Christian Right | Political Research Associates

Australia’s First Pentecostal Prime Minister Faces Re-Election after Floods, Fires, and Plagues

Protesters standing around a mic, two people holding a banner that reads "no right to discriminate"

As Australia’s first Pentecostal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, perhaps could not help but notice, the events of his first years in office had biblical connotations. “Floods. Fires. Drought. Pandemic. Mouse plague,” Morrison recently quipped to his…

A Twisted Love Story

How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

A man in a black robe and a black hate with a cross on it sitting next to Vladimir Putin on a golden couch.

If someone from 1965 were to arrive in a time machine, there’s likely much about our current state of affairs that would shock them. But I cannot imagine anything that would be more confusing than the love affair between the U.S. Right and Russia—…

CRT and the SBC

Fights over Racism Highlight Southern Baptist Divide

It was late May, but Denny Burk’s mind was on June.^{^[1]} A professor of biblical studies at Boyce College in Kentucky and an associate pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church—both institutions affiliated with the…

Ten Years of Turning Point USA

From Free Markets to Freedom Square

A young white man, Charlie kirk, in a suit, holding a mic.

During an October 2021 “Freedom Night in America” event at Dream City Church, a megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona, Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), talked about Vermont as a new frontier for organizing—and evangelizing—…

Capitol Offenses: January 6th 2021 & The Ongoing Insurrection

PRA State of the Right Report

Introduction: The Insurrection Isn’t Over; Neither is the Attempted Coup The January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol provided the bloody final chapter to Donald Trump’s term as president, as “stop the steal” loyalists from all over the country…

Between a Secular Rock and a Fundamentalist Hard Place

The Aftermath of Scandal at Liberty University

The letters LU in red on a green mountain

I sometimes joke that Liberty University and I grew up together. My childhood home was about a mile from campus. While Liberty was getting on its feet, so was I. I started kindergarten at a Baptist school and stayed through 9^th grade. I…

This Year and Next in Anti-LGBT Advocacy

Watch Now: A briefing from PRA

Even as we reel from one of the most deadly and destructive years in recent memory for anti-LGBT advocacy, we must start preparing for the next. On December 9, PRA hosted an invaluable conversation about the past year and what we expect to see in…

Exodus or Transformation

Christian Homeschooling and R.J. Rushdoony’s Legacy in the Age of COVID

The word In God We Trust engraved in a stone staircase

On a March 2021 episode of the popular Christian radio show and podcast Stand in the Gap Today, a former Pennsylvania legislator exhorted Christian parents to “leave Egypt behind” and seek out the “Promised Land.”^{^[1]…}

Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz Hasn't Gone Away

It's Just Gotten More Secretive

Older woman standing in crowd with both hands raised

In the Fall of 2019, the secretive Christian Right state legislative campaign, Project Blitz, became even more of a secret. When RD first reported on Project Blitz in April 2018 the website featured their…

A Storm is Coming

Horror and Hope in QAnon Apocalypticism

A woman in front of the U.S. Capitol building, wearing a red hat, holding an image of Jesus wearing a Make America Great Again hat, and WWG1WGA on his shirt

On October 28, 2017, the now infamous “Q” posted for the first time on 4chan in a chat thread titled “Calm before the Storm.”^{^[1]} The thread’s title seemed to reference a puzzling statement President Trump…

Black and white circle with text in middle reading "Seven Spheres of Society"

The city of Spokane, Washington sits at the eastern edge of the state—a mountain range and a cultural world away from the Pacific coast. It looks eastward to Idaho and Montana, and south to Eastern Oregon, where far-right secessionist movements have…

White Evangelical Racism

Author Q&A with Anthea Butler

A woman wearing a red hat, holding a paining of Jesus wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

One of the myths that Anthea Butler, author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) discovered in her research is the “conceit that the Religious Right, fundamentalism, and…

New Anti-Trans Promise

An Ohio state legislator may have leaked a new set of anti-trans “principles” endorsed by three major anti-LGBT organizations.

Man standing next to a woman at a podium speaking into microphone

Amid a spate of legislation in early 2021 targeting trans-affirming health care for youth and trans and gender nonconforming athletes, Ohio…

Still Here

The Christian Right in the 2020 Election

A white woman with blond hair, kneeling with her arms in the air, a Trump flag tied around her neck and hanging down her back

Even amid Trump’s defeat, the 2020 election proved that the Christian Right may still be the most powerful, best-organized faction in American politics. The popular stereotype notwithstanding, the election demonstrated that the Christian Right is…

The Family Research Council (FRC), a leading organization of the Christian Right has long featured Christian nationalist ideology in its materials and events — including speakers at its annual political conference, the Values Voter Summit. But…

Mission to Destroy Public Education Rebrands Under COVID-19

Understanding the Christian Homeschooling Movement

As we speculate about the ways that our world will be different when we emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important to keep…

Homeschooling During COVID-19?

Be Aware of Outreach by Evangelical Homeschooling Organizations

Adult man works on laptop and looks after two children reading nearby in room.

With so many schools closed across the country and so many parents working from home to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, families are desperate for resources. In response, homeschool organizations like the conservative evangelical-affiliated…

The Mission Field Hospital

Samaritan’s Purse Brings Its Dual Agenda to New York

As New York City passes the grim milestone of 1,100 deaths, the city’s battle against the COVID-19…

The story on NPR’s website first introduces the Buckley-Becker family with a beautiful portrait of the young, middle-class, White couple and their children. In the photo, the father, Paul Buckley, holds their toddler son Mason, whom he and his wife…

Project Blitz by Any Other Name

Strategy Call Reveals a Shift to Stealth Mode Amid Escalating Rhetoric

Randy Forbes and Lea Carawan on Truth & Liberty Livecast

Randy Forbes, the founder of the Christian Right state legislative campaign Project Blitz, recently told affiliates on a recorded conference call that they are “trying to respond to attacks on faith,” which he described as a problem of “geometric…

A remarkable thing has happened since the Baptist Joint Committee launched an unprecedented campaign called …

title card for netflix the family docuseries

The five-part, original Netflix documentary “The Family,” is about a secretive, international religious network that has profoundly influenced governments in the U.S. and around the world for many…

Ronald Reagan gives his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, July 1980.

Trump’s election was less an aberration than a reflection of changes in the New Right coalition, which brought business elites, evangelicals, and neoconservatives together under the Republican umbrella in the late 1970s and has underpinned the party…

The Christian and business Right has been steadily building political, policy and legislative capacity in the states since the 1980s. Since 2016, a Christian Right state legislative campaign called Project Blitz has become part of this …

A professor offers a prayer during a rally by the LGBTQ Christian community at Azusa Pacific University to show support after the school reinstated a ban on same-sex relationships, October 1, 2018. Credit: Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images.

When Gary Campbell enrolled in Baptist Bible College (now Clarks Summit University) in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, in 2001, he knew he was gay. He was among those students who, in an effort to repress their sexual orientation, choose the…

It’s notable that anti-trans feminists are employing similar racist dog-whistles that have been used by the Right for centuries to create out-sized fear and outrage among their constituents and followers to justify the out-sized time and energy…

Losing their Religion

A Roundtable Discussion

In the 1980s, the Moral Majority helped usher in an era of politicized Christianity in the United States. The breadth of Christian Right activity since then, from the evangelical Right, to fundamentalist homeschooling, to cross-denominational…

Pure by Linda Kay Klein

Book Review

Evangelical “purity” culture, roughly defined, is the belief that Christianity requires sexual abstinence before (heterosexual) marriage, especially for girls and women, and promises sexual fulfillment to those who save sex until marriage.

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), founded in 2002 in opposition to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) support for adoption by LGBTQ couples, was cited in one of several articles published by right-wing news outlets in late…

Insurgent Supremacists

Author Q&A with Matthew N. Lyons

Confrontation at the stairs leading into Emancipation Park during the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally.

This September, Lyons spoke to David Neiwert, researcher and author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, about his new book.

Bringing Bad Sex Ed Back

Trump’s Rebranding of Abstinence-Only

Chalkboard with text that reads "Sex Education"

In a private session intended to set language for gender equality policies and to brief non-governmental organizations on U.S. priorities for women’s issues, a senior advisor from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Bethany Kozma…

On November 6, Massachusetts voters will decide several ballot measures, including Question 3, which asks voters to overturn public accommodations protections in the Bay State based on gender identity.

Two protesters hold signs at a rally for trans rights

On October 21, The New York Times reported receiving information from the White House that details how the Trump Administration proposes to impose a multi-agency re-interpretation of “sex” under several civil rights laws to mean “[t]he sex listed on…

The New Southern Strategy

How Christian Persecution Became White Supremacy’s Newest Disguise

Donald Trump shakes hands with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins at the 2017 Value Voters Summit, Friday, Oct. 13, 2017, in Washington.

On Election Day, White evangelicals turned out in force for Trump, with over 80 percent voting for the Republican ticket. Their game-changing status became undeniably clear, but so did an unsavory truth about their “values voter” identity. For all…

The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank that claims to be “the most influential conservative group in America.” Its mission is to “formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited…

Demonstration against marriage equality in Strasbourg, France, February 2013.

Last March, on a cold, early spring afternoon in New York City, a bright orange tour bus wended its way from Trump Tower, down Second Avenue, eventually parking in front of the United Nations’ glass-walled Secretariat Building. Wrapped around the…

The People’s Pope?

How the Vatican's Position on Gender Threatens Human Rights

Pope Francis arrives at Copacabana beach for a welcoming ceremony for World Youth Day 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In September 2016, Sharon Slater of the U.S.-based Christian Right group Family Watch International issued a special appeal to a crowd of African conservatives, including Kenya’s Catholic Conference of Bishops, which was sponsoring the gathering.…

Profile on the Right: Steven Anderson

Steven Anderson is a virulently anti-LGBTQ preacher from the United States, who has compared gay people to ax murderers and Adolf Hitler, believes that all gay people should be executed, and admitted he would reject his children if they were …

Profile on the Right: Desert Stream Ministries

DSM is an ex-gay ministry that promotes homophobia under the guise of offering counseling, support, and healing for “men and women seeking Jesus in light of unwanted same-sex attractions.”

Profile on the Right: Human Life International (HLI)

Human Life International (HLI) is a Catholic organization with a long history of vicious and hyperbolic attacks on LGBTQ and reproductive rights. It opposes contraception, in-vitro fertilization, comprehensive sex education, and abortion in all…

Profile on the Right: Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam)

The Center for Family and Human Rights, known as C-Fam, is a fierce and active opponent to LGBTQ rights and has considerable international influence, particularly in the United Nations.

Profile on the Right: MassResistance

MassResistance is a Massachusetts-based anti-LGBTI group with an expanding global presence. The group supports activists around the world in combatting LGBTI equality “without compromise.”

Profile on the Right: Christian Broadcasting Network & Trinity Broadcasting Network

While casting themselves as ambassadors of goodwill, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) are global purveyors of a rigidly right-wing political and social agenda. By vastly expanding the U.S. Christian…

Profile on the Right: CitizenGO

CitizenGO describes itself as a “community of active citizens who work together, using online petitions and action alerts as a resource, to defend and promote life, family, and liberty.” The right-…

An orange HazteOir/CitizenGO bus in Spain

CitizenGO Africa recently announced that Nairobi, Kenya would be the first city on the continent to host the so-called #FreeSpeechBus. The bus, infamous for its explicitly anti-transgender messages, will likely roll through Nairobi in conjunction…

Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

The depth and breadth of White evangelical support for Donald Trump before and since his election has perplexed most observers. But a team of sociologists, freshly-analyzed data in hand, may have the answer that has eluded journalists, scholars, and…

Religious Freedom is the Cornerstone of Our Democracy

Religious freedom is a central issue of our time. It has figured prominently in recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a major theme of the presidential election of 2016. And it has been a major theme of the Christian Right in both its…

Tony Perkins speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C. on October 7, 2011. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

Paul Rosenberg recently published an essay at Salon that challenged the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation. The occasion was the then-forthcoming annual celebration of Religious Freedom Day, which commemorates the…

A Manual to Restore a Christian Nation that Never Was

Originally published in 2011, the Culture Impact Team Resource Manual—which includes, among other things, sample voter guides and instructions for church-based voter registration drives—has served as the primer for church-based, Christian Right…

“And yet” … Trans Existence in the Face of Religious Right Erasure

Twenty-five years ago, the Roman Catholic Church offered a rare acknowledgment of error. It admitted that it was wrong to have condemned one of the great fathers of modern science, Galileo Galilei. In 1632, Galileo was summoned to Rome and forced to…

Dominionism Beyond the Roy Moore Moment

Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore –– arguably the most openly theocratic candidate to run for a major office in the U.S. in modern times –– almost won. This, despite credible allegations of child sex abuse, a reputation as a serial…

Religious Freedom and the Christian Right's Masterpiece of Manipulation

Throughout history, people have used religion to justify a myriad of injustices. In the United States, for example, some Christians used their faith to defend slavery and segregation, citing scriptural references as moral justification for the…

Will Corporations, The Christian Right, and the Tea Party Get to Rewrite the Constitution?

A return to an earlier constitutional order, in which the federal government’s ability to regulate corporations and protect the public interest is severely constrained, is the end toward which decades of right-wing investments have been …

The Christian Right’s Growing Allegiance to Trump

As Donald Trump exited the stage after addressing the 2016 Values Voter Summit (VVS) in Washington, DC a year ago, the Rolling Stone’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” blasted from the speakers. The audience gathered together for the Family…

Prenatal Diagnosis, Reproductive Rights, and the Specter of Eugenics

A raft of state-level legislative and regulatory restrictions on access to abortion followed the “wave election” of 2010. But a closely related trend has gone less noticed: the increasingly successful movement to bar or discourage the practice of…

The Meaning of the Nashville Line in the Sand

The hundreds of Southern Baptist and conservative Reformed leaders who initially signed the recent Nashville Statement, have always opposed all forms of sexuality and gender expressions outside of heterosexual marriage. But in the face of broad…

Captive Audience

How Prison Ministries Prioritize Salvation Over Justice

As bipartisan reform efforts have steadily drifted rightward, the heavy hand of evangelicals in prison reform efforts has created new kinds of problems. In the eight years I spent researching my book, God In Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Prison…

Battle without Bullets: The Christian Right and Fourth Generation Warfare

What might have seemed to most to be normal, if unusually acrimonious, political aggression was in fact a classic example of a right-wing strategy developed in the late 1980s: Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). Trump’s rhetoric and policies rightly…

Trading Principles for Power

The U.S. Christian Right's Endorsement of Authoritarian Leaders

On Friday, August 4, Paul Kagame celebrated a landslide victory in Rwanda’s presidential election, securing his third seven-year term as the small, East African country’s leader with nearly 99% of the vote. It was an unsurprising result, given that…

Attacking Trans People in Defense of “Austerity"

On July 24, 2017, the Family Research Council (FRC), a right-wing political advocacy group based in Washington, DC, issued an Action Alert to its members, enlisting their support in denying healthcare to military personnel who are transgender. FRC…

Dancing with Dictators

As was outlined in part one of this series, evidence shows that American corporate entities are taking advantage of the U.S. Christian Right’s pre-existing relationships with political, religious, and business leaders in Africa in order to advance…

Religion, Money, & Politics: An (un)Holy Trinity

As with anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion culture wars, the exportation of American economic ideologies to the Global South (and the strategies and tactics employed to impose them on others) has a long history of violence and destruction. From Nestle’s…

The Right’s Relationship with Climate Denial

In 2015, the United States and China – the two biggest emitters of greenhouses gases in the world – were among 195 countries to ratify the Paris climate accord with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Less than two years later…

Press Release: Judge condemns Scott Lively's efforts to render very existence of Ugandan LGBTIs illegal, finds US law offers no redress

Historic Case Exposes Right-Wing Activist’s Campaign of Persecution in Uganda.

Seventeen Years of Tracking the World Congress of Families

PRA first reported on the World Congress of Families (WCF) in 2000, noting its role within the coalition of Christian Right groups that was beginning to emerge as a well-organized and influential force at the United Nations. Writing for The Public…

Between Trump and Putin

The Right-Wing International, a Crisis of Democracy, and the Future of the European Union

One of the more striking features of the 2016 U.S. election was the convergence of the rhetoric and talking points of President Donald Trump and his supporters with those of the Kremlin. And in the tangled and ongoing investigation of Russian…

Chechnya's LGBTQ Assault and the Consequences of "Pro-Family" Contradictions

In early April, reports of atrocities being committed against LGBTQ people began to emerge out of Chechnya, a small, independent republic of the Russian Federation that is predominantly Muslim. Novaya Gazeta — an independent Russian newspaper —…

Profile on the Right: Paul McHugh

Dr. Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University (and former director of the school’s Department of Psychiatry as well as the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital), has positioned himself as a go-to source for…

#First100Days Crash Course: Week 12

Public Education

From “school choice” schemes and the neoliberal privatization movement to the influence of the Christian Right on curriculum and school policy, public education is a key battleground.

Profile on the Right: Alliance Defending Freedom

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is an international legal organization serving at the frontlines of the Christian Right’s effort to redefine religious freedom and insert its anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice agenda into every element of government and…

Right Moves: Historian Jason Stahl Opens a New Era of Scholarship on Conservative Think Tanks

The role of conservative think tanks in the modern resurgence of the Political Right has been a topic of interest to progressive activists for decades. However, academia had failed to produce a full-length historical study of conservative think…

The President Gets Paradoxical about Religious Freedom

During the presidential campaign and since assuming office, Donald Trump has repeatedly promised the Christian Right that he would make religious freedom a priority. In an apparent bid for their support, Trump made clear that he would advance the…

#First100Days Crash Course: Week 3

Religious Freedom and the Christian Right

The right to believe differently from the rich and the powerful is a prerequisite for free speech and a free press. Separation exists not to limit religious expression, but to safeguard against creeping religious supremacism and the theocratic…

Many are called but few are chosen during any presidential transition. That’s why it’s illuminating to consider who Donald Trump has chosen from the parade of possibilities for his transition team and senior administration appointments so far— and…

Religious Freedom is a Progressive Value

To read press coverage about it, one might think that religious freedom is a concern only for religious and political conservatives, and not one of the most liberatory ideas in history. One would also think religious freedom and civil rights are at…

International Backlash

The Religious Right at the UN

A woman at a Pride march in Paris holding a sign painting in the LGBT colors that says "Get used to it"

In a single two-day period this summer, the United Nations Human Rights Council gave advocates for LGBTQ equality their most significant victory yet at the UN and simultaneously gave antiLGBTQ “traditional” family proponents a major win in their…

Press Release: Case in Defense of LGBTQI Human Rights Moves Forward with Critical Support from Political Research Associates’ Ground Breaking Research

Oral argument on motions for summary judgment in Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Lively, a federal lawsuit in which Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), is suing Scott Lively, a U.S.-based anti-…