Frederick Clarkson is a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a social justice research and strategy center that exposes the agenda and strategies of the U.S. and global Right, revealing the dangerous intersections of Christian nationalism, white nationalism, and patriarchy. Clarkson has written about politics and religion for four decades. He recently wrote a profile of Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano which caught a lot of people’s attention across the state.
Clarkson spoke with me to further unpack the beliefs, tactics, and goals of this movement as it not only explains a lot of what we are seeing across the state and country, but also locally in Bucks County. People need to understand the Christian right and start organizing against it, otherwise the state (and country) may be unrecognizable in four years.
Why did you decide to profile Doug Mastriano?
Well there were many reasons, but among them is that I have been looking at the New Apostolic Reformation for a long time. I had also been looking at Project Blitz, the Christian right state legislative campaign in the states of which Abby Abildness is the state director in Pennsylvania. And, I knew for a while that Mastriano was very involved with Abildness and others who were leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, and that there was a story there. The trick was to figure out, well, what in the world’s going on with Doug Mastriano, this up and coming political figure. Eliza Griswold wrote about him last year in the New Yorker [“A Pennsylvania Lawmaker and the Resurgence of Christian Nationalism”]. I was quoted in the piece and provided background information, but I stayed on the case because the Christian right is what I’ve been studying for four decades now. And so I saw this latest manifestation of the political and religious impact of the Christian right and this particular iteration, the New Apostolic Reformation is an important development. I don’t think we’ve seen a candidate for an important public office – being governor of a major state – who’s anything like Mastriano since Pat Robertson ran for president in 1988.
You wrote that the Christian nationalist label applied to Mastriano and his supporters is more complicated than most people think. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Sure. Christian nationalism is something that I’ve written about for a long time. And the simplest idea is that people who believe that America was founded as a Christian nation, and usually that means applying some contemporary idea of Christianity and nationhood and issues as if the Founding Fathers had intended it that way. And that somehow … God and the vision of God and the Founding Fathers was lost or stolen along the way. And somehow that vision that intention has to be restored. And the way that most people use it, it’s basically just another term for the Christian Right. You know, conservative Christians, trying to apply their agenda to the rest of society. But it is more complicated than that because these folks have a transcendent vision of living in the End Times and bringing heaven to earth in a way that infuses their political work in the present with the authority, if not the powers of angelic hosts. And Abby Abildness and many of the people around Mastriano absolutely believe that’s true.
Some people talk about living the dream of whatever their dream is. In this case they’re living the metaphor, they’re living the metaphors of religious ideas as if they’re coming true in their own lives and that it’s their job to make them true in society. And, initially with that kind of Christian nationalism – and I can’t say whether Mastriano is specifically involved in this – but we can see those around him cer