In an article published in Rolling Stone Thursday, The Christian Nationalist Machine Turning Hate Into Law, Tim Dickinson reports:
Jason Rapert has likened himself to an Old Testament seer, conveying hard truths on behalf of an angry God. On his broadcast Save the Nation, the 50-year-old preacher and former Arkansas state senator calls himself a “proud” Christian Nationalist, insisting: “I reject that being a Christian Nationalist is somehow unseemly or wrong.”
Long a shadowy force in American politics, Christian Nationalism is having a coming out party. The movement seeks a fusion of fundamentalist theology with American civic life. “They believe that this country was founded for Christians like them, generally natural-born citizens and white,” says Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Whitehead emphasizes that the danger of Christian Nationalism to democracy is that the movement “sees no room for compromise — their vision must be the one that comes to pass.”
Thanks to Rapert, the Christian Nationalist movement now commands a burgeoning political powerhouse, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. A first-of-its-kind organization in U.S. history, NACL advances “biblical” legislation in America’s statehouses. These bills are not mere stunts or messaging. They’re dark, freedom-limiting bills that, in some cases, have become law. . . .
The NACL logo is a crusader’s shield: red emblazoned with a white cross. Rapert says the red represents “the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross as a sacrifice for the salvation of all humanity.” The emblem, he says, is meant to evoke the biblical “shield of faith” that promises to “extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”
Yet far from the defensive posture suggested by its shield, NACL is unabashedly on the offense. Rapert brags that NACL is at “the forefront of the battles to end abortion in the individual states” and also seeks to drive queer Americans back into the closet. “For far too long,” Rapert insists, “we have allowed one political party in our nation to hold up Sodom and Gomorrah as a goal to be achieved rather than a sin to be shunned.”
Today, NACL has legislative members in 31 states, and touts a dozen “model laws” that its members can introduce “in legislative bodies around the country.” NACL previously made four of its model laws public — including the Texas-style anti-abortion bill and a bill to mandate the display of “In God We Trust” in public buildings.
Rapert would not share NACL’s current legislative lineup, though he promised the group’s website would soon be updated with its model bills “posted for public viewing.” Meantime, Rapert shared that NACL’s top priorities include the fight to block “radical LGBTQ indoctrination in our public schools” and to halt “radical transgender ideology and irreversible genital mutilation of minor children.” . . .
Bluestem grew curious whether anyone serving in the South Dakota or Minnesota state legislature took a leadership role in this group. On the group's website front page "About Us" section (scroll down), we didn't see anyone from South Dakota, but Number 31 under Our staff, governing board, and state chair leadership/NACL State Chairs is Alexandria Republican state representative Mary Franson.
Franson just took on her role at a meeting in Dallas, in mid-Novemer 2022, or so Rapert tells viewers in the December 5, 2022 episode of Save The Nation.
Readers can watch the meeting's banquet on Facebook here. A comment on the post notes that the Washington Post got it wrong in an article about a speech by James Robison, the president of the Christian group Life Outreach International, at that meeting of the NACL, Trump would act ‘like a little elementary schoolchild,’ former spiritual adviser says.
We've asked Representative for comment and will post it here should she return our query.
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Photo: A still from a recent video statement by Representative Mary Franson.
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