According to the Heritage Foundation, a highly influential Republican think tank—and citing its “Project 2025”—will be the most sophisticated effort to date targeting the Department of Health and Human Services in a strategy to centralize and expand the presidential powers at “every level of the administration” and will deeply affect abortion policy if Trump wins in November.
The issue, according to a recent New York Times article was highlighted in the Heritage’s 887-page “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” published last year.
One pledge—to turn the now federal health department into the “The Department of Life”—
“by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans from ‘conception to natural death.’
Further, as part of its “Life Agenda” the Heritage Foundation will call for the elimination of the HHS Reproductive Healthcare Access Task force developed by President Biden just prior to the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Heritage says this team should be replaced by “a pro-life task force to ensure that all of the department’s divisions seek to use their authority to promote the life and health of women and their unborn children.”
One Arizona pastor disagrees with the political power seen and heard from too many Christian evangelical leaders behind the pulpit.
Richard Garone a 39-year old associate Episcopal pastor in South Phoenix says the shift to mandate a government based on Christianity “goes against the very foundations of our country and the First Amendment.”
“I want religion out of government, and I feel like these people are taking over my country,” said, Kendrea Wilson, a Valley business owner who caters to a diverse clientele but has watched GOP religious extremists representing her own district continually introduce anti-gay and anti-abortion laws.
Wilson is a strong supporter of reproductive rights for women and keeping the “church” out of government.
“If religious extremists get power via Donald Trump, our civil and personal rights will diminish one by one and it will all be done in the name of “Christianity,” Wilson said.
Northeast Valley News conducted opinion polling at several different Valley locations to ask Arizonans their thoughts on Christian extremism and the phenomenon of white Christian nationalism being promoted at the federal, state and local government in the U.S. by certain lawmakers.
Over the week long polling, Arizonans were agree—keep religion out of government.
A sharp majority, 64.1% of those questioned would like to see less religion (identified as right-wing religious extremism and specifically as Christian nationalism) in all government offices.
But this polling majority from Arizona (and other polls around the country) has not stopped the growing number of MAGA and white Christian nationalist candidates and lawmakers in or seeking various government and even school board offices across the U.S. from trying to push extreme policy with their religious tenets at the helm.
The recent election by Republicans of the of the most extreme MAGA supporter and now, the U.S. House Speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson, reveals the extreme right working at the highest echelon in Congress.
Johnson’s report card on his extreme Christian views in governance propels him to the top of the class of those who unapologetically promote governance steeped in a religious theology.
Johnson led the House effort to challenge, although unsuccessfully, the Biden win and was a fierce opponent of investigation attempts into Donald Trump.
What is white Christian nationalism?
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s describes white Christian nationalism this way: – it “refers to a political ideology and identity that fuses white supremacy, Christianity and American nationalism, and whose proponents claim that the United States is a `Christian Nation.’”
Arizona is the home to many of Christian nationalist faithful.
Over the summer, a West Valley Republican state senator proudly displayed a white flag tied to Christian nationalism and other extremist movements on her desk on the floor of the Arizona Senate.
The flag originally had a historical significance and reference to George Washington and the Continental Army. But today the flag has been adopted by evangelical Christians and Christian nationalists, who see the flag as a rallying call.
Rolling Stone referenced that Christian nationalists believe that the United States is Christian nation that should base its laws and practices around the teachings of Christianity.
For followers of the movement, the flag symbolizes what they view as America’s Christian roots.
The flag has also been embraced by far-right extremist organizations like the Proud Boys and some neo-Nazi groups.
An Arizona State University professor who requested anonymity told Northeast Valley News that white Christian nationalism is not only a threat to our democracy and the way we govern but it is a movement on education as well and if not kept in check will restrict educators in “teaching factual information in the classroom without some kind of dangerous prior restraint rules.”
“It’s ok to have a personal belief, but this movement wants to govern based on their religious beliefs and we should reject that at all stops.”
Last month, the publication, Michigan Advance highlighted the growing white Christian nationalist movement and their resilient danger that is already weaved through our local, state and federal lawmaking governments.
“White Christian nationalism is a key ideology that inspired the failed Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection and fueled multiple failed political campaigns in 2022 . . . however, white Christian nationalism remains a persistent and growing threat to U.S. democracy.
Any person with a modicum of intelligence knows European colonists immigrated to America to escape religious persecution, expand their economic opportunities and live in a country where there was separation of church and state.
Followers of the white Christian nationalism movement want to contradict the principles and norms of democracy and make America an authoritarian country.
Adherents of white Christian nationalism are the drivers of antidemocratic conspiracy theories and election denialism and possibly book banning, LGBTQIA denigration, “sanitized” black history curriculum, anti-female reproductive rights, gerrymandering and attacking diversity, equity and inclusion.”
