Context
A NYT opinion, This Case Has Flown Under the Radar. It Won’t Stay There, summarizes the gravity the threat of bigoted Christian nationalist theocracy presents to what’s left of our democracy, rule of law, civil liberties, and defenses of the public interest. In a nutshell, theocratic MAGA elites are not close to finished with their goal of making America an aggressive, arrogantly bigoted theocracy.
The opinion starts with a very short list of some of the damage that Trump and MAGA authoritarianism and kleptocracy have caused so far. It includes mention of (1) lost abortion rights that Roe v. Wade used to afford, (2) gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 rendering it incapable of preventing states from undermining the political power of minority citizens, (3) killing off the independence of executive branch agencies, leaving the president now able to fire nearly all agency heads for any or no reason, (4) neutering federal agency power by removing federal judges deference to an agency’s interpretation of its own authority, instead being told to decide for themselves the validity of agency regulations, and (5) eliminated the government’s ability to pass reasonable gun safety laws. All of those lost functions and powers were generally pro-public interest.
Although that short list covers a huge amount of damage to our democracy, rule of law, civil liberties and public interest power, there is a lot more that isn’t mentioned. For example, undermining reasonable public health measures, killing off funding for genuinely useful research, transferring vast wealth and power from the people and the public interest to wealthy people and special interests, normalizing lying, corruption and bigotry, etc. Vast amounts of power have been redirected to serve and protect wealthy people and special interests at the expense of the public interest.
Regarding Christian nationalist theocracy
Not mentioned in the damage list is religion. What do elite MAGA theocrats plan for us, whether we want it or not? They have huge plans. Aggressive plans. The opinion cites an assessment by three constitutional scholars that MAGA’s theocracy for America plan amounts to a massive shift in the law that raises theocracy to the same level as existing secular law. In those minds, there is no such thing as church-state separation. The scholars write:
The slow undoing of constitutional limits on government support for religion that began with the Rehnquist Court has intensified over the last several years into a systematic dismantling of the previous legal regime. The Court has mandated government funding of religious schools alongside secular schools, where before the government had been forbidden from doing so under the Establishment Clause.
In essence, the NYT opinion is warning is that MAGA-aligned legal politics can turn Christianity into a preferred constitutional interest, instead of being one freedom among equal freedoms. MAGA’s way of doing this has not been a simple, explicit declaration that Christianity outranks everything else. Instead, theocratic MAGA judges have weakened church-state separation in a series of court rulings. Over time, the new dictates increasingly require government to include, fund, or exempt religious entities while giving much less weight to competing “secular” rights. In essence, what the MAGA judges have done in decisions over decades is to write the Establishment Clause almost completely out of the US Constitution by narrowing with MAGA judges say they want it to mean. With the Establishment Clause gone, there’s nothing left to stop America from degenerating into a bigoted, racist, misogynist Christian nationalist theocracy.
Not all Christians support an American theocracy
If the MAGA USSC goes further by allowing religious providers to receive public funds while disregarding nondiscrimination conditions, that would put religious claims above the equal citizenship and civil rights of the people taxpayer-funded programs are supposed to serve. That obviously strengthens the Christian-nationalist theocracy agenda by forcing public power and money to be freely available to institutions that can deny equal treatment in the name of religious dogma.
Q1: Is it reasonable to see MAGA elite’s Christian nationalist theocracy agenda as aggressive and significantly intolerant, bigoted, racist, or misogynist?
Q2: Should America be a Christian theocracy or a secular democracy that protects freedom of religion but separates church from state?
Some info sources:
Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership — Comment: This is the primary document that lays out Christian theocracy for America. It details a highly intolerant authoritarian executive-branch agenda that uses explicitly Christian religious framing. That includes a “biblically based” definition of marriage and family. This is the best source to answer the question, “Where does the MAGA agenda include Christian theocracy?”
Project 2025: The Blueprint for Christian Nationalist Regime Change — Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, recently said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” He’s not exaggerating.
Project 2025: What’s At Stake for Civil Rights — Comment: This is one of the clearest sources linking the Heritage Foundation-led agenda to racial, gender, LGBTQ, disability, immigrant, and religious-minority rights. This assessment characterizes the Project 2025 blueprint as reflecting “extreme white Christian nationalist ideology”.
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