This week's issue of The New Yorker magazine, features as report by Eliza Griswold on “How Election Subversion Went Mainstream in Pennsylvania.” Then, Editor David Remnick interviewed Griswold, on an important, but under reported dimension of this: “How Christian Nationalism Has Taken Hold in Pennsylvania” (Scroll down to find this interview and the full transcript of New Yorker Radio Hour November 4, 2022. )
David Remnick: Our contributor, Eliza Griswold, has been reporting from Pennsylvania on the political trends affecting the midterms. There's the senate race between Mehmet Oz, Dr. Oz, and a lieutenant Governor John Federman, who suffered a stroke this year that's impacted his campaign, particularly after he struggled in a recent debate. There's also something else going on in Pennsylvania, an energized movement of Christian nationalists aiming for power in state government. Those nationalists see God, not the will of voters, as the source of authority in government. Our writer, Eliza Griswold, says the movement is truly significant at the state level where it can put far-right candidates into the legislature.
Eliza, this is not your old-school Christian right that we used to talk about, the era of Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell. Is it?
Eliza Griswold: Not at all, David. This is something really different. This isn't about injecting Christian values into society. This is about overthrowing secular democracy.
David Remnick: In what sense?
Eliza Griswold: In the sense that what we see is people who believe that a God-ordained government requires that they take over the institutions of democracy. It's actually thinking called dominionism that's growing very popular in some circles in Christianity.
Eliza Griswold: What Mastriano means as freedom is freedom for a tiny minority. He doesn't mean when he talks about persecution or persecution by the media or religious freedom. He isn't talking about diverse freedoms. He's talking about freedom for Christians like him.
David Remnick: Now Eliza, my understanding of the politics of the midterm elections revolves around inflation, around basic economic issues, around crime, around whether you like Joe Biden or not, or whether you think he's too old to be president and all kinds of, what's usually called kitchen table issues. This is something quite different. Is it really an animating part of the governor's race in Pennsylvania?
Eliza Griswold: It is an animating factor because it fuels-- In Pennsylvania, what's happened as has happened elsewhere is that it fuels the idea of basically stop this deal. The idea that God gave this Christian nation also gives people the obligation to overthrow what they say is illegitimate governments. That's really how these two movements have fused between Christian nationalists who claim the moral authority of God and election deniers who are looking for a base who will support them in their claims that 2020 was fraudulent and we have to massively change voting for the future.
David Remnick: ... Abby Abildness. Can you tell us who she is?
Eliza Griswold: Abby Abildness calls herself an apostle in this movement to literally capture state legislatures and bring America back to an imagined past when it was a Christian nation. She has risen to prominence as a leader of these Jericho marches, which really sprang up and got powerful in the wake of the 2020 election and in many ways became a precursor to what we saw on January 6th.
Eliza Griswold: The idea at the core of them is that the state capital, the seat of secular government is evil, as evil as the city of Jericho was in the Bible. These guys are calling on God to knock down the seat of secular government so that they can inspired by God come in and take it over by walking seven times around the capital.
Eliza Griswold: Abby Abildness really brings together a lot of these different elements, because on one hand she is an apostle in this movement we've been talking about. On the other. She helps lead the Biblical Prayer Caucus in Pennsylvania. These prayer caucuses are across the country. They are the way that over the past decade, we have seen the far right take over state legislatures by infusing these different kinds of biblical bills like gay people can't adopt children. Constitutional bans on abortion, that's really associated with this group. It's growing and it's powerful and it is a way that the old-school Christian right has become something very new and far more muscular.
For more on Dominionism and other subjects mentioned above, see my recent post:
Democracy is on the Ballot -- Mostly Because Dominionism is on the Ballot