The Religious Movement That’s Done With Democracy

Something has changed on the American religious right — and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) thinks we are making a dangerous mistake by continuing to describe it with the old vocabulary of politics.

The movement Huffman examines in his new book, No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism, is not simply seeking greater influence in elections or a louder voice in the culture. Its most committed factions, he argues, have concluded that democracy itself no longer serves their purposes. What they seek instead is dominion: political and religious control over American institutions and, ultimately, American life.

Few people are better positioned to sound this alarm. A former environmental attorney turned congressman, Huffman is the only member of Congress who openly identifies as a humanist, and he has spent years studying the theology and the players of this movement from inside the building it means to control. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, he takes us inside a movement whose ambitions can sound almost too extreme to take seriously — until you hear what its leading figures are actually saying.

Among the ideas now circulating: reconsidering the 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage), replacing individual voting with one vote per household under male “headship,” restricting political authority to Christian men, and rejecting the separation of church and state itself.

Huffman also revisits January 6, 2021, which he sees not simply as a political insurrection but as an event infused with Christian nationalist theology — and explains why he believes a crucial part of that story disappeared from the official congressional account.

But the movement may contain the seeds of its own fracture. Beneath its apparent unity lie bitter theological rivalries and increasingly explosive disagreements over Israel and Christian Zionism.

And that leads to a larger question: What happens when a movement that believes it has a mandate from God decides it no longer needs a mandate from voters?

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Full Text Transcript:

Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to the WhoWhatWhy podcast. I’m your host, Jeff Schechtman. Something has come loose in the American arrangement, and nearly everyone can feel it. The prayer gatherings have moved inside the Capitol. The Ten Commandments are going back up on classroom walls. Inside federal agencies, officials hold services to repent for the sins of the nation. This is not some quiet erosion that slips by unnoticed. The alarm is loud, and it is everywhere. What is strangely missing is anyone willing to say plainly what is actually happening, because we keep reaching for the words we already own. We call it authoritarianism. We call it extremism. We call it Trump. And every time we reach for those words, my guest today argues, we walk straight past the one force we cannot bring ourselves to name out loud.

It is a religious movement. It has a religious aim. And that aim is to pull down the wall between church and state and to govern the country by one faction’s reading of God’s law.

My guest, California Congressman Jared Huffman, watched it take shape in real time. On the sixth of January 2021, he stood inside the Capitol and saw the crosses raised over the crowd. He heard the pastors on the ground issuing prophecies while the building was breached and understood something most of the country still has not. Thousands of devout believers do not storm the seat of government on their own. Someone gathers them. Someone tells them it’s holy work.

Huffman is the only member of Congress who will say out loud that he does not believe in God. In a new book entitled No Prophets, he argues that the people driving this movement mean the word “theocracy” exactly as it sounds, that they are already at work inside the courts and the agencies and the classrooms, and that his own party has proven unable or unwilling to so much as name the danger.

It is my pleasure to welcome California Congressman Jared Huffman here to the WhoWhatWhy podcast to talk about his new book, No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

Jared Huffman: Jeff, it’s great to be with you. And let me just say, that’s the best introduction I have had in dozens of interviews. You really nailed the essence of this problem. And, frankly, the whole reason I wrote this book.

Jeff: Well, thank you so much for the kind words; I appreciate it. Tell us a little bit about your story. You grew up in Missouri in an LDS household, and it really wasn’t until you were early twenties that you realized that you felt differently about religion.

Jared: That’s right. I was a devout Christian. As a young man, I was ordained into the priesthood of a branch of the Latter Day Saints Church called the Reorganized Latter Day Saints at the time. And it stopped working for me when I was about 20 years old. You know, it’s a long story, but like many people, I fell out of my religious belief, and it took me years to really figure out that the things I liked about my religious upbringing… You know, I was not a traumatized Christian that left the church because of some abuse or terrible thing. But I realized that the thing I like — the moral upbringing, the sense of community, and all of that — is available in every faith perspective, really. And, frankly, it’s available among nonbelievers, too. These are just universal values. So that pretty much makes me a humanist. That is the label that I have adopted. It means that I believe that we have a duty to live moral lives, to be good to each other, but it’s not because of some inducement of an afterlife or some fear of hell. And we take the world as we find it. We try to live our lives based on science and facts and critical inquiry — and not anything supernatural.

Jeff: For a long time, people told you that that was a fine point of view to have, but not something you wanted to talk about out loud.

Jared: That’s right. Because we live in, not legally but certainly culturally, a very Christian nation. And folks who don’t subscribe to that de facto national religion are expected to sort of go along and keep quiet.

Jeff: Talk a little bit about what Christian nationalism is as you understand it. It’s part of what you focus on, part of the title of the book. What is it as you see it today?

Jared: Christian nationalism is defined by the sociologists and experts who study it — and coined the term — as the fusion of Christian religious identity with national identity, weighted toward right-wing politics and built on this narrative that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that, therefore, Christians were always intended to have favored status.

Jeff: Christians and Christian men in particular. Talk about that.

Jared: Well, there certainly is a patriarchal, if not misogynistic, element through this movement. And some of the religious subcultures that drive Christian nationalism are really over the top. A guy named Doug Wilson, who is the pastor who leads one of these major denominations, has made news lately by saying he thinks the Nineteenth Amendment was a mistake, that we need to move toward male headship and household voting, where the men maybe consult the women of the family but do all the decision-making, and where only men can hold public office and positions of authority, and only Christian men at that.

So this is not hyperbole. I’m not saying that this is fringe stuff. This is a huge part of the Christian nationalist movement. This is the church and the belief system that our secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, subscribes to.

Jeff: And the Speaker of the House as well.

Jared: A slightly different variant of Christian nationalism. But yes, many of the same precepts.

Jeff: This didn’t come out of nowhere. It grew over time. And you talk in the book about what people may remember — that are old, as old as us — the Moral Majority and how that existed, and Christian attitudes that grew up during the Cold War. Talk about that.

Jared: Jeff, I didn’t think I would ever wax nostalgic for the Moral Majority. But I grew up and kind of came of age during the 1980s. I learned about what was called at that time the New Religious Right. And I thought it was terrible, hypocritical, absolutist. I didn’t like anything about it, but I can now see that that movement, as extreme as it was, was trying to work within the system of democracy. They weren’t explicitly theocratic. In fact, folks like Jerry Falwell assured us that he did not want theocracy. He just wanted to win hearts and minds through persuasion and using the levers of the democratic system.

That has changed. And when that movement collapsed in the early 1990s, right-wing Christianity underwent a bit of a transformation with the militia movement and the rise of these really extreme nondenominational ministries that really caught fire in evangelical Christianity. And what came as a result of all of that is today’s MAGA Christian nationalist movement, which is much more militant, explicitly theocratic. It is done with democracy. They have figured out that with America’s changing demographics, with the decline in religiosity that has continued now for almost four decades, democracy no longer works for them. So they’re not trying to change hearts and minds through gentle persuasion. They are seeking conquest. And one of the things that I write about in this book is it’s important for us to understand: that’s not just politics for them. That is religious duty — their belief system. This dominion theology tells them that they have to conquer our government and all aspects of American life for Jesus Christ. These are extreme beliefs that most Christians reject, but for them they are absolutely articles of faith.

Jeff: One of the things that seems fundamentally different is that when you go back to the Moral Majority — and Jerry Falwell, who you mentioned, and Jim and Tammy Bakker — to a large extent, and so much was written about this at the time, it was about money. It was about those people taking religion and twisting it to make a lot of money for themselves at the time. Today, it seems to be about raw political power.

Jared: There have always been elements of grifters and opportunists and prosperity gospel, diamond-clad televangelists in this space, but I think it’s a mistake to write off today’s Christian nationalist movement as simply about money or power. And one of the things I try to explain in this book is that there really are genuine religious beliefs, at least as it applies to the religious architects of this movement. Maybe not to all of the players, but certainly the religious architects. They are true believers.

And that’s why I spend an entire chapter called “Three Roads to Theocracy” kind of breaking down the belief systems. Now, I’m not a theologian, I don’t pretend to be, but in the book, I rely on some of the nation’s top religious scholars to help me explain this, because I think we have to follow the theology a little bit to really understand what we’re up against.

Jeff: One of the things that brought this home for you — and, you argue, one of the reasons that you wrote this — was what happened on January 6, what you saw personally on January 6.

Jared: That’s right. So I had watched this movement grow in militancy and power my whole time in Congress. And it really did erupt for all of us to see on January 6. The sights and sounds and symbols of religious worship, of a highly choreographed religious coup, were everywhere for anyone who wanted to see it.

Unfortunately, this event that I thought would be a national wake-up call about this movement ended up not even being noticed by most Americans. The country went back to sleep. My own colleagues, who this mob wanted to kill, went back to sleep. And where we really missed an opportunity to name and confront this movement was the January 6 Select Committee that was put together to chronicle and explain, for the country and for the future, what happened that day.

The Select Committee was on course to tell the full story, to explain that religion was front and center, that this Christian nationalist movement played a central role in the coup. But one person, Liz Cheney, wasn’t having it. She thought that that would offend conservative Christians. And she ordered all of that material erased from the final report. She had the power to do that because, as the committee’s vice chair and one of the few Republicans willing to serve on the committee, others really did have to go along with whatever she wanted.

Jeff: Talk about the material that would have come out had it been made public. What would we have known today that we didn’t know?

Jared: For example, when we think about the planning and the execution of the insurrection, we think about folks like Eastman and Giuliani and the brain trust that gathered at the Willard Hotel in a war room in the days leading up to January 6. All of that was well documented and explained in the report. But what people don’t know is that the so-called prophets and apostles of the New Apostolic Reformation, these folks who are such virulent and violent Christian nationalists, were also there at the Willard in the days before January 6. They were inside the White House for two months. They had been working closely with the Trump political team to barnstorm the nation and rally and radicalize their followers, their devout Christian followers, for what would eventually be this great Jericho march, they think of it as, which is a knocking down of the walls of government, a storming of the Capitol on January 6, the very much of a religious coup. That whole story got erased.

Jeff: Talk about how Mike Johnson fits into this story at this point.

Jared: Well, Mike Johnson is, by any analysis, a power player in this movement. He’s, I think, sometimes written off because he’s so ineffective at governing. He’s a very weak Speaker, he is incompetent in the things that you would expect a Speaker of the House to do. But as a champion for this movement and its extreme agenda, he has actually accomplished quite a bit. He has elevated all sorts of fringe actors and religious extremists into positions of power; he has normalized and mainstreamed them; he has instituted ceremonies and practices; he’s populated the Capitol with some of these folks and really lifted up this, I call it the ministry-industrial complex that operates every day in the Capitol. So he’s made a tremendous difference for moving Christian nationalism forward, even as he’s been a terrible Speaker.

Jeff: And how big is the movement? Talk about what you know in terms of the data on this movement and how people perceive it.

Jared: The polling would tell you that most Americans reject the tenets of Christian nationalism. But within Republican circles, a majority — a narrow majority — embrace Christian nationalism. And within the religious circles of Republican politics, the number goes up a lot higher. And certainly among evangelical Christians, which is Donald Trump’s core MAGA base, the numbers are incredibly high, a large supermajority embrace Christian nationalism explicitly, and a disturbingly high number even embrace these prophecies that Donald Trump was meant by God to have this prophetic destiny, that the United States needs to officially be a Christian nation, and that we may need to even resort to violence, if necessary, to carry out God’s plan.

Jeff: And is it your sense that this group is getting stronger or weaker as Trump supporters peel off little by little, as we’ve seen?

Jared: Here’s the paradox there. America is getting less religious all the time. This has been a three- to four-decade trajectory. And from what we know about younger Americans and just sort of basic replacement actuary projections, the country will continue to be less religious into the future. At some point around mid-century, maybe a little bit thereafter, America is likely to no longer be a majority-Christian nation.

So, in that sense, you would think that a religious movement like this would be kind of waning and fading. Here’s why it’s more complicated than that. These folks aren’t trying to win majorities. They are trying to seize power and outflank those demographic trends. They are trying to achieve their ends before democracy makes it impossible for them to do it. And so there is an urgency and a desperation. And through Donald Trump, who has just been a powerful instrument for this movement, they have entrenched themselves at the highest levels of our government, and certainly they’ve co-opted the entire Republican Party. So they are formidable. They are much more powerful today than they have ever been.

Jeff: Do you have a sense — and none of us have a crystal ball, clearly, but you’ve studied this — of where this all might go post-Trump? Will it fracture? I’ve heard the argument made that everybody will see the rot of the past 10 years or so and that there’ll be a religious revival after Trump. What is your sense of what a post-Trump religious world looks like?

Jared: It’s a fascinating question. So this coalition, this MAGA-Christian coalition, is just as powerful as what I just said. But if you look a little deeper, there are fissures and fault lines that suggest it could blow up. These factions — these religious factions that have held together — in some ways don’t like each other. They have profound theological differences. And somehow Donald Trump has held them together because he doesn’t belong to any of them. He is obviously irreligious. He has managed to have each of these religious subcultures think of him as their own because he is such a free agent, if you will.

I don’t think his successor is going to be able to pull that off. All of the likely successors belong to one denomination or religious subculture or the other. And so all of the mistrust, all of the absolutism that each of these subcultures have — and believe me, the radical traditionalist Catholics think they’ve got the only form of Christian supremacy, Catholic integralism, and that everything else is an abomination; the Reconstructionist theo-bros, the Pete Hegseth branch of this movement, absolutist as you could be, they think everyone else is deeply heretical, and they certainly don’t like Catholics, they think that the American theocracy has to be Protestant. And then you get over to the charismatic evangelicals who think that anyone who disagrees with them is somewhere between heretical and demonic. So this is a rumbling fault line. And there are certainly issues like Israel and Christian Zionism that threaten to blow the whole thing up. It’s far more volatile than it looks from the outside. And I think all of that suggests that there could very well be an unraveling after Trump.

Jeff: Is all of that volatility part of the reason that the Democrats, as you write about, are so afraid of this issue?

Jared: I think there’s a number of reasons why Democrats are afraid and awkward and hesitant on this issue. Possibly all of that complexity and volatility, but also probably the fact that there’s some lingering Christian privilege among even my fellow Democrats. We are the party of religious diversity. We’ve got a lot of non-Christians in our big tent, but it’s still predominantly Christian, culturally and otherwise. And it’s hard, I think, for many of my fellow Democrats to even talk about this subject matter. I am very much of an oddball in this conversation because I think we have to lean in and talk about it.

My view, Jeff, is that Republicans have left Democrats a golden opportunity because most Americans want no part of this Christian nationalist project. Most of them do not want to live in a creepy right-wing theocracy. Most of them overwhelmingly support church-state separation, which Republicans now explicitly reject. Donald Trump’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission just came out with a 200-page report that said there is no church-state separation. Never was, it’s a misunderstanding, we need to just push church authority right on into government.

So I think that the lane is wide open for Democrats to talk about religious freedom, to talk about diversity, to talk about “to each their own,” and to do what all the data says voters want us to do, which is, don’t push a bunch of religion into our politics. Talk about how you’re going to make our lives better.

Jeff: Talk a little bit about how that religious coalition — those that believe in that freedom — can work with pro-democracy coalitions as well, and how those two groups can really function successfully together.

Jared: We have to do that, and we have to do it quickly. That is really the take-home call to action in my book, because this Christian nationalist theocratic project is so much further along than most people realize. I take readers inside the Capitol to show you what I see all the time, in a way that hasn’t been done before.

So it’s going to be awkward for some of my fellow Democrats who just prefer to look away and avoid this touchy subject. We’ve got to get better at talking about the intersection of religion and politics, and we have to get better at working with people who are our allies in the fight to save democracy but might be evangelicals with pretty conservative views on social issues. And I talked to some of these evangelical faith leaders in writing the book, and they’re ready to work with secularists, agnostics, atheists, humanists in a broad interfaith coalition to save democracy — but they don’t like being attacked for some of their social positions. So we will have to navigate that with some sensitivity.

The great thing about saving our democracy is we can continue to disagree about some of those issues and to have those public debates, but if this theocratic juggernaut finishes what they’ve started on January 6, we’re not going to have that luxury. So we really do need to focus on what’s most important here.

Jeff: And talk about the pushback to secularism in general that you sense from Democratic colleagues and, just in general, among constituents.

Jared: I don’t get much pushback among Democratic colleagues or constituents about secularism. What I get is a lot of demonization of secularism from the religious right wing. They have always viewed secularism as a grave threat to their fragile worldview. They don’t like secular public education; they like church schools, and they want to move taxpayer dollars explicitly into religious schools and kind of be done with public education. They sort of gave away the plot in Texas, where they created this sweeping voucher system that would allow public money to go to Christian schools. But then when Muslims tried to access that same public money for their schools, the Christians said, “No way. We’re not going to let that happen.” So that tells you an awful lot about where this project is heading. It is not about religious liberty, for sure. And it’s dangerous in the long term.

One hundred years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, you wouldn’t think that we would still be fighting about mandating the teaching of young-Earth theory and literal creationism from the Book of Genesis in schools. But with this movement, we are. And it is dangerous for our entire system of knowledge, for the research and innovation and science that we look to to develop cures for diseases, to get us through the next pandemic, to help us navigate something as existential as the climate crisis. It’s really high-stakes stuff.

Jeff: What is your sense of James Talarico in Texas? You mentioned Texas a moment ago, and his view of all this, bringing religion very much into the political frame, not in the same way, in the Christian national way, but certainly bringing it into politics, into a campaign.

Jared: I like Talarico, and I’ll tell you why. He certainly does talk about his Christian faith a lot. I mean, he went to seminary. He’s a minister. This is who he is. I’ve got no quarrel with anyone who talks about faith as something that is deeply personal to them and that informs their moral framework. That’s just someone being authentic.

He is just as clear, though, in saying that he’s not talking only to evangelical Christians. He’s talking to Muslims and nonbelievers and agnostics and Jews and everyone else. And he is a fierce champion of church-state separation. So, to my mind, he’s got it exactly right. He’s not grifting or fooling anyone. He’s just being himself. But he’s making it clear that religious faith is a personal thing, that we support religious diversity, and that church-state separation is really the bulwark of freedom that allows us all to believe whatever we choose to believe.

Jeff: And finally, do Democrats have the language to make this case in the way that you’re making it? Or do they need to first learn that language at this point?

Jared: Most Democrats are exceptionally bad at this. That’s why I’m happy to hold Talarico and Warnock and, to some extent, Pete Buttigieg up as refreshing exceptions, folks who are comfortable talking about their own personal faith but also talking about religious liberty and freedom and church-state separation as part and parcel of how this should work.

The rest of my colleagues mostly steer clear of the entire subject and just feel it’s sort of obviously awkward. They squirm on this subject. And I think Democrats have to really get better at this. We have somehow managed to make both devout Christians and nonbelievers like me feel unwelcome.

So when you look at the American people, when you look at the base of Democratic voters, I think most people are pretty much where Talarico and me and Warnock are in terms of religion and politics. And most Democratic candidates haven’t figured out how to talk to them.

Jeff: Congressman Jared Huffman. Book is No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism. Congressman, I thank you so very much for spending time with us today.

Jared: My pleasure. Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff: Thank you. And thank you for listening and joining us here on the WhoWhatWhy podcast. I hope you join us next week for another WhoWhatWhy podcast. I’m Jeff Schechtman. If you like this podcast, please feel free to share and help others find it by rating and reviewing it on iTunes. You can also support this podcast and all the work we do by going to WhoWhatWhy.org/donate.