Christian nationalists have made inroads in Texas with their push to eliminate the separation between church and state.
By Schuyler Mitchell ,
November 25, 2024
Christina Milan, a parent with two children attending Cypress-Fairbanks ISD schools, protests during a CFISD Board of Trustees meeting Monday, June 17, 2024, at Mark Henry, Ed.D. Administration Building in Cypress, Texas.Jon Shapley / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
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When schoolchildren across Texas return to classrooms next fall, thousands could encounter new, Bible-infused lessons. The Texas board of education voted Friday to approve “Bluebonnet Learning,” an optional, state-developed curriculum for public elementary schools that includes Christian teachings like the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
The 8-7 vote by Texas officials arrives as Christian nationalist groups nationwide intensify their efforts to inject religion into state curricula. Earlier this month, a federal judge temporarily blocked a Louisiana law requiring every public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments by January 1. Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, sent a memo in June ordering all 5th through 12th grade teachers to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans.
Similar directives have failed legal tests in the past. The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment is widely interpreted to enshrine church-state separation, prohibiting the government from establishing a national religion or favoring one system of belief over another. But armed with a new conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal judiciary stacked with Donald Trump’s picks, the Christian far right sees a revived opportunity to overturn decades of legal precedent.
“With more conservative leaders being elected, and with the U.S. Supreme Court becoming more conservative and issuing a series of decisions weakening the separation of church and state, all of that has emboldened Christian nationalist and other religious right groups,” said Alex J. Luchenister, associate legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a lead plaintiff in litigation over Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law and the Oklahoma superintendent’s Bible mandate.
One of these decisions was issued in 2021, when the Supreme Court found that Maine had to include religious schools in its publicly funded education assistance program. The following year, shortly after issuing the landmark decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court overturned another six decades of legal precedent in the case Kennedy v. Bremerton. Joseph Kennedy, a high school football coach, had established a practice of leading group prayers in the middle of the field after each game. After attempting to negotiate religious accommodations with Kennedy, the public school district in Bremerton, Washington, ultimately declined to renew his contract, citing fears that his conduct was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court found that the First Amendment protected Kennedy’s public school prayer and safeguarded the inclusion of religious institutions in state school voucher programs
Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size.
When schoolchildren across Texas return to classrooms next fall, thousands could encounter new, Bible-infused lessons. The Texas board of education voted Friday to approve “Bluebonnet Learning,” an optional, state-developed curriculum for public elementary schools that includes Christian teachings like the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
The 8-7 vote by Texas officials arrives as Christian nationalist groups nationwide intensify their efforts to inject religion into state curricula. Earlier this month, a federal judge temporarily blocked a Louisiana law requiring every public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments by January 1. Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, sent a memo in June ordering all 5th through 12th grade teachers to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans.
Similar directives have failed legal tests in the past. The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment is widely interpreted to enshrine church-state separation, prohibiting the government from establishing a national religion or favoring one system of belief over another. But armed with a new conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal judiciary stacked with Donald Trump’s picks, the Christian far right sees a revived opportunity to overturn decades of legal precedent.
“With more conservative leaders being elected, and with the U.S. Supreme Court becoming more conservative and issuing a series of decisions weakening the separation of church and state, all of that has emboldened Christian nationalist and other religious right groups,” said Alex J. Luchenister, associate legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a lead plaintiff in litigation over Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law and the Oklahoma superintendent’s Bible mandate.
One of these decisions was issued in 2021, when the Supreme Court found that Maine had to include religious schools in its publicly funded education assistance program. The following year, shortly after issuing the landmark decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court overturned another six decades of legal precedent in the case Kennedy v. Bremerton. Joseph Kennedy, a high school football coach, had established a practice of leading group prayers in the middle of the field after each game. After attempting to negotiate religious accommodations with Kennedy, the public school district in Bremerton, Washington, ultimately declined to renew his contract, citing fears that his conduct was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court found that the First Amendment protected Kennedy’s public school prayer and safeguarded the inclusion of religious institutions in state school voucher programs
Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in an analysis that, together, these two rulings could render “the lines between church and state hopelessly blurred, if not eliminated altogether.”
As a lawyer with Americans United, Luchenister has been fighting the religious right’s attacks on public education for more than 20 years. But, he told Truthout, the organization has seen “much more aggressive efforts by Christian nationalist groups” in the last year alone.
“Before that, we weren’t really seeing these kinds of efforts to just defy existing precedent and directly try to push religion into the classroom in a very overt way,” Luchenister said. So far in 2024, Americans United has tracked at least 91 state bills that would promote religion in public schools, including protecting school prayer. That’s nearly double the amount of similar bills that were proposed last year.
But in chipping away at foundational constitutional protections, Christian nationalist groups stand to win more than prayer in schools or Bible-based lesson plans. The legal battles playing out in federal courts could give rise to anti-LGBTQ violence and state-sanctioned discrimination against religious minorities.
“Children can be made to feel that they’re marginalized, made to feel like outsiders or ostracized by their peers if there’s any indication that they don’t believe in the majority religion,” Luchenister said. “These actions threaten the most vulnerable among schoolchildren in these states.”
Still, Luchenister said he thinks that Supreme Court precedent remains a sound bulwark against Christian nationalists’ latest legal attacks, particularly in the Louisiana Ten Commandments lawsuit. After all, the Court already issued a ruling in a near-identical case, Stone v. Graham. In 1980, the justices found that a Kentucky statute requiring public schools to post copies of the Ten Commandments was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment.
Why, then, might state legislators attempt to blatantly defy such clear constitutional protections? Luchenister said Louisiana’s legislation was likely “passed with the intent of trying to trigger a lawsuit” that would make its way through the federal courts, in the hopes that SCOTUS would eventually take it up and overturn the Stone precedent. Indeed, Louisiana has already appealed the district court’s ruling to the 5th Circuit.
“We think the Supreme Court continues to recognize the fundamental principle that public school students should not have religion forced upon them in public schools,” Luchenister said. “But maybe we’re overly optimistic.”
A report by the Center for American Progress, a progressive policy institute, called the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, “rogue.” In recent years, the 5th Circuit, which oversees Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, has issued a series of decisions that have “allowed extremist lower court judges to issue sweeping, politically fraught rulings.” This approach, the report’s authors write, “has helped undermine the separation of powers, established precedent, and principled legal reasoning to accomplish right-wing policy goals.”
The far right groups pushing for legislative change are also well-funded and highly coordinated. The First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit Christian law firm, raked in nearly $25 million last year and has served as co-counsel in several major Supreme Court victories, including Kennedy v. Bremerton. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a far right Christian advocacy organization classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, says it is involved in “more than 1,000 active legal matters” at any given moment. Both, First Liberty Institute and the Alliance Defending Freedom, serve on the advisory board of Project 2025, a conservative coalition led by the Heritage Foundation that has drafted an extremist policy blueprint for Trump’s second term.
“There is a much larger, broader movement that is attempting to erode and destroy the wall between church and state using schools as the vehicle,” said Colleen McCarty, founding executive director of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit against Oklahoma state superintendent Walters, the Oklahoma department of education and the members of the state’s school board.
In a CNN interview last week, Walters decried “gaslighting from the left” and “hatred for this country pushed by woke teachers’ unions.” In addition to his Bible education mandate, Walters has demanded that Oklahoma schools screen a video for students that begins with him praying for president-elect Trump, and he recently announced that the first batch of Trump-endorsed “God Bless the USA” Bibles had arrived for public instruction.
“President Trump has a clear mandate: He wants prayer back in school. He wants radical leftism out of the classroom,” Walters told the CNN host. “His agenda is crystal clear.”
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Schuyler Mitchell is a writer, editor and fact-checker from North Carolina, currently based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The Intercept, The Baffler, Labor Notes, Los Angeles Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her on X: @schuy_ler
Stop taking Bonhoeffer’s name in vain, his relatives and scholars warn Eric Metaxas, Project 2025
(RNS) — Scholars and family members of the famed theologian worry conservatives will use a new Bonhoeffer movie to promote Christian nationalism and political violence.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on a weekend getaway with confirmands of Zion's Church congregation in 1932. (Photo courtesy of German Federal Archives/Creative Commons)
Bob Smietana
October 21, 2024
(RNS) — In recent years, author and radio host Eric Metaxas and other conservative Christian supporters of Donald Trump have compared themselves to the famed German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer — who was put to death for taking part in a plan to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
In a recent interview on Flashpoint, a Christian television talk show on the Victory network, both Metaxas — author of a bestselling biography of Bonhoeffer — and the show’s host called the current election a “Bonhoeffer moment” and urged Christians to rise up and oppose evil.
That evil, in Metaxas’ eyes, is the Democrats, who, he has argued, stole the 2020 election and whom he often compares to Nazis. For him, if Democrats win the next election, it could mean the end of America as we know it. Metaxas has argued and has claimed in the past that Trump is God’s chosen candidate and that those who oppose him oppose God.
His newest book, “Religionless Christianity” — a phrase used by Bonhoeffer — describes America’s current politics as a spiritual war and sign of the end times.
RELATED: How Eric Metaxas went from Trump despiser to true believer
A group of Bonhoeffer scholars — and the theologian’s descendants — have had enough. In a statement issued Friday (Oct. 18) members of the International Bonhoeffer Society called on Metaxas and others to stop comparing the current election to the rise of the Nazis. The statement, in particular, called out Metaxas for social media posts featuring a gun and a Bible and his support of Jan. 6 rioters.
FILE – Eric Metaxas speaks at Judson University on Sept. 26, 2018, in Elgin, Illinois, near Chicago. (RNS photo/Emily McFarlan Miller)
“This portrayal glorifies violence and draws inappropriate analogies between our political system and that of Nazi Germany,” the scholars said in a statement, which has been signed by more than 800 Bonhoeffer scholars and other Christian leaders. “It is a dangerous misuse of Bonhoeffer’s life and lessons, particularly in this election season in the United States.”
The scholars and relatives of Bonhoeffer also objected to the mention of Bonhoeffer’s work in Project 2025, a controversial plan from the Heritage Foundation and other Trump supporters, which has been criticized for promoting Christian nationalism.
“From Project 2025 to violent political rhetoric, the legacy of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is being invoked this election season on behalf of Christian Nationalism,” the scholars said in their statement. “It is a dangerous and grievous misuse of his theology and life.”
The statement was prompted in part by the upcoming release of a new Bonhoeffer biopic, which will be out in theaters in late November. One of the posters for the film shows Bonhoeffer with a gun, and a trailer for the film shows his involvement in the plot to kill Hitler. Some of the early social media tweets about the film included messages about the “battle against tyranny” and a line from the trailer, “My country was invaded from within.”
“Bonhoeffer” film poster. (Image courtesy Angel Studios)
During Metaxas’ Victory Channel interview, the trailer for the movie — which is being distributed by Angel Studios, the studio behind the hit film “Sound of Freedom” was shown. After the trailer, Metaxas and other guests urged Christians to wake up to the evil of their political enemies.
In an interview for a German news publication, relatives of Bonhoeffer criticized that depiction of the theologian. Relatives also released a statement Friday rejecting the idea that Bonhoeffer would have embraced Christian nationalism.
“He would never have seen himself anywhere near the right-wing extremist, violent movements that are trying to appropriate him today,” family members said in a statement passed on by Bonhoeffer scholars. “On the contrary, he would have criticized these very attitudes.”
Metaxas’ press contact did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lori Brandt Hale, professor of religion at Augsburg University and president of the English language section of the International Bonhoeffer Society, said scholars understand that filmmakers need to take artistic license, and they do not believe the filmmakers intend to send Christian nationalist messages.
Hale, who has seen the film, said the movie — and, even more so, the marketing material — exaggerates the theologian’s role in the conspiracy against Hitler and plays up the idea of him being an “assassin.” She and other scholars worry that may give viewers the wrong message — especially if they already hold Christian nationalist views or are sympathetic to Metaxas’ claims — and they may use Bonhoeffer’s opposition to Hitler to justify political violence.
Hale said Bonhoeffer’s theological and ethical reflections in the face of the evils of the Nazis are distorted by American Christian nationalists. In America’s current politics, she fears Christian nationalists miss the real comparisons with Nazi Germany, including “threats to political enemies, the free press, and the Constitution, and calls to dehumanize certain groups of people, especially immigrants and refugees.”
“The people who make comparisons with Nazi Germany and contemporary realities, they are just not doing the work,” she said.
Lori Brandt Hale. (Photo courtesy International Bonhoeffer Society)
The statement from the Bonhoeffer Society makes a similar point.
“Any attempt to invoke Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his resistance against Hitler as a reason to engage in political violence in our contemporary context must be strongly opposed,” it says. “Moreover, while Bonhoeffer supported the coup, he refused to offer a Christian or theological justification for it. He understood the dangers of such a rationale.”
The promotional site for the film includes a call to reject racism and antisemitism and calls on supporters to practice civil discourse and peacemaking. A “Bonhoeffer Declaration” linked to the site also calls for fans to “stand with Israel” and is endorsed by a number of Christian pastors, including some with Christian nationalist ties.
Makers of the new Bonhoeffer biography reject the idea that the film has a Christian nationalist message.
Jared Geesey, chief distribution officer of Angel, said the film is being released at a time when antisemitism is on the rise and that the film calls audiences “to stand up against evil and love our neighbor — no matter who that neighbor is.” He also downplayed any connection to Metaxas and defended the poster promoting the film.
“The film is not based on the Eric Metaxas book even though the titles may look similar,” he said. “The movie poster is simply a representation of the film. This is a spy thriller, and we believe the artwork captures the tension inherent in the story.”
Todd Komarnicki, writer and director of the Bonhoeffer movie, said he “could not be further from being a Christian nationalist.”
“The fact is, Bonhoeffer doesn’t belong to any group,” he said. “He is a singular voice of love, grace, justice and courage, and his voice is just as clarion now as it was during WWII. We should be listening to him (which our movie does) and not to all the voices trying to steal him for their own cultural grievances.”
(RNS) — Scholars and family members of the famed theologian worry conservatives will use a new Bonhoeffer movie to promote Christian nationalism and political violence.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on a weekend getaway with confirmands of Zion's Church congregation in 1932. (Photo courtesy of German Federal Archives/Creative Commons)
Bob Smietana
October 21, 2024
(RNS) — In recent years, author and radio host Eric Metaxas and other conservative Christian supporters of Donald Trump have compared themselves to the famed German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer — who was put to death for taking part in a plan to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
In a recent interview on Flashpoint, a Christian television talk show on the Victory network, both Metaxas — author of a bestselling biography of Bonhoeffer — and the show’s host called the current election a “Bonhoeffer moment” and urged Christians to rise up and oppose evil.
That evil, in Metaxas’ eyes, is the Democrats, who, he has argued, stole the 2020 election and whom he often compares to Nazis. For him, if Democrats win the next election, it could mean the end of America as we know it. Metaxas has argued and has claimed in the past that Trump is God’s chosen candidate and that those who oppose him oppose God.
His newest book, “Religionless Christianity” — a phrase used by Bonhoeffer — describes America’s current politics as a spiritual war and sign of the end times.
RELATED: How Eric Metaxas went from Trump despiser to true believer
A group of Bonhoeffer scholars — and the theologian’s descendants — have had enough. In a statement issued Friday (Oct. 18) members of the International Bonhoeffer Society called on Metaxas and others to stop comparing the current election to the rise of the Nazis. The statement, in particular, called out Metaxas for social media posts featuring a gun and a Bible and his support of Jan. 6 rioters.
FILE – Eric Metaxas speaks at Judson University on Sept. 26, 2018, in Elgin, Illinois, near Chicago. (RNS photo/Emily McFarlan Miller)
“This portrayal glorifies violence and draws inappropriate analogies between our political system and that of Nazi Germany,” the scholars said in a statement, which has been signed by more than 800 Bonhoeffer scholars and other Christian leaders. “It is a dangerous misuse of Bonhoeffer’s life and lessons, particularly in this election season in the United States.”
The scholars and relatives of Bonhoeffer also objected to the mention of Bonhoeffer’s work in Project 2025, a controversial plan from the Heritage Foundation and other Trump supporters, which has been criticized for promoting Christian nationalism.
“From Project 2025 to violent political rhetoric, the legacy of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is being invoked this election season on behalf of Christian Nationalism,” the scholars said in their statement. “It is a dangerous and grievous misuse of his theology and life.”
The statement was prompted in part by the upcoming release of a new Bonhoeffer biopic, which will be out in theaters in late November. One of the posters for the film shows Bonhoeffer with a gun, and a trailer for the film shows his involvement in the plot to kill Hitler. Some of the early social media tweets about the film included messages about the “battle against tyranny” and a line from the trailer, “My country was invaded from within.”
“Bonhoeffer” film poster. (Image courtesy Angel Studios)
During Metaxas’ Victory Channel interview, the trailer for the movie — which is being distributed by Angel Studios, the studio behind the hit film “Sound of Freedom” was shown. After the trailer, Metaxas and other guests urged Christians to wake up to the evil of their political enemies.
In an interview for a German news publication, relatives of Bonhoeffer criticized that depiction of the theologian. Relatives also released a statement Friday rejecting the idea that Bonhoeffer would have embraced Christian nationalism.
“He would never have seen himself anywhere near the right-wing extremist, violent movements that are trying to appropriate him today,” family members said in a statement passed on by Bonhoeffer scholars. “On the contrary, he would have criticized these very attitudes.”
Metaxas’ press contact did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lori Brandt Hale, professor of religion at Augsburg University and president of the English language section of the International Bonhoeffer Society, said scholars understand that filmmakers need to take artistic license, and they do not believe the filmmakers intend to send Christian nationalist messages.
Hale, who has seen the film, said the movie — and, even more so, the marketing material — exaggerates the theologian’s role in the conspiracy against Hitler and plays up the idea of him being an “assassin.” She and other scholars worry that may give viewers the wrong message — especially if they already hold Christian nationalist views or are sympathetic to Metaxas’ claims — and they may use Bonhoeffer’s opposition to Hitler to justify political violence.
Hale said Bonhoeffer’s theological and ethical reflections in the face of the evils of the Nazis are distorted by American Christian nationalists. In America’s current politics, she fears Christian nationalists miss the real comparisons with Nazi Germany, including “threats to political enemies, the free press, and the Constitution, and calls to dehumanize certain groups of people, especially immigrants and refugees.”
“The people who make comparisons with Nazi Germany and contemporary realities, they are just not doing the work,” she said.
Lori Brandt Hale. (Photo courtesy International Bonhoeffer Society)
The statement from the Bonhoeffer Society makes a similar point.
“Any attempt to invoke Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his resistance against Hitler as a reason to engage in political violence in our contemporary context must be strongly opposed,” it says. “Moreover, while Bonhoeffer supported the coup, he refused to offer a Christian or theological justification for it. He understood the dangers of such a rationale.”
The promotional site for the film includes a call to reject racism and antisemitism and calls on supporters to practice civil discourse and peacemaking. A “Bonhoeffer Declaration” linked to the site also calls for fans to “stand with Israel” and is endorsed by a number of Christian pastors, including some with Christian nationalist ties.
Makers of the new Bonhoeffer biography reject the idea that the film has a Christian nationalist message.
Jared Geesey, chief distribution officer of Angel, said the film is being released at a time when antisemitism is on the rise and that the film calls audiences “to stand up against evil and love our neighbor — no matter who that neighbor is.” He also downplayed any connection to Metaxas and defended the poster promoting the film.
“The film is not based on the Eric Metaxas book even though the titles may look similar,” he said. “The movie poster is simply a representation of the film. This is a spy thriller, and we believe the artwork captures the tension inherent in the story.”
Todd Komarnicki, writer and director of the Bonhoeffer movie, said he “could not be further from being a Christian nationalist.”
“The fact is, Bonhoeffer doesn’t belong to any group,” he said. “He is a singular voice of love, grace, justice and courage, and his voice is just as clarion now as it was during WWII. We should be listening to him (which our movie does) and not to all the voices trying to steal him for their own cultural grievances.”
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