There’s an uncomfortable reality about the 2024 Presidential election which has received little attention in the media: the best case scenario for Democrats – and for the republic – is a repeat of the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election. Chaos. Conspiracism. Efforts to delegitimize the election. Possibly even a modified repeat of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. And I don’t mean that Democrats would benefit from this scenario; I mean it’s the best they can hope for.
Campaign fundraisers for down-ballot offices like state Representative are not usually newsworthy affairs. They do not attract big-ticket speakers or high-dollar contributions, and they almost never generate any significant discussion among either voters or activists. They are a necessary chore of running for office; they occur and are then forgotten.
One of the most audacious efforts in the history of American politics is currently being planned, not in smoke-filled rooms, but out in the open. It’s named Project 2025, and, if it succeeds, it promises to remake American government and civic life for decades.
Campaign signs are packed in tight clusters on the roadside as Highway 24 emerges from the mountain pass and levels-out into Woodland Park. It’s a familiar scene by now in the small town which has spent the past three years fighting for its own future. The conflict has well-defined lines by this point, and the campaign signs – which have sprung like Columbines from the snow over the past month as the town’s April 2nd municipal election draws near – are clustered to reflect them.
None of them realized they were in a cult until it was too late. It started in late 1993 as a Bible study group composed of students from Messiah College in Pennsylvania. By the time it shattered in February of 1997, most of the group’s members had lost their individual identities and many of their worldly possessions. Some had lost their marriages. The leader, the man who they say slowly wove a web of control around their minds and around their lives, had lost his wife and child: they fled in the night, afraid that he might kill them.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that, after years of ignoring, marginalizing, or mocking the threat, the mainstream media finally seems to be taking Christian nationalism seriously. In recent weeks, major national outlets have released a flood of stories raising the alarm. Politico wrote about the plan to “infuse” Christian nationalism into a second Trump administration. The Hill referred to the growing trend of Christian nationalism as “a threat of Biblical proportions.” The New Republic covered Christian nationalist plans to “ban abortion and cut LGBT rights” if Trump is re-elected.
Bipartisanship is in bloom at the state capitol – and in the case of one bill introduced to the legislature last week, we would be better off if it wasn’t. Last week, state Representatives Matt Soper (R) and Cathy Kipp (D) announced that they were cosponsoring a bill to accomplish a goal many elected officials have long dreamed of: making sure you cannot see their emails.
I was raised to take over the world for God. My teachers have been sorely disappointed on that front. It is not something I spend much time talking about because it’s not something I spend much time thinking about. It was the milieu of my childhood, and I had no say in the matter. As a pastor’s kid from Nashville, Tennessee, I was steeped in religious conservatism from birth. The impetus towards a highly political, far-right version of Christianity which seeks to conquer the world for Christ, though, didn’t come from my family so much as it came from my classical Christian school. We were taught that we were special, that the world was fallen and we could redeem it. We were taught that America was a Christian nation which had drifted off course, but that a faithful generation could restore it.
On an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon in January 2021, my friends and I gathered around a shoddy table in a borrowed conference room for the specific purpose of causing trouble. Some were legislative aides, historically underpaid and mistreated at the state Capitol. Some were campaign workers, historically underpaid and mistreated on the campaign trail. All of us knew we deserved better, and all of us had come to the realization that asking nicely wasn’t going to do the trick. We had gathered to put a collective foot down.
