Christian Right Observer Weekly (Volume 19)
CROW's stories on the Christian Right that you need read this week.
1. Trump Campaign Names Project 2025 Leader Russ Vought, an Evangelical Extremist, to Lead the RNC Platform Committee
Trump nonetheless feigns ignorance of Project 2025’s plans for his potential second term.
In May, the Trump campaign named Project 2025 leader Russ Vought – an alumnus of both the Trump administration and Heritage Foundation – to lead the RNC’s platform committee, as reported in an RNC press release. Project 2025 is a plan to dismantle the so-called “administrative state” and to choose the people who will preside over the remains in the event of a second Trump administration. You can read it here.
Vought’s leadership role in Project 2025 and in the RNC platform committee is concerning because he’s an evangelical extremist who has said that the organization he founded (the Center for Renewing America) seeks a consensus that, although America has “religious liberty,” a country still “has to obey God,” and “there is only one true God, Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
When we say that Vought is a top Project 2025 leader, it’s not an exaggeration. Project 2025 Director Paul Dans has called Vought’s Center for Renewing America a “key [Project 2025] coalition partner” and said that Vought directs 1,000 people divided into 30 teams to help bring Project 2025 to fruition.
As for Trump, despite naming Vought to the RNC platform committee (and giving him a top job in his last administration), he has recently tried to manufacture false distance between himself and Project 2025. We cannot let him get away with it because the public deserves to know the stakes of this next election.
Those stakes are alarmingly high. Vought, for example, has tweeted that he’s proud to work with Trump administration alumnus William Wolfe on “scoping out a sound Christian nationalism,” as reported by Politico journalist Heidi Pryzybola. Wolfe is also an alumnus of Heritage Foundation (the lead organizer of Project 2025) and of Vought’s Center for Renewing America (CRA). A leaked CRA memo included “Christian Nationalism” as a priority for a second Trump administration, per Pryzybyla’s report.
Wolfe has posted many controversial tweets of his own, including one in which he declared his desire to end abortion, reduce access to contraception, overturn Obergefell (which recognized a right to same-sex marriage), and end no-fault divorce. Wolfe later deleted the tweet, but it had already been saved and reported on by the Tattooed Theologian.
Wolfe is also a co-editor of the “Statement on Christian Nationalism” manifesto, an overtly Christofascist screed, the content of which demolishes any suggestion that his (and Vought’s) brand of Christian Nationalism represents “mainstream Christianity”, as Jenny reported in detail for the Bucks County Beacon. More recently, Wolfe founded the Center for Baptist Leadership, with the express goal of pushing the Southern Baptist Convention even further to the right, as reported in Volume 11 of our newsletter (brief #2).
In addition, Wolfe (Vought’s “Christian Nationalism” collaborator) is a proponent of Doug Wilson, the controversial lead pastor of Christ Church, which has established a mini fiefdom in a small Idaho town. (For more on Wilson, including his promotion of “biblical patriarchy” and soft-soaping of slavery, see Brief #2 in Volume 14 of our newsletter.)
Unbeknownst to most of the public, it was Wilson who founded the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), which recently boasted on social media of hosting Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts (the president of Heritage Foundation) at an event.
Wilson has also been interviewed by Tucker Carlson (as reported in Volume 14 of our newsletter, see brief #2) and by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which advises Project 2025 and has written on social media that “abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of a mother.”
It gets worse.
A few years ago, the publishing company founded by Wilson’s church, Canon Press, released “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” a book that advocates an ethnically uniform society governed by a “Christian Prince,” as reported by Reason Magazine. Both Wilson (who sits on Canon’s board) and Wolfe have enthusiastically promoted this theocratic screed.
In September 2023, Vought himself spoke on a panel alongside Wilson. (See thread.) The event was hosted by American Moment, another Project 2025 advisor.
Vought’s wife, Mary Vought, belongs to this same Christian extremist cabal. She’s a close friend of Wilson-and-Wolfe collaborator Meg Basham, who has said on social media that she stopped using birth control pills because she thinks they have an “abortifacient” mechanism. Mary previously worked alongside Meg at the Claremont Institute, which advises Project 2025. She has called Basham “brilliant” and encouraged people to follow her.
Mary currently works as VP of Strategic Communications for Heritage Foundation, the lead organizer of Project 2025.
The public deserves to know that, if reelected, Trump will put religious extremists backed by Project 2025 into positions of federal authority, just like he did before. This time, however, will be worse because Trump will purge the federal government of dissenters, another express goal of Project 2025.
READ: Legislating Inequality: The Christian Confederate Roots of Project 2025
Why will Trump do it? Power. Trump needs the support of religious extremists to re-acquire and then maintain his grip on America. This is why he gave them our Supreme Court during his first administration and why he will give them our federal agencies during a second administration, if given the chance.
2. Transforming Society as God's Appointed Legislators
When Christian Dominionist Apostle Chuck Pierce tells his Apostolic Glory of Zion network that states need to gather in a new way, one pays attention. Leading the charge of this new way is Texas Apostolic Prayer Network (TAXPN) Apostle Tom Schlueter who we linked to Texas Senator Angela Paxton in our last issue.
Schlueter conducted a two part training for Pierce last week called Releasing Legislative Authority to the states based on his 2023 book called Tribunals: The Authority of the Ekklesia to Legislate. Pierce, of course, wrote the foreword:
“In this book, Tom has great examples of going to places to reverse wrong judgments previously made by an authority and the people of the tribunal's choice.”
And Schlueter has indeed been going places traversing the 254 Texas counties and four Midwest states both training on and chronicling the results of his fellow Intercessors’ tribunals:
“The Lord said to me: ‘This is you. You are My judges and My rulers that I have established on earth. I have extended my scepter to each of you so that you can be the ones that determine the fate of the enemies that you rule during. You are indeed sons and daughters and kings and priests after the order of Melchizedek I will continue to use My people, My Ekklesia, to carry out the force of this passage. So, rule in the midst of your enemies.’”
And just a few pages later in his book Tribunals, Schlueter repeats a similar vision:
“It was early in our history of TXAPN and there were about sixty of us that were gathered around the tables. As we began to worship and minister to the Lord, the Lord opened my eyes, and, as I looked at the council members, they were all sitting around the room on thrones. He revealed to me in that moment that we were to be, as his sons and daughters His appointed judges on the Earth.”
These 60 NAR members are attempting to ascend to their thrones in each of their counties. Here's just a sampling of Tribunal activities:
Plateau Region Tribunal played a key part in influencing Brown County Commissioners to pass a resolution declaring that Brown County is a Constitutional County. This Tribunal business leader then Mills County Constitutional Citizens.
Central Panhandle Region Tribunal focused their efforts on making Lubbock a Sanctuary City for the Unborn and moving the Lubbock area into becoming a Kingdom Center. Members of the prayer group included the “five Grandmothers,” Texas State Senator Charles Perry, Former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell, and East Texas Right To Life Director Mark Lee Dickson.”
Plateau Region Tribunal member was asked by Sheriff Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) to submit research on election integrity to be used in a video he presented at a convocation in Las Vegas and then turned into a book.
Other Tribunals centered on Biblical Justice issues in the form of Christian supremacy such as performing spiritual warfare for a political office’s Muslim secretary to quit. And they centered on the Family Mountain where they decreed that their Tribunal members should stay in Covental marriages through prophetic acts at courthouses.
“God's design for family will be restored to America. Marriage is between one man and one woman who will produce Godly offspring to 1,000 generations.” -Primary Source Document
Schlueter's dream of Restoring America through Tribunals has already spread to the Midwest.
Schlueter taught about Tribunals at Apostle Greg Hood's Kingdom University where Apostles Craig and Kimchi Blow were students. The Blows’ Midwest Regional Prayer Tribunal consists of four states: Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky. The Blows currently support former Indiana Governor Candidate Jamie Reitenour. Reitenour has appeared at events with them and is connected to other New Apostolic Reformation figures. Blow was running for Lieutenant Governor with Reitenour.
During the Tribunal meeting, the Blows said:
“We saw the demonic entities over Chicago coming down; so, we agreed together in our authority to declare those evil and false structures were torn down."
While Apostle Blow lost his bid for Lieutenant Governor, both he and Apostle Schlueter continue to seek to influence their Government Mountain. With Schlueter, his connection is not only to the Paxtons but former Governor Rick Perry as well.
“For their shouted praises are their weapons of war. These warring weapons will bring vengeance on the nations and every resistant power. To bind Kings with chains and Rulers with iron shackles.
Praise filled warriors will enforce the Judgment decreed against their enemies.
Start talking about Tribunals; we're talking about very nature of the Revelation that has been given to us as the Ekklesia.” –Apostle Tom Schlueter
3. Podcast Uncovers Christian Nationalist Plan to Overthrow City in Idaho … Then the Nation?
"Are you a woman? Do you like having the right to vote? Nearly every Christian nationalist I spoke to wants to disenfranchise nearly all women. If you’re in the LGBTQ+ community, you’d have to go underground or risk prosecution for having a same-sex relationship. And if you think Christian nationalism is a fringe movement, it’s been rapidly becoming more and more mainstream," writes Heath Druzin in the Idaho Capital Sun.
“In Season 2 of Extremely American: Onward Christian Soldiers host Heath Druzin and James Dawson take an inside look at Christian nationalism. The movement aims to end American democracy as we know it and install theocracy, taking rights away from the vast majority of Americans in the process. The season follows the movement through the story of an influential far-right church, its attempt to take over a small town and a dark underbelly of abuse.”
LISTEN HERE: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510381/extremely-american