The Christian Right is winning in court while losing in public opinion
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An influential minority of Americans see the United States as a Christian nation whose laws ought to be based on biblical Scripture. Lately, this group has been making a lot of progress in its mission, even though there's a growing majority of Americans who oppose their most prominent positions on issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights. NPR's Ashley Lopez has the story.
ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: On the Sunday after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decades-old ruling that legalized abortions in the U.S., Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert spoke to a crowd of people at a church in Colorado.
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LAUREN BOEBERT: The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.
LOPEZ: Among other things, Boebert complained that faith communities have long had to deal with laws in the U.S. that they don't agree with.
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BOEBERT: That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it. And I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that's not in the Constitution. It was in a stinkin' letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.
LOPEZ: Of course, the Constitution does explicitly ban the establishment of a specific religion. It's in the First Amendment. But more and more white evangelical Christians are now talking about the U.S. as a Christian nation in ways that verge on or outright embrace Christian nationalism, the idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation and its laws should be rooted in the Bible. Timothy Head, the executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, says he thinks the First Amendment gets misconstrued, that it was written to keep the government from interfering with religion.
TIMOTHY HEAD: Not to keep anybody that holds a religious view out of government. All of us have certain kinds of worldviews, and some of those are based on, you know, college professors or your favorite philosopher or a comedian somewhere. It just so happens that some people base their their worldview on biblical teachings.
LOPEZ: But there are limits to this, says Amelia Fulbright, a progressive pastor at the Congregational Church of Austin. While faith can motivate people to vote and hold certain values, she says it's not okay for religious communities to expect to see their particular theology reflected in the country's laws.
AMELIA FULBRIGHT: I don't think it is the role of faith communities to use politics to impose their worldview on others.
LOPEZ: Fulbright has spent almost a decade advocating for the rights of LGBTQ people, as well as abortion rights in Texas. She says in the past few years, Republican state lawmakers have been crossing a line, making the case for laws by citing Christian ideas.
FULBRIGHT: There's not even an effort to conceal that these are theological ideas, that there is just a full-throated, unapologetic attempt to impose a certain Christian worldview on everyone else.
LOPEZ: Fulbright says for years, she relied on the U.S. Supreme Court to block the laws in Texas that were explicitly rooted in Christian theology. But ever since Republicans secured a conservative majority on the court, Fulbright and others say those guardrails are in tatters.
ROBERT P JONES: This is the most disproportionate power that the Christian right has had in my lifetime.
LOPEZ: That's Robert P. Jones. He's the CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. Jones says Christian nationalists and the Christian right broadly is winning some key legal battles at a time when demographically and culturally, they're actually losing ground from their heydays in the '70s and '80s.
JONES: And, you know, when they said things like, we're the moral majority, there was a kind of truth to that, even if it wasn't a demographic truth. If you looked at some of the issues, for example, like same-sex marriage, you know, most of the country agreed with them.
LOPEZ: But those days are gone. Jones says about 7 in 10 Americans support same-sex marriage now. And that number also keeps growing. And about 6 in 10 Americans say abortions should be legal in the U.S. Tim Whitaker created a group called The New Evangelicals, which he says is a response to less tolerant aspects of the faith. He says the reality that the Christian right is losing public opinion has simultaneously been a hard pill to swallow and yet a motivating force.
TIM WHITAKER: When they start getting a taste, a small taste of just making room for other viewpoints, that's perceived as a loss of power. And then they campaign on that.
LOPEZ: That campaigning, which started around 50 years ago, has amounted to an immense amount of influence, particularly in the Republican Party. Donald Trump put three anti-abortion-rights justices on the Supreme Court in his four years in office, delivering on an essential campaign promise to the Christian right. These groups have also galvanized power in state legislatures across the country. Tim Head with the Faith and Freedom Coalition says they are not trying to push their views on everyone, though.
HEAD: And I don't think that religious views or Christian people should be given special positions. They also shouldn't be excluded from the public discourse, either.
LOPEZ: And while Tim Whitaker with The New Evangelicals says not all Christian conservatives support extreme views like Christian nationalism, an influential number of them do.
WHITAKER: It truly does concern me for the future of the country because, ultimately, Christian nationalism is not about democracy. It's really about - and I hate to use such, you know, blunt language, but it's really more about theocracy.
LOPEZ: Robert P. Jones with the Public Religion Research Institute says he also sees the Christian right beginning to part with democratic norms. For example, many Christian conservatives have been supporting voting restrictions and backing Donald Trump's election lies. Jones says it's one of the ways they can make sure the country, from their view, is a Christian nation.
JONES: I think we are seeing, you know, the last kind of desperate grasp that, by the way, includes violence. You know, that is a kind of desperate attempt to kind of hold on to that vision of the country and to hold onto power.
LOPEZ: Jones says this period in American history could be a hinge point for democracy.
JONES: I think if we can protect our democratic institutions and we can weather these attacks on it, then I think there is, you know, light at the other end of the tunnel. But I do think we're in for some dark days.
LOPEZ: Jones says upcoming elections this year and in 2024 are going to be a big test of which path the country is set on. Ashley Lopez, NPR News.
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