Evangelicals Are Directly Connected to Project 2025: It's Part of Their Christian Nationalist Vision for the United States

The Democratic Party has been subjected to the criticism that it is the party of "no religion," while the GOP claims itself to be the "party of God."  And while that is absolutely false, it is a fact that conservative, Evangelical Christians have an outsized influence over the Republican party because they have planned and plotted since the days of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Robison, Ralph Reed, the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition to infuse themselves and their leaders into the party's leadership, to use it as a vehicle for transforming the United States into a Christian theocracy that they run on their terms.  

Those Democrats who have either never paid much attention to religious beliefs, or who have abandoned it after being raised in it and coming to the conclusion that it was not what it claimed to be, and did not "save their soul," should probably make themselves very familiar with the political movement that has developed out of this infiltration and blending of Evangelicalism with Republicanism that has created an extremist movement with the intention of destroying the America that the founders established when they wrote and ratified the Constitution.  It is a movement which has effectively abandoned the Christian gospel but which still uses terminology and methodology lifted from it, but distorted and interpreted in a way that would not be recognizable to Jesus or his apostles who preached it and established the Christian church.  

They've made a deal with the devil when it comes to Trump.  They have a Christian nationalist agenda, they want the power and control over people's lives that they do not now have, and they see him as a useful tool in achieving their goal, and they couldn't care less whether he's one of them or not, because being Christian is just a means to an end for them, as well.  Their ends are the wealth that comes from the power of control over people's lives.  That's quite visible in the fact that many of the leaders of churches and movements within Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity who are the biggest supporters of a Christian nationalist agenda run their churches in exactly that way, to direct the wealth into their own pockets without accountability and to have control over the congregations of people who bow at their feet and surrender their loyalty.  

For his part, Trump, who openly denies the Evangelical version of Christian conversion by claiming he has never done anything requiring God's forgiveness, gets the support of Evangelical leaders, who have dictatorial and ideological control over their congregations, and gets their endorsement and votes.  These Evangelical leaders think that implementing this draconian plan, which violates every American's constitutional guarantees of individual freedom as well as a good portion of the biblical doctrine and theology of the Christian church, will bring about "revival" that will push more people into their churches, increasing their power and their wealth, including the personal fortunes that most of them have amassed at the expense of the members of their churches.

And that greed, more than anything else, is their common bond with Trump.  Obtaining it means that the same rules which they use to control their flock do not apply to themselves.

But the use of political power has never brought about revival to the Christian church.  Not ever at any point in its entire history.  What the connection between church and state does is corrupt the church, replacing the authority of scriptural teaching with the state's bending and twisting it to use for its own political purposes.  That is the entire history of Christianity, from its founding, right up to the present.  Political gain and personal prosperity become the focus of church leadership that is put in place because of its concession to state control, not because of its commitment to Jesus or its dependence on God.  And this brand of Christian nationalism, developed by the merger of extremist right wing politics with Christian fundamentalism and Charismatic "spiritualism", corrupts and defies the Christian gospel of Christ just like every other political corruption of the Christian church has done.  

Jesus himself, whose life and teaching are the criteria by which all of the rest of the Christian gospel, and the Bible, are to be interpreted, deliberately avoided creating a theocratic relationship with any country, nation, or political entity, because at the core of Christian theology, conversion is a matter of individual, not collective, conscience.  And America's founding fathers, as a direct result of their own experience with failed, oppressive, and manipulated state churches, deliberately intended to set Americans free from imposed, state mandated Christianity.  Both James Madison and Thomas Jefferson made this very clear, directly addressing the issue and proposing what eventually became complete religious liberty and what Jefferson described as a "wall of separation" between church and state.   

Project 2025 breaks down that wall by using the state to enforce religious principles and doctrine by law.  It makes the government, rather than the church, the primary vehicle of Christian evangelism, though the consequences for exercising personal religious liberty are anti-Christian in their execution.  Christianity that is enforced by punitive consequences of the law, not by conviction of conscience, is not Christianity.  

Examining those individuals connected to the Heritage Foundation and what the Evangelical Christianity from which they have emerged actually looks like, it is also pretty easy to conclude that a Christian spiritual revival is the furthest thing from their own intentions.  These are people who have made themselves fabulously wealthy off their peddling of the Christian gospel and their salesmanship of power and "bigness" and Trump is a useful and willing politician in their scheme to get the wealth and power they are after.  

There's very little, if anything, in their intentions, methodology, or means of operating their churches that resembles the Christian gospel or that is consistent with its core principles and values.  Spiritual power is imparted to individual Christians, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which is the result of conversion and a covenant agreement between God and the Christian and requires no pastor or church leader to mediate, control or dictate practice.  Likewise, American idealism, made very clear from the writings, speeches and eventual drafting and ratification of the Constitution by the founding fathers, also has as its core value the empowerment of the people and the protection of individual, "God-given" rights, which they identified as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

There is absolutely nothing in the written documentation of Project 2025 that remotely resembles either Biblical Christianity or American idealism.  And those who promote it as the major component of the platform of their political party should be flatly and absolutely rejected as unAmerican, unpatriotic and anti-Christian.  That includes the Heritage Foundation and Donald Trump.  Any church or Christian leader who does not unequivocally denounce and reject this brand of politics, and this politician, is being unfaithful to the Christian gospel.