In 1980, conservative political operative Paul Weyrich approached evangelical Christian leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson with a proposal: If they would mobilize their believers to begin voting Republican, he would help them in their quest to roll back many of the civil rights protections they chafed against. Over the next 40 years, Weyrich and his Council for National Policy would guide these groups to greater and greater political success while slowly radicalizing them into a potent force — the Moral Majority — whose particular ideas of Christianity and Christian values drove nearly all their voting decisions.
Weyrich was not subtle in his motivations for a reigning political class, telling a group of evangelical leaders in 1980 that “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
In “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy,” filmmakers Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones trace the origins of Christian nationalism from the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th century through the creation of the Moral Majority, the sudden rise of the tea party and the election of Donald Trump. What they uncover is an essential aspect of our current political situation, one that puts evangelical Christianity in new light.
Where many liberals have long dismissed evangelical Christians and their fundamentalist beliefs as ridiculous and absurd, Ujlaki and Brown work to understand them on their own terms — and discover not hypocrisy but a deeply consistent, radically dualistic theology that, for many, is worth defending, even to the point of violence.
Ujlaki spoke in an interview by phone in Los Angeles about the making of “Bad Faith” and the story it tells of how a large swath of religious voters came to believe that President Joe Biden is in league with the devil while Trump is essential to the spiritual salvation of America. The film is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Tubi and other platforms.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What initially made you want to tell this story?
When Trump got elected, I was shocked. Nobody thought he had a chance. He was obviously a joke. It was never going to happen. When he got elected, I realized I didn’t really know anything about what was going on. I was in a bubble.
More than anything, my wanting to make the film was just to find out: How did he do it, how did he win, and who were the Christian evangelicals (who supported him)? But then I discovered all of this plotting, all of these deals, and the fact that those behind them were anti-democratic from the beginning.
The heart of the film is the story of Paul Weyrich and the deal he made with evangelical Christian leaders to use abortion to motivate their people to begin to vote for Republicans. How did that all work?
There were a couple of congressional elections in which the people who were running for office were very anti-abortion. And Weyrich, who had been a Catholic, found that they were successful campaigns, more so than they should have been. Abortion was very successful in ringing people’s bell.
Evangelicals had nothing against abortion. Frankly, they thought it was a good way to keep the Black population down. The Southern Baptist Convention applauded Roe v. Wade in 1973. But Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson agreed to start telling people this is bad, in return for which they were going to get help turning back all the progressive things they hated that the Supreme Court had done and that Lyndon Johnson had done. The Great Society, all of those progressive things that gave a lot of us hope in the 1960s and ’70s were anathema to them, and they were determined to turn that back. So they would faithfully help elect Republicans, and they would get rewarded.
It (abortion) was a great way to cover the fact that they were really trying to stop integration. It’s much better to say that we’re trying to defend the rights of the unborn.
I was surprised to learn that Christian evangelicals were not always so politically engaged.
For many, many years they were completely opposed to political involvement. The public square was the devil’s playground. To convince them to get involved and to vote Republican, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson applied the Manichaeanism of their theology. There’s a good and bad; there’s evil, and there’s God. The Republican Party is the party of God, and the Democratic Party is the party of the devil. They got that.
But this has nothing to do with theology, nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with God or with Jesus. I don’t even consider Christian nationalism as a religion. What is its ethos? What is its morality? It’s actually amoral, which is why it uses the church. The church lends it that moral, ethical authority that it doesn’t have otherwise.
Jesus is anti-democratic and God likes authoritarian governments? It’s the antithesis of anything Christian.
Would it be fair to say Christian nationalism’s goal is fascism?
Yes. It’s pure fascism. It’s pure power. They have been wanting and plotting the same thing for 40-plus years. They were incredibly adept at concealing what their motives were. You had to decode what they were saying. When they were talking about re-creating the kingdom of God on Earth, if you thought they were talking about something theological and spiritual, you would be mistaken. They were talking about replacing democracy with theocracy.
The one exception, and this to me is like the smoking gun in the film, was the Weyrich Manifesto (“The Integration of Theory and Practice,” 2001). Born of his complete frustration with the knowledge that his followers were never going to be the majority, Weyrich argued the only way they were going to create a Christian nation was to bypass democracy. They had to weaken and destroy it, creating a vacuum, which leaves room for the strongman to appear.
If you look around you at the divisiveness and the distrust of institutions that exist today in this country, you will realize how incredibly successful they have been in executing their plan. It’s been like a slow-motion revolution in a way, happening bit by bit all over the place.
And yet even so, Donald Trump seemed like such a reach for people concerned about goodness and morality.
Everything he stood for was against what they believed in. A number of people were saying they would do it but they would be holding their noses, because they didn’t really believe in it.
Then you had his spiritual adviser, a charismatic, Paula White, who had befriended Trump a year or so earlier and was his sort of secret adviser. She started the ball rolling by telling her group that Trump had become a Christian. That was one attempt to deal with the thing. But more was needed.
Then, looking in the Bible, another charismatic Christian came up with the idea that God sometimes uses pagans to accomplish good works on behalf of the Jews. King Cyrus was this horrible pagan who did all kinds of bad things, but he was very good for the Jews.
And so Trump becomes reinterpreted as, in a sense, part of salvation history?
The notion was that looking at the Bible, we see that what was really happening was God using Trump in order to redeem America and bring it back to God. And as (evangelical Christian and former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security) Elizabeth Neumann says in the film, the notion that they could be living out the prophesies got evangelical Christians so excited they all got behind this notion of Trump as King Cyrus. That’s what God was doing. That was the answer. They figured it out.
There comes a point in the film where you interview a man who seems very thoughtful about Biden’s desire to unify the country. But then his conclusion is that it’s impossible because good and evil cannot work together.
That’s one of the scarier parts of the film. Because he seems like a reasonable, intelligent person, and yet he’s deeply convinced of this, even sad about it, not triumphant. It’s simply a fact, good cannot unify with evil.
The notion that over half the country is in fact demonic and evil, and evangelical Christians are the holy ones and should be allowed to do whatever they need to do in order to take control from the devil, it’s incredible when you think about it.
Watching the film, it certainly sounds like the leaders of the Christian nationalist movement see civil war, or something like it, as the path to power.
That’s right. That’s the only way they’re going to get it. They’re not going to get it through democracy, they’re never going to be the majority. They are going to weaken and destroy and then conquer. That’s the game plan.
It’s so hard, people aren’t willing to accept the fact there are sizable numbers of people in this country who don’t believe in democracy. And the national media doesn’t know how to deal with it. They’re constantly accommodating, normalizing, and not fulfilling what I would take to be the mandate of proper newsgathering. They call them “conservative” in The New York Times. They’re not conservative. These are seditionists, treasonous, anti-democratic.
People with this kind of liberal notion of fair and balanced think we’re not going to be over the top like them. But the thing is, one is following the rules and the other isn’t.
It’s so difficult, because you don’t want people to be so terrified that they think it’s hopeless. You don’t want to have to think “I better stay out of this.”
On the contrary, what it should show you is that you need to fight for your democracy if you want to keep it.
Jim McDermott is an arts and culture writer for several publications, and is a contributor to Religion News Service.
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57 Responses
“Evangelicals had nothing against abortion. Frankly, they thought it was a good way to keep the Black population down.”
What?!?! So this guy is redefining what an evangelical is. I’m speechless that this website would publish this article with no attempt to provide a counter to so many false statements made by the interviewee.
And so it begins, Christianity and biblical morality is fast becoming the object of a which hunt in America, and it’s movies like this that will pave the way.
Agreed. Maybe it’s time for Julie to fire Jim McDermott.
McDermott doesn’t work for me. We have an agreement that allows us to republish stories from RNS. This is one of those stories. And please do not confuse the views of someone in an interview with the opinions of The Roys Report.
This is the literal and actual history of evangelicals and abortion. I know it SEEMS like evangelicals have always been staunchly against abortion, but they really haven’t- they were at most neutral, and at worst- exactly as stated- for it as a means of racism.
If you don’t believe me (or Jim) maybe it’s time to look into the actual history of it? Broken Words by Jonathan Dudley, is a great book that traces the history
jen:
We, as believers, are to be focused on today. Our sins are in the past. Which group of people stands against abortion TODAY?
Yes our sins are in the past, but we should also know HOW and WHY we landed here.
We also have a lot of believers walking around spreading and believing misinformation, with self-righteous comments like “we’ve ALWAYS stood loud and proud against abortion!”
Perhaps learning – and telling – the story on how and why we landed here can be a powerful testimony on correcting course.
We (as individuals or a group) haven’t always gotten things right. Let’s not hide from that. Let’s share the story.
Wow. This seems like a very one-sided and incomplete “documentary” – not one that has the balance they claim to want from others.
I grew up in an evangelical church in the 1960s-1990s and and we and every other conservative evangelical I knew were opposed to abortion before, during and after Roe v. Wade. We found RvW to be an abomination.
Luther and Calvin were both against abortion. The verses about God knowing us before we were born, God knitting us in our mother’s wombs, God preordaining us for salvation and good works, and God punishing people that hurt babies in the womb in the Old Testament were very common.
The Southern Baptists did not go through the conservative resurgence until 1979 – that would seem a pertinent point to their accommodating response in 1973.
Another huge factor in the antiabortion movement was Francis Schaeffer. I don’t know how they missed that.
And C. Everett Koop. Speaking out against “throw away society”. Pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Surgeon General of the US from 1982 to 1989.
There was no widespread opposition on the Religious Right to abortion in the 70s.
Jerry Falwell’s first sermon against abortion was six years after Roe vs Wade, and months after conservative Christians lost their final appeal to the Supreme Court who ruled that religious schools could indeed lose their tax exempt status if they refused blacks.
The right was united on discrimination and segregation.
If abortion was not the catalyst for this political movement of white evangelicals, however, what was?
According to Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist and architect of the Religious Right, the movement started in the 1970s in response to attempts on the part of the Internal Revenue Service to rescind the tax-exempt status of whites-only segregation academies (many of them church sponsored) and Bob Jones University because of its segregationist policies. Among those affected was Jerry Falwell, who referred to the civil rights movement as “civil wrongs” and who had opened his own segregation academy in 1967. The IRS actions against racially segregated institutions, not abortion, is what mobilized evangelical activists in the 1970s, and they directed their ire against a fellow evangelical, Jimmy Carter, in the run-up to the 1980 presidential election.
Weyrich’s genius, however, lay in his understanding that racism — the defense of racial segregation — was not likely to energize grassroots evangelical voters. So he, Falwell and others deftly flipped the script. Instead of the Religious Right mobilizing in defense of segregation, evangelical leaders in the late 1970s decried government intrusion into their affairs as an assault on religious freedom.
Francis Schaefer’s son wrote a book about his father’s involvement with the Moral Majority. Frank was also involved with the Moral Majority. go frank claims his father was pressured into joining the movement, and that his father didn’t really want to broken voiced with the anti abortion movement. Frank Schaffer is still alive and knows the whole story, as head part of it all. read Frank Schaefer as book for the whole story. Its a fascinating read.
Those who keep erroneously invoking 2 Chronicles 7:14 and are hoping and praying for a revival are unwittingly (and naively) supporting White Christian Nationalist ideology. They may not realize they are wanting to flood the polls on election days with newly-hatched evangelical Christian Republicans who will vote out of office most Democrats. There are plenty of ultra-Right wingers who already know they can’t win many more major elections and will eventually have to resort to violence in the Name of Christ to achieve their goals. Now that Trump has been convicted, how many unaffiliated voters who might have voted for him are going back to Biden? Those of us who are moderate unaffiliated voters are stuck in a cacotopian political system and our consciences won’t allow us to vote for either guy.
Not voting is voting. You know Trump shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House. After what he did to the Central Park Five he should never be leading America.
I will be voting for Trump PROUDLY because Biden is a communist, and yes, his policies are satanic!
These are very outlandish, aggrandized accusations, leading me to question your understanding of both communism and satanism.
The pilgrims who sailed from the UK to start a colony where Christianity was the national religion, were very brave, confident & secure in their trust in their Heavenly Father bc they had got to know Him by searching for Him with all their hearts. Jer. 29:11-14 demands that of all people, so they can be set free from captivity & know God‘s plans & purposes for them, personally.
At that time, Christians were those who knew, feared, agape’d, & obeyed God, & had repented. More than a century after landing at this ‘New World,’ their descendants prayed to their Father for instructions on how to set up a government that would work for a moral & God-fearing people. The Constitution & the Bill of Rights were the result of that prayer. The message of salvation remained as God has declared it, for another century, until civil war broke out, & Christian men were conscripted to fight on both sides. They had to make an instant decision when they faced someone in a different colored uniform to kill him before he killed them, or stand there & let him kill them. They knew that once a child of God sinned [did anything outside of God’s perfect will] they were doomed to hell. Heb. 6:4-6
After that war, very few, if any Christian men existed. Satan jumped in with his substitute gospel, which has been the prominent gospel preached to this day. All one has to do is say some words about trusting, coming to, believing in, accepting Jesus as Lord & Savior to become a Christian. Oh yes, & even confessing that they are sinners & asking Jesus to forgive them, sometimes. This has NEVER transformed a single soul from sinner to saint.
“… so they can be set free from captivity & know God‘s plans & purposes for them, personally… At that time, Christians were those who knew, feared, agape’d, & obeyed God, & had repented” ~Colin Stitt.
Yes, but how did the Pilgrims, and Puritans who came shortly after, define their “freedom”, “christianity” and “agape”? A decade after John Winthrop died, in 1660, the Massachusetts Colony hung four Quakers (aka “Boston Martyrs”) for their “heretical” beliefs and violating a law banning Quakers (est. 1658) from the colony. Now, supposing that Quakers were actually guilty of the heresies they were accused of, how did the Apostle Paul deal with heretics in the New Testament? Ironically, an unsaved Paul (Saul) went around killing people who he deemed to be heretics.
There are two aspects to Christianity – orthodoxy (conformity to established biblical doctrine) and orthopraxy (correct/biblical ethics and practice). It’s only when we mash up what a person or group professes with how they express or apply those convictions, that we understand what they truly believe. Isn’t it ironic that the Mass Colony was founded on freedom from captivity, yet when in power, enacted laws to deny others those same freedoms. They fled the oppression of a national religion, the Church of England, where they were persecuted, only to found another “national religion” that persecuted Quakers?
“By their fruit you shall know them” ~Jesus
Thank you! Colin knows almost nothing about history of the Christian faith.
Thank u for the memory jolt. But what I said still stands, even if there were some renegades/rebels/fake Christians during that century. There has always been & always will be such. Some even snuck into the fellowship at Corinth, & Paul had to rebuke them by commanding them to come back to their senses & stop sinning, & gave them the reason why they sinned: they were ignorant of God. 1 Cor. 15:34 One who truly knows God will fear Him Ex. 20:20 & repent [stop sinning]. {Prov. 14:26-27, 6:16.
Hello Colin,
would you be willing to explain and expand on the claim in your writing : ‘once a child of God sinned [did anything outside of God’s perfect will] they were doomed to hell.’ thanks –
Good catch. Seems doomed from the start.
Sure. A child of God is one who knows. fears, agape’s & obeys God & has repented, so never sins again. Peter told us that its only those who repent who are given the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of their sins. Acts 2:38 There is ZERO forgiveness in the absence of true repentance. 2 Chron. 7:14, Mk. 1:4. Lk. 3:3. 24:46-47, Acts. 2:38, 3:19.
Paul assured us that if such a one rejects the leading & guiding of the Holy Spirit, & makes a deliberate choice with his/her will to sin again, there is no way for that one to repent again. I cannot imagine anyone ever doing such a thing bc life in Christ, where there is NO SIN, 1 Jn. 3:4-10 KJV is SO INCREDIBLY amazing that who would want to give that up? And the event of repentance is so emotionally painful that I sure do not wish to ever repeat that, even if it were possible. The only people who are ‘IN CHRIST’ are those who have repented. They are new creations with all that old garbage [sin] gone, & everything being new. 2 Cor. 5:17 He told us that we must work out our salvation with fear & trembling. Phil. 2:12. God’s message of salvation has never changed [like Himself]. Obey Me & live or don’t & don’t. The Garden of Eden to Rev. 21:6-8, 22:14-15. When one gets to know God really well one realizes that one cannot ‘agape Him’ all the while he/she sins. He/she knows that God meant what He said that the wage of sin is death. Jesus told us that. Matt. 5:27-30. Today’s ‘gospel’ is Satan’s substitute for the real gospel that was taught in the Holiness Movement B4 the civil war.
Colin,
Romans 7:
“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Through Christ alone, Colin. You will never be “sinless” in your own strength. None of us will. It is a daily struggle.
Then there is 1 John 1:8-10 (KJV):
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
By the way, this was a letter directed to believers. If you say you have no sin, you are deceiving yourself.
My comment has 293 words according to my word program.
Colin:
John 3:16 & 17:
“For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should NOT perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved.”
And, once saved, to grow in Him. You seem confused about the Gospel message. Jesus is clear that even a little child can come to know him. He is also clear about the power of the Holy Spirit, which transforms Christians more and more into people who look, act, and speak like Jesus.
So, please explain your interpretation of the following:
Hebrews 6 : 4-6
“It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”
(Note the term “brought back to repentance.”)
I cannot see anywhere where I am confused. I literally believe the bible, so I cannot get confused bc there are ZERO contradictions or vague scriptures that cannot be understood once one has studied the book from cover to cover. It all fits together like a large jigsaw puzzle, displaying the truth of God’s message of salvation. If u have never studied a bible Satan WILL deceive u into believing all sorts of nonsense. like Jn 3:16 That word ‘believe’ is NOT a mental assent. It is like faith, which is dead & useless in the absence of works. Being saved ‘through’ Christ’ has a meaning that Satan loves to hide from all those who have never studied a bible as well. PLEASE read JESUS THE REVOLUTIONIST on Substack ot Facebook’s Life Abundant to see what Jesus did accomplish on the cross. None of it is applied to any sinner who has not repented, which means ceasing sin. There is nothing to ‘interpret with Heb. 6:4-6. It means exactly what it says. The only person who is given the Holy Spirit is the one who knows God well enough to fear Him so they can repent. Acts 2:38, Ex. 20:20. Prov. 14:26-27, 6:16. Fearing God is essential for salvation. It’s part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Matt. 10:28
The gospel message has NEVER changed bc God NEVER changes. Adam & Eve were commanded to obey God or die. The Israelites were held to the same justice. Jesus told us the only way to heaven is to ‘do God’s will,’ which is simply obeying God. Matt. 7:21 . It’s not rocket science!!
Colin,
You are most definitely confused. I will pray for you. And, by the way, even a child can come to Christ without studying the Bible “from cover to cover.” And no book on earth, including “Jesus the Revolutionist” is a substitute for the Bible.
Nobody can earn their way into heaven. Nobody. This means it is by grace we are saved, through faith, and not by works. Nobody can boast about being better than someone else.
The gospel message is simple, clear and straightforward. It requires no special knowledge for understanding. The only way to heaven is through Jesus. It’s how the man next to him on the cross made it in: His only qualification was that Jesus told him he could come.
This article was hard for me to follow due to several apparently conflicting statements. For example here are two back-to-back sentences which seem to completely contradict each other: “Abortion was very successful in ringing people’s bell. Evangelicals had nothing against abortion.” If these broad assertions make sense to anyone reading this, then please help me to understand how.
Another concern I have with this piece is that it leaves out the word Republic!
Are there Christian Nationalisms? Is there are a unified front among Evangelicals to form a ‘Christian America’ ? Or is it one big convoluted mess of warring factions that will accomplish next to nothing?
“In 1980, conservative political operative Paul Weyrich approached evangelical Christian leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson……………..”
As I understand, these were the notorious grandfathers of this insidious movement indeed. While they are no more, unfortunately their legacy still breathes and has hatched ‘cockatrices that spawn poisonous vipers’.
Christian leaders who left an anti-Christian legacy”. How ironic. The day approaches when the LORD will deal them all remaining that of the leaders of this malignant cancerous movement plaguing the Church.
Yeshayahu (Isa) 9:14-16: for the leaders of this people cause them to err, and they led by them are destroyed. Therefore, the LORD will cut off the head and the tail, the branch and the root in one day….the ancient and prominent. The heads are their leaders; the tail are their prophets that teach lies.
Strike the shepherds, scatter the goats. Wail o you leaders of this people, for the day of your dispersion shall come.
The LORD has to cleanse first of its toxic waste dump for to rehabilitate and restore the true church. LORD, do it for you glory that it no more be blasphemed and reproached among nations. Amen. May it happen swiftly in our days. Amen.
I’m so conservative that today’s republics look like communists to me. I’d identify more closely with libertarian views. I refuse to vote for Trump because he is a godless man with no morals higher than his own desires. But Biden is no different. There is no Christian party. Only Christian people. But this article and obviously this film so misrepresent most Christian’s and especially those who call themselves evangelicals. I’m very disappointed that you would platform it. First century Christian’s cared about things like abortion. That’s one of the key ways they went against the grain of the culture of the day. To say “Christian’s” or “evangelicals” had no issues with abortion is the most naive statement possible. No actual real believer would ever be “ok” with abortion.
I too believe “conservatives” betrayed thier ideals to make America great. Just as I believe many Christians have betrayed the gospel to live comfortable lives. And yes murdering a defenseless innocent human being is always wrong… even if you are a woman.
I wish the US had a functional multi-party system. Then, you’d have a party that directly represents your views!
Let’s overlook their statement on abortion (which I know is difficult), they could be dead wrong about that point and it doesn’t really change what has happened from like the mid 1970s to present. I think an important distinction here, I have not watched this movie yet but I don’t think they are claiming the “Moral Majority” and Christian Nationalists are representing the views of most Evangelicals. It sounded to me like part of the point here is the people behind this movement are quite power-hungry and have found they can say the right things to get votes and support FROM Evangelicals, not that they are actually representing their views.
I have seen this documentary and wish that every true God-fearing individual in this country could see it and come to their own conclusion that what purports to be Christian Nationalism is, in fact, religious fanaticism and deception. There is no such thing as Christian Nationalism because there is absolutely nothing Christian about the ideology of this group.
Correct! LORD JESUS was not a nationalist. HE was 100% non-political. In GOD’S Kingdom there is no Jew nor Greek. If you want to know how GOD defines a leader read 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and apply that standard to anyone you choose to lead.
An old Jewish story. GOD and Satan were talking to the people, in a field divided by a fence. Both said, come with me.” All went except one who sat on the fence. A little later, Satan came back and urged him to come. The man said, “I haven’t decided. To which Satan said, “ah, but you already have.”
I would’ve been aborted in 1965. I wasn’t aborted ONLY because it was 1965. Do you think that I could ever support abortion? I’d either be an idiot or a demoniac. The political world demands that we support one side or the other. Democrats love abortion. They cheer as though the child doesn’t exist, or was a cyst to be removed. It’s insane. I’m willing to grant that the other side isn’t made up of Holy Ghost filled, righteous individuals. However, they don’t celebrate boys cutting off sexual organs and then calling themselves girls. Racism? I pray that not ONE black child would ever be aborted in the world again. EVERY baby is priceless. The thing about the SBC supporting Roe is great. Liberals had taken control of the SBC in 73. They were pretty much gone by 83. The leadership wasn’t reflecting what the people (or the Bible) supported. So they were removed. What Falwell’s motivations were, I don’t know. I do know that many of the things that he said were evil, were evil. He now stands before the judge that measures us all. I’m sure he’s got plenty to answer for, but speaking against abortion, isn’t one of his sins.
“…the Democrat Party is the party of the devil.” That part is true! And has been since at least LBJ. But Donald Trump proves the GOP is not the party of God. The GOP used to be generally the more moral and more civil party, but Rush Limbaugh and Trump have made it less civil than the Democrats. And most Republicans–including Trump–only cling to a façade of being pro-life and pro-family.
John – yes, at least Democrats are open in their actions, non-hypocritical, of NOT being pro-life and pro-family.
Yes I’m rather alarmed by these groups who appear to have full support of fascism;gaining undue power and support for their own people, trying to lay on the most restrictive interpretation of their own religion (and usually throwing in other restrictions that are not even Bible-based at all while they are at it) onto everyone else in the country.
A lot of these very same people are very concerned about Muslim fundamentalism. It does make some of these supporters reconsider just what they are doing if you ask “So, you want to turn this into the Iran of the west?”
This article is pure fiction, plain and simple.
Fascism: “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
(Webster)
Odd…This does not describe the beliefs of any born-again believer I know.
Same for me – even those believers who lean more to the left and/or are Democrats.
The challenge is that fascism (like many other extremist regimes) VERY RARELY comes into play in one fell swoop. It’s often little by little. Hitler didn’t come in on day one shipping Jews off to Auschwitz. It started little by little, one law at a time.
Similar example: apartheid is defined as “a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on the grounds of race or gender.”
This does not describe the beliefs of any believer I know on the right or left. However, if you study apartheid, and walk through the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, you see a list of laws that were passed one by one by one by one, enforcing practices and beliefs little by little by little, until the regime was in place.
This is why we MUST remain alert for the “little things” that can lead us on a dangerous path.
For me, one “little thing” I’m upset about is book banning; historically, that has been a step towards destruction.
Hi Marin,
Believe it or not, I lived in South Africa (Swaziland) during apartheid. I encountered it on a train ride that started in JoBurg, as we called it. I needed to use the “rest room.”
Unbeknownst to me, there were three on the train: The one for Blacks was a hole carved out of the train’s floor. You could literally see the ground flying by. The one for Coloreds was a hole in the floor with a supporting “bench” over it. The one for whites was a regular toilet.
There will be MUCH to answer for when we stand before the Throne.
I’ve run in Evangelical circles all my life, including keeping up with Falwell and BJU and I know their best and worst. This article is a perfect example of gaslighting. Accusing the “right” of everything the “left” is actually doing–grasping after and wielding raw power. I agree that RR should not be platforming this garbage without a counter opinion. There’s hints of facts here and there, smothered by wild extrapolation. It’s part of an attempt to characterize all Christians as being part of the “Christian Nationalism movement.” The CNs are a very tiny fraction of Christianity but films like this will whitewash all of us who are both Christian and patriotic. Just because we want people with our Christian values in positions to do good, doesn’t mean we want a theocracy.
Well said Lydia! The Left still has not taken the 2016 election results all that well. Trump has many faults, and when their usual tactics didn’t work to tear him down, they had to resort to a new bogeyman…enter Christian Nationalism stage right! I chuckle out how progressives try and define, and somewhat rewrite history, to fit their world view! ‘Everyone that doesn’t agree with my worldview is a “threat to democracy”! ‘
And the image at the beginning of this article is getting a little old! “A supporter of then-President Donald Trump carries a Bible outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)”. How do you know he is/was a supporter of Trump? Did the photographer ask him? I don’t see any MAGA stuff on his person. I don’t know many Christian Nationalist that cover their face, wear skeleton sleeves and carry a Gideon Bible that they snagged from the hotel on their way out the door to protest. Goebbels would be proud!
“The Left still has not taken the 2016 election results all that well. ”
Yikes, given what happened on Jan. 6, commenting that the left does not take election results well is scary. I mean is going out and having an insurrection taking an election better? (Jan 6 convictions are of people on the far right –Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, former military. Remember that people were killed or seriously injured on J6. Some of them call themselves Christians. This is why people are alarmed/concerned.) Here is a link to convictions of people who did not truly take an election well:https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-capitol-rioters-jailed-sentences-january-6-1826075
Please direct me to the liberals who broke into the capital after the 2016 election.
How do you know he wasn’t a trump supporter? Since most of the people were there because trump
told them to go, it would mean it is much more likely than not he was a trump supporter! Was he a Biden supporter? Are you saying he was part of the “deep state”.
Here’s the thing for the two of you. When a Muslim commits an atrocity like a terrorist attack, it’s islams problem. When a christian nationalist does something bad, while a small fraction , it comes down on the rest of us. How will you personally take care of that?
” I agree that RR should not be platforming this garbage without a counter opinion. There’s hints of facts here and there, smothered by wild extrapolation. It’s part of an attempt to characterize all Christians as being part of the “Christian Nationalism movement.” The CNs are a very tiny fraction of Christianity but films like this will whitewash all of us who are both Christian and patriotic. Just because we want people with our Christian values in positions to do good, doesn’t mean we want a theocracy.”
Thank you for putting my thoughts into the words I was having trouble finding! It’s not balanced to only post such extreme articles with no strong counter opinion article to go along with them.
I understand what you are saying, Lydia. However, until the majority does a better job of silencing – or at least openly criticizing – it’s “tiny fraction” that is shouting the loudest, everyone risks being lumped together.
I am reading a whole lot of attacks on the article and/or writer, but VERY few against the “tiny fraction.” So it comes across as if the majority has a bigger problem with the article/writer than its fringe Christian Nationalists. Then you wonder why everyone is lumped together? That is the problem.
Thank you for Posting this article and link.
Most people don’t know that Colorado legalized abortion in 1967, passed by an overwhelmingly male, Republican-dominated Legislature and signed into law by a Republican governor.
So when pastors at Evangelical churches says they believe life begins at birth and are against abortion.
That would mean:
-No Morning After Pill
-No IVF
-No Medical Abortions (Abortion Pill) (52% of all abortions fall into this category… surprised…?)
-No Surgical Abortions
So tell me how many pastors preach against IVF at white suburban evangelical churches.
They do not, because it does not provide a political advantage even though “theologically” they are against the concept. As the pastor well knows, if he preached against IVF their would have a bunch of very upset women in the congregation mad at church leadership.
So it seems Evangelicals can be very Machiavellian. Yes ….that is the point of the article….
I have a great appreciation for how Julie and crew have brought the disinfectant of sunlight into the dark corners of evangelicalism. But, this particular article is nothing more than a brutal broadside at those who have policy differences by resorting to name calling. So if I reject the prevailing democrat party initiatives, which I believe are bringing about the ruination of our country, I am a Christian nationalist – a fascist? Seriously, I know so many good persons, Christian or not, who are so done with what democrats have wrought – they simply reject left leaning policy. And so this article writer has become the very thing he purports to distain in the most clever, but hateful manner. Sad.
This documentary “Bad Faith” is just a reaction to the one of Eric Metaxas, “Letter to the American Church” which is a true and amazing documentary. Eye opening!! The enemy is just trying to scare the church in America to rise up, speak up, and take action by attacking the truth and depicting Christian patriot has bad. Let’s not fall for it!!
For those who wonder why Black voters – including Black Christians – are overwhelmingly Democrat, read no farther than the opening of this article:
“If they [Falwell and Robertson] would mobilize their believers to begin voting Republican, he [Weyrich] would help them in their quest to roll back many of the civil rights protections they chafed against.”
There you go!
So many political and religious arguments are undermined by binary thinking that reduces others to accusatory labels and generalizations.
Not all conservatives are overzealous religious bigots. Not all liberals are God-hating, abortion-worshipping groomers. It’s interesting how the SAME people who get upset when they are lumped in with a generalization, “defend themselves” by hurling ANOTHER generalization at the other side. And when doing so, they often misuse words like “fascist” or “woke”. I mean, we have even gotten away from what it means to be a true conservative or liberal.
I say this because we aren’t going to address the root causes and issues surrounding Christian nationalism by doing this. It’s lazy. We need to have constructive dialogue that critically examines and considers the nuances and complex factors that got us here.
I say that as someone who is a Black woman, a Christian, a Gen Xer, a moderate Democrat, and a Texan (now living in the Midwest) who holds an “elite” education – and is VERY concerned about the direction of the church and this nation (and I do view them separately). Yeah, there’s no simple label to describe me, my experiences, or my views.
Marin, I agree wholeheartedly! I feel your perspective is always respectful and helpful. I always look forward to reading your comments and appreciate them.