The Growing Strength of the Christian Nationalism in Politics
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. There are a lot of different right-wing forces swirling around Donald Trump in his second term. Elon Musk's tech-inflected Doge camp, the Steve Bannon original MAGA people, a variety of ultra-wealthy conservatives, and then a group of Christian nationalists, a political movement that sees itself as engaged in a, quote, spiritual battle for the nation.

As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it in a podcast, quote, our American crusade is not about literal swords and our fight is not with guns yet. We talk with experts about the agenda and influence of Christian nationalists coming up next right after this news.

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Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Today we're talking about Christian nationalism and its influence on and in the Trump administration. We've got two people who've been reporting at the intersection of politics, power, and religion here to help us define and understand this political movement.

Catherine Stewart is a journalist and author of Money, Lies, and God, Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. She's also the author of Power Worshippers. Welcome, Catherine. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. We're also joined by Sarah McCammon, politics reporter at NPR and host of the NPR Politics Podcast. She is the author of Exvangelicals, Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. Welcome, Sarah.

Hi, thanks so much. Catherine Stewart, let's start with you. I mean, Christian nationalism is a phrase that a lot of people probably have heard. But if I was pressed, I'm not sure that I could define it precisely. What's the definition that you use?

Well, the term Christian nationalism is descriptive of an ideology, the idea that America was founded to be a Christian nation, our laws should be based on reactionary interpretation of the Bible. But it's also a description of a political movement, an organized quest for power. So it's not describing people who happen to be Christian and have patriotic sentiments. It's not just a religion or set of beliefs.

In the current context, it actually involves a rejection of a series of liberal democratic norms, including the idea of equality, the idea of pluralism, and separation of church and state, of course. I mean, would you say that there is a kind of central thesis or like a core set of beliefs in Christian nationalism?

Well, it involves this idea that America was founded to be a Christian nation, as the leaders of the Christian nationalist movement define it. So what does that entail? You know, like, what does that belief lead you to?

Well, it basically is the idea that America was not founded on any principles, but on a specific religion and cultural heritage. It includes the idea that America, the way they describe it, is on the brink of an apocalypse, owing to the rise of equality, and often what they call "wokeness," or anybody, frankly, who is to the left of them, which they sort of describe as a radical left,

And it's the idea that democracy itself won't be able to solve our problems. So that sort of clears the way for this idea that we need to embrace a strong man, like an authoritarian leader who really puts himself above the law. So that's sort of where the movement leads when you're looking not just at the ideology of Christian nationalism, but when you're looking at it together with the way that it operates in the current political context. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, reading your work, I mean, one of the things that really struck me was that it's not a particular flavor or denomination of Christianity that is sort of Christian nationalism, but that there's actually a lot of people from different realms of the broader Christian world who subscribe to this kind of political ideology or philosophy.

That's absolutely true. You know, often people describe this movement as being synonymous with white evangelicals, and certainly a very large number of white evangelicals support the movement, but many white evangelicals do not, and the movement also includes the involvement of representatives of different groups. This is a leadership-driven movement and also an organization-driven movement, and

And we're looking at the leadership as well as a sector of the rank and file. The movement would be nowhere without a cadre of ultra conservative Catholics. It draws new energy, I would say, from independent charismatic networks. Many of the funders of

different organizations that contribute toward the movement are themselves not even particularly religious, and some aren't Christian at all. Some are, I think, about people like Barry Side, who donated $1.6 billion to form the Marble Freedom Trust, and he put Leonard Leo, who's long been known as a kind of money man of the Christian rights legal sphere, he put him in charge of it. Now, Leonard Leo is an ultra-conservative Catholic. Barry Side is Jewish.

So really, it's not about, I would say it's hard to express the degree to which the politics leads the religion and not the other way around. Sarah McCammon, you obviously have written about the evangelical movement. You've also, as a political reporter, seen how Donald Trump has rhetorically embraced, you know, as he called them, you know, his beautiful Christians.

As you kind of hear these tenets and as you understand them, Michelle, do you think Donald Trump himself has embraced the ideas of Christian nationalism? I think the ideas of Christian nationalism and people within the movement have embraced Donald Trump because it's been mutually useful for both the Christian nationalist movement and for Trump himself. I think it's often hard to decipher exactly what Trump's core ideology is other than

seems to work. That seems to be Trump's modus operandi. He, you know, early on in his 2016 campaign aligned himself with the Christian right and seemed to understand

Maybe intuitively, maybe from some of his advisors, the importance of the evangelical base, which as Catherine identifies, is only a part of the story here. It's not just about white evangelicals. There are other types of Christians, including conservative Catholics.

who could be described as Christian nationalists. There are Christian nationalists who are not white and not all white evangelicals are Christian nationalists. But to the extent that these movements overlap, I think they have propelled Trump to power. They created sort of a unifying, almost branding around Trumpism. You see

these emblems and symbols and language all over his rallies and, you know, even sort of on the bodies of his supporters and the clothing that they wear and the messages that they repeat. So, you know, is Trump himself a Christian nationalist? I don't necessarily think so, but I think Christian nationalism and some of the ideas associated with it have been very useful.

for Trump achieving his goals. And Trump has been useful, again, to these activists who have their own ideology that they've worked to carry out. And there are people in the administration, too, who, you know, self-define or are, you know, labeled by others as Christian nationalists. And I think maybe the one that has been most prominent for people is Pete Hegseth, now the head of the Department of Defense. What was Hegseth's relationship to this movement?

You know, Hegseth, I think like Trump, it's important to say, doesn't appear on the surface to embody the ideals of the Christian right. You know, they both have had multiple marriages. Hegseth also has had allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies. But he's been closely affiliated with some of these movements, right?

The Idaho Capitol Sun and others have reported that he is a member of a congregation in Tennessee that has close ties, that's affiliated with a church.

led by a prominent self-described Christian nationalist leader in Idaho named Doug Wilson, who has openly criticized the separation of church and state. He's expressed the belief that giving women the right to vote was a mistake. He's written a defense or co-written a defense of Southern slave owners, among many other things.

Not to say that Hegseth necessarily endorses all of these ideas, but he has expressed support for at least a metaphorically militaristic vision of Christianity and the desire to infuse what he sees as Christian ideas into government. He's expressed that prior to Trump's election that he thought Trump would be helpful to those goals. And so he is seen as someone who sort of embodies this ideology to one degree or another.

We're talking about the rise of Christian nationalism and its influence on and in the Trump administration. We're joined by Sarah McCammon, national political correspondent at NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics podcast. McCammon's also the author of

Ex-evangelicals loving, living, and leaving the white evangelical church. We're also joined by Katherine Stewart, a journalist and author of Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, big piece of investigative reporting.

We want to hear from you as well. What are your questions about Christian nationalism? You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. I mean, what role should religion play in politics? What do you think? The number is 866-733-6786. Forum at kqed.org. You can find us on all the social media platforms. We're KQED Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more.

Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the rise of Christian nationalism and its influence on and in the Trump administration. Got a couple of journalists, Sarah McCammon, national political correspondent at NPR, author of the book Exvangelicals, and Catherine Stewart, author of Money, Lies, and God, Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. She's been following the rise of Christian nationalism for the last 15 years.

Catherine, I wanted to ask you about Russell Vogt. People may know him as one of the sort of architects of the slashing and burning going on inside the federal government through his role at the Office of Management and Budget.

It's really surprising that, at least to me, that a Christian nationalist would end up in that position doing those things. It doesn't seem on the surface to have much to do with Christianity or religion or faith. Well, this is a movement that really wants absolute power, and we can really see it in the first days of the second Trump administration movement.

Every move they're making is intended to consolidate as much power as possible in Trump's hands and in the hands of his allies.

I mean, look at what they're doing. This is a—you know, Russell Vogt describes himself as a Christian nationalist. An organization he ran previously had as one of its explicit goals the idea to infuse Christian nationalism in every level of government. But he's also a representative of a movement called the New Right, which is, I would say

I would say overall it's less explicitly Christian nationalist, but also more explicitly hostile to what they call the administrative state, like a functioning government. And Russell Vogt said that he wanted previously to put, when they took over, he wanted to put government employees in trauma. He said that. He's all in on this idea of smashing the administrative state, which is basically disingenuous.

destroying the institutions of a functioning government. Now, why would they want to do that? Yeah, especially because it almost seems contradictory in its impulses. Absolute power and reduction of state capacity seem to be in contradiction.

Right, but modern democracy relies on specialized knowledge. It relies on expertise and rational accountability to function. And Trump's people understand intuitively that this kind of rationality is really inimical to their ability to gain power. So they've set about destroying centers of expertise within the government. They're basically destroying the guardrails of democracy and its institutions.

And this is what they, you know, they want to do that so that they can consolidate power. I mean, I think, again, this is really about power and it really sort of exposes how this movement is not just about faith or patriotism. In fact, it's as un-American as it gets.

You know, I hope I make clear that this is not the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and others who helped create America as we know it. It's they really want to, you know, smash the administrative state in order to set up something new, an autocracy.

And, you know, there are multiple forces around Donald Trump right now. And Sarah, maybe I'll send this one to you. There, of course, you know, the kind of doge people around Elon Musk. There's kind of Steve Bannon. There are Russ Vogue and Pete Hague said. How are you sort of parsing what's coming out of the administration and these kind of

overlapping but sort of distinct ideologies that are circulating around the president.

I think this is something to watch because if there is a fracture going forward in Trump's power and the administration's power, it may come from within. I mean, I think we've already seen that to a degree in recent days on a small scale with sort of the conflicting directives coming from different agencies about how to respond to the email that came out that was directed at federal employees.

from the Office of Management and Budget, directing them to send five bullet points about what they've been working on in the past week. We saw the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, say essentially don't do that.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk was posting on X that employees would be laid off if they didn't. So it's clear there are multiple forces at work, as you say, and some differences of opinion. And, you know, again, like Trump himself, I think it's sometimes hard to point to one clear ideology that's in play here. It's sort of a coming together of multiple ideologies, certainly Christian nationalism, racism.

and the Christian right, but also sort of the technocratic billionaires who have gained a lot of influence over Trump. We didn't see that the first time around to the same degree, but to a huge degree, the second Trump administration. But what they've come together around, at least for now, is, as Catherine has identified, the pursuit of power. I think the question will be how

You know, for...

A lot of liberal people, I think white evangelicals became a sort of like political boogeyman. Do you think that that movement morphed into Christian nationalism or is this kind of a separate kind of political movement from the kind of like religious right of your. Well, I mean, I would I would argue and I do argue in my book that.

strains of Christian nationalism have been there from the beginning of what we sort of understand as the modern iteration of the Christian right. You know, the moral majority and some of the

Christian right evangelical activists that were organizing in the late 70s, early 80s, you know, from before I was born or around the time I was born. I mean, they shared many of the same goals that the Christian nationalists that we would describe of today share. Some of the things we've seen this Trump administration do right off the bat, including, you know, declaring that there are only two sexes, sort of erasing transgender identity, you

efforts to restrict federal funding for abortion, which isn't a new thing. That's been a feature of Republican administrations for decades. But those are the kinds of goals that have really been part of the movement for decades.

Has it morphed into something new? I think it's become more powerful and maybe more overt in some ways. I don't recall a time before the last several years where you had elected members of Congress openly describing themselves as Christian nationalists. And I think one of the challenges of cursing the difference is the fact that

Most people bring their religious identity, their personal values, their moral beliefs into their political behavior, whether that is voting or activism. I mean, we've seen that for a very long time across the political spectrum in ways that I think most people would consider quite legitimate and even good, virtuous. You know, for example, the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, the

Christian nationalism takes the idea of infusing one's religious beliefs into their political behavior to a different level, though, and it privileges Christianity above other faiths. And I would argue that, and again, I argue in my book, but once again, that has been there from the beginning. In fact, one of the things that I did in researching my book was look back at Christian school textbooks from as long ago as the 1970s, 80s, 90s,

And some of them talked explicitly about how America had once been a Christian nation and had fallen away, which is an idea that you see sort of come to life in the Trump movement. Let's bring in Chadwick in Oakland. Welcome. Yes. Thank you. I hear what you're saying for most of the panelists. It's but I feel like you're it's.

diluting the fact that, yes, it's not just white evangelicals. Yes, it's the Christian National Movement, but it's not really Christian anymore. It's about power, is it not? And not just power, more about white power. When all the movements have been made against DEI, against diversity, against everything that is not

promoting the white status quo in this country. Chadwick, it's a really good point. And Catherine, I know that you have like a like an interesting answer to this question of some people call this movement white Christian nationalism. You tend to use Christian nationalism. Talk to me about that decision and how it might address what Chadwick is bringing up.

That's a really fantastic point. And I think it's really important to look at the sort of ideological roots of this movement. We can go back to the pro-slavery theologians, people like Robert Louis Dabney, James Henley Thornwell, leaders of the Southern Presbyterian Church, who believed that America, or they said that they thought America, they totally allied themselves with money and power.

saying that America, with the slaveholders, they said America should be a Christian nation and their hierarchies established by God, white people over black people, men over women. And I remember that there's a quote, I don't have it in front of me, by Thornwell who said, the parties in this conflict, he was speaking about the voices who are trying to end slavery, the religious voices who are trying to do that at the time.

He said, "The parties in this conflict are between God's established order on the one side and chaos on the other." So it's interesting quote because it's very modern. You hear very similar kinds of quote being articulated today. Now I think what's happened, and listen, the movement has been explicitly racist over time. I think about people like Bob Jones who said that,

you know, segregation was scriptural. And Roussas John Roshdouni, who was also a big supporter of Dabney and actually chose to reprint him. I think about people like Doug Wilson, who Sarah mentioned today. He's a very powerful pastor today whose profile is rising within the movement, who has essentially defended what he calls biblical slavery. This is sort of like done the right way.

And it's basically the idea that God sets hierarchies of value in humans, and that's the way God—or they'll say—they'll have, like, nice language. They'll say, "Oh, you know, we're all equal in the eyes of God, but you have to have these hierarchies." But, you know, in recent years, the movement—some of the strategists of the movement have recognized that they can't continue to win elections if they don't diversify somewhat.

So in recent years, there's been enormous efforts made to reach out to, I would say, like conservative-leaning Latino pastors. Like a lot of the way the movement works is by drawing these pastors into networks,

And then, because they know if you can get the pastors on board, you can get their congregations to vote a certain way. And they give these pastors very explicit tools for, you know, getting them to turn out their congregations to vote for the candidate who supports quote-unquote biblical values. Now, it's never the biblical values are never care for the poor or caring for the least of these or empathy or loving your neighbor. No, the biblical values that they value are all like the culture war stuff.

you know, that's intended to distract people. Same-sex marriage, abortion, LGBT stuff, you know. And if you can get people to vote on a single issue or those two or three issues, you can capture their vote. And we have seen consequences of this effort to diversify the ballot box. Now, in terms of labeling, I really support the way different writers characterize the movement because everybody comes from different perspectives. Some of us are sociologists, others of us

are journalists. Some people have more or less experience with the movement. But I have written explicitly, particularly in my previous book, Power Worshippers, about the sort of racist roots of much of the ideology we're seeing in our politics today. Chadwick, great, great, great question. Phil in Burlingame, welcome to the show.

Hi. You know, whenever you hear evangelical Christian, that's always been Protestant. You know, the country began as a Protestant country. Kennedy had a hard time running as a Catholic. It seems like evangelicalism has kind of merged Catholicism and Protestantism. And, you know, six out of the nine Supreme Court justices are Roman Catholic. But like Coney Barrett, you know, is...

What's the story with that? When did they merge? When did they put down their arms? They battled for hundreds of years in Europe, and now they're buddies? Right, Phil, it's a really interesting point, you know? I'd love to take that, if that's all right. Sure, yeah, go ahead. There was a process to create a detente among evangelicals or conservative Protestants and conservative Catholics. It was a process that took time.

took quite some time and the sort of culmination was a document called the Manhattan Declaration. I believe it was 2009, Sarah, please correct me if I'm wrong, which basically signed by very prominent members of both traditions where they basically said, we're going to set aside our, you know,

Our theological disputes over the last 500 years. Yes, exactly. We're going to set aside our differences and come together because we can unite in opposition to these culture war issues. And they chose abortion, same-sex marriage, and a sort of redefinition of religious freedom as the three issues they wanted to unite around. And, you know, the way I do a lot of my research is I go to right-wing conferences and strategy gatherings and

And in a lot of the more traditional evangelical spaces, I started to see a more robust presence of Catholics. And now you see, you know,

a lot of different, you know, folks from a lot of different religious traditions. You'll see folks who are Pentecostal or conservative Pentecostal. Pentecostalism is quite diverse politically, but also, you know, representatives of independent charismatic networks. You'll see sort of traditional Southern Baptist convention evangelicals, and you'll see ultra conservative Catholics as well. Basically power, power has united them together.

uh, outside of the particular denomination. So interesting, you know, Sarah, um, Oh yeah. I could just jump in on that. And Catherine's correct. And it even goes back farther than 2009. I mean, back in the early mid 1990s, there was another document called evangelicals and Catholics together, which was spearheaded by some of the, the leaders of the Christian right, including Chuck Colson, who was an advisor to Richard Nixon and was involved in the, in the Watergate scandal, uh,

I believe Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer were also involved in this effort. And it was, you know, an earlier iteration, I think, of what Catherine just described. There was an understanding by especially some of the leaders of the Christian right, the Protestant evangelical Christian right, that they had common cause with conservative Roman Catholics on a variety of issues, chiefly abortion. You know, I've covered this.

the abortion issue for many years. And many of the anti-abortion organizations, some of the leading groups that work, you know, at the ground grassroots level, all the way up to lobbying Congress, many of them are,

led by coalitions of both conservative Protestant evangelicals and conservative Catholics who are doing that work, you know, from the crisis pregnancy centers where they counsel women against abortion all the way to Washington, D.C. And abortion would be the chief issue, but certainly a traditional view of the family and sexual morality. Mm-hmm.

I want to make sure we get to a bunch of comments here that are coming in from listeners. First, Jesse writes, the so-called Christian nationalists are anything but Christian. Christ never turned his back on anyone. The movement needs to be called out every chance we get. Steve on the Discord also writes, I wish the press broadly were more actively elevating other Christian voices.

voices of compassion, of humility, of loving kindness. We do need to hear stories like the one on air now, but the far-right narrative is omnipresent in the media which normalizes that point of view, and we need to normalize a different approach to Christianity.

Vivian over on the Discord also writes, "I think there are a lot of regular people who would not describe themselves as Christian nationalists but feel religious pressure towards certain conservative positions. What frustrates me is when my friends and acquaintances support Christian nationalist politicians who pay lip service to religion and vote religious right on sensational issues like abortion but who otherwise utterly fail to embody the values I know my friends hold."

We're going to get to a lot more of your comments and questions in the next segment. We want to know if maybe your relationship with Christianity has changed because of Christian nationalism and how you hear the phrase separation of church and state.

We are, of course, talking about the rise of Christian nationalism and its influence on the Trump administration. You can get in the conversation by calling 866-733-6786. Forum at KQED.org. Find us on Blue Sky, on Instagram, or over on the Discord. Sounds like there's some lively conversation going on there. We're KQED Forum.

We're joined this morning by Catherine Stewart, a journalist and author of Money, Lies, and God, Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, as well as Sarah McCammon, national political correspondent at NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break.

Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the rise of Christian nationalism and its influence on and in the Trump administration by NPR's Sarah McCammon and author Catherine Stewart. Her latest book is Money, Lies, and God Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.

A bunch of listeners have some comments and questions about the Establishment Clause. Listener writes, what do the leaders of Christian nationalism say about the separation of church and state? Do they dismiss that as a constitutional right or do they think that the right to freely practice religion per the First Amendment trumps that concept? Another listener writes, as a Jewish person, I don't like the idea of Christian nationalism. I think it might violate the First Amendment. Sarah, do you want to start us off there?

Well, as I alluded to earlier, I think it depends on the individual, but certainly leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, people like Doug Wilson, who we've talked about a couple of times, have expressed skepticism at the idea of separation of church and state. You know, some will...

I guess question the idea of separation of church and state by talking about different spheres for government and for the state, but really believing in sort of an overarching divine authority that sort of hovers over all of that. Catherine might be able to talk about it a little bit more than I can. But I think the...

you know, you'll be hard pressed to find people who will overtly say they don't believe in separation of church and state. It's such a fundamental bedrock American value. And yet so often these debates are infused with religious ideas, which, you know, I think does frustrate people who are from other traditions or, you know, Christians who who are committed to those ideas. I mean, we have seen some pushback.

in recent years against some of these movements from the Christian left. There's a group called Christians United Against Christian Nationalism, I think it is, who tries to make this point that separation of church and state is an American idea and one that people of all faiths or no faith should embrace. But you often see it eroded at minimum in some of the implicit rhetoric from these movements. Mm-hmm.

Catherine, I wanted to come to you on some of the kind of like institutional undergirding of this movement. You know, one listener writes in to say, can you explain how the Heritage Foundation who wrote Project 2025 fits into this analysis? And you really note in your book that

how this is really an interconnected network between legal scholars, think tanks, people on the ground, strategists, the funders, of course, the pastors. So where does the Heritage Foundation fit into that kind of institutional network?

The Heritage Foundation is one of the key organizations that make up this sort of organizational infrastructure of this movement. I mean, the power of the movement rests on that deep organizational infrastructure. The movement is as powerful as it is also because there's been five-plus decades of investment in these different organizations. We can divide some of these organizations into categories. There are policy groups, think tanks, a vast majority

legal advocacy ecosystem, networking organizations that get leaders of the movement or members of the leadership on the same page. There are those pastoral networks I spoke of earlier. And, you know, the Heritage Foundation played a lead role in coordinating

Project 2025, but it did so with the collaboration of over 100 other organizations. And so it's very interesting because I would say not every single person who works at all of those organizations could be described as a Christian nationalist, right? But I think of Christian nationalism as something that happens, it's almost like a

a political dynamic that afflicts a political system like authoritarianism. So even if, say, an individual working at one of those organizations that contributed to Project 2025 might not see themselves as a Christian nationalist, they are with their efforts, with their collective efforts, contributing to a Christian nationalist agenda. Let's bring in Rob in San Francisco. Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. Wow. What I was going to talk about has kind of changed after listening to your show so far. Great contributions by your guests. It almost seems like there's really two sides to Christianity now. You've got the people that are kind of the born-again Christians, sort of in the Jimmy Carter vein, where they want to help people. They're more the liberal side. And then you have the other side, which

which is the more conservative side, which is taking over politics. And they're not saying, love thy neighbor. They're saying, screw thy neighbor if I can get ahead. And that seems to be what this political Christian movement is

is all about. They're not about religion, about helping people. They're about amassing power and taking over and really pushing things. And it seems to have happened in the Muslim world as well. The conservative side of the Muslim...

religion are the ones that are the most oppressive. And I see this happening in the United States now. Even, you know, the Catholic Church has two sides to it. You have a liberal side that really goes out and helps people, and you have the conservative side that wants to enforce all the rules like anti-gay marriage and all the other part of it. Yeah, Rob, appreciate your contribution. I'm sure, you know, lots of folks inside these religions feel like they're doing what they should be doing to help people.

And I do think for people who maybe have a more, you know, grace, cathedral sort of approach to religion or who are thoroughly secular, it does feel like it's hard to imagine that.

some of what Christian nationalists are saying they want to do actually happening. And one of those big questions, and Sarah, I'll bring this to you, is this idea that I've seen circulated, and I'm not sure how seriously to take it, that some Christian nationalist people are sort of advocating legislation that may make it difficult for women,

All women, not just transgender women, to vote. Can you talk a little bit about that legislation and how you're thinking about it?

Right. There's a proposal in the Texas legislature. I think it's been introduced more than once, but was introduced this year to require essentially additional documentation to register to vote. This is being billed as a voter security proposal. It would require documents like birth certificates,

to register, which is not required in most states. And, you know, the way that it's written, some advocates argue that in addition to just creating additional barriers for people who, uh, maybe marginalized, maybe, um, don't have access to those documents or easy access, that it would in particular create barriers for married women who have changed their names, um, because their, their documents would not match their birth certificates. You know, if

anybody who's changed their name. You're typically issued a social security card with your new name, but your birth certificate isn't reissued. And the people who are most likely to do that in our society are women who've been married. So the concern is that that would create challenges for women to prove that they're US citizens.

And get the right to vote. And it's not that it's impossible. It's just that any time these barriers are constructed, they, you know, studies suggest that they make people less likely to be able to vote. You know, another category of people who often change their names are indeed transgender people as well. And this is something that, you know, quite mainstream voting organizations like the League of Women Voters are concerned about. Yeah.

Right. That's one of the key groups that sort of raised the red flag about it. Now, it's just a proposal at this stage, but it's the kind of thing that gets voting rights advocates and women's rights advocates concerned because, again, the more layers of paperwork and documentation that are required for something like this, the more challenging it can be for some people to put those together and get a voter ID card. Yeah.

Yeah. Worth noting, too, in addition to the Texas bill, there's also a federal bill as well. I guess I want to come to you, Catherine, on this topic. There is an emerging gender split between the parties and political positions. It's even stronger among younger women and younger men. I mean, as someone who's followed this movement for a long time,

Can you see them making a move to suppress the votes of women as a pure power move? Or does that feel to you sort of like beyond the scope or pale of of what you've seen so far?

Unfortunately, it doesn't feel beyond the pale. I've heard over the more recent years, more voices talking about how it's a mistake to allow women to vote or trying to sort of take away women's right to vote by other means through the SAVE Act, of course, which you referenced this

which has been introduced to the House of Representatives, which would require Americans to improve citizenship in these different kinds of ways. And we have to remember that 69%

million women in America have taken their spouse's name and do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name. But there are other ways. Some people are speaking explicitly of what they call household voting or head of household voting. The idea that only the quote unquote head of the household should be casting the vote for other, you know, for the other party. And then when they're asked for the justification, it's like, oh, it just promotes the

sort of happiness and peace within families. I was like, "Really?"

But it's a way, you know, the implication, of course, is that it's the man who's the head of the House voting. And I've even heard people like Abby Johnson, who is a leading anti-abortion activist who was invited to speak to the RNC, you know, at the Republican National Convention. She has advocated this idea. So there are a lot of other folks doing that. But it kind of tracks within...

A real, I would say, normalization or sort of like mainstreaming of more, I would say like,

pro-masculinity, but within that, there's nothing wrong with being pro-men, pro-women, but there's within that a kind of misogyny within it. A lot of the voices who are affiliated with the new right and some of the think tanks that people like Russell Vogt and Darren Beatty and other members of the Trump administration that are in his new administration, they come out of Michael Anton,

You know, they've published in journals where, you know, men are speaking about women basically on the level of property or advocating these really strict hierarchies. There's one fellow who contributes to a Claremont Institute publication. Claremont Institute is one of these sort of new right think tanks. He said maybe men and women shouldn't work in the same spaces. Just think about that.

Maybe men and women shouldn't work in the same spaces. I mean, this is really kind of astonishing to hear these types of comments normalized in this year. Yeah.

I think it does intersect with something Catherine just mentioned. Real quick, Sarah. I'm going to give you the floor in just one second. I just want to say, you know, we're talking about the rise of Christian nationalism and its influence in the Trump administration. Joined by Sarah McCammon, national political correspondent at NPR, and Catherine Stewart, journalist and author of Money, Lies, and God. This is a fundraising period for KQED Public Radio. For more information, how to support KQED, go to kqed.org. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Sorry, Sarah, you were saying?

Oh, no worries. You know, Catherine just touched on something and it was an issue she brought up earlier, which I think is a really important point, which is tying in with this Christian nationalist, you know, vision of the country and the world is important.

The idea of hierarchy, and it's a specific hierarchy that's patriarchal, that places, you know, sort of men at the top of the church, the society, the government, and the family. And so there's this idea that men are sort of ordained by God to be in charge of things and to...

You know, not necessarily that they're superior, most people would say, but that they're that they're supposed to be the leaders. And I think it ties in with that idea that just the idea that that men are supposed to be head of household. And as Catherine mentioned, we've I've heard this from some of.

sort of more far right anti-abortion activists. Abby Johnson is one of them. But I've I've heard it from rank and file anti-abortion activists, the idea that we should somehow go to a head of household system where we're. Yes, I mean, the man's vote would would very likely be the one that predominated. I agree with you. I think these things are wild to hear in the year 2025. Let's bring in Ajay in Berkeley.

Hi, thanks for taking me on. I had a comment about, not about what the agenda of Christian nationalism might be,

But how how they try and normalize it and by they I mean the Republican Party at the national level right What in my view what they do is that they turn issues into big-ticket issues like for example and the anti-gay agenda that that was around when it was Trump's first first campaign 2016 and

And then they quickly realized that hey society is not okay with homophobia they were they were trying to sell it as sanctity of marriage and all of that and And they quickly realized that hey people are actually against this People believe that every that they should have these right so they pivoted away from that in my view and now they they took the whole anti-trans thing and they try to make that into a big-ticket item and

And there are many examples of such issues that have turned into big-ticket items to bring voters over to their side. And then once voters are over, that's when they start sneaking in the white nationalism agenda. They're not going to bring it in as a, hey, this is our white nationalist agenda. Come over to our side. This is how things are being sneaked in. And one last thing I would like to say is to say—

To a large degree, I would say that even the whole pro-life movement is a way to bring people over and then sneak in other things once the people are over. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ajay. I really appreciate that point. Catherine Stewart, as someone who has been watching this movement for a long time, is that a conscious principle of Christian nationalism to take...

what Ajay is calling these kind of big ticket items or very hot culture war things, and then bring people kind of along the path to a larger number of white Christian nationalist positions? Absolutely. I mean, those culture war issues are deployed for the politics of outrage. They do their market testing. They figure out which messages resonate with voters, which turn voters off.

And so he's exactly right. You know, this is exactly what they're doing. I was just attending America Fest, which is a big, you know, the hardcore, the MAGA movement, gathering 20,000 people in Phoenix, Arizona, put on by Turning Point USA. And almost every single speaker was

talked about the issue of, you know, the trans, like sports and transgender identity, every single speaker. Now, we have a lot of issues facing our country, but it's like those issues will function almost like a laser pointer cat toy, you know, so people... Especially when you've plowed hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising in the campaign to support that.

Exactly. So it distracts people. They vote on that one issue and you can get them to vote on that. Like not, you know, if they can just peel off a few percentages on one issue, then they can actually, you know, really do well on election day.

We've got a couple last comments here. One listener on Blue Sky writes, breaking capitalists using religion to gain more power. Tom on Blue Sky writes, tax churches. We shouldn't be giving the religious right the strength to impose their values into law. They've crossed the line, separation of church and state. We have been talking about the complex but quite strong rise of Christianity

of Christian nationalism and its influence on and in this second Trump administration. We've been joined by Catherine Stewart. She's a journalist and author of "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy." Also the author of "Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism." Thank you so much for joining us, Catherine. - Thank you.

We have also been joined by Sarah McCammon, national political correspondent at NPR, co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. She is also the author of Exvangelicals, Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thanks. And thank you to all of our listeners for your calls and comments, Discord and Blue Sky. Listeners, we've been loving hearing from you. Thanks so much for your comments. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.