Chapter Review: Theocracy from the Bench

Chapter 10 of Katherine Stewart's 2019 book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, focuses on the long, carefully coordinated, and intense legal battle that Christian Nationalism (CN) has been waging in an increasingly successful effort to fuse the federal, state and local governments with a CN of version Christianity. Chapter 10, entitled Theocracy from the Bench or How to Establish Religion in the Name of “Religious Liberty,” lays out how successful the CN legal battle has been. From what I can tell, most of the public knows little to nothing about what has happened, how important it is, and what will happen to this country if the CN battle continues to succeed. 

In the CN legal war on secular governance in the name of Christian privilege, money is no constraint. There is more than plenty of it to wage this war. Hundreds of millions have been spent in this quiet battle that is being fought mostly below the public’s radar. Again, the free press and professional MSM generally are failing the American people and democracy. Maybe they have been subverted by Christianity.

This post is long and complex. It is set out in three sections in my to try to make this easier. Examples of what has happened are easiest to grasp intuitively, so that is first. Next easiest to grasp is about the success that CN has had in infiltrating the all-powerful federal courts. That is second. Last and most complicated is the legal strategy that CN attorneys have successfully convinced the US Supreme Court to adopt.

Sections 1 and 2 alone go a long way to explaining the whole shebang. Section 3 is for wonks or people with interest and some time on their hands.

Section 1: Examples

Three examples help clarify what has happened in the CN legal offensive against secular government. They hint at what is going to happen if CN gets its way with us. 

Giving more tax money to greedy churches and the collapse of opposition: After the court opened to door to public schools, the CN legal behemoth sensed another opening that they tested by filing a lawsuit during the flooding of Houston by hurricane Harvey on September 4, 2017. The lawsuit argued that FEMA's policy of excluding houses of worship from disaster relief money was unconstitutional. Two of the three churches provided no essential services to the community during or after the flood. The CN legal argument was that FEMA must provide money for church repairs the flood caused because (i) the Churches did not want to buy disaster insurance, and (ii) FEMA funds were necessitated as a matter religious liberty and non-discrimination. The fact that religious operations already were heavily subsidized by tax breaks apparently was of no relevance. 

At this point, political opposition to this Christian raid on the US treasury seems to have collapsed. Apparently FEMA just caved in without a court decision. Stewart writes: “.... with Trump in office and the Republican Party controlled by the far right, the announcement by FEMA that houses of worship could now claim this special government benefit, too, was met with a collective shrug. The lines of separation between church and state were so blurred, the Establishment Clause so degraded, and the list of outrages over Trump-and-allies-related  instances of graft and corruption so long and overwhelming that few people could muster the ability to notice or care.”

Church planting in public schools and even more big taxpayer gifts to Christianity: CN leaders realize that a key religious liberty gravy train is the public school system. Stewarts points out that Christianity can get a “cheap ride on public school facilities. .... churches can claim access to public facilities for their [religious] services, typically with below-market-rate facility use fees on the grounds of ‘religious liberty.’” What CN is doing is literally planting Christian churches in hundreds of public schools in America, while mostly ignorant state and local taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the onslaught. 

Stewart points out the vast propaganda and financial value of churches in schools: “.... establishing churches in public schools has the added advantage of investing their activity with a high degree of public trust, especially among children and school families. Over the past two decades, vast networks of ‘church planting’ organizations have sprung up and rolled across the nation, effectively using taxpayer largesse to establish religion in the name of ‘religious liberty.’ Church planting is now happening on an industrial scale, and it often takes place in neighborhoods that least expect it, with little or no input from residents who are, in the end, subsidizing the process.”

A cofounder of one of the large networks, Act 29, with about 700 school-churches worldwide is a preacher named Mark Driscoll. Driscoll is, at most, a colorful person. He disparages “sensitive emasculated men” and claims that Americans “live in a pussified nation.” He blamed a homosexual affair between a major gay bashing evangelical Christian preacher and a male prostitute as the preacher’s wife’s fault blaming her for “letting herself go.” This is the kind of moral example that some or most of the CN leadership has embraced.

Radical right small government policy invites Christianity into public school operations: CN infiltration and subversion of public schools is a complicated and broad attack plan. Stewart points out that anti-government conservatives have cut back on state funding for schools. Strangling schools for money has led to about 59% of American public school teachers to take on additional paid work just to survive. 

The state of Florida is an example. Between 2007 and 2015 Orange County FL cut spending by about $105 million or about $11.6 million/year on average. In response, the superintendent of schools reached out to religion with the following explicitly no-sectarian appeal: “Our missions to better dovetail when churches, synagogues and mosques and all faith-based organizations harness the power of volunteerism and servant leadership to benefit the region’s youth.” The response from Orange County “faith partners” was almost exclusively evangelical Christian. The appeal was to plant religious groups (churches, etc.) in the school on Sundays in return for some cash.

On the other hand, at least some of the Christian “faith partners” were looking for a high return on their investment. The website of Venue Church in Apopka, FL commented: “If you are looking to maximize missional money, the school campus is where you will yield the highest return on your investment.” A CN activist in Georgia commented that church volunteers in public schools was a way to open doors to the vast flow of money into public education, “Once [the door to public schools] is open, it is wide open.”

Stewart argues that the CN goal of building its network of quasi-state-funded churches is not just access to cheap or free facilities. They want to get their hands on more of the hundreds of billions the US spends annually on public education, about $668 billion on primary and secondary education in the 2014-2105 fiscal school year. Stewart comments: “Christian nationalists understand that if they can capture a portion of that figure in the name of religious liberty, the money will flow without end.” The flow of money here was envisioned for publicly funded religious schools and school vouchers. 

A major step to achieving the CN goal for publicly funded religious schools was achieved in the June 2017 Supreme Court decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer. There, the CN Supreme Court majority held that Missouri’s policy violated the rights of Trinity Lutheran under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by denying the Church an otherwise available public benefit on account of its religious status. Trinity Lutheran, located in MO, was not eligible for state money for church school repairs. The Supreme Court said that the state was unconstitutionally discriminating against the religious character of the school.

Section 2: Context and stacking the courts

In many lawsuits over many years, the successful CN legal strategy has mostly eroded the separation of church and state. The CN strategy is now at a point that religious organizations are on the verge of tapping into vast flows of taxpayer money for direct support of Christian churches and business operations. Other religions are excluded. Much of the political opposition has faded and apparently given up after having been worn down. 

Federal courts, especially the US Supreme Court, have adopted the irrational reasoning that CN legal experts have dreamed up to force governments into supporting Christianity with tax dollars. The end result has been a high return of tax dollars on Christianity’s investment in itself, and the ROI is only going to increase over time. With that flow of tax dollars comes political power to grab even more money and more power that added future revenue will bring.

The CN effort understands that it cannot get what it wants, power, wealth and exclusive privileges for Christianity, by winning elections. That appears to be why the modern fascist GOP (FGOP) doesn't pay much attention to contrary public opinion except to use dark free speech (lies, deceit, partisan motivated reasoning, etc.) to convert as much of it as possible into support based on deceit, division, distrust and so forth. Stewart writes:

Not long after the election of Bill Clinton, Leonard Leo realized that the Christian Right had little hope of winning at the ballot box. A Catholic ultraconservative, Leo was sure that the public, seduced by the shallow values of a liberalizing culture, would never voluntarily submit to the moral medicine needed to save the nation. The last best chance to rescue civilization, he concluded, was to take over the courts. If activists could funnel just enough true believers onto the bench, especially onto the Supreme Court, they just might be able to reverse the moral tide. 

“He figured out twenty years ago that conservatives had lost the culture war,” said Leo’s former media relations director, Tom Carter. “Abortion, gay rights, contraception -- conservatives didn’t have a chance if public opinion prevailed. So they needed to stack the courts.”

From that, one can clearly see the arrogance and authoritarianism in the CN mindset. One can also see the demise of abortion rights and the reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Leo became influential in The Federalist Society and he influenced the ex-president’s selection of at least two CN Supreme Court justices, which were in addition to the three already on the bench, i.e., Roberts, Thomas and Alito.

The CN movement recruited lawyers and now has them positioned to take power in state and local courts and governments. The critical requirement isn’t legal excellence. Instead it is blind loyalty to CN moral dogma. Stewart comments:

Undistinguished academic records might be forgiven provided an unwavering commitment to the cause could be verified. .... the “carefully manicured terrarium of the conservative legal community,” as the journalist Charles P. Pierce has described it. “Federalist Society member? Check. Clerkships for Supreme Court justices? Check. . . . Wingnut culture-war bona fides? Check.” 

In addition to advising Trump on his judicial picks, Leo and his allies have raised hundreds of millions of dollars -- over $250 million between 2014 and 2017 alone -- in part to promote conservative policies, provide funding for right wing TV pundits, and coordinate and finance campaigns for their judicial picks, including Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.  

Stewart points out that CN groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom (~$50 million/year), the Liberty Council, the American Center for Law and Justice and others were spending about $100 million/year on legal advocacy alone.

Section 3: The successful but crackpot CN legal strategy - use the Free Speech clause, smoke and mirrors to obliterate the Establishment Clause

The First Amendment reads as follows: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There are three separate clauses. Note that the first clause specifies establishment and free exercise of religion. The separate second clause invokes free speech. Those two two clauses deal with two different things. Well, at least that is how it used to be. The CN legal movement with its judges on the Supreme Court have successfully obliterated the establishment clause by breaking down the legal separation of free speech from religion. In essence the free speech clause has swallowed the establishment clause, thereby protecting the intrusion of Christianity, nominally “religion,” into secular government. 

Simply put, governments cannot keep religion out of government. Religious people and organizations can now argue that their activities in government have nothing to do with establishing any religion. Instead, their activities are protected by their free speech rights. The floodgates are now open for Christianity, not other religions and not atheists, to exercise exclusive privileges and gobble as much tax money as possible as fast as possible. The CN legal strategy has rendered governments powerless to stop Christianity from exercising privileges in government activities and feeding at the tax dollar trough. 

Stewart writes: “One could spill a lot of ink explaining why it is absurd to suppose that religion is not religion at all, but just speech from a religious point of view.”

The Supreme Court has given Christianity the green light to have access to government while excluding other religious and secular groups. Once the Supreme Court opened the door to religious activities in schools, it quickly became apparent that the opening into government operations was for Christianity and not much else. Non-Christian groups could not exercise the same privilege. Stewart writes on this point: “A [nontheistic, secular] religious group called the Satanic Temple proved the point. .... A key difference was that, instead of teaching small children that without Jesus they would suffer eternal torment, as [Christian] Good News Clubs do, The Satanic Temple clubs aimed to teach reason and empathy. .... The schools could not slam their doors fast enough, throwing up a variety of procedural and legal hurdles.”

In other words, when non-Christian groups try to exercise the same privileges the Christian groups easily get, they are usually harassed enough to give up. This kind of discrimination is legal. 

Questions: Stewart argues that probably the best source of power to oppose CN and its fascist, bigoted agenda is among Christians who are aware of the CN ideology and agenda and who oppose it. Assuming that is true, and it probably is, what can one do to try to coalesce that opposition into a more powerful political force? Or, is it already too late and American will inevitably fall to some form of corrupt Christian fascism under the cynical CN banner?