Deep Church
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(This article leans heavily on the outstanding work of Katherine Stewart, who is among the most important and under-appreciated journalists in America.)
ow, months later, it still sticks in the back of your throat. It’s a number: 74,111,419. That’s the total count of voters who thought it would be a good idea to keep Donald Trump in office. What the hell were they thinking?
Sure, there are several million outright racists who heard his dog whistles. Plus millions of rich people who just wanted to thank Trump for swelling their 401k’s. Even so, that’s not nearly 74 million people. Something else is at work here; something that convinces people to vote against their own best interests.
Well, it turns out there is a drug coursing through the veins of the body politic. It feeds delusions. I guess we could talk about it…but maybe we’re too polite. We don’t want to offend anyone.
Hell--let’s talk about it.
or the second half of his presidency, Trump endlessly repeated the meta-lie that there was a “deep state” at work undermining him. That was hardly original. He used the playbook mastered by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950’s, who said he held a secret list of communists working to destroy government from the inside. Trump knew that if you invent a grave threat, repeat the lie over and over, that millions will believe. Like McCarthy, he promised to protect “good old American values.”
The irony here is that a deep, largely unspoken threat does exist. But it’s not a “deep state.”
Its’ the “deep church.”
t would take several books to lay out the full picture of damage being done to democracy by faux Christian leaders. They are loosely aligned, with no formal hierarchy. But they are uniformly focused on their true mission. Reporter/author Katherine Stewart defines the foundation of “Christian nationalism”:
“…the religious right has become more focused and powerful, even as it is arguably less representative. It is not a social or cultural movement; it is a political movement, whose ultimate goal is power…”
“(Christian nationalism) looks forward to a future in which its version of the Christian religion and its adherents…enjoy exceptional positions of power and influence in government and in law.”
“…(it) is also a device for mobilizing and often manipulating large segments of the population and concentrating power in the hands of a new elite.”
“The Christian national movement is not a grassroots movement. It is a means through which a small number of people…harness the passions, resentments and insecurities of a large and diverse population in their own quest for power…turning citizens into congregants, and congregants into voters.”
These are sweeping statements—they may sound like crazy talk. They may be difficult to accept without evidence. So, let’s provide some.
merica is divided. No one disputes this. But what’s vital to understand is how the deep church has its fingerprints all over our divisions. We have heated arguments over race, gender, taxation, immigration, abortion, women’s equality, education, environmentalism, gun rights, voter suppression, party politics—all reveal the deep church as provocateur. Sermons are written and votes harvested on the basis of sometimes perverse biblical interpretations by people who work to serve the interests of the right wing rich.
It’s impossible here to deal with the full breadth of influence being peddled. So, let’s look at just the most fundamental and dangerous element of the movement: the attack of the deep church to control government itself.
alph Drollinger is 7’2” tall and played for two basketball national champions at UCLA. He’s also a noted mountain climber. But he didn’t reach his true ceiling until he founded Capital Ministries in 1997. “CapMin” now spreads his view of the bible (which he insists is “God’s view”) across the country and around the world. Most important, however, is his role leveraging that view inside the operations of government.
Drollinger has personally led “bible study” sessions inside the Capitol, and also inside the White House, at the behest of VP Mike Pence. The nature of his teachings is reflected by a key follower, former Rep. Michelle Bachman. She has promoted gay conversion therapy, demanded the teaching of creationism, and supported the phasing out of Social Security and Medicare.
Drollinger has informed his political flock, “…the righteous leader is a man of potent prayer. Those who…actively reject the Son of God—their prayers are worthless.”
More recently, he suggested that the coronavirus may be the result of “God’s wrath” over homosexuality and environmentalism.
When he describes the threat posed by non-believers in government, he sounds like McCarthy incarnate:
”…too many of the unfaithful have been allowed by the faithful to gain high positions of influence in our culture: high position in our government, our educational systm, our media and our entertainment industry. This is tragic, unfortunate and costly.”
Needless to say, he foresees national damnation ahead.
ow, you could say, “yeah—whatever. There have always been a lot of religious whack jobs out there.” But the work of Drollinger and other religious zealots is a true threat, and readily apparent. They’re hiding in plain sight at all levels of government:
1) White House: Donald Trump had no natural constituency for his 2016 presidential campaign until a luncheon with 1,000 evangelical leaders that summer. They embraced him, despite coming across as something less than a religious man. Anyway, they jumped behind his campaign and it took off…and Trump didn’t forget. Soon after, Drollinger began bragging about his “pen pal” relationship with Trump, exchanging notes on Drollinger’s sermons. By 2018, Drollinger’s weekly bible studies included Pence and as many as eleven of the 15 Trump cabinet members. The result of those meetings had real world impact. Mike Pompeo put God at the center of the country’s foreign policy. And Attorney General Jeff Sessions personally sanctified the right of any businesses to discriminate against anyone who offended their “religious beliefs.”
2) Supreme Court: Leonard Leo is a judicial activist and one of the country’s most prominent Catholics. For years he has formed the lists of potential Supreme Court nominees for GOP presidents. He also led the fight to block the nomination of Obama nominee Merrick Garland. The result of his work? Of the nine current members of the high court, seven are dedicated Catholics. It’s hard to calculate how many are intellectually equipped to separate their faith from their decision-making on issues like abortion.
3) Congress: The “people’s house” might be expected to be exactly that--a reflection of the people. In that sense, members would reflect the religious beliefs of the country as a whole. That’s not the case. Here is a graph that charts representation in Congress against the religious identification by Americans:
The lesson is clear. Professing religious allegiance—of any Christian faith—is a virtual requirement for service in Congress. Inside the Capitol, non-believers are the most ostracized of all Americans. (And a new poll conducted by Pew makes this disparity even wider. For the first time in 80 years of asking the question, a majority of respondents—53%—say they belong to no church, synagogue or mosque.)
4) Local Government: The current wave of voter suppression legislation in statehouses across the country is stunning, and no accident. But it only mirrors a wider and longer-standing movement called Project Blitz. This is a right-wing Christian campaign to infuse government with its supposed religious beliefs. For example, displaying the motto “in God we trust” (not adopted for currency until 1956) is now mandatory in public schools in several states. Project Blitz is also pushing for similar signage on police cars. It is a campaign that works hand-in-glove with the interests of big business. According to a Texas-based leader improbably named Buddy Pilgrim, “business is God’s system of wealth creation,” and, “the only way to have freedom work is to have godly men and women assuming positions of power and authority in business and government.” This seeding of zealots starts with the smallest of local school boards…and works upwards from there.
he disappearance of civics classes from school curricula is more than a shame. It’s largely responsible for the fact that three out of every four Americans can’t name the three branches of government. Civics also typically dealt with Jefferson’s ironclad wall separating church and state. Teaching civics should be mandatory.
Similarly, I believe that it’s not possible to understand the roots of America’s divide without reading Stewart’s Power Worshipers. If you do, the central points she makes are inarguable:
The purpose of the Christian nationalism is not religious; it’ the accumulation of power. Religion is the façade wears to get into the party.
Unfortunately, it’s working. Virtually every legal and social divide that now separates Americans is perpetrated by the work of its leaders. They will not condone compromise.
Because I try to lay out solutions as well as laments, I’ll clearly state two solutions here—one of which will be controversial.
First, all who I might defined as “good Christians” need to speak out. As Stewart says, “a great many people who identify as Christians oppose the movement, and quite a few even question whether it’s authentically Christian in the first place.” It’s time call out the poseurs.
Second, every form of financial aid from any government to any religious entity—tax breaks, grants, subsidies, school vouchers, and any “faith-based” activity—should end immediately.
Many will scream that this is a violation of their “religious freedom.” Nonsense. In 1947, a Supreme Court ruling stated, “No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.” I wonder how conservatives on the Supreme Court who claim to rely on “legal precedent” explain how this one precedent has been eviscerated.
The 1947 ruling seems pretty clear, but every day my tax dollars and yours are siphoned off to support the purely non-religious work of charlatans like Ralph Drollinger, Buddy Pilgrim and dozens of others. Those dollars help support sectarian churches, schools and hospitals across the country. That’s not right.
To conclude, let me put it this way. If you’re an American citizen and pay your taxes, you know what you those taxes buy you: a country that should be the model for the world, one founded on freedom and equal opportunity. Yes, we’re still trying to get that right. But it does not buy you the privilege of your chosen religion.
In America, some people ride in Teslas, and some people ride the bus. Your taxes get you the bus ride. If you want the Tesla, you’ve got to pay for it. Same thing for your religion.
In the book of Job, it says, “His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.”
It’s time to send these serpents fleeing. We either cut off the head of the deep church… or it destroys us.
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