Religion will undoubtedly continue to play a major role in American society after the 2024 elections, but it remains to be seen whether that role will be one of oppression or liberation, said Interfaith Alliance President Paul Raushenbush.

The authoritarian version of the faith is that of Christian nationalism and its incarnation in Project 2025the conservative project to replace democracy with a “Bible-based” nation led by a white supremacist Christian government.

Paul Raushenbush

“If we follow the path of Project 2025, religion has a role to play in creating a theocracy, something where a small fragment of American religious tradition can dictate to everyone else what happens,” said Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance and moderator. A recent webinar with panelists Skye Perryman and Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons.

The alternative is what he called “Promise 25,” which presents a version of the faith that nurtures democracy by advocating freedom over tyranny and education over indoctrination.

“The idea is that we will advocate for each other across the religious landscape, including atheists, humanists, agnostics, as well as Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews and Christians” , he declared. “And that is recognizing that religion can be a bridge and not a bludgeon, and that religion can be a cause for celebration and not for discrimination.”

“Religion can be a bridge and not a cudgel. »

It would also involve reclaiming the meaning of religious freedom from those who claim it is a right for white, conservative Christians to receive taxpayer dollars, to ban books, to suppress voters, to restrict access to abortion and threaten the rights of black, brown and LGBTQ people.

“Religious freedom can mean reading what we want to read and reading the true history of our country,” he said. “Freedom of religion can mean voting without intimidation or repression. Voting is almost sacred, said John Lewis (the late congressman and civil rights leader), and voting is a freedom of speech, a freedom of religion. We need to recognize that yes, religious freedom is important, but that doesn’t mean you can do anything to anyone.

Skye Perryman

Elements of the 900-page 2025 Project are already being implemented piecemeal in various states, said Perryman, an alliance board member and CEO of Democracy Forward, a national legal organization dedicated to fighting for the preservation of democracy.

Examples include a Louisiana law make it mandatory to display the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms, The Oklahoma Executive Order that school teachers teach from the Bible and that aggressive book bans in Florida school libraries restrict abortion censorship attempts media.

The Heritage Foundation and its partners behind Project 2025 seek to ban medical abortion, are at the origin of the reversal of the Roe v. Wade and protecting racial equity and are actively engaged in voter suppression and voter denialism campaigns, Perryman said.

A Trump return to the White House would accelerate the project’s goal of “undermining the federal government’s core staff, the way our laws are implemented, and the way programs are implemented across the country, and seeking to roll back reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and economic justice.” “, she added.

The potential consequences of Project 2025 can also be discerned by examining the foundation’s list of partners, which include “the who’s who of Christian nationalism,” said Graves-Fitzsimmons, senior director of policy and advocacy at Interfaith Alliance.

These include the Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty Institute, American Center for Law and Justice, Liberty University and Hillsdale College, he said. “It’s the legal rights groups and the kind of conservative religious right think tanks that have shaped the Christian nationalist agenda, undermining our rights in the courts and trying to push this false myth that we are a nation Christian and that Christians should be privileged in law and politics.

“If authoritarianism takes hold in the United States, it will be done in the name of Christianity and these groups will be on the front lines encouraging it. »

Christian nationalism provides a licensing structure for these and other groups to promote restrictive policies disguised as efforts to prevent “woke” progressives from taking control of the nation, Graves-Fitzsimmons said. “If authoritarianism takes hold in the United States, it will be done in the name of Christianity and these groups will be on the front lines encouraging it by saying, ‘You may not like some of these checks and balances, and some of these tactics.’ This may seem extreme, but we do it to restore God to the public square.

Project 2025 targets the Respect for Marriage Act, which codifies same-sex marriage, and would limit the application of the law. Bostock v. Clayton Countya 2020 Supreme Court ruling banning employment discrimination against LGBTQ applicants and employees, he said.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons

“The vast majority of almost every religious group in this country supports anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people,” he added. “The Christian nationalist vision, as outlined in Project 2025, inserts into law and policy a very narrow, restrictive, and far-right extremist view of Christianity, which most American Christians and people of other faiths do not want it at all levels. »

Project 2025 also aims to federalize anti-abortion laws that would affect access to in vitro fertilization and contraception, he added. The goal is a “backdoored national abortion ban to overturn approval of medication abortion and limit emergency contraception.” Again, this narrow view of Christian extremism and Christian nationalism does not reflect the views of most religious Americans. »

The conservatives behind this effort also want to dismantle public education and funnel these and other federal funds to like-minded religious institutions, he continued. “This total embrace of Christian nationalism represents only a very small portion of the American population, but it is very well organized. It is very well funded. Many groups make these arguments. They have a strong impact in the courts of Congress.

Only 9% of Americans have a favorable view of Project 2025.

An October Browser Search investigation found that only 9% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Project 2025.

Regardless of how the election turns out, Perryman said she finds comfort in the fact that the country has faced the “dark side of human nature” and resisted previous attempts to weaken democracy and constitutional freedoms .

She cited McCarthyism as an example. This is the political movement of the 1950s that hyped anticommunist fervor to create the Red Scare, fueled anticommunist witch hunts, and threatened due process in the early and mid-1950s.

“It took people of great courage during this time to do the right thing and defend their country, on a small and large scale, within their communities,” she said. “This wasn’t something that just happened in the halls of Congress. It was about how you interacted at the school board meeting and how you interacted in your community.

While Democracy Forward and its partners are prepared to challenge future attempts to implement Project 2025, she urged those watching the webinar to remember that it is the responsibility of every American to defend democracy when it is in danger.

“What gives me hope is that we are past these moments where you can only keep democracy if you are willing to keep it and if you try to keep it.”

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