Chapter Review: The Blitz

Chapter 7 of Katherine Stewart's 2019 book , The Power worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, is entitled The Blitz: Turning States into Laboratories of Theocracy. This chapter focuses on the propaganda and legislative tactics that Christian nationalist (CN) leaders have successfully employed in their relentless quest to merge secular government with a CN authoritarian vision of Christianity. Their ultimate goal is to convert federal, state and local governments from secular institutions that work on ideals of equality and tolerance for all Americans. CN vehemently opposes that secularism and any other secular ideology. 

Instead, the CN political goal is to control governments at all levels who will rule according to a particular CN biblical worldview. That worldview privileges the true believers above all others. That authoritarian-fascist theocratic ideology gives government freedom to openly discriminate against the unworthy in the name of “religious freedom.” 

Those not worthy of equal dignity and treatment include all women, the entire LGBQT community, and all non-CN Christians, i.e., everyone who does not faithfully adhere to CN dogma. CN dogma is rigidly patriarchal. Women must submit to their men and they cannot be preachers. Children, including defiant infants fresh from the womb, must be raised to fear God and they must be subject to corporal punishment when they are disobedient. Failure to beat naughty children is failure to be a good Christian.

Three phases of Project Blitz - looks like CN is mostly doing phase III now:

democracy and the rule of law are on the verge of falling

The Blitz Project is the social and political war plan that the CN movement has been following and refining for years. The propaganda is sophisticated and carefully crafted to split conservative religious from other people in society using shrewd, subtle messaging that has been quite effective.

Stewart describes the three phases of Project Blitz like this: 

The first consists of symbolic or ceremonial gestures that will receive some “some opposition but not hard to beat,” according to David Barton.[1] Some like the Minnesota bill, focus on placing mottos in schools. Others aim to place “In God We Trust” placards and stickers in statehouses, federal buildings, libraries, post offices -- even even police cars. 

But the point of phase I is just to clear the path for phase II, which consists of bills that propose to inject Christian nationalist ideas more directly into schools and other government entities. Some phase II bills are intended to promote the teaching and celebration of Christianity in public schools, including support for sectarian “Bible literacy” curricula, particularly those that serve hefty servings of Christian nationalist history and the declaration of a “Christian Heritage Week.” They are a means of spreading the message, among children especially, that conservative Christians are the real Americans and everybody else is here by invitation only. According to Barton, these laws “will also be pretty easy to pass,” but the opposition is “going to be a lot more virulent and mean in their attacks.” The point of phase II, of course, is to make room for phase III, which legalizes discrimination against those whose actions (or very being) offends the sensibilities of conservative Christians.

Subtle but powerful propaganda

CN leadership has though long and hard about how to trap the religious conservative mind in the authoritarian CN vision of America. Their thinking is deep and subtle but effective. Stewart writes:

The documentation of Project Blitz[2] makes clear that a principal purpose of the “In God We Trust” legislation is to force the opposition to take unpopular stands on seemingly symbolic issues. In fact, the authors specifically seemed to envision using the bills to catch opponent lawmakers on video saying things that can later be used against them.

The documentation of the Blitz is particularly valuable in that it shows that Christian nationalists have self-consciously embraced a strategy of advancing their goals through deception and indirection. For many years critics have warned that concessions to the Christian right on “symbolic” issues -- erecting religious monuments and emblazoning religious mottos on state property, for example -- would set the nation on a course leading to the establishment of religion. We now knw that the critics were right .... 

 Like the sponsors of Americans United for Life [anti-abortion] legislation initiatives, the leaders behind Project Blitz are playing a long and ambitious game. They have invested their deepest hopes in the third and most contentious category of model legislation. Recognizing that the initiatives will be unpopular, Project Blitz advises its troops against framing them in religious terms, recommending instead that they “begin a public discourse on these important topics grounded in the language that the opponents themselves use.” 

The public perceptions of these bills, often abetted by Christian nationalists themselves, is that they they concern only the religious feeling of homophobic cake bakers and florists. 

 

Stewart cites some examples on the power of the propaganda. In one example, in opposing the “In God We Trust” motto in public schools, one political opponent wondered if conservative Christians would be OK if “God” was replaced with “Allah.” Another politician opposed to putting the motto in public schools commented that it was offensive. Stewart writes: “The last comment in particular was like gold for the right-wing media sphere. The implication that “God” was “offensive,” or that Islam might claim equal rights before the law with Christianity, was more than worth its weight in conservative rage. This seemingly minor incident led to massive publicity on right wing outlets like Fox News. CN propagandists had a field day in making democrats and other opponents look like anti-Christian zealots, which was not the case. But that point was lost in the thunder and fury of right toxic wing propaganda.

The important thing to keep in mind about this is simple. Under secular constitutional government, equal treatment and equal respect, it does not matter one iota if the “In X We Trust” motto recites God, Allah, Satan or Reason and Empathy as X. But under bigoted CN ideology, Allah, Satan, Reason and Empathy and everything else are all unacceptable. Only the “Christian God” can be mentioned. That is unconstitutional theocracy, pure and simple.

Protect the gravy train at all costs

The CN movement is deeply concerned that its bigoted, pro-discrimination against everyone except CN loyalists will cost it the precious tax breaks it heavily relies on for financial support. Stewart writes:

Apart from consolidating the privileges of conservative Christians to impose their beliefs on others, the point of bills like HB 1523 [now the law in Mississippi] has a lot to do with money. A helpful clue can be found in a letter that the American Family Association sent out in support of the Mississippi bill before it was passed. The bill, said the AFA, is critical because it protects the AFA and groups like it  from “government threat of losing their tax exempt status.”

There is a revealing irony in that statement. Tax exemption is a kind of gift from the government: a privilege. It is an indirect way of funneling money from taxpayers to groups that engage in certain kinds of activities (like charity work or nonprofit education) and not other kinds of activities (like business and political activism). In articulating their concern for potential threats to their government subsidy, the AFA implicitly recognizes that if our society decides that it no longer wishes to to subsidize groups that preach homophobia and promote discrimination, the justification for continued subsidies and privileges from government will evaporate.

The people who drafted the bill on behalf of the Mississippi legislators get it. This is why the very first “discriminatory action” by the government that the law prohibits is “to alter in any way the tax treatment” of any person or organization that abides by the newly sanctioned religious beliefs.

Thus, states are trying to make it illegal for society, through the federal government acting on behalf of the will of the people, to revoke the tax breaks that are so valuable to CN welfare queens. Although the CN hates government and wants to drown it in Christianity, it wants to keep its vast welfare-industrial complex alive and fat with precious tax dollars.

Stewart concludes the chapter asserting that the Project Blitz agenda is not really about genuine religious freedom. Instead, it is a declaration of a war that is squarely aimed at retaining tax subsidy funding and empowering conservative Christians to discriminate against people who do not share their beliefs. To CN, “religious freedom” means privileges only for those who adhere to its vision of Christianity.

Questions: Probably most conservatives (~97% ?) would reject Stewart’s characterization of CN and Project Blitz. Is Stewart’s characterization credible, and if not why not, and if so, why? Does any politically active religious organization deserve tax credits, CN, anti-CN or otherwise, e.g., anti-abortion or pro-abortion? Are states under significant CN influence, i.e., most or all Republican-dominated states, mostly laboratories of theocracy, mostly laboratories of anti-democratic autocracy and corruption, some combination of both, and/or something else to a non-trivial degree?

Footnotes: 

1. David Barton is one of four key CN leaders. Barton founded Wallbuilders ProFamily Legislative Network and is the president of the National Legal Foundation, both of which are influential in the CN political movement. Barton is also on the steering committee of Project Blitz and one of the two CN leaders (along with lea Carawan) who lead in laying out Project Blitz strategy for Republican politicians and leaders.

2. Project Blitz documentation was uncovered by a journalist. It came as a major revelation in understanding CN as a powerful, sophisticated political movement. What appeared to be an uncoordinated and scattershot phenomenon was in fact a carefully orchestrated political assault on secular government and the legislative process. Over time the CN expanded and refined the document to increase the effectiveness of the the CN effort to establish a privileged CN version of Christianity as the official American religion. The 2018-2019 edition of the project is entitled Report and Analysis on Religious Freedom Measures Impacting Prayer and Faith in America, a copy of which is here. 

I intend to do a separate blog post on 2018-2019 document and maybe some other CN-related material. The CN war plan is too complex to be included in this chapter review, which is more than complex enough by itself.