Abstract
Donald Trump has aligned himself with a religious right faction who see in him their saviour. If only they cared about rights.
“It describes itself as ‘non-denominational’, but it’s highly sectarian and teaches children they can burn for an eternity if they fail to conform to a strict interpretation of the Christian faith,” she told Index from her home in New York.
The journalist and bestselling author notes that in 2017 the administration of US president Donald Trump, using the term “school choice movement”, allocated $1.4 billion of public funding to promote charter schools. “These are often run by people with covert religious or right-wing ideological agendas,” Stewart explained.
In her more recent book, The Power Worshipers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, she provides a detailed analysis of how US taxpayers’ money is being used to promote far-right religious ideology in politics, education, schools, hospitals, civic spaces, courts, and both local and national communities.
The book begins by defining the American Christian nationalist movement. Today, Stewart elaborates on that definition. “It is radically anti-democratic because it claims that the foundation of legitimate government in the USA is a strict interpretation of [Christianity] rather than our constitution, our representative government or the ideals of justice and equality that the American promise consists of,” she said.
Made up of evangelical Christians, Protestants, ultra-conservative Catholics and some Pentecostalists, the American Christian nationalist movement is united by a common political vision, said Stewart. “This is not a culture war. The movement is ultimately trying to achieve political power and it now determines the future of the Republican Party.”
In 2016, America’s religious right got its first taste of power after Trump was elected as the 45th president of the USA. He promised his radically-religious-right voting base that he would appoint “pro-life” judges who would seek to end abortion rights, funnel public money to religious schools and enact far-right economic policies that many of the movement’s plutocratic funders support.
“Trump largely delivered on those promises,” Stewart said, adding that by the spring of 2018 there were weekly Bible study gatherings taking place at the White House. Some reportedly were held in the West Wing, and up to 11 of 15 cabinet secretaries, including then vice-president Mike Pence and education secretary Betsy DeVos, counted as participating members.
How has the religious right managed to gain such a strong foothold in Washington? Just follow the money, says Stewart. She mentions organisations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organisation that has an annual revenue of more than $50 million, which directs its efforts to dismantling the wall of separation between church and state. Stewart also speaks about the Federalist Society and the National Christian Foundation. The latter organisation is a “donor advised fund” that reportedly raised more than $1.5 billion in 2017.
Much of that funding has been channelled into highly sophisticated ways to mobilise a large voting base. Take, for example, United in Purpose: a non-profit organisation whose main mission is to unite like-minded conservative organisations in their quest to create a US society that is based entirely on Judeo-Christian principles.
“United in Purpose is now in a position to select the targets for its messaging from almost the entire voting-age population of the United States,” said Stewart. “It begins by assigning points to each individual in its database for characteristics that line up with conservative religious voting patterns.”
The religious right also plays a pivotal role in shaping how US healthcare facilities are run, she said. At the moment, an estimated one in six hospital beds in the USA is at a Catholic-run medical facility. Most are governed by Ethical and Religious Directives (these strict guidelines take moral instruction directly from the Vatican) and impose limitations on the types of services and procedures hospitals are able to deliver. To illustrate how dangerous this can be, Stewart cites an example from her book. It involved a doctor working in a Catholic-affiliated hospital in the USA not being able to prescribe birth control pills to a young woman with HIV. The patient was taking efavirenz, a potent anti-viral medication that can cause severe harm to a developing foetus, and subsequently ended up getting pregnant and giving birth to a baby without a brain.
It’s not an isolated incident, Stewart explains, adding: “The rate of maternal mortality in the United States is already the highest in the developed world, and it’s sharply trending upward.”
Stewart concludes by looking at what she claims is the Trump administration’s most damaging legacy: the radical overhaul to the USA’s judicial system.
By March 2019, 86 Trump judicial nominees had been confirmed since his inauguration - two to the Supreme Court, 31 to courts of appeal, and 53 to district and speciality courts. Trump also nominated 58 people to the federal courts during that timeframe. And she said key players from the USA’s Christian nationalist movement helped advise Trump when and where those judicial appointments should occur.
In June 2022, two years into President Joe Biden’s administration, the religious right achieved what is undoubtedly its greatest legal and moral victory to date, when Roe v Wade was overturned.
Since 1973, that Supreme Court ruling had held that the specific guarantee of “liberty” in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects individual privacy, included the right to abortion prior to foetal viability - thus granting women abortion as a constitutional right.
“Even as it seeks to end abortion nationwide, along with emergency contraception and some widely practised forms of birth control, the Republican Party - which is beholden to America’s religious right and relies on it for votes - is now an anti-family party that has somehow, by cloaking itself in the rhetoric of ‘family values’, passed itself off as pro-family,” said Stewart.
Is there a pushback from either secular liberals or moderate conservatives? The rule of law and the separation of church and state is crucially important if US democracy is to survive, and Stewart said: “There are many legal advocacy groups committed to protecting individual rights, freedom of speech and conscience, and the separation of church and state, working in opposition to right-wing legal advocacy groups.
Former president Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC, June 2020
CREDIT: UPI / Alamy
“There’s a growing awareness that what we are dealing with here is a political movement, so awareness is a critical first step. As a journalist it is not my role to tell people how they should personally get involved in [taking on the religious right]. But there are no shortages of avenues for engagement. Whatever your lane, there are plenty of activists out there offering strategies and guidance. There is certainly a lot of work to be done, but for now we are free to do it.”
But will radical US voters have the final say? Recent polls suggest that twice-indicted former president Trump leads across nearly every category and region, as voters seem to disregard any moral concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy. Stewart claims the more Trump holds the rule of law in contempt, the more the religious right embraces his authoritarian values.
“Trump’s clear disdain for the rules is part of his appeal,” she said. “His transparently immoral character makes him the ideal leader of a religious nationalist state. Trump puts himself above the law, and is therefore representative of the authoritarian impulses of large numbers of his supporters who do not believe in equality or pluralism.”
Stewart concluded: “They have made this explicit by comparing him to biblical figures like King David and King Cyrus.
“Trump is cast as an imperfect vessel whom God chose to enact His will and restore America to its ‘Judeo-Christian’ roots. If you believe you are in an existential struggle between absolute good and absolute evil, and you are fighting for your tribe, you don’t want the nice guy who follows the rules.”