School boards are being targeted to expand the base of the Christian Right and the Republican Party going into 2022.
Back in October, I wrote at Religion Dispatches about the plans of a nascent Dominionist religious, broadcasting and political empire headed by Andrew Wommack of Woodbridge, Colorado. He has established a national broadcast platform and political organization called the Truth and Liberty Coalition (TLC) as well as Charis Bible College. The latter is training hundreds of students to be activists to achieve conservative Christian dominion over what they call the seven mountains or spheres of society (metaphors vary). These are government, religion, family, business, education, media and arts & entertainment. This theology and its praxis is known as Seven Mountains Dominionism, 7M for short.
Wommack had hosted a series of training conferences in 2021 intended to equip students and others to take school boards in Colorado and elsewhere. The Coalition’s conferences were open to students as well as a wider community of like-minded Christians. The local press reported that one of the events drew a thousand people.
Following the November election, I reported, also at Religion Dispatches, on the results of the Coalition’s political pilot project. Their candidates were those that scored 100% on the Coalition’s voting guide. The guide's five issues were not such traditional school board concerns as budget, curricula and building maintenance. Their issues were "Critical Race Theory," "Parental Rights," "Boys Playing Girl Sports," (sic) "Sex Education" and "Gender Identity Pronouns," with each candidate's position described simply as "agree," "disagree" or "refused."
The Truth and Liberty Coalition’s candidates won 28 school board seats across the state, gaining majority control in the Coalition’s hometown of Woodbridge as well as Grand Junction. Their slate flipped majority control in Colorado Springs from Democratic to Republican.
Paul Rosenberg, followed-up on my reporting at Salon last week, writing:
Andrew Wommack, who founded the unaccredited Bible college in 2014, co-founded TLC in 2017 along with Lance Wallnau, preeminent promoter of the "Seven Mountain Mandate," a manifesto for evangelical Christians to conquer and claim dominion over seven key facets of life: education, religion, family, business, government, entertainment and media. So while they claim to speak out as Christians and to express a broadly Christian worldview, they have something radically different in mind from anything America has ever known.
"The 'biblical worldview' is code for a theocratic or theonomic vision of society, in tension or at odds with secular institutions," Clarkson told Salon. "It's not the siloed issues. It's the whole enchilada."
Wallnau was also one of Donald Trump's earliest and most prominent evangelical endorsers. His book "God's Chaos Candidate" was published during the 2020 campaign, just a week before the "Access Hollywood" tape became public. One prominent TLC board member is the evangelical pseudo-historian David Barton, whose 2012 book "The Jefferson Lies," which claimed to debunk claims by legitimate historians about Thomas Jefferson's secular, pluralistic worldview, among other things, was recalled by its evangelical publisher for its numerous falsehoods. (The book was later republished by Glenn Beck, and sold very well to his far-right followers.)
Rosenberg further reported:
TLC and its allies' ability to turn out agitated and misinformed voters in low-turnout elections is yet another ominous sign about the electoral landscape Democrats face in the 2022 midterms. In El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, Republican turnout was 47.3%, compared to 37.6% for Democrats and 28.9% for independent voters.
This was not an isolated phenomenon. Clarkson writes that as in "past waves of fresh political action, there are other organizations doing similar things for similar reasons, often in close collaboration. Their impact is undoubtedly greater than the sum of their parts in the movement." He specifically cites a group called Church Voter Guides, launched earlier this year by Steve Holt, former pastor of a Colorado Springs megachurch, that targeted some of the same races. TLC issued a press release in early October promoting the voter guides of both groups, and casting the election as "a referendum on parental rights."
On the national level, Business Insider noted the involvement of the 1776 Project PAC, which won all 11 of its targeted Colorado school board races, and a majority of the 55 races it targeted nationwide — in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Kansas — focusing on the bogeyman of critical race theory. Clarkson also noted the existence of similar groups in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Texas, primarily reacting to school closures.
Well, this is the shape of things to come, folks.
These races may seem like small beer to those who only look at the big picture. But they may very well be harbingers of a changing big picture. This is how the Christian Right and their allies will create a new wave of political base-building for lasting power and influence. They may not succeed, but their intentions are clear—even if their visions may sometimes vary.
It is going to take an imaginative, energetic and dedicated effort by the vast majority that does not support the theocratic aims of the Christian Right to ensure that the public schools are not dismantled or rendered too dysfunctional to sustain public support. Its both necessary and possible.
And its not too late.
