One of the most dangerous consequences of leading a fear-based existence is that it often takes our attention away from the far greater threats, the ones that should absolutely keep us up at night. In this case, we should be wholly alarmed by the almost casual violation of church and state by the highest courts in the land. We should be terrified by Trump’s promise to convert the Department of Justice into his personal secret police.
We know the solution. We’ve known for centuries: Faith is not fact. It’s time to act on that knowledge.

I describe myself as agnostic, which in simple terms means I recognize what I know. And what I don’t. I cannot say with any certainty if there is a higher purpose in our individual lives or our collective existence. I cannot say with any certainty how our known universe was created, much less why, or if those are even the right questions to ask. And to whom am I even addressing these questions.

We cannot adequately define supernatural deities, much less validate their existence, what they value, and what they expect of us. How do we measure and observe what we have defined as being unmeasurable and unobservable, beyond nature.

Agnosticism requires getting comfortable with uncertainty, because we live in a world that does not give up its secrets easily. It’s fortunate then, that agnosticism also goes hand-in-hand with curiosity. It does not stop us from speculating, it encourages it, as long as that speculation is not presented as fact and weaponized to oppress others.

One thing I can say with absolute certainty, is that there is absolutely no certainty to support supernatural claims, religious or otherwise. I can say with complete confidence, that faith is not fact.

Contained within those four words are some four hundred years of scientific discoveries, each of which contributed to that confidence. Those discoveries led to one of humanity’s crowning achievements.

Through the rigor of the scientific method and the critical thinking skills it demands, we can objectively assess the validity of our claims. We can design and run tests on those claims, recording our measurements and observations, and then validating our results to ensure they are repeatable by independently run experiments.

In this way we can separate fact from fiction, distinguish between subjective and objective truths, and attempt to quantify uncertainty. Applying this to religious doctrine is a straightforward process and leads us to some definitive answers.

Since we can’t conceive of any way to repeatably test and independently verify the existence of supernatural entities, much less their characteristics and nuanced expectations, we quite quickly arrive at this conclusion: Hypotheses about supernatural entities are unprovable. Any religion that promotes its supernatural doctrine as objective truth or factual is making fraudulent claims.

Any chance we have in halting the damage caused by these fraudulent claims hinges on our ability to hold religions accountable, and the scientific method gives us the framework to do just that. Science doesn’t have the answers to the great mysteries surrounding the origins and meaning of our existence either. But the difference between science and religion is that science doesn’t claim to have those answers. Rather it gives us the confidence to acknowledge and embrace uncertainty, rather than fear it and flee from it.

As evolutionary biologist Dr Jerry Coyne explains in his book Faith versus Fact, many people continue to rationalize that their faith has some scientific basis and conflate the two. Coyne meticulously shows how faith and science are inherently incompatible, conflicting in methodology, outcomes, and philosophy. What is certain is that no one can claim to be objectively certain on matters of faith.

In his book, Jesus and the Hidden Contradictions of the Gospels, biblical scholar, Dr Bart Ehrman, describes not only the contradictions of the gospels but the fact that they were authored anonymously. The utter lack of evidence for the very underpinnings of Catholic Canon Law and all the doctrine that followed, led to Dr Ehrman becoming an agnostic.

Let’s call a spade a spade. Many churches and well-meaning parents are brainwashing kids from the moment they’re born. Isolation from those with secular opinions, like insisting on religious schooling, and controlling access to information, for example, by banning books. Exploiting fear and uncertainty by explaining the mysteries of life and death through the lens of their religious ideology and using repetition and daily recitations to reinforce those notions.

And finally, intertwining faith in God with love and loyalty to their family and country, emotionally equating obedience to God with everything good that gives meaning and joy to their lives. Is it any wonder these kids grow up to have an almost visceral reaction to anything that challenges their world view? Is it any wonder that they become susceptible to those who weaponize religion and exploit their deepest fears?

To end the cycle of generational indoctrination and the subsequent weaponization of religious doctrine that inevitably occurs, we must teach our young people that faith is not fact. Not only do we need to require all organized religions to display that message, but we also need every public school to reinforce that message with age-appropriate curriculum, starting in kindergarten and continuing through their secondary education.

It may seem a tall order, however we should never underestimate the power of inspiration. Like many others in my generation, I was inspired by the Cosmos series and accompanying book by Dr Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan. Cosmos shared the wonderment of the universe in a way that anyone could appreciate. It put into perspective how little we actually know about the universe and our place in it, and how that uncertainty can be a source of inspiration rather than fear.

Sagan defined superstition as belief without evidence. If we’ve learned anything from the church’s history, superstition can become so deeply entrenched in culture that it is not easily overcome. His words ring truer than ever,
“You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.”

We find evidence of that in how conservatives frame every critical issue in religious terms to motivate their voting base: climate crisis, reproductive justice, voter suppression, anti-trans legislation, LGBTQ rights, stolen elections and insurrection, vaccines and masks, and even gun control. Now, more than ever, we must provide future generations with the critical thinking skills they need to make the most informed decisions about the many crises we face on our planet.

The scientific method gives us the tools we need to make evidence-based decisions. It allows us to unequivocally state that religious beliefs, like any supernatural conjecture, cannot be proven or disproven.

Acknowledging that faith is not fact does not stop us from believing or appreciating the wisdom contained within the stories of our faith. They often carry with them the traditions and convictions of our ancestors, passed on through generations of storytelling. Some themes even seem to be common among all religions in some form or another. Like those encouraging us to love and care for one another, regardless of our differences.

Growing up Catholic, I did not think Christianity was meant to be interpreted as an absolute truth and I did not feel compelled to analyze it deeply. I also never thought of church doctrine as a legitimate answer to the mysteries of the universe and our role in it. I assumed no one else did either, based on the actions of my other Catholic friends.

I believed church was simply a place where you could find some sense of shared community. Where I grew up, you sort of inherited the church of your family, whether you wanted to or not. It’s understandable how people would attend a certain church and not really give it much thought.
Church seemed to fill a void for those who wanted to feel connected, either to family or their community. It was a place they would be welcomed regardless of their background, assuming you tithed on time. It also seemed the only place in town to get married and buried, so there was that.

For most people, church was inextricably integrated into their family traditions and often represented a link to their cultural identities. This was especially true in a city like Youngstown, where waves of immigrants were brought in from Europe to work the coal mines and steel mills that were the lifeblood of the region.

In Youngstown, the city was neatly divided into regions where immigrants from a certain country tended to congregate. For example, you knew exactly where the Ukrainian, Polish, Italian, and Irish parts of the city were. Think of it like an early version of EPCOT, but instead of beautiful gardens and fountains there were blast furnaces and huge smokestacks billowing glowing embers of soot that would burn into the paint of all the houses downwind.

I was baptized in the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Ukrainian Church with the Byzantine Rite. I went through the equivalent of Navy SEAL Bud-S training and graduated from Catechism. And I learned to feel guilty for everything that went wrong and beg for forgiveness. We abided by the tithing regulations and attended religiously on Christmas and Easter, come hell or high water.

That’s the way it was for me and my sisters, and it seemed to align well enough with my family’s values. Take my dad, for example. He embodied the angry-God from scripture, and much like our priest, we knew instinctually never to cross him. My mom, thankfully, embodied everything good in scripture, which is largely what kept us kids alive when we invariably ran afoul of our dad’s many rules.

I’ll spare you the details, but for most of my adult life I did not attend church with any regularity, and mostly not at all. I just didn’t find any that matched with my sense of community. I won’t lie, it was also very difficult for me to be in places where even the tiniest bit of swearing would tend to make people uncomfortable.

Fast forward several decades to the birth of my last two kids, and wham. I suddenly felt compelled to go back to church. Yes, you heard me right. This agnostic decided to find a church. And it was pretty much my urging that led our family to start attending regularly and ultimately become members.

The church we started attending was the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. I will say that I knowingly violated my dad’s rule against changing churches, but by then he had mellowed quite a bit, and it helped that he never attended church again after us kids left the house.
One of the things that attracted us most to the Congregational Church was its reputation as one of the first and fiercest critics of slavery in America and their on-going commitment to social justice. For one thing, they affirm the LGBTQ community and don’t describe trans kids as abominations. But more on that later.

All this to say that I had a pretty typical Catholic up-bringing by all accounts, and I don’t have some preternatural vendetta against churches per say. But it is infinitely clear that while religious doctrine may inform our character, traditions, and culture, we cannot allow it to be used as the basis for the Rule of Law or any rules of law. We cannot allow it to manipulate or dictate legislation, justice, education, or any other public institution.
And while each religion speaks to morality through the lens of their supernatural beliefs, morality did not arise from religious epiphany and is certainly not essential for moral conduct.

To the contrary, religions are responsible for or complicit in some of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man. And more specifically, man’s inhumanity to woman. And white man’s inhumanity to, well, everyone. The essential elements of morality result from societal evolution and natural selection. Morality today often exists in spite of religion rather than because of it. I bear witness.

Peter Tchoryk

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My family’s journey, which led to me writing this book, began on Easter Sunday more than a decade ago. As I mentioned previously, we had decided to join the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor shortly after our last two kids were born and our family was doing its usual fire drill in a desperate and mostly futile attempt to get there on time.

It was during this Easter fire drill to get the kids dressed and out the door that my young trans son gave me the chance to see the world through his eyes. Though assigned female at birth, my son was experiencing what we now know as gender dysphoria.

That moment was a foreshadowing of the consistent, insistent, and persistent distress over the mismatch between his body and his identity. A dysphoria that turned his world upside down over the next two years.

On that Sunday, however, all we knew was that our two-and-a-half-year-old was channeling Jackie Chan to avoid putting on that Easter dress, complete with squirrel-like hops and acrobatics, and kicks that often landed cleanly.

At that point my wife and I went to Plan B and dug up the only clothes our son had that were completely gender-neutral: sweatpants and a t-shirt. I can still remember walking down the center aisle in the middle of the service, our four-year-old daughter skipping her way toward the front, wearing the matching version of what is simply known in our house as, “The Dress.” And sauntering behind her, a toddler who may have just escaped from an orphanage, Oliver Twist, but with swagger.

I think of this story and smile whenever some anti-trans legislator or church leader passionately calls for trans-affirming parents to be prosecuted for felony child abuse. We are accused of turning our kids trans, because we apparently want a kid with a different gender so badly, we’re willing to force it on them.

I thought this amusing for two reasons.

First, I should probably make you aware that there is only about a year and a half age gap between our son and his next older sister. As a result, I think you can understand the feeling of awe and unbridled joy that I felt when the doctor exclaimed, “It’s a girl!” In that moment time stopped, and I knew that we would never, ever have to buy this kid new clothes and toys.

Hand-me-downs are pure gold. It’s like winning the lotto for parents.

My second reason is this. Do not underestimate the determination of a kid who is out to set the record straight on their gender, and I don’t care how old they are. That Jackie Chan reference was no joke. It was at once disconcerting and impressive.

The reality is that gender dysphoria is a desperate, despondent, and fierce rejection of gender. Clothes, hairstyle, and pronouns are just the outward manifestations of a much greater battle going on inside. One of the most brutal battles is the unbearable and unrelenting dissonance between their gender identity and how their body looks, especially with respect to their gender-related body parts.

For example, when my son was around three years old, he started asking me when he was going to get his peanut, which was his word for penis. We knew from his Day Care provider that our son would consistently stand up when the teachers called for boys to line up for the bathroom. He was already trying to make sense of why he didn’t have a peanut like the other boys.

I remember struggling to find the right words to clearly articulate the concept of identity and how it relates to his physical appearance and anatomy – essentially, why he didn’t have a peanut when he knew he was a boy. At one point I said, “Think of it this way, on the inside you’re a boy, but on the outside you’re a girl.”

That seemed to placate him for the moment, but in a few days, he again asked me why he doesn’t have a peanut. When I started reminding him of the explanation I had given last time, he interrupted me and said, “No, that’s not right. I’m a boy on the inside and outside.” I was clearly going to have to work harder. Because he was right.

He is a boy, inside and out. Just because he doesn’t have the parts that other boys typically have, it doesn’t mean he is not a boy through and through. True, he has a variation of a boy’s body which is not as common – that’s why it is described as dysphoria. My son’s body is a boy’s body, but with female genitalia instead of male.

In any event, I told my son that if he still wanted boy parts when he got older, we would make that happen. And we will.

Around the same time, his Day Care teacher noted our son’s extreme dislike of his hair length, which he often complained was too long, making him look like a girl. A quick aside. His Day Care teachers became some of his strongest advocates for that haircut, outside of his sister, and even arranged for one of their co-workers to cut his hair after we gave the green light.

Immediately after getting his haircut, they noticed our son didn’t seem as happy as they anticipated, and asked if he liked it. He shook his head no, and said it was still too long. So back they went. That buzzcut seemed to do the trick, with his teacher saying, and I quote, “It was the happiest I had ever seen him.”

Gender dysphoria involves a comprehensive diagnosis. Our family was fortunate to finally find medical and mental health experts who could help. Gender dysphoria is an intense and typically consistent, insistent, and persistent discord between a child’s assigned gender and their internal identity.

This is probably where I should emphasize that gender dysphoria is not the same as your child wanting to be a dog, lion, or pirate. We hear that a lot from kind, concerned anti-trans strangers. In fact, based on my experiences, trans kids seem to have a better handle on their identities than, say, your average adult male football fan. Don’t believe me? Just watch how heavily invested the fans are in their college and pro teams. Or if you have the stomach for it, watch any English Premier League match.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to put into words how despondent our son was from the dysphoria. All I can tell you it was a matter of life and death. Maybe not right then, maybe not in a year, but at some point in his young life.

Suffice to say, after The Dress incident we went on Google and researched the heck out of the symptoms we had witnessed. We had to look outside the state to find the relatively few families who were going public at that time. And it was challenging to find local doctors and therapists who had experience with gender dysphoria in such a young kid.

We learned that gender, like many other things in life, is on a spectrum. We learned that gender dysphoria often reveals itself at the age when all children first begin associating with a gender, typically at two to three years old. These things are almost obvious, in hindsight.

We were very fortunate to have the wherewithal to attend conferences and seek out the help we needed. Ultimately, we found medical professionals who were able to diagnose our son’s gender dysphoria and provide gender-affirming care.

Gender dysphoria is real and much more common than people think. And it is entirely manageable.

Our decision to affirm our son’s identity was made to keep him alive. We’d rather have a child who is alive and happy, than a child who takes their own life because we refused to learn and grow ourselves.

After we affirmed his identity, it was like a light switch. He went from despair to a happy kid who couldn’t wait to go to school.

We enrolled our son in kindergarten as a boy, but before school started, I spoke with his principal. I explained what we learned about gender identity and what our family experienced over the last two years.

We were also fortunate because although our son’s principal didn’t have any prior experience with trans kids, he was eager to learn. He assured us not to worry, that his job was to provide a safe and supportive environment for every one of his students. Because “all means all.” It didn’t make a bit of difference whether we were talking about learning challenges, physical disabilities, mental health challenges, or gender dysphoria.

As our son thrived in his elementary school years following the decision to affirm his identity, I began to wonder if the key to changing hearts and minds would be as simple as people getting to know him. I decided to ask him if he would be ok with me loaning him out to families around the globe, say for a week at a time, just so they could see how cool he is. Kind of like a time-share sort of thing.

Unfortunately, by the time I finished explaining time-shares and how lucrative they could be for the sellers, my son was tired and cranky. I began realizing his behavior at times might test our return policies, and decided instead to wait a few more years. Another good idea before its time.

In any event, from second through sixth grade, our educators led discussions in my son’s classes explaining what it means to be transgender, allowing him to share his personal experiences. These discussions were always done in the context of gender identity being just one of countless differences. He wanted his classmates to understand what it means to be transgender and that he is telling the truth.

My son’s classmates seemed genuinely curious, and the discussions would inevitably lead to other students sharing their differences and how they would like to be treated. Kids get it. From our experiences and those of educators around the country kids can certainly be taught about gender identity in an age-appropriate way, even in elementary school.

Young people with gender dysphoria suffer extremely high rates of depression and anxiety, with an attempted suicide rate approaching 50%. In contrast, youth who are affirmed in their gender identity experience mental health similar to the rest of the population.

The evidence we have today confirms that gender-affirming care yields the best possible outcomes compared to wait-and-see approaches and the Christian-backed conversion therapies that have been debunked time and again. There is always more to discover, of course. Yet ironically, it is conservatives who are banning and even criminalizing efforts by universities to perform research on gender identity.

With respect to education, we have evidence and experience from welcoming schools around the country demonstrating that affirming trans identities in no way diminishes the school experiences of other students. In fact, when schools provide safer, more inclusive environments for L.G.B.T.Q. students, the safety and academic achievements of all students improves.

My son has been interviewed by several media outlets over the years, most recently by the Detroit News. He had an opportunity to share his story as the first openly trans student in the Dexter school district. Asked to sum up his early elementary school experiences, he said, “It was pretty normal. I was treated like every other kid. My parents talked to the principal, and he talked to my teacher. There were no problems. Curious kids, they asked questions.”

The normalcy of my son’s school experience and our cautious optimism would end as he started high school. In Michigan, copycat legislation similar to that passed in Texas and Alabama was introduced. The proposed legislation would prevent gender-affirming health care for trans and gender-diverse youth. It would also criminalize affirming parents and healthcare professionals as child abusers. A federal offense with a potential sentence of life in prison.

Just so we’re completely clear on this, what exactly is my crime? Well, I’m the dad of a 15-year-old trans son, and I make it possible for him to follow the medical recommendations of pediatric endocrinologists at the University of Michigan Health System, one of the top-ranked medical institutions in the world.

The University of Michigan Health System provides gender dysphoria diagnoses and gender-affirming care that aligns with the evidence-based practices called for by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychology Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, among others.

A 2022 article in Scientific American reported that, “All of those medical societies find such care to be evidence-based and medically necessary.” It went on to say, “data from more than a dozen studies of more than 30,000 transgender and gender-diverse young people consistently show that access to gender-affirming care is associated with better mental health outcomes. And that lack of access to such care is associated with higher rates of suicidality, depression, and self-harming behavior.”

“Data suggests that the effects of denying that care are worse than whatever side effects result from delaying puberty. And medical society guidelines conclude that the benefits of gender-affirming care outweigh the risks.”

Our family has taken part in one of the longest-running longitudinal studies that tracks the efficacy of gender-affirming care. It is one of many studies corroborating that gender-affirming health care improves mental health outcomes for trans patients.

Unlike the anti-trans critiques, this and similar research results are published in peer-reviewed journals by leading researchers in the field. There is always more to learn, just like with any medical treatment, but there is no doubt that today’s gender-affirming care is the best evidence-based option available.

The prospect of going to prison isn’t something I’ve had to consider before. And life imprisonment for following recommended healthcare practices seems a bit harsh, in light of the sentences given to the people who stormed the Capitol. Not to mention the potential life-time immunity being considered for its ringleader.

Be that as it may, it is still nothing compared to what will happen to trans kids under this law. My son and others like him will be denied gender-affirming health care and taken away from their families.

For a population that already has to overcome lies that accuse them of being sexual deviants, denying this care will have deadly consequences. Our kids see no future for themselves in a world dominated by conservative ideology and supernatural doctrine that denies their right to exist.

Why are trans kids suddenly the highest priority of conservative state legislators and wealthy donors? Are conservatives genuinely trying to protect trans kids?

Do these legislators have evidence that every major medical and mental health organization in the U.S., including our pediatric endocrinologists at the University of Michigan, have somehow neglected to consider? Were the countless testimonies of parents and trans kids themselves even considered?

Nah. The anti-trans movement is not motivated out of care for trans kids. No more than segregation was motivated out of care for Black Americans and the kidnapping and indoctrination of Native American children was motivated out of care for indigenous families.

As with most efforts to eliminate diverse populations, it begins with talk of cleansing blood lines, maintaining cultural purity, and the need for people to assimilate and convert or face punishment. It cloaks itself in false piety and disingenuous concern for others, while simultaneously fanning the flames of racism and bigotry and normalizing violence against all who fall outside a narrow, white Christian nationalist ideal.

This type of insidious genetic cleansing is not easily overcome once it takes root, as we’ve seen in the rise of countless fascist regimes in the past century. We are at a tipping point, and the actions or inactions of companies and educational institutions that value diversity will determine the outcome.

Any company that relies on innovation understands the value of diversity. Diversity powers invention, enlightenment, and groundbreaking discoveries. Diversity in race, nationality, culture, and different lived experiences. It is those very differences that inspire transformative thinking.

And when we consider the goals of our educational system to prepare kids for life and for meaningful, productive careers, think about this: the majority of companies in our country also recognize the rights of transgender people to use the bathrooms and facilities that match their identity. Many of those companies also signed on to a Friend of the Court brief in support of transgender student Gavin Grimm to use the bathroom of his identity, in G.G. versus the Gloucester County School Board.

Trans kids are joining a long list of groups that have faced persecution, enslavement, segregation, even genocide, throughout America’s history. It’s impossible to compare the freedom struggles that different groups of people go through because their experiences are unique; their sacrifices, pain, and suffering are singular.

We do have an obligation, however, to understand the common threads between these struggles. For example, the malice I saw on the faces of anti-trans protestors immediately brought to mind that iconic photo of Elizabeth Eckford of the Little Rock Nine, walking bravely through a crowd of raging white protesters.

The 15-year-old Ms Eckford was one of nine black students who eventually ushered in the era of desegregation in Arkansas, finally holding the state accountable for defying the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. But on that day, she was chased from the school with taunts and threats against her life.

In that single photo, the unfiltered truth of where Arkansas and much of our society stood on racial equality was exposed for all to see. Black communities were not just segregated; they were dehumanized.

Through Jim Crow laws, lynching, and violent suppression of the black vote, southern states still governed as if the confederacy won the Civil War. For the Little Rock Nine, the victory was short-lived. The following school year, Governor Faubus closed all the high schools in Little Rock rather than continue with integration.

The ideology that produced hundreds of years of slavery is tightly woven into the fabric of Southern life. It took a civil war to prevent the South from seceding and establishing a nation that would enshrine slavery and racism as a cornerstone of its Confederate Constitution.

The white Christian churches of the South assured their congregations that God made white men superior to the not-quite-human black and indigenous peoples. Those fire-and-brimstone churches preached that Southerners had a God-mandated obligation to preserve slavery and the Southern way of life, at any cost.

That cost was bloodshed on a scale this continent had not seen since the genocide of indigenous peoples. Even after emancipation, the zeal to preserve slavery and the Southern way of life was never defeated in the soul of the South. It merely evolves to survive.

The Confederate ideology lived on through Jim Crow laws and was empowered by white Christian churches. With that backing, southerners produced another hundred years of segregated, institutionalized racism and dehumanization of black America.

Nearly 70 years after the Elizabeth Eckford photo was taken, that moment is recreated whenever systemic racism is challenged, whenever trans-affirming measures are taken, and whenever women seek autonomy over their bodies. That moment is recreated in the enraged faces of the Christian protestors at school board meetings, outside reproductive health clinics, and public libraries. It is clear why we are still fighting battles against systemic racism, some 160 years after emancipation.

Cloaked in themes of family and the welfare of children, the powerful combination of religion, nationalism, and fear has been exploited by conservatives to perfection. “In Florida,” as Charles Blow writes, “the point isn’t the protection of children but the deceiving of them. It’s to fight so-called woke indoctrination with a historical whitewash.”

Such is the power that Governor DeSantis has bestowed on Florida conservative parents. He’s not alone of course, as Katelyn Burns reports, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has essentially deputized conservative citizens in Texas in his war against L.G.B.T.Q. identities and their allies.

What many of us failed to recognize is that Christianity, as with all religions, is just as easily exploited today as it has in centuries past. Christian nationalists and the conservatives who prey on peoples’ fears are fully complicit. But as Dr King admonished, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

That time is now.

Peter Tchoryk

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Amanda Tylor, the Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), describes Christian nationalism this way,

“The ‘Christian’ in Christian nationalism is more about identity than religion and carries with it assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and militarism.”

In her recent book The Power Worshippers, Katherine Stewart chronicles her decades-long investigation into Christian nationalism. The sobering reality is that Christian nationalism represents a clear and present danger to democracies everywhere. It is a worldwide network of evangelical and like-minded religious organizations funded by a dark web of extremely wealthy, powerful, old-money conservative families.

More than half of Republicans now openly identify as Christian nationalists. Not all Christian nationalists are card-carrying members of the American Nazi Movement, KKK, Proud Boys, or Oath Keepers. But there is little doubt many still deeply identify with the ideology of white nationalism sanctified by a militant, evangelical version of Christianity.

Christian nationalism exploits conservative churches, primarily white evangelical and Catholic churches. In that respect, it’s a parasitic movement that relies on host churches to spread its message and mobilize its voting base. Exposing it is a necessary first step, but stopping its influence is difficult because it is an amorphous, decentralized political movement that exists outside of any specific denomination.

Today’s Christian nationalist movement evolved from the Religious Right and Moral Majority, movements created by televangelists and conservative power brokers. In that respect, Trump seems biologically engineered to unite the religious right, with a televangelist’s gift for showmanship and a pathological lack of conscience. This is also what makes Trump infinitely more dangerous than his conservative rivals.

As the January 6^th insurrection exploded into full view, it was tempting to think Trump had finally sealed his fate. Surely, he would face the condemnation of anyone who valued democracy, conservative or not.

But Trump’s base was largely unfazed. They seemed even more determined to put him back in office, even if it meant subverting democracy all together.

Many people underestimated how strongly Trump’s message of rage, racism, bigotry, and misogyny would resonate in America. As Trump famously remarked, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.”

If you think that’s hyperbole, consider how loyal Trump’s base has been since he entered the political scene. In 2016, he received 46.1% of the popular vote and that percentage remained roughly the same in 2020, coming in at 46.8%. Even though Trump is the only president to never achieve a 50% approval rating while in office, his numbers were fairly consistent, averaging 41%.

Trump expertly preys on his followers’ deepest and darkest fears about immigrants and white replacement. He validates their generational malice toward Black Americans and people of color. He exploits their misguided views on science, religion, and other cultures. And he manipulates their Christian faith to demonize anyone who supports women’s reproductive rights and LGBTQ identities.

Through his nearly continuous attacks against democratic principles and anyone who challenges him, Trump has effectively normalized tyranny. Hannah Arendt described this normalization as the banality of evil. It results in populations becoming desensitized to the erosion of their civil and human rights as oppressors commit greater and greater atrocities.

Christian nationalism, by its very nature, relies on an ambiguous Christian narrative to both spread its message and deceive the uninitiated. This makes it difficult to confront without offending Christians who don’t subscribe to it or may not understand its true intentions. It is not just another Christian denomination with a different opinion on spirituality, it was created specifically as a political weapon.

None of this is really new, as Kristin Kobes Du Mez points out in her book, Jesus and John Wayne. It’s entirely consistent with enduring, mainstream evangelical values, where leaders have long preached a “mutually reinforcing vision of Christian masculinity — of patriarchy and submission, sex and power.”

In the recently released documentary, “God and Country,” Du Mez warns us that Christian nationalism is not some fringe movement. It is an extremely well-funded, global network of conservative think tanks and power brokers, politicians, and church leaders.

Christian nationalism seeks to create a Christian American Kingdom that is best described as a theocratic fascist state. Unlike in 2020, they are well prepared to hit the ground running if Trump is elected. For starters, PBS reports that the conservative Heritage Foundation is leading Project 2025, a transition plan that would replace around 50,000 civil employees with an “army” of employees loyal to Trump.

To see a model of how Trump’s Christian government would work in practice, look no further than the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Trump. Roger Severino was appointed by Trump to direct the HHS Office of Civil Rights, and in 2018 created the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.

Severino sought to punish blue states for protecting abortion access by encouraging conservatives to file complaints that those policies violated their religious convictions. He also rescinded an HHS regulation protecting trans people from discrimination in health care.

As reported by Sarah Posner, the Heritage Foundation’s thousand-page 2025 mandate calls for HHS to once again be the “epicenter of imposing the Christian right’s agenda on all Americans, under the guise of protecting the ‘conscience’ and ‘religious freedom’ of people who oppose abortion and LGBTQ rights.” She explains Severino’s views on LGBTQ rights as a “malevolent ideology deployed by soulless bureaucrats to crush the freedom of religious Americans.”

In his condemnation of gender-affirming health care, Severino has gone on record espousing easily debunked lies that contradict the peer-reviewed, scientifically validated recommendations of every major medical and mental health organization in the United States and internationally. He follows the script established long ago by segregationists who promoted lies about the inferiority and threat of Black Americans using pseudo-science to justify their inherent racism.

This speaks volumes about the lengths conservative leaders are willing to go to unite white Christian voters by demonizing vulnerable populations. Most recently, at the 2024 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Trump preached a sermon to the choir of white conservative Christians that should be very familiar to Black Americans:

“Remember, every communist regime throughout history has tried to stamp out the churches, just like every fascist regime has tried to co-opt them and control them, and, in America, the radical left is trying to do both. They want to tear down crosses where they can and cover them up with social justice flags, but no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.”

Conservative Christians have long opposed social justice and have fought fiercely to preserve racist systems of segregation and discrimination. Christian nationalism is the rebirth of those earlier movements. But in Trump they truly did find their savior, a messiah figure who is not burdened by conscience or a moral compass. Trump is someone who has no problem with arguments devoid of logic and reason, and is more than willing to say and do anything to get a few votes.

This is the Trump Effect. It is real and it is powerful. Combined with the wealth and influence of the Christian nationalist movement, it presents a clear and present danger to our country. And it is why we must rebel.

Peter Tchoryk

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