Christian nationalism is in vogue, at least for the people who are trying to hold on to power , the people who are trying to destroy American democracy.

A case in point is Peter Thiel. He's the founder of Palantir.

Palantir is a company that profits on systems that conduct widespread electronic surveillance of people, so that anybody who is not from here is being watched.

The idea is that anybody who is not from here can be picked up by Palantir’s systems, identified, targeted for detention, for exile, being deported from the United States. In order to get that information, all of our information information needs to be searched through.

That's an obvious violation of the Bill of Rights, which guarantees protection from unreasonable search and seizure of our persons and our papers, meaning our bodies and our records of our personal lives, of what we're doing.

Peter Thiel seems to think that the Bill of Rights isn't really a valid form of law  so he's created Palantir to help the government to violate the Bill of Rights and our protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

But Peter Theil also is a big believer in Christian power in the United States of America. Christian power, as he sees it, is the same thing as power for big tech executives like himself.

So Peter Thiel is giving a four-part lecture series, which is supposed to be secret. They punish people who even share notes of these lectures, and yet some of the content has leaked out.

In this four-part lecture series, Peter Thiel is describing how he believes the Antichrist is on the move in the United States of America. Guess what: for him, the Antichrist is anybody who is attempting to stop big tech firms from doing whatever they want.

As he describes it, regulation of generative artificial intelligence and other high-powered digital tools for social control , regulation of those things by the government is an effort by the Antichrist. It's anti-Christian to regulate artificial intelligence, according to him. In Christian Nationalism, what counts as Christian is really kind of flexible. It happens to coincide with what the people in power want.

So it is that the chairman of the House judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, got on CNN just a few days ago and declared that he believes that Christianity, part of the will of God, is to have ice agents, put on masks, go roaming through American neighborhoods and dragging people out of their homes, out of their cars, out of their schools, sending them to secret detention camps without due process of law and keeping them there under inhumane conditions or deporting them.

Here's what Jim Jordan had to say about that: “I think the ice agents are doing the Lord's work.”

How is it that a secret police set up by a fascist government dragging parents, children out of their homes and their cars, their schools, their places of work, and putting them into prisons without any due process of law is the Lord's work.

Well, the Lord's work is it turns out, whatever people in power want it to mean.

So that actually, if you take a look at what Christ nationalists are doing in this government , they are defining what the Lord wants and what the government is willing to accept, not just in terms of being punitive in general against outsiders, but deciding which kinds of religion, worshiping, which kind of gods, which kinds of Lord, in a sacred sense, are going to be admitted into the United States of America?

So it is that in the U.S. House of Representatives, we now have a bill numbered HR 5722 , the purpose of which is to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to prohibit the entry of aliens who adhere to Sharia law. It doesn't stop there. This bill also legalizes the deportation and the imprisonment of anybody who adheres to Sharia law.

This is the really important piece of language to pay attention to: “Any alien in the United States found to be an adherent of Sharia law shall have any immigration benefit, immigration relief, or visa revoked, be considered inadmissible or deportable and shall be removed from the United States.”

Not that they can, but that anybody who is not a U.S. citizen, even if they came here legally, you know, through all the paperwork, all of the procedures that are required for that, say, a university professor, say somebody who's working for a tech firm in San Francisco, if they are found merely to, "adhere to Sharia law,", they shall be deported, they have to be deported under this new proposed law.

Well, what is Sharia law?

Sharia law is merely the law, under the religion of Islam, as it is understood in Muslim countries. That actually means a lot of different things in different Muslim countries, in different varieties of Islam, which there are varieties of Islam.

There are fundamentalist Muslims, yes, but there are also modern liberal Muslims, and they have a very different sense of what Sharia means.

Sharia can mean justice, it can mean the body of laws. So, Sharia law is not just one thing. How would the U.S government even determine what that means?

It's pretty clear how that would actually work, given our current state of affairs, given the way that the fascist government of Donald Trump is applying the laws that it already has to persecute people who are from other countries and other cultures.

To be an adherent of Sharia law is merely to be Muslim, to belong to to the religion of Islam.

To be an adherent of Sharia law doesn't mean that you're imposing Sharia law on anyone else.

It's just a series of codes of conduct that you think that you ought to comply with.

So if this law passes, the U.S. Congress, it will become mandatory for all Muslims who are not U.S. Citizens to be deported or detained to be kicked out of the United States of America for no other reason than what their religion is.

Those of you who have actually read the Constitution, who understand the Bill of Rights, know that this is specifically prohibited in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

But then again, here in the United States of America, the law doesn't really seem to matter anymore.

The members of the U.S. House of Representatives who support HR5722, which would, effectively prohibit the practice of Islam or even Islamic beliefs in the United States, Randy Fine of the 6th Congressional District of Florida, Tim Burchett of the second Congressional District of Tennessee, Keith Self of the third Congressional District in Texas, Barry Moore of the first Congressional District in Alabama , Mary Miller of the 15th Congressional District in Illinois, Scott Perry of the 10th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, Sherry Biggs of the third Congressional District of South Carolina , Lauren Boebert of the fourth Congressional District of Colorado, Josh Breechen of the Second Congressional District of Oklahoma, Andrew Clyde of the 9th Congressional District of Georgia, Russ Fulcher of the First Congressional District of Idaho, Andy Biggs of the fifth Congressional District of Arizona, and Byron Donalds of the 19th Congressional District of Florida.

In case you are wondering, yes, all of these members of Congress are Republicans.

Another group of people who were all Republicans were those who were gunning for positions of leadership within the national organization of the young Republicans. They were organizing in a chat group, and Politico obtained the text of what they had to say.

Repeatedly, this group of young Republicans praised Adolf Hitler. They called African Americans monkeys who liked to eat watermelon. Then they said, not once, not even just twice, but three times that they want to put all of their political opponents into gas chambers, like the Nazis used in Germany and Poland.

There are some people who like to quibble when we call the government and the Republican Party that runs it right now , fascists.

They say, oh, that's too strong a term.

When we see see Republicans in Congress and out of Congress coalescing around ideas, like making it illegal for anyone entering this country to be Muslim, ending freedom of religion in America , praising Adolf Hitler, and threatening to kill their opponents in Nazi gas chambers, I really do't see how we can quibble with calling these people fascists. 

Many Americans were alarmed that the President of the United States would release such a sinister video during a time of high political tensions. What has not been so widely acknowledged is the violent Christian threat embedded in the video’s ominous imagery.

Part of the video’s message is not religious, to be sure. It comes in the context of the Republican Party’s decision to shut down the federal government of the USA. Donald Trump has threatened that he will give Russ Vought, his Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, free reign to destroy huge parts of the American government by withholding funds already allocated by Congress, and by firing massive numbers of government workers.

That destruction itself is an outrageous assault against America’s constitutional democracy. The Constitution gives Congress, not the President’s Executive Branch, the power to decide which government programs will be funded and how they will be run. The President’s job is supposed to be merely to execute the direction set by Congress. Trump’s decision to set Russ Vought loose to destroy large parts of the American government violates the highest law of the nation.

There’s more to this video than that, unfortunately. Donald Trump and Russ Vought share a lifelong hatred of the democracy embodied in the American government, but more than that, they share a Christian Nationalist determination to smash American democracy and replace it with a brutal Christian theocracy.

The cruelty of this vision is clear in the visual tone of the video, but its Christian Nationalism and biblical foundations are spelled out in the words that celebrate Russ Vought as The Reaper.

The Grim Reaper is a figure in Christian mythology that comes from the Bible’s violent final portion, the Book of Revelation. It’s this book, not the Gospels, that American Christian Nationalists worship as the central message of the Bible. It is a revenge fantasy, a culmination of the Christian Bible in which Jesus decides that peace and love are foolish, pursuing a campaign of planet-wrecking bloody revenge and heartless authoritarian rule, smashing his opponents with a rod of iron.

The Grim Reaper is a harvester, not of grain, but of human beings, cutting them down as if they are bad fruit. The Book of Revelation chapter 14 depicts non-Christians metaphorically as bad fruit, over-ripe grapes that are good for nothing but being crushed and fermented into a bloody beverage drunk by a furious Jesus. This threat of violence at the end of the Bible starts with a description of Jesus as the Son of Man, and the Lamb of God, watching while the angels of God persecute non-Christians.

I looked and there was a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud one who looked like the Son of Man, with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Another angel came out of the temple, crying out in a loud voice to the one sitting on the cloud, “Use your sickle and reap the harvest, for the time to reap has come, because the earth’s harvest is fully ripe.” The one who was sitting on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven who also had a sharp sickle. Then another angel from the altar was in charge of the fire, and cried out in a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and cut the clusters from the earth’s vines, for its grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle over the Earth and cut the Earth’s vintage. He threw it into the great wine press of God’s fury. The wine press was trodden outside the city and blood poured out of the wine press to the height of a horse’s bridle for two hundred miles.

The Grim Reaper is not servant of Satan. The Grim Reaper is an angel of God working by the side of Jesus to torment and kill human beings, wielding a sickle to cut people down before they are smashed to bits.

Donald Trump’s threatening video states explicitly that “Russ Vought is the reaper,” showing him as a wicked angel of God with a scythe, a kind of sickle, as described in the Christian Bible. The video then shows Russ Vought standing with the sickle in an office of terrified federal government workers, ready to cut them down under the orders of the Christian god.

What will happen to these government workers before they are crushed in the wine press of the wrath of God? The Book of Revelation says that they will be tortured in front of Jesus, who will watch them burn and do nothing to stop their agony.

“They shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out unmixed into the cup of His indignation and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascends up for ever and ever; and they have no rest day or night.”

Accordingly, Donald Trump’s video shows federal government workers after they have been tortured by Jesus, Russ Vought and his other angels, stumbling through the streets of Washington DC at night in agony. It’s insanely sadistic, but the President of the United States is making a show of the way that he intends to torture American workers, and do it in the name of Jesus.

Russ Vought has already stated that this brutal vision of the apocalyptic, bloody destruction of American democracy is his goal. Last year, he declared that he wanted to use the power of the federal government to make the United States into an exclusively Christian nation. Vought said the following:

“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation, and my viewpoint is mostly that I would be probably Christian Nationism. That’s pretty close to Christian Nationalism. Can we, if we’re going to have legal immigration, can we get actually get people who believe in Christianity? Is that something, or do we have to have, you know, are we not allowed to ask questions about sharia law?… In an ideal world, I think we could save the country in the sense of the largest deportation in history.”

Here, in Russ Vought’s own voice, you hear how far Donald Trump’s fascist mass deportations are intended to go. According to Russ Vought, it won’t be just non-citizens or criminals who are rounded up and put into prison camps and shipped overseas. Anyone who isn’t a Christian will be targeted as well. Russ Vought plans to make Christianity a requirement for citizenship in the United States.

Mass roundups of non-Christian Americans have not yet begun, but at the very same time that Trump and Vought have shut down the American federal government, Trump has sent the American military into many American cities, where they are helping masked ICE agents to break into people’s homes, grabbing large numbers of people, including American citizens. A couple days ago in Chicago, ICE agents even handcuffed large numbers of naked children and dragged them out into the street before sending them to prison. A totalitarian secret police that was once unthinkable in America is now roaming the streets, looking for people to victimize.

Donald Trump’s National Security Policy Memo 7 (NSPM-7) specifically categorizes anyone who fails to conform with the beliefs of Christianity as a “terrorist” who can be imprisoned by the US federal government. It’s an obvious, flagrant violation of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, but then, Donald Trump, Russ Vought, and their ICE stormtroopers have made it plain that they don’t believe they need to follow the Constitution any longer.

Under Donald Trump and Russ Vought, anything goes. So, when they release a video that depicts a Christian Nationalist fantasy of enacting the bloody religious persecution of the Bible’s Book of Revelation, it would be foolish to think that it’s all just a sick joke.

Shortly before the speeches at Quantico, Donald Trump issued an order categorizing hostility toward Christianity as a form of terrorism.

Your friends on social media may have reposted inspiring graphics in which Pope Leo XIV (AKA Robert Prevost) said, “To be called woke in a world that sleeps through suffering is no insult.”

It’s bogus. Pope Leo XIV never said any such thing.

An atheist made up the fake quote using an artificial intelligence chatbot in order to see how many people would fall for the hoax. “The fact that so many of you wanted this to be true shows how far Catholicism is from real progress,” he said, revealing the fake.

Pope Leo XIV also never said that “To be woke is not a threat. It is a calling.” That’s another fake quote. Pope Leo XIV has never defended the woke perspective. In fact, he has criticized it.

What about the following statement, though?

"You cannot follow both Christ and the cruelty of kings. A leader who mocks the weak, exalts himself, and preys on the innocent is not sent by God. He is sent to test you. And many are failing."

Nope. It’s another fake quote. Pope Leo XIV didn’t say it.

There’s a longer quote claiming to be from Pope Leo XIV that people have been forwarding around in which the new Pope directly criticizes Donald Trump:

“Trump, the immigration policies you've implemented are a blatant trampling on both the teachings of the church and the promises of the American dream. You've made a big show of declaring a state of emergency at the border, dispatched the military to enforce the law there, canceled birthright citizenship and even had law enforcement officers barge into places like churches and schools which are supposed to be inviolable to arrest illegal immigrants. You're turning the United States into a country that has no room for tolerance, going completely against the diversity that the U.S. has always advocated. In order to win those so-called votes and pander to some extreme voters, you've resorted to all means to create external enemies and have intensified social conflicts. All of your actions are a hideous manifestation of white supremacist ideology. What's more, the incident of you accepting an airplane from the cartel is truly despicable. Such behavior of yours has seriously damaged the image of public officials. You're simply using your power as a tool to seek personal gains. I, Robert Prevost, firmly oppose everything that you stand for. Every single thing you've done is dragging the United States into the abyss of darkness and undermining the very foundation of this country.”

By this point, you know what I’m going to say. Yes, it’s a completely fake quote. This supposed statement by Pope Leo XIV was uploaded in a video that was explicitly labeled as generated by AI tools.

When Pope Leo XIV did not speak up for liberal social values, liberal Christians seized upon fake quotes in order to avoid confronting the brutal reality that the Catholic Church is an anti-liberal organization.

What Pope Leo XIV Actually Has Said

In a previous episode of this podcast, I noted Pope Leo XIV’s verbal attack against atheists, accusing them of causing all of the problems that have in fact been caused by Christian Nationalists. Pope Leo XIV said:

"A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society."

Now, Pope Leo XIV has issued a new statement criticizing LGBTQ marriages, saying that governments around the world should only support families that are “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman”. Pope Leo XIV has also criticized what he calls the “homosexual lifestyle”.

Pope Leo XIV has not made a single statement or gesture that criticizes Donald Trump. At the same time, Pope Leo XIV is criticizing the acceptance of non-Christians and LGBTQ people.

People are spreading false quotes from Pope Leo XIV because the real statements the new Pope is making are unpalatable. Pope Leo XIV is not a liberal. Like every other Pope before him, Pope Leo punches down.

Pope Leo XIV is turning a blind eye to the abuses of Christian Nationalism. He won’t be coming to the rescue of an America that is falling into Christofascism.

The traditional American view of politics is that the population chooses leaders who represent their interests, and manage a government that meets their needs. The government is organized into different departments, which are staffed by people who have studied their areas of expertise, and deliver specialized services for the good of the country.

The Christian Nationalist view of politics is quite different from that. Under Christian Nationalism, people hope that their needs will be met through the magical services of spirits whose powers can be summoned through ritual incantations.

Consider the following prophecy made by Christian Nationalists in July, 2020. The prophecy said that Democrats seek to destroy the United States through spellcraft, political assassination, and allegiances with monsters.

“The goal is to put an evil black Communist woman in the White House, who is dedicated to the tearing down of America and the shredding of the Constitution. If she is a real witch, so much the better, since the Democrats have been using witches and wizards against Trump since he became president. Satan wants to control the White House. She will be the Vice President for Biden, and immediately after he is inaugurated, there will be a fatal accident and Biden will become history. Biden has committed himself to the Marxist agenda of Communist Bernie Sanders, so that is already the goal of the Democrats. And once this poor, senile, incompetent is vanished, freedom in America will be banished.”

In hindsight, we can see that this Christian Nationalist prophecy was not true.

Joe Biden did not advance a Communist agenda while in the White House.

Joe Biden was not assassinated by Kamala Harris.

Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris destroyed the Constitution. Neither did they banish freedom.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but wizards are not real. Witchcraft is not real. Demons are not real.

That this prophecy is nonsense should be obvious. The tragically absurd reality is that it isn’t obvious to many Americans.

When I was a kid, if you asked me about what life would be like for an American in the year 2025, I would have predicted that our world would be defined by astonishing technological advancements.

I would not have predicted that the person who became President of the United States in 2025 would be elected by people who believe that secret societies of wizards and witches control use magic spells to control the American political system. I would not have predicted that fear of Satanic plots motivated Americans to elect a Christian Nationalist fascist with ambitions of becoming the first dictator of the United States of America.

When I was a child, I believed that the political culture of the United States would continue to improve, that Americans would learn from the mistakes of the past and find new ways to live with each other in an enlightened peace with respect for differences. Instead, America has reverted to the superstitions of the medieval Puritans.

In medieval times, people had some excuse for believing in magic, monsters, and evil spirits. Many people were not literate, and did not have access to formal education. Science was just beginning to emerge as a beacon of light in the darkness of religious conformity.

There is no excuse for believing in wizards and witches and demons today. Americans have access to scientific knowledge. They have schools in which they have the luxury of learning how to think clearly over years free from the burden of childhood labor.

32 percent of Americans have chosen to believe in absurd magical nonsense. They have thrown away the opportunities of democracy in favor of idiotic conspiracy theories that don’t even have any internal logic.

32 percent of Americans have voluntarily given their government into the hands of Christian Nationalists who believe that worshipping a prophet who has been dead for two thousand years is more important than feeding and educating children today.

32 percent of adult Americans voted for Donald Trump.

31 percent of adult Americans voted against Donald Trump.

34.7 percent of adult Americans chose not to vote in the 2024 presidential election at all.

34.7 percent of adult Americans could not bring themselves to oppose a campaign that was blatantly fascist and Christian Nationalist.

Because of them, and because of the 32 percent of adult Americans who voted for Donald Trump, we now have a US federal government organized around the belief that an ancient magical incarnation of a vengeful cosmic spirit could return to the Earth at any moment. The USA is under control of people who believe that the return of this ancient cosmic spirit is the foundation of what America stands for.

I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s an absurd basis for a national identity in the year 2025, but I do.

In the year 2025, America is being run by people who are obsessed with a fear of dark wizards and demons.

It is difficult to hold out any hope for a country this moronic.

Christian Nationalism is the ideology of a new Dark Age.

There’s a new Catholic Pope this week. He named himself Pope Leo XIV, and he gave his first speech.

The obvious question on everybody’s mind was how the new Pope would address the danger posed by Donald Trump, who is threatening war with Canada, ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and an end to democracy in the United States, with new concentration camps in Guantanamo, El Salvador, and Alcatraz.

Pope Leo XIV chose to respond to this historical moment of growing fascism by blaming atheists for it all. He declared:

"A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society."

This statement is astonishingly out of touch with the reality of social struggle today, especially given that Robert Prevost, the man who now calls himself Pope Leo XIV, is from the United States. Let’s break down his statement, point by point.

Is the loss of meaning in life caused by lack of faith?

There certainly is a general feeling of a loss of meaning in society these days, but it doesn’t come from a lack of faith.

Donald Trump’s rapid dismantling of American democracy is causing huge numbers of people to feel a loss of meaning, and not just in the United States. People around the world had come to regard the USA as unshakably democratic, with a strong system of constitutional law that established and protected liberty for generations. Now, Donald Trump is violating that system of civil liberties, transforming the United States into an authoritarian regime that upholds few principles other than that Donald Trump can do whatever he wants. Americans, and liberals around the world, are dumbfounded by this turn of events, and many are left feeling unmoored, struggling to find a sense of meaning now that the promises of liberal democracy have been abandoned.

Donald Trump was elected with the support of the majority of American Catholic voters, and through the organized political influence of right wing Catholic organizations.

Pope Leo XIV did not choose to talk about any of that in his homily, however. Instead, he warned against the danger of people entering “a state of practical atheism”.

Is the neglect of mercy caused by lack of faith?

In the world today, the most tragic examples of neglect of mercy come from Christian Nationalist governments, not atheists.

The government of Russia, which aligns itself strongly with Christianity, is mercilessly attacking the nation of Ukraine.

Israel is waging a campaign of explicit ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and is doing so with the strong encouragement of the Christian Nationalist government of the United States.

The Christian Nationalists in charge of the US federal government have begun to defund medical research and disaster response, and have taken systematic action to eliminate programs that deliver food to the hungry and medicine to the sick. Millions of deaths are projected to take place by the end of this year because of this Christian Nationalist neglect of mercy.

None of the perpetrators of these cruelties were atheists. To the contrary, the leaders responsible for this neglect of mercy are both personally religious and politically connected with religious political organizations. Lack of faith has nothing to do with their motivation. In fact, these leaders frequently cite religious faith as a motivation for what they do.

Are appalling violations of human dignity caused by lack of faith?

Donald Trump, the Christian Nationalist President of the United States, has begun systematic programs of the torture and humiliation of prisoners who have no record of criminal activity. He has described entire nations and ethnicities of human beings as “animals” who deserve to be hunted down like “vermin”.

Trump does these things even as he declares that he is “bringing religion back” using the power of the US federal government.

Trump is a lifelong Christian who frequently cites experiences going to church and talks about how his special relationship with the Christian god has brought him to power.

Lack of faith has nothing to do with any of this.

Is a crisis of the family caused by lack of faith?

Donald Trump is ripping families apart, splitting up married couples during ICE raids, putting people into prisons from which they cannot contact their families, and even deporting young children who are citizens of the United States while denying them life-saving medical care.

At the same time, Christian Nationalists are clamoring to declare same-sex marriages null and void. Catholic organizations funded by the US federal government are refusing to allow LGBTQ married couples to adopt children. Christian groups are banning books from public libraries for no other reason than that the books dare to mention that same-sex married couples exist.

In the United States of America, Christians, not atheists, are causing a nationwide crisis of the family. The power of faith is proving corrosive to family life, as religious groups spread divisive conspiracy theories and encourage their adherents to shun family members who refuse to submit to the authority of faith leaders.

Atheists just aren’t doing that.

Lack of Faith Leads to Resistance to Fascism

The Christian Nationalists who control the US federal government are destroying democracy and establishing fascism as an expression of their faith.

Non-religious Americans are the strongest most reliable opponents of Donald Trump’s cruel Christian Nationalist fascism. Americans who live without faith voted against Donald Trump by the largest margins of any cultural group in the United States.

The majority of Christian voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump, and months into Trump’s second presidency, the majority of American Christians strongly support Trump’s seizure of totalitarian power.

Atheists and other non-Christian Americans are the ones most reliably holding the line against cruelty, corruption, and social chaos of fascism. Only 14 percent of American Christians are willing to identify themselves as liberals.

Faith Organizations in America Are Using Fascism to Gain Power

Last week, Donald Trump announced the creation of a new governmental bureau, headquartered in the White House itself, that is dedicated to protecting Christian power in America.

At a ceremony announcing the creating of the bureau, called the Religious Liberty Commission, Trump stated explicitly that the purpose of the government bureau is to blend the power of church and state, defying the First Amendment to the Constitution from the Bill of Rights. Trump gave a wandering speech, in which he acknowledged that this mixture of church and state defies all legal precedent in the United States. Trump said:

“You know, they work right out of the White House. They’ve never done that. That’s never been done before. No other president allowed that. I think, you know, they say separation, they say separation between church and state, they told me. I said, all right, let’s forget about that for one time. We said, really? Separation? I don’t know. Is that a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not sure, but whether there is separation or not, you guys are in the White House, where you should be, and you’re representing our country, and we’re bringing religion back to our country, and it’s a big deal… Today, as the American people turn to God and prayer, we continue a tradition that is older than our independence itself… and interestingly, I had none of them, had I had a rigged election, had the election not been rigged, I would have been out of here. I would have been gone. The radical left would have said, we got rid of him, finally. But no, now they have me for another four years. We talk about that… and we’re going to always bring God with us. We’re going to bring God to those celebrations. We’re not going to forget about God… We rejoice that God answered those prayers, and I think God answered other prayers, because he has put in an Administration to run this country that is going to make you proud again. It’s going make you believe and believe more again. Just a hundred days, we are respected all over the world. Every leader is calling and wants to have a meeting, appointments.”

“We’re not going to forget about God,” Donald Trump said. This is not the voice of a person who is suffering from what Pope Leo XIV called “a lack of faith”. Donald Trump is proposing the opposite of a lack of faith. Trump is proposing that the US federal government “make you believe”, that it force the faith of Christianity on the American people whether they like it or not.

Donald Trump was talking to the members of the Religious Liberty Commission, who are:

Dan Patrick, chair of the Commission

Dan Patrick is Lieutenant Governor of Texas. As Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick has declared that members of the Democratic Party must be fought against because Democrats are either controlled by demons (“powers and principalities”) or are demons themselves. Patrick said:

“Scripture says the horse is made ready for battle but the victory is the lord’s, but we have to be ready for battle. We have to be ready for the fight, because we are not in a fight any longer of Republicans and Democrats of the old days. We are in a fight of lightness and darkness. We are in a fight of powers and principalities.”

Dan Patrick has stated that the United States was created by the Christian god, not by any human political leaders. Patrick declares that the Christian god wrote the Constitution.

The Constitution itself contradicts that claim. It declares that it was written by the people of the United States, and that the Constitution was established by people. The first words of the Constitution are:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

There is no mention of any god or spirit or ghost or anything other supernatural in the Constitution, and that’s by design. The only time the Constitution mentions religion, it is in order to separate government from religion. Dan Patrick either doesn’t understand that, or is willingly exploiting the ignorance of religious Americans about this aspect of American history and law.

Ben Carson

Ben Carson is not a religious leader, but is a politician, a former Trump cabinet member who has embraced Christian Nationalism.

Ryan T. Anderson

Ryan T. Anderson is a former staff member of the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025, a document that urges Donald Trump to replace constitutional freedoms with the freedom to obey. Ryan has preached against sexual freedom, decries “the widespread acceptance of contraception”, and argues that LGBTQ marriages must be broken up, in order to comply with Christian beliefs. That’s not, “religious liberty”, but Christian Nationalists use the phrase “religious liberty” as a euphemism for Christian power.

Robert Barron

Robert Barron is a Catholic bishop. He is a Christian Nationalist who claims that legal rights of people in the United States were not established by any government, but were established by and are subject to the arbitrary power of the Christian god. “It is exceptionally dangerous when we forget the principle that our rights come from God and not from a government,” Barron writes. Barron has embraced the totalitarian dictatorship of Donald Trump in order to promote this idea that the United States of America is the creation and property of the Christian god, and must submit to that god’s absolute power.

Carrie Prejean Boller

Carrie Prejean Boller is a former beauty pageant contestant who opposes legal equality for LGBTQ Americans. She is a former member of the advisory board for Women for Trump. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Boller paid children to go into public spaces without any mask to protect them from infection.

Timothy Dolan

Timothy Dolan is a Catholic archbishop. Dolan is an anti-LGBTQ activist who has argued that the marriages of LGBTQ Americans “imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage” and has stated that LGBTQ people do not have the right to engage in sexual relationships with each other. Dolan also coordinated with the Vatican to conceal $57 million dollars from legal courts so that the money could not be used to compensate children who had been raped by Catholic priests.

Franklin Graham

Franklin Graham inherited the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association from his father. He is a preacher who called upon the Christian god to physically attack President Barack Obama, and has claimed that Barack Obama collaborated with the “Spirit of AntiChrist”.

Eric Metaxas

Eric Metaxas is a radio talk show host, who says that recognizing the legal rights of transgender Americans is part of “a Satanic war” and claims that separation of church and state is “Satan’s will”.

Kelly Shackelford

Kelly Shackelford is the CEO of a legal firm that specializes in establishing legal precedents for overturning separation of church and state.

Paula White

Paula White is a Christian preacher who claims to have the power of prophecy. After Donald Trump lost the presidential election of 2020, she attempted to use magic chanting to call angels from Africa to fly over the Atlantic Ocean in order to use their supernatural abilities to overturn the election. White has argued that the American people are not capable of handling the responsibilities of ruling themselves in a democracy, which is why the Christian god should be allowed to take over the USA.

Meir Soloveichik

Meir Soloveichik is the only non-Christian member of Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. He is an orthodox Jewish rabbi who has spoken against separation of church and state.

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These American religious leaders (well, only some of them are actual religious leaders) did not challenge Donald Trump at this ceremony. They were happy to stand side by side with America’s fascist dictator, endorsing his government, in exchange for political power. Instead of criticizing the sadistic crimes and abuses of Donald Trump, they shook his hand and smiled.

Their faith led them to embrace Donald Trump’s crimes, to embrace his fascism.

These religious leaders show that lack of faith is not the problem.

An excess of faith is the problem.

“The loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society” are problems that result of the lack of healthy skepticism, the lack of critical questions, the lack of independent thinking, and the lack of resistance to people and institutions that claim arbitrary authority.

If he were to approach his new job as Pope Leo XIV with an attitude of honesty and humility, Robert Prevost would focus on the role of Christian Nationalist ideology in promoting the cruelty of fascism. He would preach about how faith can create a vulnerability to exploitation by authoritarian regimes.

For the new Catholic Pope to use this historical moment to blame atheists for the problems created by Christian Nationalists is beyond disappointing. It’s despicable.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio uses Easter to promote the idea that Jesus is king over the entire world, as a matter of official US State Department policy.

In Texas, teams of Christian Nationalists from a group called My God Votes have been laying hands on each other to magically protect the Texas state legislature building from attacks by demons and other spirits.

The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case where the state government of Oklahoma is seeking to provide taxpayer funding for religious schools with the explicit mission of indoctrinating children in Catholic theology and rituals.

Amidst all this rampant Christian Nationalism, a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute finds that non-Christian Americans provide the strongest opposition to Donald Trump’s dictatorship, while the majority of American Christians want to see Donald Trump seize even more power.

Donald Trump has announced that he will disobey a unanimous ruling by the US Supreme Court, placing himself in the position of a totalitarian dictator above the law. Trump also has declared plans to begin sending American citizens to massive concentration camps in El Salvador, each one capable of holding tens of thousands of people as prisoners.

As this new wave of fascist crackdowns in the United States begins, We Are Higher Ed is sharing statistics indicating that thousands of foreign students are having their visas revoked. These nonviolent, non-criminal students are being declared illegal aliens even though they entered and remained in the United States legally.

The Christian Nationalists in charge of the White House are deporting and detaining large numbers of university students at the same time that billions of dollars in funding for colleges and universities is being withdrawn. The goal is nothing less than the destruction of higher education in the United States.

Christian Nationalists know that education is negatively correlated with church attendance, and Christian Nationalist preachers make money by getting people into the pews. With fewer foreign students paying tuition at American universities, the higher education system in the United States cannot survive, and that’s just how Christian Nationalists want it.

Christian Nationalism aims for a less knowledgeable, more gullible American public dependent on churches after the destruction of education and other government services.

Christian Nationalist fascism has begun in earnest.

This week’s episode of Stop Christian Nationalism is a bit different. For the first time, I’m having a guest on the podcast: F.G. Fitzer, who is the author of a new book that confronts Christian Nationalism in an unusual way: By offering a new version of the Christian Bible. The book is called The Demonic Bible: Book of Genesis, and it’s available through Lulu and Amazon, as well as on the Demonic Bible web site as an ebook.

A transcript of our conversation is below.

Clifford Cook:

Thanks for talking with me. I’m wondering about your choice to write The Demonic Bible. It’s combining two ideas, demons and the Christian Bible, that most people don’t think are compatible. Why did you decide to write this book?

F.G. Fitzer: 

Hm. Well, I do realize that The Demonic Bible is an unorthodox book, but let's stop and just think about that word for a minute, okay? Unorthodox. What does that word actually mean? It doesn't mean that something is wrong, or harmful. Something is unorthodox if it fails to comply with the ideological expectations of people in power.  The word unorthodox comes from Christianity four hundred years ago, when Christian kingdoms around the world were using bloody military violence to force their religious beliefs on people. It was used to refer to someone who did not have the proper opinions. You know, I think we need to ask who has the power to tell other people that their opinions are proper or improper. How did they get that power?

Clifford Cook:

So, you wrote The Demonic Bible to challenge Christian models of power. What makes that an important project?

F.G. Fitzer:

Look at what is happening to the United States of America right now. The country is in chaos. The USA has never been a perfect secular democracy, but from the beginning, that is what it was designed to be, and the secular nature of American democracy is an important part of what has kept the country from falling backwards into Christian dictatorship, which is what the Christian kingdoms that dominated the world before American independence were really all about. Donald Trump and his followers are trying to drag the whole world, not just America, back into the dark days of religious totalitarianism.

Clifford Cook:

How can you deal with the issues of Christian totalitarianism in history, and as they are returning through the Christian Nationalism of Donald Trump, by writing a new version of the Bible? The Bible was written before all of that history. Why bring up this ancient book again?

F.G. Fitzer: 

I would love nothing more than to leave the Bible in the past. Christian Nationalists make that impossible. They are trying to make the Christian Bible into the law of the land in the United States, and around the world. We need to deal with that, by taking their fundamental document, the Bible, and giving it a level of scrutiny. People excuse the actions of Christians in power by saying that the Christian religion is a force for good in society. The Demonic Bible does not take that for granted. It looks at the Christian Bible, line by line, book by book, and then examines the connection between Christian scripture and present day Christian abuses of power.

Clifford Cook:

What did you find when you examined the Bible in this way?

F.G. Fitzer: 

For one thing, you can see that Christian Nationalism takes its obsession with nationalism and political domination straight from the Bible. Some people say that Christian Nationalism isn’t biblical, but right from the start, in the Book of Genesis, there is an emphasis on dividing people according to national groups, with the story of the Tower of Babel, for example. Violent nationalism is also found in the New Testament, with its promises of a bloody global religious war to establish absolute Christian dominion.

Clifford Cook:

Okay, but why make this a demonic Bible, though? Why not call it The Atheist Bible?

F.G. Fitzer:

I did not want to launch an attack on Christianity from the outside. I wanted to explore Christianity from the inside, but from the perspective of a political dissident. That is what a demon is. Of course, demons are not real. They are mythical creatures. However, the voice of the demon is a useful tool in exploring the problems with Christian politics from within the Christian worldview.

Clifford Cook:

So, how did you find the voice of the demon within Christianity, then?

F.G. Fitzer:

That was simple. I realized that the essence of the Christian Bible is that it makes declarations of reality without allowing any space for questions. Demons are rebels against the divine monarchy of the Bible. Demons are creatures who live within questions. So, I made the voice of the demon a questioning voice. Instead of attacking, the demon merely questions. The conventional interpretation of the Bible falls apart from there.

Clifford Cook:

You represented the conversation between the demon and the angel in The Demonic Bible as a cartoon. Why did you do that?

F.G. Fitzer:

The cartoon format makes The Demonic Bible the most easy to read version of the Bible there is. The traditional Christian Bible is all about the Word. Christians say that the Bible is The Greatest Story Ever Told, but the truth is that the Bible is very difficult to read. It’s full of unstated presumptions, repetitions, inconsistencies, and profoundly out of date cultural references. Worst of all, however, is that the Christian Bible is dense. It’s weird, because the book is full of magic, but it puts most readers to sleep.

Clifford Cook:

How does a cartoon format for The Demonic Bible remedy that?

F.G. Fitzer:

The cartoon format promotes a conversational approach to the text. Instead of one voice going on and on and on, there are two voices, and they are interacting with each other. Furthermore, the demon and the angel both represent the practical, real world view of people living today. They ask the questions that Christian preachers never want to deal with, and talk about the issues that churches just won’t touch. 

Clifford Cook:

Won’t making the Christian Bible accessible to readers just strengthen the position of Christian Nationalists?

F.G. Fitzer:

It’s possible, but I don’t think so. Most people who leave Christianity do so because they begin to read the Bible for themselves, and ask questions about it. A sincere question is always a challenge to faith. That’s why I believe that The Demonic Bible will undermine Christian Nationalism. Not every Christian who reads The Demonic Bible will leave Christianity, but those who remain within Christianity will shift to a more demonic Christianity.

Clifford Cook:

Demonic Christianity? That’s an interesting concept. This is a long-term project though. At present, only the first book of The Demonic Bible is available. When will the next book come out?

F.G. Fitzer:

The next book in the Demonic Bible will be out later this year, before the autumn of 2025. That book will cover the Book of Revelation. I think it’s important for critical readers of the Christian Bible to understand both the beginning and the end of Christian scripture before they read the middle, because the beginning and the end together reveal the ideological mission of Christianity. The narrative end of Christianity in the Book of Revelation is essential to an interpretation of the rest of the Bible, but most Christian readers skip over Revelation.

Clifford Cook:

Thank you for talking with me about this fascinating project. I look forward to seeing where you take it next.

Find out more about the Demonic Bible at DemonicBible.com

A few weeks ago, we reported on the demand from Christian Nationalist Andrew Isker that when Christian dominion is established over the United States, Jews must not be allowed to persist within the country.

Now, Isker is promoting the conspiracy theory that airport security scanners have secret “gay beams” in them that allow Jews hiding behind walls to steal adrenochrome from travelers and transform them into flaming homosexuals.

If you wonder how so many Christians can continue to support Donald Trump, here’s your answer: They’re being trained to accept all manner of nonsense in the name of faith.