Dispatch #174 White Lesbian Age 73 Considers Insidious Creep of Authoritarian White Christian Nationalism & the Normalization of Theocratic Rhetoric in Political Discourse
- Kathleen A. Maloy
- Oct 5
- 8 min read
September 29th 2025 Day 252 White Supremacist Misogynist Christian Nationalist Regime; 1193 Days Since SCOTUS Ruled American Women Don’t Have Human Rights; 723 Days Since Israel Began Genocidal Campaign on Palestinians in Gaza.
The insidious and relentless insertion of Christian nationalist rhetoric into political discourse is effectively normalizing authoritarianism and fascism. Administration officials employ polarizing rhetoric to declare that the spiritual war between good and evil has been launched.
Charlie Kirk and the ‘Third Great Awakening’ MAGA is embracing the language of a rising Christian movement. │Stephanie McCrummen│The Atlantic│27 September 2025
In the two weeks since Charlie Kirk’s killing, Trump-administration officials and allies have not only promised a sweeping crackdown on liberal groups. They have marshaled the language of a rising charismatic Christian movement to describe their political agenda as a cosmic battle against the forces of evil.
At Kirk’s memorial service on Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described the moment at hand as “not a political war” and “not even a cultural war—it’s a spiritual war.” The right-wing influencer Benny Johnson called out the heads of the Justice Department, the State Department, and the newly rebranded “Department of War”: “God has instituted them. God has given them power over our nation and our land,” he told the crowd of roughly 70,000 people at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. “May we pray that our rulers here—rightfully instituted and given power by our God—wield the sword for the terror of evil men in our nation.” Holding up a rosary, the far-right activist Jack Posobiec asked the crowd: “Are you ready to put on the full armor of God and face the evil in high places and the spiritual warfare before us? Then put on the full armor of God. Do it now. Now is the time. This is the place.”
Although Kirk was best known for his organization Turning Point USA, which swept droves of college students into the MAGA movement, in more recent years he’d founded TPUSA Faith, which tapped into and mobilized the energy gathering in this realm of charismatic Christianity. At the time of his death, Kirk had embraced a concept popularized by NAR leaders called the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” the idea that Christians are called to dominate seven spheres of society, from government to education to business; Turning Point Faith had an arm devoted to each sphere, according to Matthew Boedy, the author of a forthcoming book that describes how Kirk turned the mandate into a “central organizing element of the Trump era.” Kirk spoke often of creating “biblical citizens.” He argued that the separation of Church and state is a “fabrication” that was “made up by secular humanists.” He spoke of God’s design for humanity—traditional marriage, two genders, biblical education—as “beautiful” and “true.” He described Democratic leaders as “maggots, vermin, and swine” and said that the Democratic Party “supports everything that God hates.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/charlie-kirk-spiritual-warfare/684389/
Democrats silent as Republicans galvanized after Charlie Kirk memorial. Democrats trod carefully in responding to event attended by nearly 100,000 that blended politics with religion. │David Smith │The Guardian │22 September 2025
Democrats maintained a wary silence on Monday as Donald Trump’s Republican party appeared galvanized by a memorial service for the late rightwing activist Charlie Kirk that was part religious revival, part political rally.
The service was a show of force that blended politics with religion, putting Christian nationalism at the heart of Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement. It also cast Kirk as a martyr who could be a rallying point in future elections. “Today is the day democrats lost 2028,” posted Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Republican senator John McCain.
They [Republicans] cast Kirk‘s death as a pivotal moment in the conservative movement, exhorting followers to finish the work he began in sometimes aggressive and ominous language. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said in a fiery speech: “We will carry Charlie and Erika in our heart every single day, and fight that much harder because of what you did to us. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save this civilization, to save the west, to save the republic.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/22/charlie-kirk-memorial-democrats-republicans
Conservatives Are Using Charlie Kirk’s Death to Enact Sweeping Speech Crackdown The US has entered a new era of McCarthyism as the Trump administration equates leftist critique with “terrorism.” Daniel Moritz-Rabson│truthout│17 September 2025
The Christian Nationalist Movement in the US represents a clear and present danger. Followers of this movement agree that violence can be an acceptable strategy to save America from the devil.
Project 2025: The Blueprint for Christian Nationalist Regime Change│by Maura Casey│The Charles F Kettering Foundation│19 August 2024.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a “presidential transition project” created as a blueprint for recruitment and indoctrination should Donald J. Trump become the next president. The plan calls for establishing a government that would be imbued with “biblical principles” and run by a president who holds sweeping executive powers.
The plan is ambitious. The Mandate for Leadership is both specific in detail and vengeful in tone. Its central agenda is to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Christian nationalism believes that the Christian Bible, as God’s infallible law, should be the basis of government and have primacy over public and private institutions. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership.
The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights, out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Presumably, First Amendment freedoms would be reserved for only those who agree with this dystopian view.
If Project 2025 were put in place, America would change from a beacon of democracy to a superpower version of Viktor Orban’s Hungary. The extreme right-wing of the Republican Party has been openly besotted with Orban: his autocratic rule, his takeover of Hungarian government institutions, and especially his patriarchal Christian nationalism that embraces traditional gender roles, marriage, and demonizes LGBTQ+ individuals. The implication is clear: The values of Christian fundamentalism would hold sway, not separation of church and state, secular science, or the current rule of law.
An example of this is found in the document’s denunciation of CDC actions during the pandemic: “How much risk mitigation is worth the price of shutting down churches . . . as happened in 2020? What is the proper balance of lives saved versus souls saved?” (453). Rights in the Constitution are praised as God-given; Project 2025 claims that federal government should “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family” (481). https://kettering.org/project-2025-the-blueprint-for-christian-nationalist-regime-change/
This very informative program aired on Fresh Air features a discussion with Bradley Onishi a former Christian nationalist who's now a professor of religion at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism–And What Comes Next, a critique of the movement and its impact on American democracy.
Tracing the rise of Christian nationalism, from Trump to the Ala. Supreme Court
February 29, 2024 1:31 PM ET Heard on Fresh Air. What follows are excerpts from the interview with Teri Gross.
Christian nationalism is the idea that Christian people should be privileged in the United States in some way - economically, socially, politically - and that that influence and that privilege is a result of the country being founded by and for Christians. Christian nationalism is not the idea that others can't be here - that if you're a Muslim or an atheist, that you have to leave. It's also not the idea that only Christians can be part of the government. However, for most Christian nationalists, there is a core belief that the story of the United States is one where it has been elected by God to play an exceptional role in human history, and as being chosen by God, it's the duty of Christian people to carry out his will on Earth.
The Seven Mountains mandate is a particular form of understanding human society that says that Christian people are not called to persuade their neighbors to practice the Christian faith, to demonstrate to their fellow Americans that the Christian faith is the faith of love and truth. The Seven Mountains Mandate is, as my colleague Matthew Taylor says, a mandate to colonize the Earth for God. The seven domains – government, family, religion, business, education, media, arts/entertainment - are seen as mountains of conquest. The goal is not dialogue with neighbors who may be Muslim or atheist or Hindu. The goal is not to simply reflect the character of Christ on earth by way of living a life that upholds his glory and his teachings. The goal is to have absolute authority and power over every facet of human society.
And so we can see here what I take to be a very dangerous approach to practicing Christianity in the public square. It is not one that recognizes democracy or dialogue, pluralism as sacred values. The goal is power. The goal is conquest. And so when one hears about a politician or a leader or anyone in influence, especially as part of our government, who adheres to the Seven Mountains Mandate, that should set alarm bells off immediately.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as well as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has incorporated the Seven Mountains mandate in their materials and programs.
TPUSA has used its college campus activism model with the faith community, partnering with far-right pastors and groups and demanding Christian pastors preach right-wing politics. │Payton Armstrong│Media Matters│27 April 2023
Kirk has closely associated with high-profile members of the Christian nationalist “dominionist” movement, which asserts that Christians have been called to exert God’s will on society. Lance Wallnau, a self-proclaimed “prophet” and “Christian nationalist” who has been dubbed the “father of American Dominionism,” popularized the “quasi-biblical blueprint for theocracy” that is at the heart of dominionism called the “Seven Mountain Mandate.”
The Seven Mountain Mandate demands that Christians impose fundamentalist values on American society by conquering the “seven mountains” of cultural influence in U.S. life: government, education, media, religion, family, business, and entertainment. Wallnau has an extensively documented history of extreme and violent rhetoric. Recently, he called Biden the “antichrist,” referred to LGBTQ people as the “trans taliban,” and warned that God may soon start killing those who are “persecuting” Trump. www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirks-turning-point-usa-increasingly-leaning-right-wing-christian
A more complete quote from the sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley senior pastor at Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria VA is a fitting conclusion to this Dispatch.
"I am overwhelmed," he said repeatedly throughout his sermon. "Find the historical lies of the narrative of white supremacy and a nation that caters to white guilt and forces me to prove the equality of my blackness every day," he told the room. The clip, posted to social media, ends with Wesley saying, "I am sorry, but there's nowhere in the Bible where we are taught to honor evil. How you die does not redeem how you lived. You do not become a hero in your death when you were a weapon of the enemy in your life." www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/virginia/alexandria-pastors-sermon-viral-after-he-comments-charlie-kirks-death/65-0e31283b-f765-4c83-ad5f-8956bff79edb#
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