Tag Archives: Paul Weyrich

Movement to Destroy American Democracy

12 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/12/2025

Author Katherine Stewart is a friend of mine. OK, we are not bosom buddies and have only met face to face once briefly. However, in 2017, I wrote about her book The Good News Club and we began communicating by email. In 2019, when she published The Power Worshippers, I again reviewed her book and our email communications were enhanced. Now, she has completed the trilogy with Money Lies and God, her just released book, which continues a deep dive into Christian nationalism and the extreme right’s anti-democratic agenda.

On Money Lies and God’s cover, Congressman Jamie Raskin insightfully labels the book, “An indispensable citizen’s guide to the antidemocratic MAGA right.”

Whenever I read a book, the first thing I do is read everything on the cover and all introductory material. I was amazed by the well known people commenting on this book. Besides Jamie Raskin, I was particularly stuck by comments from Nancy MacLean and Steve Schmidt. Not that their selected comments were so mind blowing but because they are such heroes of mine.

Maclean, the famous historian and author of “Democracy in Chains”, states, “A bracing must-read story of how the varied streams have merged into a mighty river moving toward massive destruction—and it explains how together, we can divert it.”

Schmidt, John McCain’s campaign manager, political strategist and cofounder of the Lincoln Project, wrote, “Pieces through the fog and noise to reveal the dangerous forces gathering, planning, and plotting against liberty.”

The comments made me think this book could be special. I was not disappointed.

Building toward a Trilogy

Living in Santa Barbra, California in the early 2000s, Stewart was stunned to learn that her daughter’s elementary school had a protestant after school program for students called “The Good News Club.” For the past almost two decades this discovery has driven her to research how religious organizations are now allowed to proselytize babies in public facilities. The more she dug, the scarier reality became.

A significant figure in the tearing down of the separation of church and state was lawyer Jay Sekulow. Born into a Jewish family he converted to evangelical Christianity in the 1980s. In 1990, Pat Robertson brought Sekulow together with a few other lawyers to form the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) (notice how close the acronym is to ACLU). In 1994, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) added its name to the growing roster of well financed Christian legal organizations and is backed by groups that are a veritable who’s who of the Christian Right.

In 2001, this legal juggernaut succeeded again in their efforts to undermine the separation of church and state with its victory in Good News Club v. Milford Central School. Stewart commented:

“An alien visitor to planet First Amendment could be forgiven for summarizing the entire story thus: Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, together with a few fellow travelers on the Supreme Court and their friends in the ADF and ACLJ, got together and ordered that the United States should establish a nationwide network of evangelical churches housed in taxpayer-financed school facilities.”  

The destruction of the first amendment was well underway.

In “The Power Worshippers”, Stewart dove deeply into the world of Christian nationalism. Among the many insightful items she shared were the actions of Paul Weyrich. He coined the term “moral majority.” He also co-founded the Heritage Foundation, The Free Congress Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

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.” (Power Page 270)

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.” (Power Page 272)

Donald J. Trumpski’s embrace of Putin and other despotic world leaders is an outcome spurred by Christian nationalism.

Completing the Trilogy

In the introduction to “Money Lies and God”, Stewart states, “There is no world in which America will become the ‘Christian nation’ that it never actually was; there is only a world in which a theocratic oligarchy imposes a corrupt and despotic order in the name of sectarian values.”  (Money Page 7)

In these pages, Stewart expands beyond just the evangelical community to include the Conservative Catholic community that has joined forces with the evangelicals. The reader is introduced to Opus Dei, the ultraconservative and secretive Catholic group founded in fascist Spain. “Opus Dei does not disclose its membership, but Leonard Leo has a listed entry on the website of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., which is operated by Opus Dei …” (Money Page 43)

 Stewart reports on the big 2023 Mom’s for Liberty event in Philadelphia. That same year, she attended the Network for Public Education event in Washington D.C. which is where I had my face to face encounter with my “friend.” She writes extensively about both events.

The book does a lot of documenting of the tremendous amount of money right wingers are pouring into their agenda. She cites the spending by the DeVos-Prince family, Texan Tim Dunn, Jeff Yass, Richard Uihlein, the Corkerys, Mike Rydin, Rebekah Mercer, Charles Koch and more. You meet the Ziklag group, a secretive organizations for high net-worth Christian nationalists. A ProPublica article asserts, “Ziklag appears to be the first coordinated effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overtly Christian nationalist agenda …”

I was surprised that our American psychosis is being spread rapidly around the world. Stewart attended the 2023 National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in London where she saw representatives of the ADF and the Heritage foundation.

Stewart summarizes the NatCon pitch:

“The sum of all our problems—and the greatest threat that the United States and its sister republics around the world have ever faced—is the rise of the ‘woke’ elite. Cosmopolitan, overeducated, gender-fluid, parasitic, anti-Christian idolaters who worship at the shrine of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the leaders of this progressive cabal are bent on elevating undeserving people of color while crushing hardworking ‘real’ Americans (or real Britons, or whoever is in the audience).” (Money Page 100)

In the “The Rise of the Spirit Warriors” chapter, Stewart notes,

“In October 2023, the spirit warriors notched another stunning victory when one of their own … became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana indicated on his first day as Speaker that God himself had a hand in his ascension to a position second in line to the presidency.” (Money Page 163)

Late in the book, Stewart contends, “The axis around which a sector of the global antidemocratic reaction now turns is an extraordinary alliance between a dominant wing of the Republican Party in the U.S. and the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.” (Money Page 214)

I hope you read “Money Lies and God”.  It is an extraordinarily well written and researched endeavor.  

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Public Education Attack Measured

7 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/7/2024

A new report from Network for Public Education (NPE) concludes, “The war on public education has always been a part of Christian nationalism” (Page 32). NPE graded America’s schools using a 111 point scale:  a) Voucher and Charter Expansion and Protections – 66 points, b) Homeschooling governance – 7 points, c) Financial Support for Public Schools – 14 points and d) Freedom to Teach and Learn – 24 points (Page 9). The results from these category totals indicate, among other things, the extent of radical Christian and billionaire libertarian influence in each state.

No state earned a perfect 111 points with North Dakota’s 98 points being the high score. NPE translated the scores into letter grades of A – F: A – 86 to 98, B – 78 to 85, C – 67 to 77, D – 55 to 66 and F – 54 and below (Page 10). The top five states, all with A’s, and bottom five states, all with F’s, are listed below (Page 11).

                                    Top and Bottom Five

A GradesScore F Grades Score
North Dakota98 Arkansas37.5
Connecticut93 North Carolina32
Vermont90.5 Utah29.5
Illinois89 Arizona22.5
Nebraska87 Florida19

Interesting Privatization Observations

Stunningly, voucher costs have grown exponentially since 2000 while private school enrollment shrunk, decreasing from 11.38% in 1999 to 9.97% in 2021 (Page 5). The only way this could happen is if the public started paying for students who were already in private schools.

Of the 240 new charter schools in the US from 2022-2023, thirty of them had 25 or fewer students. A comparison of the National Center for Education Statistics data between 2021 and 2022 revealed 139 charter schools closed (Page 5).

NPE reported:

“Neighborhood public schools remain the first choice of the overwhelming majority of American families. Despite their popularity, schools, which are embedded in communities and governed by elected neighbors, have been the target of an unrelenting attack from the extreme right” (Page 4).

The title for most privatized school system in the US belongs to Florida. Even there, with its 74% public school enrollment, the popularity is unchallenged (Page 6).  

Public schools enroll about 90% of America’s K-12 students.

A Pennsylvania investigation discovered that 100% of voucher schools examined, engaged in some form of discrimination. The schools’ decisions were based on LGBTQ status, disability, academic capacity, family religion and “even pregnancy”. Dayspring Christian Academy declared that supporting the rights of LGBTQ students was also a reason for being denied enrollment or expulsion (Page 12).

The District of Columbia and 30 states have voucher programs with many having multiple programs. Some states allow participants to be in more than one program. Middle class and wealthy families who never had children in public schools now have tax-dollar generated sources flowing toward them (Page 12).

We now have the ludicrous situation where poor people are supporting private school students from wealthy families.

Root of Christian Nationalism

Carol Burris and her team at NPE observed:

“The war on public education has always been a part of Christian nationalism. As that movement rises, so do the attacks on public schools. Randall Balmer of Dartmouth College argues in his piece in Politico that the origins of the political power of the Religious Right began not with Roe v. Wade but rather with Green v. Kennedy, which denied segregation academies tax-exempt status. According to Balmer, that decision gave religious conservative Paul Weyrich an opening to leverage Evangelical political power. Today, the Heritage Foundation, the organization he co-founded, is part of a billionaire-funded effort to destroy ‘government schools’ under the banner of school choice.” (Page 32)

In 1973, Paul Weyrich co-founded the Christian nationalist think-tank, The Heritage Foundation, which has been brutal to the America I love. They attacked the separation of church and state guaranteed in the 1st amendment to the US constitution, undermined democratic action and demanded fidelity to their ideals. In their world, it is forbidden to embrace humanistic principles, share resource or help non-Christians.

Katherine Stewart discussed Weyrich in her book, The Power Worshippers. After the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights, Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” became a winner. Stewart shared, “If the right could access the religious vote, Weyrich reasoned, power would be in its grasp” (Worshippers 60).

In historian, Randall Balmer’s book, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, Weyrich claimed that it was the 1975 IRS action against Bob Jones University that caused the Religious Right’s rise, not abortion. Only after New Right leaders held a 1978 conference call to discuss strategy, was abortion was put on their political agenda (Worshippers 64).

With the Soviet Union’s fall, Weyrich saw an opportunity to unite with religious conservatives in Russia and Eastern Europe. Stewart noted:

“All told, Weyrich made more than a dozen trips to Russia and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of communism. At the time of his death in 2008, even as he was riding high on a wave of plutocratic money in the United States, he was writing and speaking frequently in defense of Russia and facilitating visits between U. S. conservatives and Russian political leaders.” (Worshippers 270)

The long relationship between Christian nationalists and Russian plutocrats informs us why some Republicans support Russia against Ukraine. A pro-Russian attitude goes along with opposing public education. To Christian nationalists, the enemy is secular humanism and public schools reek of it.

Weyrich spent the last decade of his life in excruciating pain. In 1996, he fell on black ice, suffering a spinal injury. By 2001 he required a wheel chair to get around and in 2005; both his legs were amputated from his knees down. He was in constant pain until his death in late 2008.

Why was Florida Last

The team at NPE has provided a fair and well researched assessment of public schools across America. Their four categories and weightings they used to compare schools from many jurisdictions are reasonable. Clearly privatization efforts do significant harm to public education; making giving them 51% of the grade acceptable. Assigning 22% of the grade to protect freedom to teach may be a little low but OK. School finance, getting 13% of the grade, is definitely not too much and 6% of the grade, coming for homeschooling protection, is a needed new category.

With homeschooling accelerating over the last two decades, the need to protect children educated at home has become more critical. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education  was founded by adults, who were themselves homeschooled. Their database contains documented stories of brutal neglect, including homeschooled children murdered, sexually assaulted, imprisoned, and starved. Unfortunately these stories almost never garner national attention. Students in brick and mortar schools also suffer this kind of abuse but they are around mandated reporters (teachers) every day and are not hidden from sight like homeschooled kids.

Using well-sourced data and a four-category rubric, NPE has provided parents throughout the United States with tools to evaluate their states education leadership.

NPE mentioned The Heritage Foundation and its connection to Christian nationalism, which is leading the war against public education. Before he was elected governor of Florida, Jeb Bush served on the Heritage board. It was there he developed his agenda for privatizing public education. His most influential adviser was Patricia Levesque, a graduate of Bob Jones University, the fundamentalist Christian school in South Carolina.

Little wonder that Florida was dead last in supporting public education in America.

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Eye Opening Book: The Power Worshippers

20 Feb

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.

Worshippers Cover Photo

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 8th 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 10th national championship in 12 years. It was one of the most thrilling sporting events I ever witnessed.

Drollinger at UCLA

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

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