Peter Montgomery on the Religious Right and Christian Nationalism

What is the religious right, and how has it shaped American politics over the last 50 years?

In this episode of Faithful Politics, we sit down with Peter Montgomery to break down the religious right and its influence on American politics.
We trace the movement from its modern roots in the late 1970s through figures like Jerry Falwell and the rise of organized political infrastructure. From legal battles over church-state separation to coordinated efforts in the courts, Peter explains how conservative Christian activism became a sustained political force.

We also explore the difference between the religious right as a movement and Christian nationalism as an ideology, including how it shapes policy, culture, and debates around religious liberty, education, and LGBTQ rights. Organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom and initiatives like Project 2025 are part of that broader strategy.

Finally, we talk about what it looks like to engage these issues without losing perspective, and why understanding the people behind the movement matters as much as understanding the movement itself.

Right Wing Watch: https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch

Guest Bio
Peter Montgomery is the Research Director at People For the American Way and a senior analyst for Right Wing Watch. He has spent more than two decades studying the religious right, its political strategies, and its influence on American law and culture. His work has been featured in major publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Montgomery is widely recognized for his expertise on the intersection of religion and politics in the United States.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:16

You know, it's the biggest of the legal groups in the religious right. There's multiple Liberty Council, ACLJ, First Liberty Institute. So there's a number of groups that focus on litigation, but the ADF is really the big player in this. And they have helped lead the fight to redefine First Amendment jurisprudence. And so it goes hand in hand with the success of the broader right-wing movement to sort of take ideological domination of the federal courts, the Federalist Society, the decades-long effort to push a more conservative ideology through the law schools and into the courts. And then ADF has taken advantage of that shift to help engineer the abandonment really of a lot of decades of precedent on separation of church and state and the establishment clause to really redefine what religious liberty means.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? Hey, Will. Hey, I'm I'm doing well. He threw me off. He just said, Hey, Will.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Sorry, I just said, hey, how's it going? Well, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

There's like there's like an open show rhythm. And normally it's like I know, I threw you off, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I threw you off.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Anyways, let's forget all that. Today, our guest is Peter Montgomery. He's the research director at People Four, the organization that runs Right Wing Watch. He studied the religious right movement and its right wing political allies for more than two decades and has written extensively about a wide range of issues to include marriage equality, religious liberty, and other conflicts at the intersection of wait for it, faith in politics. He's been cited as an expert in national publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and a whole bunch of others. And we're just so glad to finally have a chance to talk with you. So welcome to the show, Peter.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Thanks. I'm really appreciated the chance to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah. Um, so I I I I just want to start off first by by maybe just getting like a bit of an origin story because like your your field, the things that you do, the videos and the amount of like I don't even know like what to call it. We'll just call it the religious right or right wing material for the past couple years. Like, like, was there a period in your in your early life where you're like, you know what seems like would be a really fun job is is to track the the religious right? So I'm like like how how did you get into this work?

SPEAKER_03 2:43

It's interesting. You know, I sort of fell into it slowly. You know, I was a freshman in college when Ronald Reagan was elected. And that was really the emergence of the modern religious right as a political force. That was the election in which Jerry Falwell and the moral majority really first flexed their muscles, defeated a bunch of Democratic senators, helped put Ronald Reagan in office. And in response to that, that was also the year that Norman Lear founded People for the American Way, seeing the uh rhetoric coming out of those politicized televangelists basically saying you couldn't be a good American unless you were the right kind of Christian, and you couldn't be a good Christian if you didn't share their politics. And he thought that was a dangerous message and started the organization to to counter that. I was a freshman in college, I'd been a religious kid, I'd spent my teen years on the Bible quiz team at my church in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. But Bible quizzers had liberal politics and so so I I f I followed I followed the kind of origins of People for the American Way. I spent a number of years working in a different nonprofit, good government group called Common Caes. And then I found myself at People for the American Way many years ago, and I've been there ever since.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

That's really cool. I appreciate hearing that story. It's always cool to hear people's origin stories, how they kind of got to where they're going, because it's never a straight line. It's always a zigzag, and it's always really fascinating to hear people's story. And uh, you know, it it's interesting because I I grew up as a Bible quizzer as well. At least I did Bible quiz in the church that I was at. I wasn't very good at it, though. I didn't like going to it. And I always argue with my mom and she always made me go, and I really didn't want to do it. So anyway, but I did learn something about the Bible, which I appreciated. And, you know, obviously growing up, I wouldn't have thought of myself, I wouldn't have thought of myself as right-winged. I hadn't even heard of that term growing up. I just kind of thought myself as correct. You know, you have uh right wing, left wing. I'm just, I'm just the wing. I don't know why it's I'm the center. This is, I'm correct. And and yet things like religious right, right, Christian right, and even Christian nationalism, right, these things become interchangeable in people's minds. And I think that might muddy the waters some. I I would love for you, how do you distinguish these terms? And where do you think the public gets the conversation confused when we're thinking about someone who's conservative, religious right, Christian right versus something like Christian nationalism, which seems maybe, I don't know, different. What do you think?

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Yeah, I would say that religious right and Christian right are pretty interchangeable. I think of them as referring to political movement, a polit a political movement that in the you know modern era started in the late 70s, and is really a movement designed to get conservative Christians involved in politics on behalf of you know politically conservative politicians and candidates. And so that so that I political movement I would think of as the religious right and the Christian right. And you know, there's a whole ton of organizations and infrastructure that's a part of that. Christian nationalism, I think of as political ideology, that there's clearly some overlap, but not everybody who's conservative Christian is a Christian nationalist, obviously. And, you know, sociologists and academics, some of the people you've had on your show, kind of have definitions of Christian nationalism that, you know, based on how people respond to questions like, you know, should the Congress declare America an officially Christian nation? But I sort of informally think of Christian nationalism as the belief that this country was founded by and for Christians, and that Christians should have a privileged place in our culture and our public policy. Robbie Jones, who I know Robert Jones, who you've had on your show, talks about it as the belief that this is a promised land for white European Christians. And I think that's um, you know, those are some ways people get at the difference between just being a conservative Christian and being a Christian nationalist. And I think, you know, with this administration, we are seeing the latter, you know, kind of being pushed forward more aggressively.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, I I really appreciate that, that explanation. And you know what's what's interesting, just kind of as a side, when it comes to Christian nationalism, last time we we spoke to Andrew Whitehead and Sam Perry, who are probably known as, you know, like the foremost experts on Christian nationalism, but they conducted this study to kind of codify like what it looks like, the contours of it, you know, and it's a framework, you know, that essentially tries to do exactly what you said, you know, try to make America more, more Christian. And and one of the things that they said in in the last in our last interview with them was, you know, it's probably been the most like studied sociological phenomenon like since since their their uh results came out. And every other study has just confirmed, you know, kind of like their initial their initial findings, you know, to include like the PRI study, right? Because they have their own sort of like matrix for how to how to measure Christian nationalism. But but you know, I I I am I am curious though more about the religious right and kind of like the importance of their presence in modern day politics. Because, you know, like like we all see it today. Anybody that you know watches this show understands religious religious overtones, Christian overtones heavily influenced January 6th. But that's not the first time they've ever really gotten into politics, like Christians as a whole. Like, could could you maybe just give us like like why are Christians so political?

SPEAKER_03 8:38

Huh. Well, that's that's a big question, right? I mean Christianity is you know, gives people uh uh a grounding for their belief in how the world works. It gives people a grounding in a particular worldview, you know, Christians I mean Christians sort of view that they have a duty to be salt and light in the world, and that has motivated people from abolitionists to all kinds of uh social justice activism. So the Christian right as a modern movement that we think about, uh, you know, it all I mean, there's also, you know, uh people have been involved using Christianity for what I would consider nefarious purposes too, right? To justify slavery, to justify Jim Crow and all kinds of things. And so this interplay between faith and politics has gone back a long time before the sort of emergence of the modern religious right as a political force. But I think that you know, the backlash against increasing religious pluralism in the United States, the backlash against feminism, against Supreme Court rulings on church state separation, against school desegregation, and efforts made to enforce that all you know contributed to this sense of grievance among white conservative evangelicals who sort of were used to white Christian being the accepted default for American culture and politics. And, you know, all that all that uh resentment was carefully cultivated and channeled by some political strategists, and that sort of brought us the Christian right movement, which has had you know a number of different phases. I'd say that, you know, in in Jerry Falwell and the moral majority were kind of at the start, and then Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed started the Christian coalition at the beginning of the 1990s with an explicit goal of taking working control of the Republican Party in a decade. And I would say that they, you know, effectively accomplished that. And then the Christian coalition itself faded as an organization, but the broader movement, you know, has a has a deep, wide infrastructure. And so it's not going anywhere. Over the years, I have lost track of how many times some political reporter responds to some democratic victory by announcing that the religious right is dead as a political force. And I have often pushed back on those, you know, saying that they're wrong and they just they fail to grapple with just the extent of the infrastructure that is that is in place and that's been invested in.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

I'm I'm I'm sure you you would probably agree with us that there needs to be more religious reporters probably out there that that can also help. But you know, uh just just a follow-up question to that. I I'd love for you just to kind of talk about the origins of the religious right. Because you you did mention a little about Falwell, you know, some others, you know, there's like Paul Weirick and kind of that whole ban of misfits. Like, could you could you just like give us give us a bit of a of a history lesson? Because I think that's important because it it'll probably, you know, set the stage and the context for some of our other conversations we'll have.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

Yeah, I think, you know, you can choose different time periods to start, but we can start with Jerry Farwell and Brown versus Board of Education. Farwell at the time, you know, was was preaching at his at his Baptist church and you know, preached that that was a sign that the Supreme Court justices were not paying attention to the the word of God. And so he just explicitly preached against that. And that was a you know broadly shared view among white conservative Christians across the South. There was all kinds of resistance, you know, closing of public schools in some places, the opening of white Christian academies to get around desegregation. And then if you go forward a little bit, then you have a time when the IRS started to enforce that by going after schools' tax exempt status if they had racially uh discriminatory policies in place as a matter of policy to say that that's not legitimate. And that led us to the case against the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University. And that lawsuit by the IRS, by the federal government, really alarmed a lot of conservative evangelical leaders who saw that as a legitimate intrusion by the government into religious institutions telling them how they could operate. And so that that anger was really a part of what was mobilized by Paul Weirich, who was, who was trying to build, trying to get more conservative Christians involved in politics because he saw them as sort of a sleeping giant. You know, many evangelicals didn't vote, sort of had some of them had sort of had a theology of staying away from politics because they saw it as a little bit dirty and of the world. And he really set out to change that. And they certainly have been successful at changing that. You know, there were other things too that that's the Supreme Court rulings upholding separation of church and state, Bible reading in public school, teacher-led prayer in public school, those kind of rulings also you know fed into this uh sense of grievance and and you know, play into the religious persecution rhetoric that has always been at the core of what the religious right has mobilized around and and continues today.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

The idea of religious persecution, right? That somehow like the government is after Christians, trying to make Christians less they're under attack, they kind of have Christians have like a target on them, that kind of idea. Is that what you mean?

SPEAKER_03 14:38

That they were Yeah, and that has been really a part of the core of the religious right organizing strategy from the beginning, you know, to say that made people feel persecuted. Made people feel persecuted to say, you know, the culture the culture has become hostile to Christianity, the government is hostile to Christianity, you know, interpreting things that uphold the separation of church and state in a religiously pluralistic country, interpreting that as an attack on Christianity, an attack on faith. You know, a lot of religious right leaders have been very, you know, so they they come into politics and you can be expected to be criticized for by people who disagree with your either your agenda or your political goals or your tactics. And that's you know to be expected. But you know, they're very good at sort of turning any of that criticism into an attack on on their faith or their religious liberty or Christianity itself. And that has, you know, it's effective at stirring up their base and and raising money. And so that kind of persecution rhetoric continues today. And it it was, it sort of overlaps with the kind of uh racial grievance rhetoric, the white grievance rhetoric that uh Donald Trump used to have ride into office, this idea that white Christian men are somehow the most discriminated against people in the country. You know, part of the attack on DEI and and efforts to you know broaden opportunity in this country, it's all sort of tied up together in that in that politics of grievance, which has really been a major motivating factor on the right.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

And so that idea that they're taking like they're trying to create these these grievances, I don't know, create them, but maybe amplify them, amplify these grievances, look at things that people might be like, hey, this is kind of something that will be applied across uh the board, but because it's being applied to so we're getting criticism, it's very easy to take that and turn it into something where they're actually attacking us and we turn it around on them, and then and then essentially we've we've we've won at that point. At this point, we can we can now say, hey, you here's the story. We're being persecuted. If we don't, if you don't help us, this is gonna happen to you. And so we kind of get this this story that drives the movement, right? And and and this is one one idea of persecution, right, that's driving this movement. And you know, I'm thinking of personalities that were there at the beginning, right, or always there that rise up amongst us, but it isn't just personalities, right? It's the narrative, it's the story and the institutions behind it. What what other things besides like this idea of Christian persecution, what kind of narratives have been pushed forward from like in in your mind from the religious right that have that have either been like problematic, untrue, or yeah, you just seem like this is something people should be aware of?

SPEAKER_03 17:57

I would say that sort of a variation on the persecution rhetoric is this idea of it goes back to again the idea that this country was founded by and for Christians, and you know, that was always accepted that this was a Christian nation and that somehow that has been taken away. That this gets to the sort of need to take back America, that you know, when we had changes in our immigration laws in the 1960s, it began a process of the country becoming more diverse religiously. Obviously, the country always had a degree of religious diversity, even back in the colonial era, but the kind of increasing pluralism, the separation of church and state, some of which was, I think, advanced to accommodate that increasing religious pluralism and to understand that religious freedom has to apply to everyone and not just to Christians in this country. I think all that was is really, you know, part of what a lot of us see as a kind of fundamentally American principle, a fundamentally American thing. But for some folks, it was fundamentally not American because their idea of American is is intrinsically tied up with you know being a real American is being a Christian, and that the identity of America as a nation is tied up with Christianity. And so this it's a little bit different from the legal persecution rhetoric, but this idea that this was our country and it has been taken away from us and we need to take it back. And then that gets so that gets applied to secularists and the courts that upheld church-state separation, it gets applied to people of other faiths, it gets applied to, you know, feminists and gay people and others who are all part of, you know, uh what are seen as moved away from some idealized uh Christian past where we sort of all supposedly all had this agreement about the Bible and about, you know, in God we trust.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

You know, because of of writers like you know, Catherine Stewart and Nelson, so many others, we know that that the religious right and maybe Christian nationalism as a whole is is really well funded. Like there's like an entire network, right? And and and there's also organizations that kind of help with with building that narrative that Josh had just talked about. Groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Council for National Policy. I'm sure there's probably a thousand others I'm I'm forgetting, but but like can you talk about sort of the role that these organizations play? And maybe, you know, if there's one you want to focus on, just sort of like help us help us better understand like what is it that they're actually doing that we can feel as you know, just average Americans.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Yeah, it's uh you're right. There's a huge infrastructure, it's legal groups, it's political groups, it's but let's start with the Lions defending freedom, because you mentioned them. You know, it's the biggest of the legal groups in the religious right. There's multiple Liberty Council, ACLJ, First Liberty Institute. So there's a number of groups that focus on litigation, but the ADF is really the big player in this. And they have helped lead the fight to redefine First Amendment jurisprudence. And so it goes hand in hand with the success of the broader right-wing movement to sort of take ideological domination of the federal courts, the Federalist Society, the you know, decades-long effort to push more conservative ideology through the law schools and into the courts. And then ADF has taken advantage of that shift to help engineer the abandonment really of a lot of decades of precedent on separation of church and state and the establishment clause to really redefine what religious liberty means. And to say that, you know, to open the door to direct taxpayer funding for religious education, for example, or to say that for profit. Corporations can claim exemption from generally applicable laws by claiming religious belief. And so ADF has really broadened, they've provided the legal muscle to brought to change the way the courts look at the establishment clause at separation church and state. And that's really a way about building power for conservative Christian movements, about giving them access to government funds. So I would say that that's that's one really consequential shift that we've seen. And in addition to the First Amendment stuff, ADF has also, that was also driving force behind the legal strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade. They would like to do the same thing for O'Burgerfell and reverse marriage equality. They have a they're also emblematic of this very long-term strategic vision of the right. They talk about their goals as generational wins. That that and for them, they were talking about Roe v. Wade, you know, years before they actually overturned it as a as one of their generational goals. And so marriage is is on that list and and the sort of redefining of religious liberty is another. So I would say that's that's one of the big ones. And I know that you've had Kevin Roberts from the Heritage Foundation on. People don't tend to think of the Heritage Foundation as necessarily part of the religious right, because it's just this kind of big conservative think tank. But they've always had, quote, traditional values as part of their agenda. And under Roberts with Project 2025, the sort of Christian nationalist bent of the, you know, became clearer. You know, he I was always struck that in he wrote the introduction to the big Project 2025, you know, policy agenda book that that came out during the campaign. And in his in his introduction, one of the striking things he talked about was that, you know, freedom is not properly understood as the freedom to live your life how you want. It's the freedom to live your life as you should, as you ought, according to what the Bible teaches. And you know, that's not a surprising thing to maybe be taught in in a Sunday school, but to have that being argued as the basis for policy is pretty dramatic. And it's um it's one bit of evidence of kind of a big shift in the whole conservative movement over the last, I don't know, decade or two, away from this kind of libertarian, just get government out of the way, let us live our lives, to and aggressively know we're gonna use the power of government. We're gonna take that government and use it to enforce our ideology, to enforce the to require people to live according to our interpretation of the Bible. And so that that I think is is a big shift that has been engineered by lots of groups. So yeah, and and then I would say that one other kind of art of the infrastructure that's out there, you know, you've got you know policy groups and political groups like the Family Research Council. In the MAGA era, one of the things that has been different about the religious right is the sort of rise and prominence of these Pentecostal Dominionists who sort of come out, they're not part of the sort of Southern Baptist fundamentalist, you know, traditional wing of the religious right, but they've got a lot of influence with the with the Trump administration. Paula White has sort of ushered them into their, you know, into the inner circles in ways that they have not had before. And they so uh Paula White, from her perch at the White House with allied groups like Intercessors for America, there's an infrastructure there that is just serves as a sort of 24-7 PR channel from the White House through religious right pastors and organizations, including both the sort of Dominionist Pentecostal groups and the other uh more traditional religious right groups, who who have some pretty strikingly different theologies, but who set those aside to work on politics, the way uh evangelists and Catholics learned to set aside their theological differences, you know, to work together on opposing abortion and and uh marriage equality. So and these these sort of new institutions were created during the MAGA-era, the Center for American Renewal, which was Russ Votes think tank, the America First Policy Institute, which was another think tank basically started by and filled with former Trump officials that has like half his cabinet, his new cabinet came from some kind of affiliation with AFPI. And they promoted their the MAGA agenda as being a biblically grounded agenda. And so they kind of claim scriptural support for the MAGA agenda. So they have that they also promote this kind of Christian nationalism as part of the MAGA movement.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Yeah, I I totally see the infrastructure, I see the power behind it, I see the agenda, I see like all these organizations, right? So I used to, I mean, I would go, I remember the first time I was really starting to get curious with the constitution as an adult. And I was looking up online and Heritage Foundation, they came up, and I was a member of the Heritage Foundation for years. I think I still have a card as as close as 2025 or 2024 that I had just like doing the Heritage Foundation, just like renewing, right? You're in there. And I appreciated their stuff. And then Project 2025 came. There's a lot of criticism around it. And uh and I've become much since 2020, and we started this podcast, I'm much more critical of my conservative brethren, uh, brothers and sisters, and the way that we really I don't even know if those conservative and liberal labels make any sense. And we've talked, we've had some people on that have talked about that, and I've kind of got on a hobby horse of saying that we shouldn't be left or right, but I don't know how actually realistic that is. But when I'm hearing you talk, I I I can't help but think about this this idea that, you know, yes, I see this on the right, and yet it seems like the left has its own powerful donors, right? It has its own advocacy groups, it has legal organizations, media ecosystems, right? It's got all sorts of, you know, money behind it, fundraising behind it, and powerful people. And I guess my question is, what's the difference? Why single out the religious right? Is there something that they're doing in particular that is way more egregious than what we might see with equivalent on the left? Or is there anything equivalent on the left? That's kind of what I'm getting at. Like, what's the case for why this is particularly a problematic vis-a-vis other like uh similar efforts on the left, or so to speak?

SPEAKER_03 29:50

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. And it gets to, I don't think you did this, but but sometimes religious conservatives say that people like us, like me, who are critics of the religious rights political involvement, that somehow we're saying that they don't have a right to be in politics or to play in politics. And that's never the case. I would say that every American has the same right to get involved in politics, and that everybody has the right to bring their faith and their values to their political agenda and to make the case for what how their faith influences their politics. So I think that's that's all legitimate across the board. I think that, you know, people who are who who like me are concerned about the impact of the religious right are largely concerned about the end goals. You know, I I support civil rights, I support legal equality, I support reproductive choice. So so my concern has a lot to do with the end goals, and and it's not about their involvement in politics or their ability to be involved in politics. Then I also think that the kind of increasing increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism is more dangerous on a bigger, in a bigger way, in a cultural way, you know, to send this message and to use the government for government officials to send this message. That really to be a real American, you have to be a certain kind of Christian. And I think that's dangerous. And I think that's actually a pretty un-American ideology. So I think the more that that has kind of imbued the MAGA movement, and as the religious right has become, in my view, more aggressively Christian nationalist in recent years, it makes me more concerned about them. And and, you know, just from a practical matter, because I'm so concerned about their goals and the ways they're trying to shift our culture in the country, that I'm I am very concerned about how much money they have. And, you know, some of the some of the billionaire donors of the religious right, people like the Wilkes brothers in Texas and Tim Dunn in Texas, you know, are very clear about their aggressive Christian nationalist goals, and and which I think are really disturbing. And so it's it's not the problem, is not that there are funders or that there are organizations playing politics on the right as there are on the left. It's how they want to use their power. And I think, you know, what's dangerous too is that there's a there's a lopsided amount. There's there is no infrastructure on the religious left that is remotely equivalent to the infrastructure on the religious right. There's just nothing like it. You know, Christian media. Christian media is, I think, a really under understood force for conservative politics. It's, you know, Salem Radio and American Family Radio and and all the Christian TV networks, you know, are are are just tremendous engines for the promotion of of conservative politics and mega politics, particularly, often the idea that Trump is particularly anointed by God to lead the country, to save the country, to return the country to God, all of that. So the that is another whole, you know, institutional infrastructure that is, I think is not understood well enough by the political media or just how impactful that is. Sorry, I kind of rambled there. I hope, I hope I got to your question. You did, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Yeah. You know, I I don't think it would be a an incorrect statement to say that, you know, since the constitutional convention that there have been people that have wanted to have more religion, specifically Christianity, in our government up till today. And and you've been studying this stuff for for decades. I I'd love to just hear your thoughts about one, what are the ways in which maybe the intensity of that blending has changed over the years? So, you know, from Reagan to today, like how how have Christians, you know, really fought to either break down the wall of separation or you know, use the legal system in some new and creative way? And and second, if if you can remember, and I'll ask you again if you forget, like, well what are some things that have been normalized? Like, so the thing that would have shocked you in the 80s about the what the religion religious right is doing, you know, like what then has been so normalized now that we don't even talk about it?

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Yeah, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

I would say that one of the differences, in addition to sort of you know, making the most of their legal successes at redefining religious liberty and and undermining church state separation, and then moving forward with policies based on that to get public funds diverted from public schools to religious schools and things like that. I think that one of the other things that has really intensified since the earlier days is this notion of politics as spiritual warfare. And that also really has come about as the as the Pentecostal Dominionist movement has has become more in the center of the religious right and and with the Trump administration. And so just the amount of rhetoric around spiritual warfare, around political opponents as demonic. So it's not just that you think that Democrats are promoting the wrong policy agenda, it's that you think Democrats are agents of Satan. And, you know, that really changes how we live and work together. And, you know, it changes the idea of how politics works and how do you reach across the aisle or achieve compromise with people who you believe are agents of Satan. And, you know, that goes a little bit of hand in hand with the idea that Trump is anointed by God. And therefore, as Paula White has said explicitly, if you're opposing Trump, you're opposing God's move in the world. And the kind of identification of Trump specifically with God's anointing and God's will tied to the increasing use of spiritual warfare rhetoric, I think is really a major shift. And I think going along with that is the adoption pretty much across the religious right of the rhetoric of Seven Mountains, Dominionism. And that's, you know, the idea of Dominionism connected with the new apostolic reformation. You know, that these that the right kind of Christians are meant to and must take control over all the spheres of influence in society, government, media, education, religion, church, you know, those, all of that. And for the for the Pentecostal movement out of which that grew, that is tied to a very different view of the end times theology than the traditional religious right had. So the Pentecostal Dominionists don't believe in the rapture, and they think rapture theology is bad because it encourages Christians to not work so hard because they think, you know, God's going to come in and save the church at the end before things get really bad. And they teach instead that God's going to come back for a triumphant church. And so that really creates this imperative to take dominion, to take control. And it's also a very heady thing to offer individual Christians and activists, because then your political involvement is not just about, you know, getting the policies you want or pushing back on school board, you know, it's literally about helping to bring about the return of Christ, because Christ is not going to come back until the church has occupied and it's taken its rightful place. So that's a big shift. And the the rhetoric of the Seven Mountains is has been adopted pretty much now across the religious right, including by people who do not buy that end times theology, but it's kind of a lingua franca for getting people, for encouraging conservative Christians of all stripes to get more involved in politics. So I think that that's been a big change.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

You know, real fast, Josh has a question, but I just I wanted to I wanted to flex a little bit of vocabulary muscle because I've been reading a lot. So so I believe what what what you're talking about is post-millennial dispensationalism. Because Josh is normally the faithful host, and he knows all these fancy, you know, Bebby Tin quadrilateral, I don't know, like I'm the political guy, so whenever I can get a chance to say, hey, I know what that is, I'm just gonna chime in. Sorry, Josh.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Hey, no worries, no worries at all. No, I appreciate that. So when I found out about Donald Trump when I first um like in 2015, right? I was in Ohio, and I had only voted Republican in my whole life at that point. And I've only voted for one Democrat in my whole life, by the way. But that's not like whatever. That's not like some pride thing. I just it's just a statement of fact. I guess I say it to show like I really am like conservative. People think I'm not, but I am because I because I want to show with progressive, they think I'm not, and because I'm not MAGA. Anyway, so the though when the first time I heard of Donald Trump, I thought it was a joke, right? I thought, I thought everyone was kidding. I would look for his policy papers, they'd be like 30-second or 60-second YouTube videos. I'm trying to find a policy. It's like, I'm gonna remove all drugs from New Hampshire, no more drugs, they're gone. And that's all he's saying. That was his policy. And I'm like, this is the most absurd thing I've ever seen in my life. This is ridiculous. And then he keeps getting the primary, and then finally he gets he gets the position. And I'm like, I can't believe I'm gonna I'm gonna do this. Like, why am I gonna vote for this man? And yet I knew, okay, I'm gonna do it. And what what's the point I'm I'm I'm getting at? Well, Trump was not my first he's not my first choice. Right? He wasn't the choice that I would have for the poster boy for the religious right as the poster boy for religious freedom, right? And all these things, and I don't really think he is, but my question is, like, for me, he doesn't represent any of that stuff. Why do you why did they choose? What did religious right leaders see in Donald Trump from your perspective that meant they're gonna get behind this man, support him, and choose him, for lack of a better term.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

I think it was a route to power.

SPEAKER_03 40:58

You know, I think initially during that 2016 campaign, a lot of religious right leaders were deeply skeptical of him. A lot of them tried very hard to coalesce around Ted Cruz. There were a lot of efforts to get the the religious right to make Cruz the candidate because he was, you know, he was from the evangelical world. And there were a few outliers, you know, who embraced Trump early on. And because they saw him as the fighter, and they they felt, you know, again, they wanted someone to to fight against the secularists in the sense that Christians were being besieged and they needed someone who would be a bull in the China shop. And then once he won the nomination, then it really became, you know, about you know, a transactional power thing. And that was when, you know, where Trump and his his allies got together this huge meeting of Trump with with pastors and and religious right activists and leaders, and he basically offered them a deal. You put me in the White House, and I'll give you the Supreme Court of your dreams. I will give you the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, I will do away with the Johnson Amendment, I will make you more powerful than you have ever been. And that was the deal he offered. And there was an evangelical writer at the time whose name I I can't recall at the moment, but who said, you know, the church should not take the deal that Jesus rejected in the desert. But the religious right took that deal. And so they they set aside their qualms about Trump. You know, even after the infamous grab em tape came out, they were they were sort of committed at that point. And once he came through on his promise with the with the court, particularly with the Supreme Court, then they were even more committed to him. And so I think that's what it was. It was, it was not necessarily that they had some kind of newfound belief in his character or his morals or how cynically he was using his, you know, language of faith when he stumbled into it. It was it was about, you know, politics. You've got two candidates. This is a candidate who is offering us offering us power and is offering to fight the same, you know, he has the same enemies we do, basically. And that was that was, I think, the overriding impulse.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Yeah, there's a there's some really interesting polling. I I can't remember if it's like PRI or Baylor or something, but you know, that polled conservative Christians after the Hollywood, the Access Hollywood tape about like the importance of like morality in a president or something like that. And you know, like if when that poll was was was given like after the Clinton scandal, you know, it's like, oh man, like morality character, that is like number one, like hands down, no, no, no red lines, you know? And after the Hollywood tape, it's like, well, you know, may maybe it can, you know, we we can let a little bit of the character go. But you know, it's it's so funny. But you know, I'm I I'm curious, like, with all the years that you've been studying this this stuff, like it's like, is there any sort Sort of clear picture that kind of develops about where like this movement is going, you know. So like when I think about like like Project Blitz, right? Like this sort of orchestrated thing, put 10 commandments, license plate, all that other kind of stuff. Like what's happening today seems a lot like Project Blitz. And I'm and I'd love to just get your thoughts on like, is it Project Blitz like, you know, put 2.0, or is it, you know, it or is there sort of a bigger plan, so to speak?

SPEAKER_03 44:45

Well, I think this this is a good combination to the second half of your last question that I'm not sure I got to about, you know, things that have really intensified or things that maybe were once fringe and that they're now more at the center of the movement. And I think that also is a sign of where the movement's going. And so one shift I would say is around abortion. And in the late 80s, even as late as the 80s, there was pro-choice Republicans and pro-choice Republican groups and officials. And now it's virtually impossible to be pro-choice Republican. But more than that, we've seen an increasing embrace of, you know, more and more extreme bans. You know, so banning abortion without any exceptions for rape and incest, politicians saying yes, a 10-year-old who was raped by her father or her uncle should carry that child to term. And I think that was once really much of a fringe position that's now much less of a fringe position. I think the idea that it's okay and a good thing for the federal government to use taxpayer dollars and for uh federal officials to use their positions to basically proselytize to give money to religious education and proselytization. And, you know, we're seeing Pete Hagsath has got Doug Wilson coming in and leading worship service at the Pentagon. So I would say that, you know, just the successes in rolling back church state separation and kind of redefining the establishment clause have just emboldened constantly increasingly aggressive efforts to push that as far as possible in undermining church state separation. And and then so we have some positions that are still kind of on the fringe, but the way the sort of overturn window works, you've now created more space for them. So people like Doug Wilson, who spouse with like a really extreme positions of Christian nationalism, that non-Christians should not be allowed to hold public office, that non-Christians should not be allowed to worship publicly. I would say that that is not yet kind of a mainstream position, but it has not made him a persona non grata. It has not made people in the MAGA movement say, this guy who says women don't deserve the right to vote, and that the 19th Amendment should be repealed, that he's no longer somebody that we want to associate with. So I think, you know, that's a sign that the Overton window has really shifted far to the right. And I think unfortunately that's happened with regard to racism as well, that Trump's rhetoric around immigration kind of opened the door to, you know, overtly racist white nationalist figures who are now who have huge followings and platforms online. And so that that that rhetoric, the kind of you know, nativism tied to racism, uh, tied to anti-Semitism in many cases, is present in our politics to a degree that I think would have s you know stunned people even a decade or two ago.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah, I definitely, I definitely agree. And it makes me I'm thinking like, so obviously courts and judges had a big part to do with this. Um I'm I'm guessing, well, I know, but I'm I'm saying I'm guessing like in the sense like leading you to if there's more that you wanted to bring into that, like how the courts and how the judges um actually contributed contributed to this movement status. But I want to pay particular attention in this question to anti-LGBTQ politics legislation that's trying to get passed, and and kind of how that that anti-LGBTQ politics, how how that works and functions within this broader movement, right? Because they're they're they're trying to get things before either before judges or get laws passed. What what is the ultimate goal in that you've seen in uh with the anti-LGBTQ politics? Is it anti-sodomy laws? Is it anti-blasphemy laws? Is it kicking all LGBT people, LGBTQ people out of the country? Is it live and let live? What what is this this function of this anti-LGBTQ politics and and how do the courts like what what's their part in this strategy?

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Well, that's a big question.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

So I would say that anti-LGBTQ politics is definitely one of the you know drivers of the movement. You know, they the success of the LGBT movement culturally in terms of just the amazing shift in public support for the rights of of gay people to basically live their lives and to have legal equality. You know, that's you know, huge, like two-thirds percentage of the public, you know, supports non-discrimination laws around sexual orientation. So I think partly because the religious right knew that they lost that battle. They kind of lost the the battle to demonize gay people. The more gay people were out and people got to know them and and have them in their families and have them in their communities. Yeah, there was more support for public equality. So that's why there's been such a huge focus on demonizing trans people, because that movement was much less further along. More people are are uncomfortable with it, trying to figure out what it means. And so the the religious right and the MAGA movement have really jumped on trans people as as a way to, I think, demonize the whole broader LGBTQ movement. I think the ultimate goal for a lot of these folks is to have the government enforcing what they see as traditional values, traditional sexual mores, traditional definitions of marriage. So they absolutely and clearly have stated their goal of overturning marriage equality. I think they are too smart politically to say publicly that they would like to also return us to the days when states criminalize people just for being gay. But there is talk about the fact that if you, you know, the same legal argument that was used to overturn Roe and that they hope will overturn Obergerfeld could also be used to overturn Lawrence and to return us to the days when states could make gay people criminals. And, you know, groups like FRC and ADF and all those groups filed amicus briefs back in 2003, which was not that long ago, defending the right of states to criminalize gay people. So I think as a as a gay man, as a married gay man, I am grateful for the progress that was made. And I do not accept, I do not take any of it as irreversible.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

You know, this is um my last question. We're we're almost at time, but I I I have to ask, like, how do you consume so much stuff and just like not lose your mind? Because I mean, I mean, like I have a little thing on my phone that shuts off show like social media at like 6 p.m. And like, and I have a truth social account too. I'm like, I'm the only person I think I know that has a true social account. So like, how do you do it, Peter? Help us.

SPEAKER_03 52:21

You know, it's funny, I have a lot of friends who say that who say, you have the worst job in the world. But I don't know, I think part of it is a little bit of a numbness that I've done it so long. You know, I've sat through I've been at so many religious right conferences, sat through so many speeches, watched so much that I I don't know. I I don't take it personally in some ways. On the other hand, in some ways it's all it's all very depressing in the same way that just reading the news about Trump and the latest law breaking and undermining of constitutional checks and balances is all is all depressing and despairing. And so I think that, you know, I I you know, this might sound simplistic, but I have a real spiritual practice of of gratitude, of, of being grateful for the things I do have in my life. And I I am a member of my church, I sing in my choir, I work to develop community in my neighborhood. My husband is a poet and I'm a lover of poetry, and so all those things are part of helping me stay grounded and human. And you know, I also over the years I always so saw it as a bit of a spiritual practice to go to religious right conferences and not just watch their speeches online, because I felt that it made it harder for me to demonize and simplif just simplify these opponents of mine as evil or as malevolent. Because I would sit around at the lunch table and I'd see that people, you know, were there because they were, you know, they were afraid that the country was coming unhinged and they were afraid of the kind of country that their kids or their grandkids were going to hear it. And so they they thought they were doing the right thing. And so, you know, I really disagreed with their their goals and their interpretation of what was going on. But, you know, being there in the room, hearing them, listening to them, it's I think it makes it harder to just do the simple demonization that is, you know, that is so much of our politics. So I think that's an aspect of it too. And and having grown up in the church, having grown up on a Bible quiz team also gives me that perspective that I know a lot of the people that I grew up to church with, you know, would be dismayed at the direction my life has taken. But I also know that there's a lot of good hearted people there.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

And so that that's part of it, is that uh no, I really like that. I mean, what I hear you saying is that um I I try to kind of practice the same thing I preach, where if I'm gonna get upset at people for demonizing the opposition, because it essentially starts with dehumanization, right? Which is they're not with me, they're not here, I don't have to worry about them and what they need and see them as actual humans with marriages and children and mortgages and all the things, right, that come with someone being a person. And if we can depersonalize them, then dehumanize them, then we can demonize them. And I think that if you can stop that, nip that in the bud, or or stop it on the way, that is a very wise thing to do. And I I appreciate you sharing that. And I think that that that's been similar to my story. Go ahead. There's something you want to share.

SPEAKER_03 55:45

I was just gonna say, and I would confess that I am not perfect at that, and it is hard sometimes. It's hard to not be so enraged at the news that but yeah, so it's it does feel like it's uh it's a spiritual discipline, something that you have to keep working at. And I have to, you know, I just have to say too, I one of the the emails that makes me a little crazy is it's like seeing the White House prayer team, which is one of the religious right groups that you know promotes the Trump agenda, put out an email today asking for people to, you know, playing off the assassination attempt and saying, you know, pray for an end to demonizing rhetoric. And I'm like, really? I mean, I I listen to every day, literally, these people calling me demons and political opponents demons. So if if I thought they believed it, I would welcome it. But unfortunately, sometimes it's hard to not be too cynical.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

Yes, I definitely understand that. And I just I I you know I've had a similar experience of just gonna going into, you know, spaces where I in other, you know, in other contexts, people say I don't belong. And yet going into these spaces and and and again, humanizing people that I would disagree with pretty significantly on policy issues, on theology issues, on sexuality issues, all sorts of things, and yet they can still be people, right? And they can still be people that I can care about for me, people made in the image of God that deserve at least, at least dignity, respect, and care as being a human at a bare minimum. Right. And so, and I think freedom of choice and conscience is part of that, those basic rights. And so, you know, I I I guess it's interesting because here I am, a straight Christian, traditional white male, and yet I find myself in pretty profound agreement with Peter Montgomery, or someone who is a white male, but gay, right, in a different place of life and political ideas, right, and and all that, and yet I can say, hey, you know what? I want Peter to be able to live his life. I want to be able to live my life, so why can't we figure out a way for us to be able to do that? That's kind of my attitude right now. I'm kind of tired of trying to make everyone do what I want to do or what I think is right because I'm not even sure if I'm doing what is right. I'm not even sure if I'm right half the time. So I'm not gonna try to put that on someone else. But thank you, Peter, for coming for the work that you've done, for coming and spending some time with us, man. It's been such a great conversation.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Absolutely. And to our viewers, guys, their guest today has been Peter Montgomery, research director of People for the American Way, the organization behind Right Wing Watch. Make sure that you go check out their website of Peter. Maybe I can give you a moment here to kind of how can people get involved with your work and connect with you.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

Yeah, people can follow Right Wing Watch on you know Blue Sky and X and Facebook. We can go to their website at RightwingWatch.org. We publish material every day. Uh, some of it's just uh little uh aggravating clips, some of it's in-depth analysis, um, all designed to sort of help us uh uh understand what's going on on the religious right and its allies.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

All right. Well, again, thank you so much. And and guys, go check out um uh Peter's organization, check out everything. We'll have links in the description. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations that right or left.