Approximately 100 right-wing organizations have signed onto Project 2025, an expansive plan for controlling (and in some cases dismantling) federal agencies in the event that Trump or another Republican wins the presidential election this year. Many of these organizations are led by Christian fundamentalist political operatives, suggesting that they may use the plan to force all Americans to submit to their extreme religious beliefs.
The Bucks County Beacon has just found explosive new evidence that seems to validate this concern.
The Beacon’s discovery follows an earlier report by Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla, which tied the Center for Renewing America (CFRA), an official Project 2025 partner, to an internal memo expressly listing “Christian Nationalism” as a priority for a second Trump term.
Przybyla further reported that CFRA founder Russ Vought, a Project 2025 co-author, had stated last year on X (formerly Twitter) that he’s “proud” to work with William Wolfe, a former Trump official and Visiting Fellow with CFRA, “on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.” In a social media post, Wolfe had called for an end to no-fault divorce and abortion and for reduced access to contraception. (Link to archived tweet.) Wolfe, who has attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has also called himself a “Christian Nationalist.”
Soon after Politico’s report, Wolfe changed his social media profile to remove the reference to his work with CFRA, thus burying his connection to Project 2025 leader Russ Vought. Wolfe is also an alumnus of Heritage, the lead organizer of Project 2025.
Meanwhile, Vought and other Project 2025 leaders have tried to mitigate the damage from Politico’s report not by rebuking Wolfe, but rather by attacking Przybyla. After Przybyla correctly stated in a TV interview that Christian Nationalists believe their rights come from God, they accused her of attacking mainstream Christianity and launched a blizzard of targeted media hit pieces, as well as a petition to demand that Politico publish a formal apology. They have also parked mobile billboards outside Politico’s DC headquarters, again demanding a formal apology.
Despite this hurricane of attempted deflection, the Christian Nationalism promoted by Wolfe is extreme, not mainstream, as evidenced not only by Przybyla’s excellent article, but also by a shocking online manifesto found by the Beacon, which identifies Wolfe as an editor. We have included screenshots of the complete manifesto in the Appendix to this article. We have also archived the manifesto (which calls itself a “draft”) here.
The manifesto’s authors include Oklahoma Senator Dusty Deevers (a Southern Baptist who supports charging women who get abortions with murder). In addition to Wolfe, its editors include Joel Webbon who has tweeted that the the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was a “bad idea.”
The manifesto, titled “The Statement on Christian Nationalism”, begins with a definition of “Christian Nationalism” that strives to implement a Scripture-based system of government whereby Christ-ordained “civil magistrates” exercise authority over the American public.
Specifically, it states that “Christian Nationalism is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture’s teaching that Christ rules as supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under Him, over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for His own glory and the common good of the nation.”
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The manifesto then states that, pursuant to Scripture, these “civil magistrates” have “lawful authority to punish civil crimes like assault, murder, rape, theft, fraud, man-stealing, and false witness, and to ensure proper due process through the civil courts, payment of liability for verifiably proven harm, and proportionality of punishment.” (Emphasis added.)
This idea of forcing the American public to submit to the authority of Christian “civil magistrates” isn’t new. It was also championed by Christian extremist Stephen Wolfe (@Perfinjust on “X”) in his book, “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” an infamous screed, which William Wolfe enthusiastically promoted in a tweet that he later deleted. The two men are not apparently related, despite having the same last names and a shared ideology.
Continuing down this same Christian Nationalist trajectory, William Wolfe’s manifesto purports to “affirm that the Church is to instruct civil authorities regarding their identity and duties as servants before the throne of Christ. We affirm that this duty is a Great Commission issue.” (Emphasis added.)
Under the heading, “Big Picture,” the manifesto claims to “affirm that this Christian Nationalist project entails national recognition of essential Christian Orthodoxy (Article II) as a Christian consensus under Jesus Christ, the supreme Lord and King of all creation, and the establishment of the general equity of the Ten Commandments as the foundational law of the nation.” (Emphasis added.)
The manifesto also claims to affirm that, “All truth, claims and ethical standards must be tested by God’s final Word, which is Scripture alone.” (Emphasis added.)
In addition, the manifesto purports to “deny that laws against public blasphemy coerce conversion or hinder religious liberty in private.”
And it promotes a literal interpretation of the Bible: “We affirm that the Bible is clear in all essential matters.” (Public stoning anyone?)
The manifesto denies that “civil authorities have the right to coerce or command obedience to the dictates of men apart from God’s Word.” (Emphasis added.)
The manifesto further denies “the authority of rulers to squelch civil disobedience if [in the authors’ opinion] the free and necessary worship of and obedience to the True One God is being hindered.” (Sounds like January 6.)
Similarly, the manifesto claims to “affirm that lesser magistrates may and sometimes must disobey a lawless higher magistrate to obey God. For example, lesser magistrates–such as State governments, counties, and municipalities–must disregard any order, statute, or ruling from a higher magistrate–such as the Federal government–instructing them to allow abortion.”
It also strives to invalidate public education: “We deny that civil authorities are tasked with being the caretakers of citizens or educators of children, as these duties belong primarily to the Church and to families, respectively.”
At the same time, the manifesto aims to “affirm” that Christians are entitled to beat their children into submission: “We affirm that parents, as the authority in the home, have been given the ‘rod’ for instruction, training, and discipline in wisdom and righteousness.” (So now we know what they mean by “parental rights.”)
In addition to opposing same-sex marriage and classifying abortion as “homicide,” the manifesto declares that life begins “from the moment of fertilization, which is conception,” a position that renders IVF unfeasible, as we recently saw in Alabama.
Project 2025 organizations cannot legitimately characterize this terrifying manifesto as representative of mainstream Christianity. Even pastor Josh Buice of G3 Ministries, a Christian fundamentalist extremist in his own right, has condemned “this idea that there’s this overlap at some level with the civil magistrate with regard to the church,” stating that the question then becomes “who gets to determine what version of Christianity is Christianity?” (Video at 15:46 -16:50.)
Buice has also expressed concern that “the form of Christian Nationalism that is being put forth in the public sphere” could “necessitate some sort of Revolution,” adding that, “I’m not saying that … my brothers … are trying to … overthrow the nation, but … we do have a constitution,” and “what does this Christian Nationalism project do with the First Amendment?” (Video at 21:14-22:53.)
William Wolfe, however, seems primed for the fight. In a video posted by Right Wing Watch last year, he declared that “We are getting close” to Christians taking up arms.
The Family Research Council (FRC) — one of the leading Project 2025 partners attacking Przybyla — is similarly militant. Its Executive Vice President, retired Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, has said that, when Jesus returns, he’ll be carrying an assault rifle. Boykin sits on the board of the Oak Initiative, a nonprofit founded by Rick Joyner who publicly expressed support for a military coup against Obama. Boykin also presided over the first “commissioning” of the “Black Robe Regiment of Virginia” (aka “America’s Black Robe Regiment”), a militant pastors group whose founder, Pastor William Cooke, sported an Oath Keepers shirt during the December 2020 Jericho March contesting Trump’s election loss.
FRC’s board chairman, former Representative Michelle Bachmann, is a protege of New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) leader Jim Garlow, a proponent of the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” which instructs Christians to conquer all aspects of our government and culture for God, as we previously reported.
FRC’s plans for our government and culture are themselves extreme. The organization has tweeted, for example, that “Abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of a mother.” And its president, Tony Perkins, has said that the push for LGBTQ+ rights is “the zenith of man’s rebellion against God” and that the people who fight for such rights are controlled by “demonic spirits,” as reported by Right Wing Watch.
Perkins, who met with Trump regularly before Trump’s 2020 election loss, has also encouraged his followers to treat public schools as a “mission field” and to infiltrate them as teachers and school board members.
In 2020, Perkins interviewed Christ Church pastor Doug Wilson (founder of the “Association of Classical Christian Schools”) who has said that men “conquer” and women “surrender” and that “supporting same-sex marriage” is a “far more serious problem” than “supporting slavery.” Wilson and his wife, Nancy, have boasted on video of delivering a protracted spanking to their son (who was a toddler at the time) for refusing to take a nap. In the video, Nancy giggles as she recalls “swatting” her tiny son up to 30 times.
Tellingly, it was Doug Wilson’s family publishing company, Canon Press, that published “The Case for Christian Nationalism” by Stephen Wolfe. It is thus unsurprising that, in addition to his interview with Perkins, Wilson spoke during a recent conference hosted by Joel Webbon, a co-editor of the Christian Nationalism manifesto edited by William Wolfe (a fan of Stephen Wolfe’s book).
Doug Wilson was also featured during a September 2023 conference hosted by American Moment, another Project 2025 partner. The event also included Project 2025 co-author Russ Vought, the former Trump official (and founder of the Center for Renewing America) who tweeted that he was proud to work with William Wolfe in “scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.”
American Moment has separately interviewed both William Wolfe and Stephen Wolfe and co-hosted an event in January 2022 where participants enjoyed “plotting the Protestant regime,” according to a tweet by American Reformer author Timon Cline who attended the gathering. William Wolfe and Joshua Abbotoy (Executive Director of American Reformer and a Fellow at the Claremont Institute, another Project 2025 partner) also attended, according to Cline’s tweet. (Link to archived tweet.)
As for Perkins, he has acknowledged (based on a study by Christian pollster George Barna) that FRC’s “biblical worldview” is so far out of the mainstream that only nine percent of Christians possess it. (Video at 28:40-47). Lack of support won’t matter, however, if Project 2025 puts these zealots in control of the federal government, which seems likely if Trump wins the next presidential election.
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