By Thomas Ultican 2/20/2020

Katherine Stewart’s The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism. It shines a light on significant threats to American pluralism and representative democracy. The religious rights amazing successes now influence every aspect of American life, from the White House to local governments, from schools to hospitals. Stewart documents the origins of “the Russia thing” and the evangelical embrace of Donald Trump. She clarifies that the Christian right is not fighting a culture war; it is a political war waged against the institutions of American democracy and freedom of conscience.

Trump is a Gift from God

Ralph Drollinger: “I started sending him my Bible studies when he was running his campaign and Trump has been writing notes back to me ever since, in a positive sense. He likes loyalty.”

Paula White about Trump: “It is God that raises up a king.”

Franklin Graham on Trump’s election: “God’s had intervened.”

David Barton called Trump: “God’s guy.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed God: “wanted Trump to become president.”

Ralph Reed stated: “There has never been anyone who has defended us and fought for us who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump.”

Rick Ridings said when he asked God how the nation will learn to change: “The Lord said, ‘It must play, the Trump card.’”

Ed Martin stated: “The Donald Trump administration has been a blessing on America like we’ve never seen.”

These sentiments are expressed by leaders of Christian Nationalism throughout this book. If you don’t recognize some of the names, it is important to understand that they are having a large influence on education, social justice and foreign policy in America and beyond. Stewart brings them out of the shadows and illuminates their roles.

Public Education, Environmentalism and Social Welfare are Evil

Pastor D. James Kennedy asserted that children in Public Schools were being “brainwashed in Godless secularism.” In 2003, the DeVos family’s Christian Reformed Church warned that “not only does there exist a climate of hostility to the Christian Faith, the legitimate and laudable educational goal of multi-culturalism is often used as a cover to introduce pagan and New Age spiritualities such as deification of mother earth (Gaia) and to promote social causes such as environmentalism.” The report also claimed that “government schools” had “become aggressively and increasingly secular in the last forty years.”

In his sermon called “A Godly Education,” Kennedy exclaimed, “The infusion of an atheistic, amoral, evolutionary, socialistic, one-world, anti-American system of education in our public schools, has indeed become such that if it had been done by and enemy, it would be considered an act of war.” After denouncing Horace Mann as “a Unitarian,” Kennedy declared, “The modern, public education system was begun in an effort to deliver children from the Christian religion.”

Environmentalism is termed a “false religion.” Stewart quotes the young pastor who took her to a Christian political event in North Carolina, “It’s ten degrees hotter than normal, and these people don’t believe in climate science.” The conservative Christian Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation declares, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.” The Christian Nationalist political organization Culture Impact Center has claimed that environmentalism is a “litany of the Green Dragon” and “one of the greatest threats to society and the church today.”

Many of the roots of Christian Nationalism can be trace to the antebellum period and theological theories supporting slavery. Calvinist philosopher R. J. Rushdoony was an admirer of these preachers and claimed that “some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.” Although some of his writing was uncomfortable for leaders in the nationalist movement, his ideas form a significant amount of the ideology embraced by today’s right wing Christian thinking. He was the first to claim the First Amendment aimed to establish freedom “not from religion, but for religion.”

Katherine Stewart explains Rushdoony’s perspective,

“The defeat of the orthodox side in the Civil War, Rushdoony realized, ‘paved the way for the rise of the unorthodox Social Gospel.’ The ‘Social Gospel,’ as Rushdoony understood it, is the mistaken belief that Christianity would have us use the power of government to reform society along lines that conform with Jesus’ teachings about loving thy neighbor. This unwanted fruit of defeat in the Civil War, Rushdoony came to think, blossomed into the next great enemy of Christian civilization. The enemy was, in a word, the New Deal.”

Rushdoony died in 2001. One of his contemporaries from the 1930’s, James W. Fifield Jr., thought he had the answer to Rushdoony’s concern. “To combat the horrors of the New Deal, Fifield proposed to energize the nation’s Protestant pastors.”  He felt the New Dealers were breaking the 8^th commandment. When they used the power of government to tax the rich and give to the poor, it violated “God’s word: Thou shalt not steal.” Stewart says, “In Fifield’s mind, the Social Gospel was just another word for communism, and it had to be stopped.”

Ralph Drollinger a Masculine Christian

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar arrived at UCLA in 1968. A couple years later, over at Muni-gym in San Diego’s Balboa Park, Jabbar’s UCLA replacement Bill Walton was dominating pickup games. It was Ralph Drollinger’s misfortune to follow in the footsteps of these two storied big men onto the campus in Westwood. During the 74-75 season, 7’2” Drollinger began the season as the starting center and his play was far below his predecessors. Capital Weekly described, “he was cruelly jeered on the court, and calls for his benching by fans and media grew ever louder.”

Going into the NCAA basketball tournament, Drollinger’s playing time had been reduced significantly. The final game of the tournament was at the San Diego Sports Arena where I was working. It was the legendary coach John Wooden’s last game. The only substitute Wooden used in the final game was Drollinger and in 16 minutes he scored 10 points and grabbed 13 rebounds. He was the key to Wooden and UCLA winning their 10^th national championship in 12 years. It was one of the most thrilling sporting events I ever witnessed.

Drollinger During the 74-75 Season

In Chapter 2, I was surprised to learn that Ralph Drollinger was a central leader in the Christian nationalist movement. Stewart speculates, “In the past two years, perhaps no Christian nationalist leader has had better luck playing the inside game than Ralph Drollinger.” He now leads a weekly “Bible study” for Trump cabinet member and other administration officials. Vice President Mike Pence has attended some of Drollinger’s studies.

After UCLA, Drollinger played with the evangelistic team, Athletes in Action, and had a brief stint with the Dallas Mavericks. He and his wife Karen Rudolph Drollinger had three children together. She left him in order to take up a relationship with a woman. It must have been brutal for Drollinger because he views homosexual relationships as “detestable acts,” “profane actions of immorality” and an “abomination.” Drollinger’s attitude toward homosexuality is widely shared on the Christian right.

He, like most of the other leaders profiled in The Power Worshippers, is a committed and unapologetic advocate of gender hierarchy in the home, at work and at church. Drollinger teaches,

“The respect of the submissive wife to her husband then, becomes a tremendous physical picture of the interrelationships existing amongst the members of the Trinity, i.e. the Son’s respect for the Father’s authority. This human modeling is essential to the woof and warp of successful cultures….”

He apparently absorbed these principles while pursuing a masters of divinity from the strict Calvinist and patriarchal brand of theology taught at The Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles. The “hyper-conservative” pastor John MacArthur has led the Seminary since 1986. One of MacArthur’s sermons, “The Willful Submission of the Christian Wife,” tells women to “rank yourself under” husbands. He declares, “Your task is at home.” He explains, “A women’s task, a woman’s work, a woman’s employment, a woman’s calling is to be at home.”

Drollinger was an early enthusiastic supporter of Trump. He is also an enthusiastic advocate of corporal punishment declaring, “When rebellion is present, to speak without spanking is woefully inadequate.” Additionally, Drollinger calls environmentalism a “false religion” and says certain initiatives to protect animal species and preserve natural resources “miss the clear proclamation of God in Genesis.”

Peter Montgomery a senior fellow at People for the American Way says that in his “Bible study” classes, Drollinger teaches public officials “that the Bible mandates adherence to right-wing policy positions on a wide range of issues, including environmental regulation, the death penalty, abortion, LGBTQ equality and more.” Dollinger writes, “Leaders must incentivize individuals and industries (which includes unencumbering them from the unnecessary burdens of government regulations).” He teaches that “God is pro private property ownership” and says the flat tax is “God-ordained.” He states that social welfare programs “have no basis in Scripture.”

There are many characters in the Christian Nationalist movement highlighted in The Power Worshippers. Like Drollinger, they all advocate policies leading to a Christian theocracy. Obfuscation and distorting American history are common practices by the religious nationalists Stewart documents.

Always about Power, Never about Abortion

Paul Weyrich coined the term “moral majority.” He also co-founded the Heritage Foundation, The Free Congress Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Weyrich and The Free Congress Foundation were labeled dominionists by the Anti-Defamation League.

Historian Randall Balmer explains how abortion was seized upon as an issue:

“It wasn’t until 1979 – a full six years after Roe – that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools.”

Balmer asked Weyrich about his claim that it was an attempt by the IRS to rescind tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies that animated the religious right and not abortion. Balmer says, “He was adamant that, yes, the 1975 action by the IRS against Bob Jones University was responsible for the genesis for the Religious Right in the 1970s.”

Trump’s “Russia Thing” Came from Religious Nationalists

Paul Weyrich made 12 trips to Russia and Eastern Europe before his death in 2008 and became a strong supporter of closer relations with Russia. Stewart reports, “He was writing and speaking frequently in defense of Russia and facilitating visits between U.S. conservatives and Russian political leaders.”

In 2013, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association called Putin a “lion of Christianity.” In 2014, Franklin Graham defended Putin for his efforts “to protect his nations’ children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” He also lamented that Americans have ‘abdicated our moral leadership.” In 2015 Graham met privately with Putin for 45-minutes. In 2016, Mike Pence said Putin was “a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.” It seems that Trump’s embrace of Putin and other despotic world leaders is an outcome of Religious Nationalism.

Conclusion

This is Katherine Stewart’s second book. In 2009, she was nonplussed to find a Christian group had established their “Good News” club at her daughter’s elementary school. This led to the 2012 book The Good News Club which I highly recommended for its brilliant scholarship and research. In The Power Worshippers, Stewart continued investigating the forces invading America’s public schools. In the words of Nancy MacLean, “Katherine Stewart presents chilling evidence that millions of American churchgoers are being inflamed and exploited by a cynical, well-funded alliance of power seekers.”

Stewart connects the dots between radical theocratic groups working to turn America into a Christian theocracy and extreme free-market libertarians. She undertook the enormous task of revealing who these “Power Worshippers” are. They pull the strings of government power in communities, statehouses and at the federal level. Read this book and encourage everyone you know to read this important book as well.

Twitter: @tultican

Tags: Christian Nationalism, Christian Right, Christianity, Donald Trump, Franklin Graham, Paul Weyrich, R. J. Rushdoony, Ralph Drollinger, Religious Nationalism, Segregation, Theocracy