people or by pagan people or people who hate God and are passing laws that are out of step with his holy and righteous law. "

"So, should mosques be legal in America?" Partridge asked, rhetorically. "I don't think so. I believe that America has a firm Christian identity in its founding. I believe that it's a violation of the first commandment to have the worship of other gods in our land. We can't sing 'God Bless America' and at the same time expect that God won't curse America for the permission of allowing other people to worship gods on our soil."

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For the record, the country’s founders had every opportunity to create a “Christian government” when they wrote the U.S. Constitution, but they instead gave us an explicit ban on any religious test for public office and a First Amendment that guarantees religious freedom and forbids government establishment of religion. As for Patridge’s claim that the founders were only thinking about “denominational choice” for Christians, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, a precursor to the First Amendment, “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

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AHA 7 25 “BIBLICAL” GOD TERM, DIFFUSE MEANING LIKE CALLING ZELELSKY A FASCIST?

IT WANTS TO MEAN AN ACT DECISION FIRMLY ROOTED IN SCRIPTURE/LOGIC THUS PRINCIPLE EG DIVORCE PAXTON?

EG

RWW

07/24/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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AN 7 25

POlitical operative David Barton held up a thick Bible with years of wear on its dark brown cover and proclaimed its pages put Protestant Christianity at the center of the country’s very foundation.

*This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

“This is actually printed by the official printer of Congress,” said Barton, a best-selling author and influential far-right Christian nationalist. Barton has spent the last 40 years arguing that the separation of church and state is a myth — and has built a multimillion-dollar media and lobbying operation to influence public opinion and shape laws around the belief that the United States was founded as a Judeo-Christian nation.

Atthis particular hearing [VID] in April, Barton appeared before the Texas House education committee and testified in favor of legislation, since signed into law, requiring that posters of the Ten Commandments be placed inside every classroom in the state’s nearly 9,100 public schools by September. With him, Barton brought a small collection of books he claims were foundational to the country’s public education system until the 20th Century.

Barton isn’t just a primary pitchman for the Ten Commandments law in Texas, his home state, an investigation by The 74 reveals. His fingerprints appear on 28 bills that have cropped up before the legislatures in 18 states this year. A data analysis of the bills exposes how their language, structure and requirements are inherently identical. In dozens of instances, they match model legislation pitched by Barton verbatim.

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At the Texas hearing, Barton’s eyes fixated on the cover of the rare 1782 Aitken Bible.

“It also says it’s ‘a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools,’” he continued. “It has the Ten Commandments.”

In actuality, Barton lifted language from Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken calling on Congress to sanction a Bible that could also be for “the use of schools.” Christian nationalists have for years falsely claimed the Revolutionary-era printing includes a government promotion of Christianity. Barton has long been accused of taking historical quotes out of context, and in 2012, the Christian publisher of his bestselling book on Thomas Jefferson ceased its production because “basic truths just were not there.”

Texas is one of three states in the last two years to pass a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools. The mandates are part of a coordinated nationwide effort to overturn a 1980 Supreme Court ruling forbidding Kentucky from requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms.

As the influence of Barton and the burgeoning Christian nationalist movement find favor in state legislatures, the White House and with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson — who cites Barton as a “profound influence” — the lobbyists and lawmakers behind the state Ten Commandments bills told The 74 they’re confident the current Supreme Court’s conservative super-majority is on their side, too.

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A Flourish table

The analysis by The 74 reveals how language in virtually every state bill matches model legislation created by Project Blitz, a Barton-steered Christian “bill mill” that’s long flooded statehouseswith legislative templates that promote Christianity in public schools, legalize discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and restrict abortion.

A dozen bills specify, for example, that the Ten Commandments displays must be hung in a “conspicuous” location. Another 11 specify they should be at least 11-by-14 inches in size. Nearly all of the bills — 25 — mandate a Christian version of the religious and ethical directives be displayed as a “poster or framed.” The 74 tallied 96 instances where bills introduced this year match Project Blitz’s model legislation, including template bills to require the Ten Commandments or the phrase “In God We Trust” in public schools.

Among the architects of Project Blitz is the Barton-founded influence machine, WallBuilders. The flurry of state bills were introduced after WallBuilders — the name is an Old Testament reference to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem — convened its annual national conference of state legislators in November where the model legislation was promoted.

After Louisiana passed its first-in-the-nation Ten Commandments law last year, new mandates approved in Arkansas and Texas this year follow the same Project Blitz template.

‘No such thing as separation of God and government’

Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton is the joint author of the state’s new Ten Commandments law and the author of another new law permitting a daily prayer period and Bible readings in public schools statewide. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed both in June.

Middleton, whose district southeast of Houston includes his hometown of Galveston, acknowledged Barton’s influence over not just his own legislative agenda, but Texas’ broader conservative movement. Barton previously served as vice chair of the state Republican Party.

“Of course, WallBuilders is very supportive of the bill,” Middleton told The 74, as were the conservative legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and the First Liberty Institute. “And, of course, all of their missions is to advance religious liberties, especially in the public realm where there is no such thing as separation of God and government.”

Founded by Barton in 1988, WallBuilders promotes theories — discredited by serious scholars — about Christianity’s central role in the formation of the United States through its podcasts, books and a museum with “one of the largest private collections of United States historical documents.”

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Through WallBuilders’ lobbying arm, the Pro-Family Legislative Network, Barton leads direct outreach to lawmakers and educators at its annual conferences at a four-star waterfront resort in suburban Dallas. It was at this gathering where Indiana Rep. J.D. Prescott, a Republican, got the idea for Ten Commandments legislation in his state, he told The 74.

Prescott proposed a bill requiring a “durable poster or framed picture” of the commandments in each library and classroom at all public schools statewide. The legislation ultimately failed to garner support. Bills in other states also failed to gain traction, including in South Dakota where the bill’s critics — including some Republicans — said a government mandate was the wrong way to spread Christianity and ran afoul of the Constitution.

“Our early common school system was really designed to teach biblical principles in the Bible, so it’s just getting back to that point,” said Prescott, who described himself as a “student of history.”

The Pro-Family Legislative conference offers lawmakers scholarships and discounted hotel rates to attend the event. In at least one instance, a New Hampshire state lawmakerfiled a disclosure form reporting that he had received $859.47 from the Pro-Family Legislative Network, including $500 reimbursing him for air fare, to attend the November 2024 conference.

Prescott told The 74, “I learned a lot of it at a WallBuilders conference hosted by David Barton. They’ve got a great conference for legislators down in Texas every November. I did look at the WallBuilders model legislation and it’s a good place to start.”

Not everyone’s Ten Commandments

Experts said the bills seek to do more than require “durable” Ten Commandments posters in every public school classroom. The campaign is part of a broader, well-organized and deep-pocketed assault, they argue, on the separation of church and state.

Although WallBuilders isn’t required to disclose its donors, the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy analyzed federal tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service to bring its finances into focus. In 2021, WallBuilders reported $5.9 million in revenue and $6.3 million in total assets.

The group relies heavily on donor-advised giving, a tax loophole that allows anonymous supporters across the political spectrum to contribute to contentious causes without scrutiny. For example, donor-advised funds have been exploited by far-right activists to leverage global campaigns against the civil rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, according to a 2023 investigation by openDemocracy.

Mercury One, a nonprofit founded by high-profile conservative pundit and media personality Glenn Beck, is both a WallBuilders donor and primary sponsor of Barton’s annual Pro-Family Legislative Conference to brief elected officials “on pressing issues from a constitutional perspective.”

Barton, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, describes himself as a self-taught historian and the owner of the largest private collection of historical documents about the Founding Fathers. His critics pan the graduate of the Oral Roberts University as a discredited pseudohistorian and propagandist.

Barton is “the granddaddy of Christian nationalist disinformation,” constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The 74.

John Fea, an American history professor and history department chair at Messiah University, a private evangelical Christian institution in Pennsylvania, accused Barton of cherry-picking historical information to present a misleading portrayal of the past, one that bolsters his own present-day political agenda.

“This is clearly an attempt by Christian nationalists to try to advance their own version of what America should be,” Fea said, noting that even as historians challenge Barton, he’s amassed influence among Republican lawmakers interested in leveraging a distorted accounting of history for political gain.

“Barton provides that history for these lawmakers. It adds a certain depth, even though it’s hollow.”

Darcy Hirsh, the senior director of government relations and advocacy at the nonprofit National Council for Jewish Women, said the Ten Commandments laws present an attack on “the strict wall of separation” between church and state.

“Any efforts to perpetuate the falsehood that the United States is a Christian nation is something that we find deeply alarming,” Hirsh said. Requiring a protestant Christian version of the Ten Commandments in schools, she said, is “exclusionary and coercive” to children from diverse backgrounds.

“A Protestant interpretation of the Ten Commandments is different than the Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments, in fact, they are numbered differently,” she said. Constitutional protections separating church and state, she said, are critical to the country’s democratic society.

“It’s that protection that has really allowed the Jewish community and other minority faith communities to flourish in the U.S.”

The laws successfully passed in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas now face lawsuits from parents alleging they violate the separation of church and state. The issue could soon appear again before the nation’s highest court. In June, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, among the nation’s most conservative, struck down Louisiana’s Ten Commandments display mandate, finding it “plainly unconstitutional.”

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Parents with diverse religious identities are being backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State in challenging the laws. In a complaint filed in Arkansas, parents allege students will be “unconstitutionally coerced into religious observance” and “pressured to suppress their personal religious beliefs.”

Fea, the evangelical historian, told The 74 the far-right campaign isn’t about the Ten Commandments’ place in the nation’s founding but about advancing the influence of Christianity in society.

“They’re using this historical argument to disguise the fact that they believe that somehow — and I don’t know how this happens, by osmosis or whatever — a student sitting in a classroom where the Ten Commandments is displayed will somehow buy into those ideals and values and become more Christian,” he said.

‘The hostility is gone’

At the Texas House education committee hearing in April, Barton held up a second book. This one was much smaller than the first, but just as old and, Barton testified, just as significant.

Barton lectured the Republican-controlled state legislature on The New England Primer, a widely used Colonial-era reading text. The book, he said, drilled first graders with 43 questions about the Ten Commandments.

Then he introduced a third book, and a fourth.

“The courts have pointed to the Ten Commandments as the reason we have all types of laws,” Barton testified. “So there’s a lot of history and tradition for that document that’s not there for other documents.”

Barton’s prop-focused presentation isn’t just scripted — it’s well rehearsed. This year, the 71-year-old has traveled across the country with his books and a small team of collaborators to spread the gospel of Christian nationalism. Like the bills before the state legislatures, Barton’s speech was replicated again and again.

As Barton testified on the Ten Commandment bills nationally, legislative sponsors routinely parroted his talking points, not just about Christianity’s role in the country’s origin, but the Supreme Court’s support for their movement.

During his recent appearances in Nebraska and other states, Barton’s testimonies invoked the court’s 2022 opinion upholding the rights of a Washington state high school football coach to lead prayers with his team on the 50-yard line after games.

Prescott, the Indiana lawmaker, said he became interested in introducing his bill after learning of the implications of the coach’s Supreme Court victory.

To Barton and other members of his coalition, the court’s opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District creates a clear path to require Ten Commandments in schools — and inject Christianity into other facets of public life — by proving they’re part of a longstanding traditional practice.

In finding for Coach Kennedy, the Supreme Court abandoned its 1971 opinion ruling that religious displays don’t violate the Constitution if they have significant secular or nonreligious purposes. The court’s new standard revolves around whether the religious displays are part of historical practices. In other words, the heart of Barton’s pitch.

“That is the new standard, so the hostility is gone,” he testified. “Showing that this is something that is longstanding practice, you go back to The New England Primer.”

Bought and paid for — according to specs

Even as bill proponents championed states’ rights as one legal justification for their Ten Commandments display mandates, Middleton, the Texas legislative leader, said there is a key benefit to the near-identical requirements in the bills across the 18 states.

“We just wanted uniformity in these displays. We thought that was important,” the oil company president and cattle rancher told The 74. “Obviously, these are primarily going to be donated as well, so it’s probably going to be primarily private funds funding these.”

Project Blitz model legislation devises a funding scheme that revolves around donated displays without the reliance on public funds — a provision that appears in 16 states’ bills. Others invoke the model legislation by encouraging donated displays, but broaden the mandate so schools are also free to spend taxpayer dollars to comply.

Mirroring the Project Blitz model legislation, the new Arkansas law requires the Ten Commandments display be composed of a “durable poster or framed copy” of the document and that it be “prominently” positioned in each public classroom and library across the state. The law also stipulates that the posters should be donated by outside groups, meaning the same private entities who had a hand in crafting the specifications, supporting the bills and getting them on legislators’ radars, will also be the ones buying the versions of the Ten Commandments that wind up in schools.

Even as the Louisiana law is caught up in federal court, religious groups who lobbied for the law’s passage and have close ties to the WallBuilders have plans to donate the displays set to appear in classrooms across the state.

In April, First Liberty Institute and The Louisiana Family Forum announced that Patriot Mobile, which describes itself as “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider,” had donated 3,000 Ten Commandments displays “as part of a project to provide, at no cost to the Louisiana taxpayer, displays in schools throughout Louisiana.”[CHART]

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05/05/2025 rww

by

Kyle Mantyla

The president complained that due process rights are interfering with his mass deportations.

President Donald Trump attempted to take credit for parts of the economy which he considers “good,” while blaming former President Joe Biden for other parts he considers “bad.”

President Donald Trump offered a message of support to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists when he met with a former Proud Boys militant in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.

State Superintendent Ryan Walters bypassed oversight to push Christian Nationalism and right-wing conspiracies into public classrooms.

In this segment, I examine the notion that there was something exceptionally Christian about America's founding era. Last week, I fact-checked Charlie Kirk's viral video defense of the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation in the legal sense. Most of what Kirk had to say was irrelevant or incorrect.

The 9/11 truther denounced Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general and claimed the COVID-19 vaccine is “killing millions of people.”

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RWW

03/10/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

Capitol Ministries, a group that runs weekly right-wing Bible studies for members of Congress and did the same for Cabinet members during the first Trump administration, has announced the return of the “White House Cabinet Bible Study.”

According to a March 6 announcement, the first Bible study of the new administration took place early on the morning of President Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting and included some governors participating by Zoom.

Capitol Ministries “disciples” public officials with its founder Ralph Drollinger’s very conservative interpretation of scripture and his belief that the Bible mandates support for right-wing economic, social, environmental, immigration, and criminal justice policies. He teaches that the government’s primary job is to “quell evil” and punish sin and teaches that entitlement programs lack “any basis of biblical authority.” Drollinger believes that elections are “first and foremost a spiritual battle.”

According to Drollinger, God only hears and acts on prayers from Christians; prayers of those who “passively or actively reject the Son of God,” he has written, “are worthless and go unheard.”

Drollinger shows little respect or tolerance for Christians who disagree with his interpretation of the Bible. He has suggested that Christian leaders who support marriage equality are “Satan’s pawns.” As Right Wing Watch has reported previously:

He has called the “social Gospel” that motivates millions of liberal American Christians “a perversion of scripture” and “not Christianity whatsoever!” He has called Catholicism “one of the primary false religions of the world.” He urges public officials not to take part in “syncretistic” events like the National Prayer Breakfast, arguing that by participating in events that combine different forms of belief, attendees invite God’s wrath rather than his blessing.

In one Bible study, Drollinger offered Christian lawmakers an explanation for why their “unregenerate” non-Christian colleagues “do not seem to get your biblical argument.” It’s because, Drollinger wrote, “they are spiritually incapable of getting it.” Not only that, “The longer a person rejects Christ, the greater his depravity becomes.”

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, former head of the America First Policy Institute, and OMB Director Russell Vought, former head of the Center for Renewing America, are sponsoring Drollinger’s Bible study.

Rollins is closely aligned with Tim Dunn, who Texas Monthly has called “the billionaire bully who wants to turn Texas into a Christian theocracy.” Under Rollins’ leadership, AFPI called its MAGA policy agenda a plan for “restoring a nation under God.” Capitol Ministries’ 2023 annual report includes an endorsement from Rollins in which she wrote that “our Founding Fathers established this great nation by God’s instructions and designed our country’s government based on biblical principles.” She wrote that Capitol Ministries gives her “the strength I need to endure the righteous fight for the soul of this nation.”

Vought has embraced Christian nationalism, and his Center for Renewing America listed Christian nationalism as one of its priorities for the new Trump administration.

Drollinger insists that he is not a Christian nationalist, theocrat, or dominionist because he does not want the church institutionally controlling the government, teaching that the two institutions have different God-ordained roles. He does want public officials to embrace and govern according to his definition of biblical Christianity, hire only “righteous” people to work for them, and refuse to support policies that “compromise biblical absolutes.” In “Oaks in Office,” his handbook for public officials, Drollinger wrote that “the critical and preeminent duty of the Church in an institutionally separated society” is “to evangelize and disciple—to Christianize—the leaders of the State and its citizenry.”

After beginning his work with legislators in California, Drollinger started his congressional Bible studies in 2010. When some of his congressional students joined the first Trump administration, he began holding Bible studies for members of the Cabinet, later expanding to other administration officials. He claimed in 2018 that Trump sent him handwritten notes praising his written studies.

In 2023 Drollinger launched weekly Zoom-based Bible studies with sitting and former governors. Drollinger produces written Bible studies (some translated into multiple languages) that form the basis for in-person gatherings and a weekly radio program that launched on the Salem radio network last year.

Drollinger’s global ambitions extend well beyond Congress and the White House. During the first Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opened doors to help Drollinger take his model to foreign capitals. A 2024 year-end letter from Drollinger boasted that Capitol Ministries held five global training conferences last year in Kathmandu, Nepal; Cape Town, South Africa; Bogota, Colombia; Brussels, Belgium; and Hebron, Kentucky. Its goal is to “plant and develop” ministries in 200 national capitals.

Capitol Ministries is also seeking, with the help of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to recruit men – and only men – to lead Bible studies for elected officials in every state capital and every one of the more than 4,000 local government jurisdictions in the U.S.

During Trump’s first term, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and former Rep. Michele Bachmann helped raise money for Capitol Ministries. Two former members of Congress, Tom Price of Georgia and Trent Franks of Arizona, currently serve on its board of directors.

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an 225 tex trib

Emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and President Donald Trump’s second term, conservative Christians are rallying behind a series of Texas bills that would further infuse religion into public education and potentially spark legal fights that could upend church-state separations.

Last week, the Texas Senate advanced a bill that would allow public taxpayer money to flow to private, religious schools via vouchers. And on Monday, Sens. Mayes Middleton of Galveston and Phil King of Weatherford filed bills, respectively, that would allow time for prayer in public schools and require classrooms to display the Ten Commandments — both of them priorities for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and co-sponsored by all 20 Republican senators.

The impact could extend beyond Texas. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, those on the religious right see an ally in their decades-long fight to crater the church-state wall and allow more Christianity in classrooms across the country.

“Our schools are not God-free zones,” Middleton said in a statement announcing Senate Bill 11, the school prayer legislation. “We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust.’ … There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in our Constitution, and recent Supreme Court decisions by President Trump’s appointees reaffirmed this.”

Legal experts and religion scholars say those arguments misrepresent history or potentially overestimate the effects of recent high court rulings.

“The Christian Right feels very empowered by this particular moment,” said Mark Chancey, a religion professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put Christianity in schools. “They see the present configuration of the U.S. Supreme Court as sympathetic to their efforts.”

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/sXI0TSELvFQRSzr8zEos7JNvoo4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/3fe9b28556c1d2115474869059d79a99/0624%20Capitol-Austin%20File%20OA%2027.jpg)

A monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Capitol in Austin on June 24, 2024. Credit: Olivia Anderson/The Texas Tribune

The religious right entered this legislative session amid a string of legal and political victories. In just the last few years, state Republicans have required classrooms to hang donated signs that say “In God We Trust”; allowed unlicensed religious chaplains to supplant mental health counselors in public schools; and approved new curriculum materials that teach the Bible and other religious texts alongside grade-school lessons.

Those moves have corresponded with a broader normalization in the GOP of claims that church-state separation is a myth, or that the nation’s founding was ordained by God and its laws and institutions should therefore reflect fundamentalist Christianity. Some lawmakers began the 2025 session with calls for “spiritual warfare” with demonic spirits that they believe seek control of the Capitol.

A new legal landscape

In his statement introducing Senate Bill 10 on the Ten Commandments, King said the legal landscape favored more opportunities for religion in school following the 2022 Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision.

In that landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled along ideological lines that a Washington state school district could not prevent a high school football coach from engaging in prayer with students on the 50-yard line after school games. Justices said the school district’s efforts to discipline the coach and prevent his praying violated his free speech rights and right to freely exercise his religion.

In issuing that opinion, the court outlined that it was moving away from the long relied upon legal test

— called the “Lemon test” — to determine if the government is unconstitutionally allowing the infusion of religion in public spaces.

The more than 50-year-old test has been used by courts to make sure that laws involving religion have primarily non-religious purposes. For example, in the 1980 case Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court relied on the Lemon test — named for a 1971 case — when it struck down a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

In the Kennedy decision, justices suggested they were replacing the Lemon test with a consideration of “historical practices and understandings” that is based on an analysis of “original meaning and history.” Legal experts describe the new test as vague and unclear.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/joeZNO6ZS2aiQCgVYcPT_wqf3us=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/b325befd99680ddcd4b266d703c25751/1104%20SCOTUS%20File%20JG%20TT%2008.jpg)

The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on Nov. 4, 2022. Credit: Jason Garza for The Texas Tribune

Christian conservatives see hope in their path to put religion back in public schools, with the court’s move to sideline the Lemon test. They view the new history-based test as a pathway to reverse long-standing precedents that prohibit school-sponsored prayer or putting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Aledo, who has proposed his own Ten Commandments bill, said in an email that “after the Kennedy decision, there is no merit in prohibiting expressions of faith or our collective history.”

Under a new history-based test, Matt Krause, a former Texas House member and attorney for the First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal organization, said he thinks a law putting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms would survive given their “very conspicuous history” in the U.S. and purported influence on the nation’s laws and government. Among other high-profile cases, First Liberty Institute represented the football coach in the Kennedy case, and Krause has previously testified in favor of putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms in part to prompt a “restoration of faith in America.”

Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, holds a similar view to Krause. This session, he’s introduced separate bills that would put the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and allow prayer during the school day. Because of the Kennedy ruling, Spiller said he believes both bills are constitutional — though he wasn’t confident they would have survived prior. A new history-based test would bode well for his Ten Commandments bill, he added, since “most of our laws are based on principles that are contained” within them.

But Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Freedom, which advocates for a strong wall between church and state, said the Constitution and American law are not rooted in Biblical texts.

“There is this zombie myth that all of American law is based on the Ten Commandments,” Tyler said. “But when you look at the U.S. Constitution, there is no mention of God. There is no mention of Christianity. The only mention of religion is to prohibit religious tests for public office.”

Moreover, she takes issue with those arguments, which she said reframe a sacred text as a secular document in order to justify its inclusion in public schools.

“There are so many different translations, and there's just such a rich and diverse depth of the Holy Scripture, she said. “And when the government gets its hands on the Holy Scripture, it standardizes it in ways that really cheapen the mystery and the beauty.”

Religious and legal experts say it isn’t immediately clear exactly how the Supreme Court will apply the history-based test in future cases. There are lingering questions about the specific type of history that would be considered as part of the test.

Chancey, the SMU religion professor, expects those laws, if passed, will prompt lawsuits that could end up in front of the Supreme Court. But he isn’t confident the Ten Commandments bill could survive a test on historical merits.

“There was no time in American history when the Ten Commandments were routinely placed in American public school classrooms,” Chancey said.

School prayer, however, presents a slightly different history. Chancey said while school-endorsed prayer was common in early American history, it was not universal and sometimes divisive.

Steven Collis, director of the First Amendment Center and the Law and Religion Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin, said he’s also not convinced that the Lemon test has been completely thrown out. It’s possible that some parts of the test could still apply, he added.

The school prayer bill, he said, may address the legal question of whether a school cannot endorse prayer or simply cannot coerce prayer, by directly or indirectly forcing students to partake. The current court appears to be leaning toward the latter, he said, which could mean they’d allow a bill similar to the one proposed to go unchallenged. Prior to Kennedy v. Bremerton and under the old test, however, a similar law likely would have been struck down by lower courts, he said.

In the 1962 case, Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot hold prayers in public schools even if the prayer is not tied to a specific religion and participation is optional. The ruling has since been consistently upheld by subsequent decisions, but conservative groups have pushed for it to be overturned.

Regardless, Collis said parties on both sides of the school prayer and Ten Commandments bills would likely try to get the Supreme Court to “bite off on it.”

Efforts to challenge related bills are already underway. Last November, a federal judge said it was “unconstitutional on its face” for Louisiana to require the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms. In January, a federal circuit court heard an appeal on the case. A decision is pending.

Freedom from religion

The religious right’s legal and legislative pushes have come as America continues to diversify and secularize. At roughly two-thirds of the population, Christians still are by far a majority.

Even so, some Christians have been alarmed by the steady decrease in their share of the population — and the simultaneous rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans. So-called “nones” — short for believing “nothing in particular” — now make up 28% of the U.S. adult population — a 12% jump since 2007 that makes them a larger group than Catholics or Protestants, according to Pew Research.

Religion experts say that trend has been accelerated by broader discontent with organized religion, namely Christianity. Interfaith groups have said as much for years, warning that the push to redefine America as a Christian nation is actually driving people away from religion altogether.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/g0HiYHcR6CVlaGZmYj2Hz2_uV1w=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/3aec7e3283c98f92299b73a39910cbb7/0210%20Religion%20Bills%20LW%20TT%2004.jpg)

Members of atheist and anti-Christian nationalism groups speak with Rep. Jon E. Rosenthal, D-Houston, at his office at the Capitol in Austin on Feb. 10, 2025. Credit: Lorianne Willett/The Texas Tribune

“They are interfering with the right of every American in Texas to practice religion freely, which includes practicing no religion, if that’s what you choose,” said Bee Moorhead, executive director of the interfaith group Texas Impact.

Benjamin Clodfelter counts himself among the 4% of U.S. adults who are atheist — though he has not always been up front about his views. During his 7-year stint in the Army, Clodfelter was a closeted atheist, fearing his disbelief in God would draw unwanted attention and cut off career opportunities.

The U.S. Military is supposed to be secular. But Clodfelter said those rules were openly flouted by his unit leader, who required those in his command to attend prayer breakfasts and, at the same time that he had broad authority over their promotions, told soldiers that “you have to have faith to be a good leader in the Army.”

Ten years after leaving the military, those remarks still stick with him. Clodfelter has since dedicated his life to maintaining a strong church-state wall, serving as a board member for the Atheist Community of Austin and, on Monday, joining about 25 other Texans as they lobbied state lawmakers to preserve those separations.

It’s at times felt like an uphill battle, with increasing hostility crowding out nuanced conversations about religion and government.

“It used to be more of a conversation,” he said. “It was an actual dialogue. And I noticed that there was more thought terminating cliches, where they are just denying the existence of our side. It is both perplexing and really frustrating.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/12/texas-ten-commandments-school-prayer/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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jack Hibbs Says The Founding Fathers Would Hang LA Mayor Karen Bass Christian nationalist pastor Jack Hibbs says that the Founding Fathers would hang Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for dereliction of duty over the wildfires.

01/13/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Jack Hibbs, a far-right anti-LGBTQ pastor,conspiracy theorist, and Christian nationalist, used his most recent Sunday sermon to blame Democratic politicians in California for the wildfires that have devastated the Los Angeles region over the last week.

"It's time to replace the leadership in California," Hibbs declared. "You don't need any more examples. These fires could have been stopped."

Hibbs then called on his congregation to join him in urging former Fox New commentator Steve Hilton to run for governor.

"I have asked someone to run for governor," Hibbs said. "I'm pleading with him to run for governor. ... Steve Hilton, would you run for governor? Because I'm behind you, we will will support you."

"The Democrat Party not only failed the United States; it is obvious they have failed California," he continued. "They've had unmitigated power; they did nothing with it, but destroy us."

Hibbs then ordered his entire congregation to stand up, look at the broadcast cameras, and join him in pleading with Hilton to launch a campaign.

"Church, why don't you stand up," Hibbs instructed. "Turn around, church. Point to that camera right in the middle. Steve, we are asking you to run for governor of California so that you can get this ship righted. We want you to run and we want you to have your policies implemented. We will do everything possible. We want to help you. We think the houses of faith should help you."

"While I'm at it," Hibbs added. "[Los Angeles mayor] Karen Bass should be removed from office today. Take her out. She should be thankful that John Adams or Samuel Adams, George Washington or John Hancock are not in power right now because she would be arrested for dereliction of duty—which cost people their lives—and she would be hung, according to our colonial fathers."

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Like other right-wing commentators who have used the devastating fires to score political points, Hibbs did not acknowledge that extreme weather and more intense natural disasters are widely recognized as likely consequences of climate change.”

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01/06/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

“WHAT WAS THE FBI DOING PLANNING January 6th for a year?” Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as FBI director, asked that question during a November 25, 2022 episode of his Kash’s Corner podcast for the Epoch Times. It was no slip of the tongue. As the title of that episode suggested—“What Did the FBI Know Before Jan. 6?”—Patel spent considerable time trying to cast the FBI as a villain responsible for January 6th.

Details about Utah-based Robert Kinch, who backed ‘race war’, suggest rightwing militia has retained links with police.

A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends.

In September, Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the January 6 insurrection.

Neo-Nazis and white nationalists have been emboldened by Trump’s reelection.

Embattled MorningStar Ministries is facing backlash for platforming disgraced preacher Todd Bentley at their recent Vision conference. Bentley was disqualified from ministry in 2020 by a panel of charismatic Christian leaders. The panel made the decision based on numerous firsthand reports of Bentley’s “steady pattern of ungodly and immoral behavior” over the course of almost 20 years, including reports of sexual abuse. Despite the reports, MorningStar gave Bentley a platform at their Vision conference Dec. 29-31.

On Friday (Jan. 3), Speaker Mike Johnson stood before the U.S. House of Representatives on the opening day of the 119th Congress and read what he called “Thomas Jefferson’s prayer.” However, as first reported by A Public Witness, that’s not true. Other outlets followed in noting the problem with Johnson’s claim, which Monticello deems as “spurious.”

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## George Grant Spreads False Christian Nationalist History Far-right pastor George Grant makes false claims attempting to "prove" that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

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11/21/2024

by

Kyle Mantyla

As Right Wing Watch has noted multiple times in the past, one of the defining characteristics of Christian nationalists is their willingness to misrepresent history, as time after time they spread blatant falsehoods in defense of their right-wing ideology. Often, this is rooted in their own ignorance about the Founding Era and the creation of the Constitution, and that tendency was on full display during arecent episode of Tim Pool's podcast.

Pool and guest Milo Yiannopoulos were trying to convince conservative journalist Elad Eliahu that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. The debate was largely incoherent and uninformed, as exemplified by Pool's ludicrous assertion that the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments in the Bill of Rights were "literally" derived from the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

"Do you know why the Founding Fathers created the 4th, 5th, and 6th [Amendments]?" Pool asked, confidently. "It's the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is literally as the spoken word of the Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin said, 'It is better that 100 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer,' which was a play on Blackstone's formulation; it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer which is literally the story of Sodom and Gomorrah [where God said] 'If but one righteous person exists, I will not destroy this land.' It was literally the Bible, which is why they said we should enshrine this in the Constitution."

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Pool's claim is, of course, nonsense and frankly doesn't even make sense, as it is exceedingly difficult to even imagine how the story of Sodom and Gomorrah could have been responsible for the various due process amendments included in the Bill of Rights:

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fifth Amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Sixth Amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Furthermore, Benjamin Franklin had nothing to do with crafting the Bill of Rights, which was drafted by James Madison before being edited and consolidated by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Additionally, Madison's draft largely originated from him choosing from among the dozens of amendments suggested by the states during their various constitutional ratifying conventions.

In fact, many of the things contained in Madison's initial draft were versions of thing already contained in state Bills of Rights or were provisions designed to address issues that had outraged American colonists leading up to the American Revolution.

As historian Carol Berkin explained in her book, "The Bill of Rights: The Fight to Secure America's Liberties":

Many of the guarantees Madison laid out conformed to traditions and expectations established by almost two hundred years of Anglo-American political culture. Some reflected an adaptation of the "rights of Englishmen” to the new experiment in republican government. But many of them also revealed the Revolutionary generation's persistent memory of the abuses arising from imperial policies in the 1760s and 1770s.

We have listened to countless professional Christian nationalist activists make a myriad of baseless and misleading statements over the years, but this is the first time we'd ever heard anyone claim that a key portion of the Bill of Rights was rooted in the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Needless to say, if there was even a shred of evidence to support this notion, we are confident that we would likely have heard it first from someone other than Tim Pool.

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In Kandiss Taylor’s Christian Nation, ‘I Don’t Have to Give You Your Freedom of Religion’

By Kyle Mantyla | August 21, 2024 rww

During the most recent episode of her “Jesus, Guns, and Babies” program, which airs on the network owned by virulently antisemitic conspiracy theorist Stew Peters, Christian nationalist GOP activist Kandiss Taylor claimed that the Christian church is supposed to be running the government and therefore non-Christians are not entitled to freedom of religion.

Taylor is flat-earth conspiracy theorist who unsuccessfully ran for governor of Georgia in 2022 and despite her paltry showing in the Republican primary, she steadfastly refused to accept that she had lost. In 2023, Taylor became a Georgia GOP district chair and started voicing increasingly radical views, even going so far as to call for the public execution of those who oppose her Christian nationalist worldview.

Those radical views were on display during her recent program as she insisted that the Constitution was founded on common law and that common law is rooted in the Bible, meaning that the United States “was founded on Jesus Christ.”

“The idea behind the whole document was that the church runs the state,” Taylor asserted. “The church is we the people. We are the church … and so we run the state. But the state, the government, has no control over the church.”

“And everybody is like, ‘Then you gotta let Satanists come in and you gotta let witches come in, and you’ve gotta let Muslims and Hindus,'” she continued. “No. No, we don’t. No, we don’t because America is founded on God almighty, Creator God, Yahweh, Elohim. That is what we’re founded on and I don’t have to honor your religion. I don’t have to give you freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is there for us to worship Jesus. It’s not for you to come force anything else upon me.”

“So we have that all wrong,” Taylor declared. “We’ve had tolerance. We’ve been politically correct. And at what point are we going to say, ‘No, we’re not going to be’? You can do whatever you want to the comfort of your home. You can do whatever you want to, but don’t come into my government and bring any of that trash in there.”

“We shouldn’t be electing anyone in government—local, state or federal—that is not a Christian,” Taylor concluded.

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FlashPoint" host Gene Bailey interviews "prophet" Joseph Z.

Monday night’s edition of the FlashPoint program on televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel focused on the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the Democratic candidate for vice president.

Guest Rick Green, an associate of Christian nationalist historian David Barton, declared Walz a “power-hungry tyrant” who is “perfect for the Communist Democrats.” If Green was hoping that would be the program’s most memorable attack line, he would soon be sorely disappointed.

That honor goes to “prophet” Joseph Z. Here’s part of his answer to his first question from host Gene Bailey, who asked if Z was encouraged or discouraged by what’s going on the country right now:

I believe very clearly the spirit of the Lord is making a way for the body of Christ to go through in this time. And you know even when we bring up guys like Tim Walz and look at what’s going on, people say he’s you know midwestern folksy, I have another word for him, being from Minnesota myself, and it’s weird. The guy’s just weird. You see the way he hugs his wife. You see the way he does everything. I believe the Spirit of the Lord is letting them overextend their reach. I believe he’s giving them a sense of confidence that’s actually going to be a surprise silver lining turnaround in this whole narrative. I believe the spirit of the Lord is going to bring victory and breakthrough. And you know it’s interesting how the spirit of antichrist just loves to pick these people that fit right in with the wicked overlord lizard mafia that is really driven by their goblin masters, and when you’re looking at this, I believe that’s exactly what we’re facing right now—a spirit of antichrist that wants to have its way.

Remarkably, Bailey had just introduced the Colorado-based Z to FlashPoint viewers by vouching for his credibility:

What we put on the air we take very seriously. And who we put on the air we take seriously as well. But that comes even more so when it comes to men of the cloth and prophets. Well, I met Joseph Z over a year ago, and I’ve continued to watch Joseph. My friend Hank Kunneman—we’ve continued to watch him. When he didn’t know we were watching, we were watching to see how he handled things. And I’m glad to say, I’m proud to have Joseph Z on the show tonight.

FlashPoint was launched by the Victory Channel in the fall of 2020 to help rally conservative Christians to support Trump and likeminded candidates, and as Right Wing Watch has reported, “provides a steady platform for pro-Trump, Christian nationalist propaganda and conspiracy theories, as it did on the night of Jan. 6, 2021.” Trump has rewarded the show’s loyalty by calling in repeatedly and sitting down with Bailey for a Mar-a-Lago interview last year. More from RWW:

“FlashPoint” played a key role in spreading lies about the 2020 election and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with host Gene Bailey regularly welcoming right-wing “prophets” and evangelists like Lance Wallnau, Hank Kunneman, and Mario Murillo on to the program, where they steadfastly refuse to accept the election results.”

Wallnau, a New Apostolic Reformation figure and promoter of Seven Mountains Dominionism, wrote a foreword to Z’s book “Demystifying the Prophetic,” which promises among other things to teach readers how to “identify real and false prophets.”

Last year Green displeased Bailey and other Christian nationalist leaders and activists when he said he thought then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy could make a good president, and Green was forced to “eat crow” on the program and insist that the nation’s founders said “over and over again” that the country needs “biblical leaders.”

FlashPoint regularly takes its show on the road, hosting events in front of live audiences to rally conservative Christian activists. Promoting a 2023 event to train right-wing Christians how to take over local school boards, Bailey declared, “That sounds like we’re trying to take over the world? Yes, we are. I fully admit that. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

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Will David Barton Fill Oklahoma’s Curriculum With Lies and Disinformation?

By Kyle Mantyla | July 22, 2024 rww

Earlier this month, Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist state superintendent of education Ryan Walters announced that he was creating an executive review committee to overhaul the state’s social studies curriculum and that it would be stocked with far-right activists and ideologues.

Among those appointed to the committee was Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, a longtime religious-right activist who has repeatedly misrepresented his academic credentials and whose scholarship is so shoddy that one of his books was pulled off the marked by his own publisher in 2012 after it concluded that “basic truths just were not there.”

Barton is notorious for misrepresenting history in order to bolster his right-wing political agenda and for continuing to repeat his false claims long after they have been debunked. Both of these tendencies were on display when Barton appeared on “The War Room” over the weekend.

David Barton Discusses President Trump's "Providential" Head Turn

“According to University of Houston, they did a 10 year study,” Barton said. “They collected the writings the Founding Fathers in the founding era—15,000 they used—and they found in those 3,154 direct quotes. They said, ‘All right, now let’s see who the Founding Fathers quoted.’ The number one source for their quotes was the Bible. Thirty four percent of all those political quotes came out of Bible verses, and the number one Bible book [was] the book of Deuteronomy.”

“So, this is not hyperbole,” Barton insisted.

While it might not be “hyperbole,” Barton’s statement is certainly misleading, as Right Wing Watch has pointed out time and again:

This claim is a deliberate misrepresentation of a 1984 study conducted by professor Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston that sought to identify which writers and sources of ideas were most cited in “the political writings of Americans published between 1760 and 1805.” Lutz found that the Bible was cited most frequently solely because many of the pamphlets included in the research were sermons that had been reprinted for mass distribution. Once the sermon pamphlets were excluded, Lutz reported that quotes from the Bible appeared no more frequently in the political writings of the era than citations of the classical or common law.

More importantly, Lutz also noted that when the focus was solely on the public political writings from 1787 to 1788, when the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified, “the Bible’s prominence disappears” almost completely.

Undaunted, Barton continued to spread claims that were debunked years ago.

“I was involved in 13 cases at the U.S. Supreme Court,” Barton stated later in the interview. “Even [former Supreme Court Justice] Stephen Breyer said, ‘We all know the due process rights of the Constitution came out of the Bible.”

“The right to confront your accusers comes out of John 8:10,” Barton insisted. “The right to compel witnesses in your behalf comes out of Proverbs 18:17. The right to speak in your own defense [comes out of] Acts 22:1. If you don’t know scriptures, you’re not going to understand how the Constitution works.”

Right Wing Watch first debunked this claim nearly a decade ago, pointing out that what Breyer actually said in his 1999 concurrence in Lilly v. Virginia was merely that “the right of an accused to meet his accusers face-to-face is mentioned in, among other things, the Bible, Shakespeare, and 16th and 17th century British statutes, cases, and treatises.”

The Court’s effort to tie the Clause so directly to the hearsay rule is of fairly recent vintage, compare Roberts, supra, with California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 155—156 (1970), while the Confrontation Clause itself has ancient origins that predate the hearsay rule, see Salinger v. United States, 272 U.S. 542, 548 (1926) (“The right of confrontation did not originate with the provision in the Sixth Amendment, but was a common-law right having recognized exceptions”).

The right of an accused to meet his accusers face-to-face is mentioned in, among other things, the Bible, Shakespeare, and 16th and 17th century British statutes, cases, and treatises. See The Bible, Acts 25:16; W. Shakespeare, Richard II, act i, sc. 1; W. Shakespeare, Henry VIII, act ii, sc. 1; 30 C. Wright & K. Graham, Federal Practice and Procedure §6342, p. 227 (1997) (quoting statutes enacted under King Edward VI in 1552 and Queen Elizabeth I in 1558); cf. Case of Thomas Tong, Kelyng J. 17, 18, 84 Eng. Rep. 1061, 1062 (1662) (out-of-court confession may be used against the confessor, but not against his co-conspirators); M. Hale, History of the Common Law of England 163—164 (C. Gray ed. 1971); 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *373. As traditionally understood, the right was designed to prevent, for example, the kind of abuse that permitted the Crown to convict Sir Walter Raleigh of treason on the basis of the out-of-court confession of Lord Cobham, a co-conspirator. See 30 Wright & Graham, supra, §6342, at 258—269.

Needless to say, there is absolutely no historical evidence to support Barton’s claims that our due process rights came out of John, Acts, or Proverbs. More importantly, Barton has never even bothered to cite any historical record to support his claim, nor has he ever had any incentive to do so. And this is because Barton has built his career on exploiting the biblical and historical ignorance of his own audiences, knowing that they are unprepared to question his assertions and will get no traction even if attempt to do so.

Now that Barton has been tapped to overhaul the academic standards in Oklahoma, it is entirely possible that these sorts of bogus claims will work their way into the state’s social studies curriculum, indoctrinating future generations with a Barton-esque Christian nationalist worldview that is built on lies and intentional misinformation.

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Oklahoma’s top education official Ryan Walters praises right-wing media figures as among “the best minds” to develop the “best history standards in the country”

07/11/24

On July 9, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters announced that a number of people — many of them key figures in right-wing media — would be rewriting the social studies curriculum in the state. The list includes right-wing hosts with ties to Walters like Steve Deace, Dennis Prager, and Stacy Washington, as well as Kevin Roberts, the head of The Heritage Foundation, which has organized Project 2025. (For more on the right-wing figures helping guide Oklahoma's curriculum, see here.)

Walters appeared on the July 11 episode of Jenna Ellis in the Morningand discussed the plans for a new curriculum, using rhetoric that appears to mirror Christian nationalism and expressing excitement with the group of right-wing figures that will help develop the curriculum.

Oklahoma’s top education official Ryan Walters praises right-wing media figures as among “the best minds” to develop the “best history standards in the country”

JULY 11, 2024

Audio

CitationFrom the the July 11, 2024, edition of American Family Radio's Jenna Ellis in the Morning

JENNA ELLIS (HOST): I’m speaking with Oklahoma state superintendent Ryan Walters, who is overhauling the curriculum for schools to simply reflect the truth of our national heritage, to explain civics.

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And yet, the left, who clearly they haven't read the Bible because they think that this is just, you know, a bunch of fairy stories that have nothing to do with reality. They don’t understand that the Bible is actually a history text. It’s actually so much more than that that gives a chronology of world history up until, of course, the New Testament, but then we also have Revelation, the end of all things.

I mean, they just think of this as a purely religious text that is trying to push the Christian religion onto students rather than, as you rightly point out Ryan Walters, the Bible actually is so much more than that and should be studied if kids actually want to understand our American heritage.

…

And so talk about this curriculum more that you have proposed, and I know that people like my good friend Steve Deace are already working on this. What was the design for, you know, bringing in some of these really great — I think just civics philosophers — like Dennis Prager, Kevin Roberts, Steve Deace?

RYAN WALTERS (OKLAHOMA STATE SUPERINTENDENT): Yes. What we’ve seen in education is education has been controlled by the radical left, by these left-wing institutions. You see them all the way down. You see it at the federal level with the Department of Education, but you see it all the way down to the local level. You see it embedded in state departments of education.

Jenna, when I came into the office, I fired 130 of the staff there. And we had embedded left-wing bureaucrats. And so we’ve come in and said, listen, you know, the left has completely tried to control everything, all the way down to curriculum.

So what I want is I want folks that understand American history, understand how to articulate that in a way that kids are going to be able to understand it. And we’re going to come in here, and we’re going to have the best history standards in the country. We’re going to find the best minds from around the country to come in here and help us develop out that story of America. We want our kids to be able to truly understand it. We don’t want any of our history censored from our kids.

We want them to truly understand that because, you know, you look at it too — And when the left has taken away any type of moral, religious reference in our history, you know, you look at folks like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, who were very clearly — you know, you think about some of John Adams quotes about, you know, this constitution was made for a moral or religious people. And part of — so much of what they articulated was an equation that, yes, our rights come from God, we maximize those individual liberties. And there’s also the citizenry has to be moral or religious so that they can self govern. That’s how maximizing individual rights work.

Well, generally, we don’t tell half of that story. We’re lying to our kids. Our kids aren’t getting that picture. And Winston Churchill said the further back you look is the further ahead you can see. And how in the world are we going to move this country forward and continue to be the greatest country in the history of the world if our kids don’t even understand the history of where we came from? And that’s where we are so excited with this group that we have to help us develop these standards.

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10/06/23

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Right Wing Watch has noted multiple times in the past that there seems to be a common theme among Christian nationalist commentators who, time and time again, spread blatant falsehoods in defense of their ideology.

The latest example comes courtesy of right-wing commentator and TPUSA contributor Benny Johnson, who recently delivered a rant in which he declared that “if you are a Christian, there is no excuse for voting for Democrats” and attempted to buttress this claim by telling a bunch of falsehoods about Benjamin Franklin and the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

“Even Ben Franklin understood that in the formation of this nation [that] if God wasn’t the center of it, then it would fail,” Johnson claimed. “The quote from Ben Franklin at his prayer at the opening of the Constitutional Convention—which he presided over as the oldest Founding Father, and it was in Philadelphia, his home city—he said, ‘If a sparrow cannot fall from the sky without [God’s] notice, how can a nation rise without his aid?'”

“Speaking in a prayer to God, [Franklin asked], ‘If a sparrow cannot fall from the sky without God’s notice, how could a nation rise without God’s aid?’ Johnson reiterated. “That’s how inextricably interwoven the being, the nature of God is, in our government. And if you are looking to destroy this place, you must separate us from God.”

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First of all, Benjamin Franklin did not preside over the Constitutional Convention, George Washington did.

Secondly, the quote Johnson repeatedly cited did not come from a “prayer” delivered by Franklin “at the opening” of the Convention, but rather from on a speech Franklin delivered on June 28, 1787, over a month into the convention.

Franklin was not “speaking in a prayer to God,” as Johnson claimed, but was rather suggesting that the delegates should turn to God in prayer for help in drafting the Constitution.

Finally, what Johnson and so many other Christian nationalists who love to tell this story always conveniently fail to mention is that the delegates explicitly chose not to heed Franklin’s call to prayer and adjourned without taking any action on his suggestion. In fact, on the bottom of the handwritten version of the speech Franklin delivered that day is a note acknowledging that “the convention, except three or four persons, thought prayer unnecessary!”

Given that nearly everything Johnson said about Franklin’s speech is wrong, there are no grounds for accepting his assertion that it somehow proves just how “inextricably interwoven the being, the nature of God is, in our government.”

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The Christian nationalist program “FlashPoint” has, since its inception, served as a platform for spreading wild conspiracy theories and Christian nationalist disinformation.That pattern continued when “FlashPoint” hosted an event in Oklahoma last week at which former Rep. Michele Bachmann delivered a speech overflowing with falsehoods about the supposedly Christian nature of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

While reminiscing about obtaining her law degree from Oral Roberts University, a right-wing evangelical university located in Oklahoma, Bachmann bragged that her professors required the students to learn about the founding of this nation using “primary source documents.”

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“So they had us read what is it that the founders read? Who are the philosophers they read?” Bachmann said. “The number one document they referred to when they were trying to figure out what kind of a country we should be; guess what? The Bible!”

As Right Wing Watch has explained multiple times, this claim is a deliberate misrepresentation of a 1984 study conducted by professor Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston that sought to identify which writers and sources of ideas were most cited in “the political writings of Americans published between 1760 and 1805.” Lutz found that the Bible was cited most frequently solely because many of the pamphlets included in the research were sermons that had been reprinted for mass distribution. Once the sermon pamphlets were excluded, Lutz reported that quotes from the Bible appeared no more frequently in the political writings of the era than citations of the classical or common law.

More importantly, Lutz also noted that when the focus was solely on the public political writings from 1787 to 1788, when the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified, “the Bible’s prominence disappears” almost completely.

Undeterred, Bachmann continued to spread obvious falsehoods.

“[The Founders] looked at all societies throughout all history,” she claimed. “They said, ‘We’ve got a unique chance in all the world to create a society. What should it look like? What should it be based on?’ They studied all societies and those forms of government, and they decided—when they had done all that—they needed to search the word of God. And so you can take the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence [and] you can literally tie it to a Bible verse; about every three or four words, it’s based upon another area of Scripture.”

This claim is, of course, also entirely false.

Both of Bachmann’s claims are either misleading or outright false, which seems to be a common theme as time and again, Christian nationalists spread blatant falsehoods in defense of their ideology, leading one to wonder why, if their position is true, do they have to keep lying to try and “prove” it. Clearly, they simply do not care about the truth as long as these myths remain useful in convincing Americans that the Christian nationalists’ political agenda is justified by our history.

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