If we are to save democracy, we must understand how theocrats (whom I’m lumping in with oligarchs) began gaining power decades ago in America.
This is Part 8 of our journey in the series, “Democracy in Crisis: We’ve Been Headed Here for Decades.” A coming overthrow was predictable at least thirty years ago, unless we instituted a major course change. How could we have seen this and how can we save democracy?
To help understand this and save democracy, we must explore this second Christian nationalist group and a network that doesn’t get enough exposure. Jerry Falwell Sr typically gets the credit for founding the “Moral Majority,” but his co-founder Paul Weyrich created a dangerous network of organizations years before that not only helped make the “Moral Majority” successful but also have helped push fascist, theocratic ideas to this day.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | …
People often say that dark money is behind our problems. While true, in part, we must take a long, hard look at how some oligarchic leaders have weaponized Christianity and paved the way for Christian nationalism to take hold, including denying rights and equality to marginalized groups and women. Democracy can’t survive long under such conditions.
Please note that Christian nationalism is not Christianity. It’s a malignant movement that has adopted a political ideology that weaponizes religion as part of its identity, and it’s fascist (based on monopolistic power of big businesses).
This Energized Jerry Falwell Sr.
One of the biggest names to galvanize far-right evangelicals and other fundamentalists into political activism is the subject of the article “How Moral Majority Founder Jerry Falwell, Sr. Helped Pave the Way for Trumpism and the White Nationalist Horrors of the Trump Era.”
Born in Lynchburg, Virginia on August 11, 1933, Jerry Falwell, Sr. was very much a product of the Jim Crow era of the Deep South. The older Falwell was a rabid segregationist in the 1950s and 1960s, railing against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and insisting that Jim Crow laws were God’s will. Falwell, Sr. defended racism from a Christian fundamentalist perspective, and he wasn’t shy about expressing his disdain for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. the Board of Education.
During one of his 1950s sermons, titled “Segregation or Integration: Which?” Falwell, Sr. declared, “If Chief Justice (Earl) Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
Indeed, Falwell exploited racism and railed against the Civil Rights Movement to build a fundamentalist coalition of conservative Christians of all types. The Brown v. Board of Education ruling was the first step in paving the way for desegregation. It gave Falwell and the entire modern American conservative movement a shot in the arm, which had its rise in the 1950s. However, Falwell didn’t help found the “Moral Majority” until 1979.
What was the next motivator to building his fascist, theocratic movement? Another landmark Court ruling...
Green v. Connally & Loss of Tax-Exempt Status
Following the Brown ruling, segregationists began creating new private, White-only schools in response. Proliferated all over the South, these schools circumvented desegregation. Falwell did the same, establishing Lynchburg Christian Academy (now Liberty Christian Academy) in 1967. Again, whose “liberty”?
As a result of similar schools opening in Mississippi, a group of Black parents filed a lawsuit, Green v. Connally, in 1969. This suit sought to revoke the tax-exempt status of private schools that discriminated based on race. In 1971, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s 1970 decision to revoke tax-exempt statuses due to racial discrimination.
Falwell, Paul Weyrich & the Undermining of Democracy
The Green decision galvanized far-right Christians, especially evangelicals, like Falwell, but also Catholics, like Paul Weyrich. While Falwell tends to get the credit for the “Moral Majority,” it’s important to understand Paul Weyrich’s role and other contributions he made to our nearly dead democracy.
According to The Nation article “Agent of Intolerance,” Falwell met with Weyrich, an anti-Vatican II Catholic — one who railed against the Vatican II changes that addressed how the Catholic Church related to the modern world. Weyrich sought to capitalize on the discontent of far-right Christians against the Green ruling. He was hoping, as the article says, “to produce a well-funded evangelical lobbying outfit that could lend grassroots muscle to the top-heavy Republican Party and effectively mobilize the vanquished forces of massive resistance into a new political bloc.”
In the meantime, the IRS began investigating the tax exemption of schools in 1970. Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist college in South Carolina, was the first investigated, an action that set off fireworks, alarming and enraging the segregationists. The university was adamant that it wouldn’t admit Black students. According to the Politico article “The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” by Randall Balmer, Bob Jones Jr. “argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible.” Falwell’s school was also investigated, which infuriated him further.
Unlike Bob Jones’s defense, the Balmer article says of Falwell’s,
Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation. For decades, evangelical leaders had boasted that because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for, of course, not having to pay taxes) the government could not tell them how to run their shops—whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject. The Civil Rights Act, however, changed that calculus.
In 1976, after years of warnings — i.e., “integrate or pay taxes” — the IRS rescinded Bob Jones University’s tax exemption.
Weyrich’s Implementation of His Fascist, Theocratical Vision in the 1970s & 80s
White supremacists were in an uproar. Before getting buy-in from Falwell to form a new Christian nationalist movement, Weyrich started implementing his own vision to infiltrate government with his radical ideas. Many “conservatives” credit Weyrich, who died in 2008, with being a “founding father of the conservative movement.” There is nothing conservative about him. He was a Christian nationalist, i.e., a fascist theocrat. He helped engineer and implement the melding of the GOP with Christian nationalism.
Most Americans don’t know who Weyrich is, but he founded or helped found various fascist organizations as part of a network with the goal of a far-right takeover of government to install his theocratic vision for America. Here are a few groups he helped found:
In 1973, Weyrich co-founded
- The Heritage Foundation — an extremely influential very conservative think tank geared toward creating public policy. Weyrich co-founded this organization with Edwin Feulner, and Joseph Coors of the brewing family. The Coors family is one of the richest families in America, and Joseph Coors financially backed the organization. It quickly gained more financial support from the super-rich, such as Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire publisher and Mellon family banking heir who financed conservative causes. Of course, this organization has ties to the Koch family, among other billionaires.
- American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — It’s a “corporate bill mill” funded mostly by corporations and corporate foundations that give state legislators bills to enact. “After the 2010 congressional midterm elections, ALEC boasted that ‘among those who won their elections, three of the four former state legislators newly-elected to the U.S. Senate are ALEC Alumni and 27 of the 42 former state legislators newly-elected to the U.S. House are ALEC Alumni.’” It’s an "associate" member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country. Here’s a list of ALEC corporate supporters. We need to stop supporting, as best as possible, fascist oligarchs and their businesses. Boycott.
In 1974, Weyrich founded
- Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress — (bolding not my own in the quote) “The Committee was established to select and fund candidates in Congressional races who represented right-wing evangelical sentiments, particularly on issues such as abortion and Gay rights.” It was funded by the beer oligarch Joseph Coors. In 1977 it evolved into Free Congress Foundation (now called American Opportunity) to break the power of unions in Congress; promote “traditional values,” fascism, and theocratic ideas; etc. This organization was a prime instigator of the “culture wars,” promoting wedge issues to divide the American people and destroy democracy.
In 1981, Weyrich co-founded
- Council for National Policy (CNP) — a secretive right-wing nonprofit that brings the most powerful conservatives and extremists together to install policies to take over the U.S. and install a fascist theocracy. A 2007 article in The Salt Lake Tribune says, ”Utah Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Holland said that the Council for National Policy meeting gives Utahns ‘a rare opportunity to see - or more accurately not see - what Republicans are all about. And that is how policy is influenced in this country by what amounts to a secret society of far-right-wing conservatives and religious extremists.’" Once again, this is funded by the super-wealthy.
These fascist think tanks and policy-making organizations, funded by the super-rich, were the power behind the “Moral Majority” and the decline of democracy. Today, they have helped to write the voter suppression bills and other fascist policies that federal and state governments across the nation have been implementing, some for decades. Also, these organizations and other similar ones have had a hand, for example, in creating COVID-19 protests.
These groups and many others are connected, forming vast networks within which they work to further their goals. Those of us who desire to save democracy and form a more perfect union presently have nothing that rivals the extent of these networks. We must build them.
Could we have seen this overthrow coming decades ago? Absolutely. Not only did many of the fascist oligarchs tell us their plans decades ago (like Karl Rove), these fascist networks are examples of how vast wealth and power become a danger to the State, weakening democracies (the power of the people) and toppling them. In fact, the Center for Media and Democracy has a great article “Christian Right Council for National Policy Tied to Violent Insurrection at U.S. Capitol.”
It’s important to note that Thomas Jefferson sent a trunk load of books from Europe back to James Madison, showing how oligarchic demagogues led groups of insurrectionists to overthrow European governments across history.
Falwell & Weyrich Create a Wedge Issue: Abortion
To galvanize evangelicals against the 1980 re-election of President Carter, who was a social justice proponent and, himself, a fellow evangelical, Falwell and Weyrich needed wedge issues. Defending racial discrimination had been such a political problem that Falwell and Weyrich sought new divisive issues and settled on abortion. Up to this point, abortion had never been a major issue with Protestant evangelicals as it had been with Catholics. Besides abortion, Falwell and Weyrich worked to stir up homophobia.
Falwell, Weyrich & the Founding of the “Moral Majority” in 1979
In 1979, Falwell and Weyrich co-founded the political action group “Moral Majority,” a term coined by Weyrich. Adopting a presumptuous and euphemistic name, they intended to hide the true purpose of their movement — to uphold White supremacy and patriarchy. In fact, Falwell rationalized and perpetuated a “white supremacist, misogynistic and homophobic worldview,” as the Salon article said. This is how this fundamentalist version of Christianity rose in political power, which spurred on other such groups. Indeed, the majority of evangelicals who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 were adherents to the “Moral Majority.”
Weyrich Wasn’t Done: The 1980 Video Supporting Voter Suppression
In August 1980, Weyrich spoke at a right-wing conference in Dallas. He brazenly talked about the need for voter suppression. Is there any wonder why we are seeing massive voter suppression today?
In the video, Weyrich attacked the idea of “good government” and said,
I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
There is no coincidence that Reagan destroyed the concepts of “good government” and for “the common good” in the 1980s.
Weyrich’s Influence: The Heritage Foundation & Ronald Reagan
As The Heritage Foundation website says, “Reagan was the embodiment of the ideas and principles Heritage holds dear.” They began a partnership during 1980, as the site says,
Heritage provided the president-elect's transition team with detailed policy prescriptions on everything from taxes and regulation to trade and national defense. The published version of these recommendations, the 1,100-page "Mandate for Leadership," was described by United Press International back then as "a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy."
In Reagan’s Inaugural Address in January 1981, Reagan attacked government, as he frequently did, saying that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” It was the prelude to the destruction of the New Deal that had kept these fascists in check for decades, including saving democracy from fascist power of corporations in the 1930s.
While the modern plot to destroy democracy started before Reagan (a fascist), he happily poured gasoline on a smoldering fire and fiddled while democracy burned. Cutting taxes for the wealthy, destroying labor unions (the political voice and power of working-class people and beyond), deregulating industries, etc., Reagan destroyed the balance of power the New Deal created between corporations and the American people.
Inequality rose alarmingly, of course, as the wealthy were stealing power from the American people (democracy). This was all predictable, but the American people, for the most part, were never taught or studied the warning signs of these things. We must change that.
Our Founders, like Jefferson and John Adams worried about massive inequality, as we’ve explored in previous articles in this series. Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian Democrats said that one of the things we had to do to preserve democracy was to control wealth so it didn’t become a danger to the State, like it had throughout history. As for Adams, we explored in Part 6 how Adams worried that oligarchs would destroy our republic. He knew massive inequality was a source of major conflict in society, as a pattern of history.
Indeed, when I was fourteen, I saw an expert on TV talk about how our democracy was in decline due to inequality. That was multiple decades ago, and I didn’t hear anyone talking about this, especially at school. Wanting to understand the mechanisms behind this and how to achieve equality and peace, I’ve spent my life studying the decline of democracy and how that relates to inequality and lack of peace. They are, indeed, connected. Among other things, massive inequality and massive personal debt destabilize democracies.
If we want to save democracy, we must understand this relationship between massive inequality and the decline of democracy; we must control the oligrachs, as the New Deal did (Part 2); and we must reduce people’s personal debt, like student debt. Selfishness kills democracies.
If you haven’t read Part 2, “The Nature of Power & Oligarchy,” which talks about some of the times Americans saved democracy in the past, including the New Deal reforms, I suggest you do. Please note that I didn’t talk about how democracy nearly died before the Constitution was written; for that, check out my article “This Requirement Today Nearly Killed Democracy by 1787...Coincidence? No.”
Choosing Political Power Over Christian Values
The leaders of the Christian nationalist movement are oligarchs who joined forces decades ago with the political right-wing to manipulate religion for political power.
Billy Graham was concerned about this alliance. In 1981, Reverend Graham was quoted in Parade magazine about his conversations with Jerry Falwell. Graham said,
I told him to preach the Gospel. That’s our calling. I want to preserve the purity of the Gospel and the freedom of religion in America. I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. Liberals organized in the ’60s, and conservatives certainly have a right to organize in the ’80s, but it would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.
Graham’s worry about a “wedding” was well founded, as we have seen today in the 2021 insurrection and in ongoing attempts to discredit elections, voter suppression bills, etc. Corporate oligarchs joined together with religious oligarchs and other far-right elites to overthrow democracy.
Ben Howe, a White evangelical whose parents worked for Falwell’s Liberty University, wrote a book in 2019, The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values. He talks about how these evangelicals sacrificed their morals for the Republican Party and the worship of political power. In his book, he writes, “In a generation, the movement had changed… from trying to be a force for change in politics, to being forcefully changed by politics.” Howe’s pain is evident as he discusses how these evangelicals went astray.
Today, we are witnessing the weaponization of Christianity by the hard right and seeing first-hand just how much the lust for power corrupts people’s moral compass. Ironically, power is a temptation that the Bible says Jesus rejected.
The immortal message, expressed by Lord Acton in 1887, couldn’t be more clear: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We shouldn’t blindly trust people who possess money and power.
The Connection Between American Christianity & White Supremacy
To save democracy, it is incumbent on us to appreciate how forcefully, yet covertly, certain major institutions, including many American churches, promote bigotry and other anti-democratic beliefs to their followers. To save democracy, we have no choice but to confront and dispel those institutions’ ideas. Silence has gotten us here.
Public Religion Research Institute’s Findings
Robert P. Jones, a leading scholar on religion and politics, writes in his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity:
The Christian denomination in which I grew up was founded on the proposition that chattel slavery could flourish alongside the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its founders believed this arrangement was not just possible but also divinely mandated.
Jones is referring to how the Southern Baptist Convention formed, splitting from the North around 1844 because of slavery.
He doesn’t just take a look at the history of the Southern Baptists in his book; he looks at American Christianity in general. He went on to found the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) where he is also the CEO. He and PRRI have done remarkable research showing how White American Christians across the board — mainline Protestants, evangelicals, Catholics, etc. — are much more likely to be racist than White, non-Christian folks.
From Jones’s conclusions, he asserts that White supremacy is enmeshed in the DNA of American Christianity. Indeed, we can see this in the Christianity which Falwell, Bob Jones, and many others preach. It’s been with us since the founding of our nation — enmeshed within fundamentalist Christianity of the Confederacy and spread throughout America, especially after the Civil War — because Americans have not confronted the ideology and replaced it.
It’s important to note that we need to take a page from Germany’s efforts after WWII to see how Germany redefined itself after the Holocaust. Professor of political science Bernd Reiter, who studies the relationship between democracy, citizenship, and justice, has a great article to start with. These concepts are, indeed, connected.
As a result of not confronting this racist ideology and replacing it in America, many churches in the North adhered to segregation. Many would not admit Black members to their White churches and schools. Or, as Jones points out, many churches would require that Black parishioners sit in the back. He also wrote that not only would many Catholic churches do this, too, but they also required that their White parishioners partake in the Eucharist before Black parishioners could do so.
Rev. Lenny Duncan Has Ideas about How to Make Positive Changes
Rev. Lenny Duncan, a Black preacher in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is mostly White, also sees the deep-rooted White supremacy in the church. NPR’s Isabella Rosario interviewed Duncan for her article “Jesus Was Divisive: A Black Pastor's Message To White Christians.” She says that Rev. Duncan “believes the denomination — and the broader mainline Christian community — have failed to answer the call to fight for racial justice and address the church's inherent white supremacy.”
In answer to Rosario’s question of what steps need to be taken to remedy this, Rev. Duncan responds,
American Christianity needs a revival. I mean, it's mostly a whitewashed tomb with the ghost of Christianity haunting our churches. It's a group of people who get together and like to think about how they used to take down empires with the power of God and make sure the marginalized are centered and offered salvation, mercy and grace. We tell stories of people who did those things, but we hardly ever do them ourselves anymore.
We need to acknowledge that a large portion of the American Christian world will never commit to the task of dismantling white supremacy. The rest of us have to start this work with or without them, because the entire republic is on the line. And beyond the republic — perhaps the world and ourselves.
Indeed. Part of the problem is that preachers are afraid they will lose their flock if they start preaching about social justice. Another issue is that others are preaching based mainly on conservative culture, not scripture, which is how they can claim social justice is against God. The truth is that we can’t maintain democracy for long without justice for all.
What Actions Can We Take Now to Save Democracy?
All of us have a role in saving democracy, even if we aren’t part of a particular group. We are in this together with our fellow human beings, fighting to preserve democracy.
Rev. Duncan sees that many preachers do want to change and embrace social justice, but they don’t know how. Silence only begets more White supremacy and possibly radicalization into Christian nationalism, so how do we deal with this?
Point People in the Right Direction to Understand Some of the Problems & Get Involved
Even if you aren’t a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church or a Christian, this is where reading Rev. Duncan’s 2019 book, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the United States, can help. The point is to begin to understand the problems and then help point people in the right directions, such as open-minded churchgoers. Even if you aren’t a member of a church, share the book with those who are, so they can read it and talk to their church leadership.
Besides the book, Rev. Duncan started an organization called Emmaus Collective. This group, as he says in the book, gives “definitive action steps for churches and to map those churches that are already deemed safer for persons of color.” The website spells out these steps and lists resources, too. The first step includes giving anti-racism training to the entire church staff and leadership team. Also, a percentage of the congregation must attend this training, as stipulated on the site, which is a great resource to share with others.
Learn How to Stand Up for Other People
Anti-racism/anti-bias training and compassionate communication training would be a great start for all Americans who care about saving democracy, no matter whether they are Christians or not. We are all in this together. If we don’t protect our fellow human beings’ rights and power, we won’t save democracy, and the fascist oligarchs will win.
In fact, in 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote, “No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of its minorities.” This is a profound truth. With the systematic attack on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, women’s rights, elections, etc., democracy is on life support.
The attack by the oligarchs and theocrats isn’t just about reducing rights of people of color and women. in March 2020, former Judge James Dannenberg blasted Chief Justice John Roberts and the radical majority on the Supreme Court. Making his letter public, he warned the American people of what is coming:
It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy. The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
Lochner (1905) refers to a desire for oligarchs to set their own working environments including the length of hours demanded of workers and the lack of protections from terrible working conditions. Plessy (1896) refers to the segregation of Black people. Both are examples of Gilded-Age thinking.
If you aren’t an adherent of Trumpism (American fascism — the American brand of neo-Nazism), they’ll be coming for you, unless we, the democracy-loving people, start speaking up for each other now. For example, there’s a Woman’s March on October 2. Get out in the streets and show your solidarity.
Martin Niemöller and His Famous Confession
Martin Niemöller is not a household name in America, but you’ve probably heard his famous confession or an adapted version of it. (I first heard a version of it in elementary school, referencing Black, Jewish, and immigrant communities.) Niemöller was a Protestant pastor in Germany during the Nazi reign of terror. “The German pastor opposed Hitler—eventually.”
The article says that Niemöller and his wife, on a wintery day in November of 1945, were reading a plaque that said, “Here in the years 1933–1945, 238,756 people were cremated.” They were “standing at the entry of the crematoria at Dachau concentration camp outside Munich, where he had been jailed from July 1941 to April 1945.” He had been jailed at a different concentration camp prior to that.
The article goes on to say,
Niemöller had been a prominent pastor of an influential parish in Berlin-Dahlem from 1931 until his arrest in July 1937. His incarceration first in Moabit prison, then in Sachsenhausen, and finally in Dachau had provided him with an alibi for the years 1937–1945. But the dates on the plaque did not read 1937–1945, they read 1933–1945, and for those first four years Niemöller had been silent about Hitler’s attack on Jews and the Left. This revelatory moment at Dachau, and the feelings of shame and guilt it surely prompted, gave rise to his famous confession:
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
The point here is the fascists come for the weakest groups first, like in America where it’s been the immigrants, rounding them up and putting them in concentration camps. Then, the fascists work their way group by group to everyone who stands in their way, including political enemies. (Niemöller was lucky, unlike so many other murdered political enemies.)
The fascists may come in sheep’s clothing. They may not identify themselves openly as part of a political group or religious or social movement.
Nevertheless, the fascists will come for all of us if we don’t stop them (which will take a lot more than just voting). Who will be speaking for you?
Remember, we are all in this fight together, including mainstream Christians and others who may not identify as religious, but who want to protect democracy. There is no room for any form of bigotry within our coalition. Bigotry fosters division. Among democracy-loving people, it weakens them and promotes a violent culture, thereby strengthening the oligarchs who put their own interests first. We must stand up for each other now before it is too late. Our struggle is democracy vs. oligarchy.
Coming Up…
In our next article, we will examine the third principal Christian nationalist group that has greatly influenced the movement and wants to replace, for one thing, secular law with biblical law. We will also explore more about CNP and its connection to this next group.