Sarah Posner for TPM:

I am a journalist who has covered the Christian right for two decades. Over the past three years, I began to more frequently use the term “Christian nationalism” to describe the movement I cover. But I did not start using a new term to suggest its proponents’ ideology had changed. Instead, the term had come into more common usage in the Trump era, now regularly used by academics, journalists, and pro-democracy activists to describe a movement that insists America is a “Christian nation” — that is, an illiberal, nominally democratic theocracy, rather than a pluralistic secular democracy. To me, the phrase was highly descriptive of the movement I’ve dedicated my career to covering, and neatly encapsulates the core threat the Christian right poses to freedom and equality. From its top leaders and influencers down to the grassroots — politically mobilized white evangelicals, the foot soldiers of the Christian right — its proponents believe that God divinely ordained America to be a Christian nation; that this Christian nation has come under attack by liberals and secularists; and that patriotic Christians must engage in spiritual warfare to rid America of demonic forces, and in political action to restore its Christian heritage. That includes taking political steps — as a voter, as an elected official, as a lawyer, as a judge — to ensure that America is governed according to a “biblical worldview.”

If you want to see that definition in action, look no further than the career of House Speaker Mike Johnson. Seventeen years ago, when I interviewed Johnson, then a lawyer with the Christian right legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, I would have labeled him a loyal soldier in the Christian right’s legal army trying to bring down the separation of church and state. He is a product of and a participant in a sprawling religious and political infrastructure that has made the movement’s successes possible, from politically active megachurches, to culture-shaping organizations like Focus on the Family, to political players like the Family Research Council, to the legal force in his former employer ADF. 

In today’s parlance, Johnson is a Christian nationalist — although he, like most of his compatriots, has certainly not embraced the label. But Mike Johnson the House Speaker is still Mike Johnson the lawyer I interviewed all those years ago: an evangelical called to politics to be a “servant leader” to a Christian nation, dedicated to its governance according to a biblical worldview: against church-state separation, for expanded rights for conservative Christians, adamantly against abortion and LGBTQ rights, and especially, currently, trans rights. That mindset is still the beating heart of the Christian right, even as the movement, and other movements in the far-right space, have radicalized in the Trump era, taking on new forms and embracing a range of solutions to the apocalyptic trajectory they see America to be on. Different movements imagining a version of Christian supremacy exist side by side — different strains that often borrow ideas from one another, and that fit comfortably under the banner of Christian nationalism.  

The term “Christian nationalism” became popularized during Trump’s presidency for a few reasons. First, Trump, who first ran in 2016 on a nativist platform with the nationalist slogan “Make America Great Again,” was and still is dependent on white evangelicals to win elections and maintain a hold on power. He is consequently willing to carry out their goals, bringing their ambitions closer to fruition than they’ve ever been in their 45-year marriage to the Republican Party. They have been clear, for example, in crediting him for the downfall of Roe v. Wade, among other assaults on other peoples’ rights.

Second, the prominence of Christian iconography at the January 6 insurrection, and the support for Trump’s stolen election lie before, during, and after January 6 by both Christian right influencers and the grassroots, brought into stark relief that Christian nationalist motivations helped fuel his attempted coup.   Finally, sociologists studying the belief systems of Christian nationalists pushed the term into public usage, as did anti-nationalist Christians, especially after January 6, in order to elevate awareness of the threats Christian nationalism poses to democracy. (The paperback edition of my book, Unholy, which was published in mid-2021 and included a post-January 6 afterword, reflected the increasing usage of the term Christian nationalists by including the term in a fresh subtitle.)

The Trump era, along with the rise of openly Christian nationalist social media sites like Gab, and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, have given space for otherwise unknown figures, like the rabidly antisemitic Gab founder Andrew Torba, co-author of the book Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations, and Stephen Wolfe, author of the racist book The Case for Christian Nationalism, to enter the Christian nationalism discourse. Although Torba and Wolfe have made waves online, and extremism watchers are rightly alarmed that their tracts could prove influential and radicalizing, they remain distinct from the Christian right. 

[...]

The conventional Christian right does not want a parallel society or a divorce. They believe they are restoring, and will run, the Christian nation God intended America to be — from the inside. They will do that, in their view, through faith (evangelizing others and bringing them to salvation through Jesus Christ); through spiritual warfare (using prayer to battle satanic enemies of Christian America); and through politics and the law (governing and lawmaking from a “biblical worldview” after eviscerating church-state separation). Changes in the evangelical world, particularly the emphasis in the growing charismatic movement on prophecy, signs and wonders, spiritual warfare, the prosperity gospel, and Trumpism, has intensified the prominence of the supernatural in their politics, giving their Christian nationalism its own unmistakable brand.

For decades, Christian right has been completely open about their beliefs and goals. Their quest to take dominion over American institutions by openly evangelizing and instituting Christian supremacist policies sets the Christian right apart from other types of Christian nationalists who might operate in secret, or imagine utopian communities as the ideal way to save themselves from a secular, debauched nation.  The fact that far-right extremists like Torba or Wolfe embrace the Christian nationalist label gives the more conventional Christian right leaders and organizations space to disassociate themselves from it. Some also berate journalists who use it to describe them, accusing them of hurling a left-wing slur at Christians. 

The bottom line is that Christian nationalism takes on different forms, and despite organizational or even ideological differences, ideas can penetrate the often porous borders between different camps. Someone who receives the daily email blast from the Family Research Council might also be drawn to Wolfe’s book, for example. On a more unnerving, macro level, major right-wing and GOP figures, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and the CEO of the Daily Wire, the podcast consortium run by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro, have embraced the rabidly antisemitic, Hitler-admiring antagonist Nick Fuentes, who is Catholic but also is accurately described as a Christian nationalist. The increasingly influential Catholic integralist movement, which seeks a Catholic-inflected replacement for the “liberal order,” is yet another unique form of Christian nationalism.

Sarah Posner wrote for TPM about the variants of Christian Nationalism within the larger Christian Right movement.

The Adventures in Odyssey commercials are now in one place

Two years ago, when we started covering Adventures in Odyssey on this podcast, we knew we were going to cause A.J. some damage. As you can hear in his comercials for Whit's Endless Summer, he has gone totally insane. Now all of those commercials (over an hour total) have been stitched together, and are available for FREE over on youtube.

pov: growing up christian

Prayer Bear (Videos, 1996/1997/1998)

You can watch Volumes 2 and 3 of this VHS series from the infamous Focus on the Family organization here, and Volume 1 on YouTube here.

VHS box photos found by @foone.

AIO Fan Artwork

My final draft of my artwork submission for Odyssey’s 1000 artwork tribute. Thanks for all your answers to the poll, but I couldn’t pass up the lawnmower scene. Pretty happy with how it turned out!

by Emily Washburn | Focus on the Family joined 12 pro-life organizations on Tuesday opposing the multi-year renewal of PEPFAR, a federal HIV/AIDS relief program worth billions of dollars, over concerns the program’s funding supports pro-abortion organizations. Established by former President George W. Bush in 2003, The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) works with government contractors and international…

I’m driving through Colorado Springs this weekend and I’m deliberately driving past Focus on the Family so I can flip them off

5th December

Christmas lunch with friends and family eating a lot of sweets. Reviewing memories. Studying again for my final presentation on tuesday. Lezgo be someone in this world :)

Please check the child's emotional sensitivity levels before subjecting them to the "It Is Well With My Soul" episode. To this day I'm too anxious to ever listen to it again...

I kept seeing these references to this group called Focus on the Family and I sounded reeeaaallly familiar and I realized just now that it's because they made this like. Fucked up children's podcast called Adventures in Pdhssey that I swear to God was actual genuine brainwashing.

Like at one point one of the characters really likes this woman and it's cute and sweet and there's all this build up and then eventually theyre like having the compatibility talk and he asks if she's a Christian and she says something like "mmm no not really I wasn't brought up Christian" and hes like "well we can never be together then" and she's like "what do you mean? If this is something that's really important to you I can start attending your church with you and start the process of conversion" and he's like no god says it's wrong to ever date anyone that's not a devout Christian. And this is like heavily heavily portrayed as the only choice he could have made in this situation.

That one's not such a bad example but there's just...a lot now that I'm thinking back.

Like it was a good audio drama it was funny we loved it but then they slipped in all these subliminal messaging.

My new header. Like or reblog if you save/use.

An unsent letter to one of the partners at my office.

Dear _____,

Please have your Focus on the Family mail forwarded to your home address.

I had asked the senior partner to address this with you, but he didn't understand what I was talking about.  (It must be nice not to understand. I wish I had the privilege.)

I have been retrieving the mail here for the past 11 years.

I have known what Focus on the Family was since I was 12.

Us gays are a hardy bunch. We understand death and silence and terror.  And so I sorted your mail and I let it go because homophobia has been the default for most of my life.

I can imagine a life without Obergefell because I had a life before it.  As a teenager, I did not expect gay marriage to be legal within my lifetime—I thought, if I were lucky, I might see it come to pass in my sixties.

I can imagine a life without Lawrence because I remember when it was passed.  I was 15 years old and my family was planning a trip to New Orleans and my girlfriend was coming with us.  We joked darkly about how we'd be criminals while we were there.  But then they passed Lawrence before our trip, and it wasn't illegal anymore to do what you liked in the privacy of your own bedroom.

But it still felt illegal.  I was too scared to hold my girlfriend's hand in public.  They had murdered Matthew Shepard five years earlier.  What good was Lawrence when we were still dying?

Like I said, homophobia has been the default, so your envelopes from Focus on the Family weren't a problem.  I am the only gay person here, after all, and at the time I was the lowest paid and lowest on the totem pole.  What right did I have to complain?

But now groups like Focus on the Family have come for women's reproductive health, against the advice of experts and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and science itself.

It might seem strange for me to draw a line when I don't even have a dog in the fight, but this is my line.

Please have your Focus on the Family mail forwarded to your home address going forward.

Thank you, [Vex]

AIO fan art submission

I just submitted my request for AIO’s fan art submission and am drawing Aubrey from the split episode, The Long Way Home. My main medium is pencil sketches, so now my brain is overthinking what “finished artwork” means. Should it be colorized? I guess I’d have to put out my pencil crayons then and potentially make it look worse

anyway, here’s a rough sketch. I’d love to put some queer themes into it, but AIO would def nix that.

So, I spent some quality time on the Focus on the Family website (yes, I know, I know) in preparation for dinner and conversation with my very Christian, very conservative friend of almost 30 years. She’s very very smart and a deep thinker, so I always have to come prepared with my A+ game when it comes to LGBTQ+ and the church.

So Focus on the Family has a digital book that goes point by point addressing homosexuality and scripture. It’s an interesting read, but what I find curiously fascinating is their narrative that a primary source of “homosexual behavior” is a dysfunctional home life where people feel alienated, being sexually abused when young, and for lesbians, a failure to adhere to gender norms:

“Counselor and author Janelle Hallmen notes that many women who struggle with lesbianism did not conform as much with gender norms when they were younger. As a result, some experienced more difficulty embracing and integrating their femininity.”

The problem with all this (one of many) is that it fails to take into account all of the gays out there who grew up in wonderful loving homes, with great parents, who were never sexually abused, and in the case of lesbians, always played with dolls.

by Lara Jean Harper | There are many stories of adoption in the Bible. Since the beginning of time, God’s children have needed to be cared for, and since the beginning of time, God has cared for them. Both the Old and New Testaments have examples of God taking care of His people and...