But if you read through the 900-plus page Project 2025, which they were largely responsible for putting together in anticipation of helping Trump to return to the White House, you can easily see their aim is to put power into the hands of government in order to enforce a Christian nationalist agenda on the country. It is to take power away from the people, and concentrate it in the hands of a few people who will enact the agenda that denigrates, excludes, persecutes and even executes people who don't fall in line with their agenda.
The whole thing is a roadmap to a dictatorship. That's the best thing that can be said about it. It is an admission of failure on the part of political conservatives to attract enough of a following to enact the kind of legislation they want to pass without opposition. Though the Heritage Foundation is not specifically an Evangelical Christian organization, but it is heavily influenced by far right wing extremist Evangelicals, it avoids direct identification as such so as not to limit its influence and specifically its ability to raise money.
But there are plenty of far right wing Evangelicals in the Heritage Foundation's leadership and among its members. It's pretty clear that they plan to segregate society by making pariahs out of, and persecuting the LGBTQ community as well as putting minorities, all non-whites including Hispanics, into a second-class citizen status ineligible to participate in government. They want to create an oligarchy made up of white billionaires who run the country for their own benefit, and it would be along the lines of the dominion theology model, though it doesn't use that terminology. It is codified white supremacist Christian Nationalism.
Was Trump Surprised By This and is He Not Planning to Make This His Platform?
Along with major tax cuts for billionaires, which means another increased tax burden for the middle class, which was exactly the pattern of the last Trump "tax cut," this is the foundation of Trumpism. It's part of the "deal" he made in exchange for the support of Evangelical leadership and their votes. So anything he and his campaign have said about distancing themselves from this plan is just another in a long string of Trump's lies.
The evidence, mountains of it, not only suggests that Trump was involved in the formation of this draconian, anti-American, Constitution-destroying plan, it proves that the possibility of another Trump presidency was exactly what those who drafted this plan were counting on when they put it together, with his stamp of approval and his telling them he planned to start enacting it on day one. That's one reason behind why they took the time and paid such attention to detail. They've said as much, openly and it's as if the Heritage Foundation never heard Trump's denial of his intention to support Project 2025. They know he's a duplicitous windbag. He's assured them of his full support and then told them to pay no attention to his denials. He has to lie to get votes.
They were headed in this direction, discussing this with him, getting his ideas and approval of theirs, while he was in office the first time. The only reason Trump has lied through his teeth about it and made them look stupid and extreme is that he discovered the American people would soundly reject this plan out of hand, and they would overwhelm the small percentage of core MAGA voters he has in his base with support for Biden, and now for Harris. Like almost every other promise he made as a candidate for President, he has no intention of listening to any criticism on anything he's negotiated in order to get the votes of the religious extremists.
This is an Idea That Has Been Tried Before, and Failed Miserably
Ever since the Edict of Thessalonica under Emperor Theodosius in 380 A.D., Christian nationalism took the Christian church in its purest form and turned it into a state institution. So we have about 1,700 years worth of examples of what happens to Christianity when it becomes a political institution, using political power to try to achieve its mission, baptizes converts by force, rather than by their own choice, and turns churches from gathered fellowships of believers into institutions.
It ceases to be a church, and it becomes an institution which is manipulated and used because of the power that it has. And at that point, by the definition and description given to it by the early Apostles, and by the words of Jesus himself, it is no longer Christian. Jesus never intended for the church to be a repeat of theocratic Israel. He offered no covenant to any nation, and declared "my Kingdom is not of this world," which indicates the spiritually transcendent nature of the universal church.
So the principles of any form of Christian Nationalism are unbiblical and pseudo-Christian.
The irony here is that most of the conservative Evangelicals involved in the Heritage Foundation are harshly critical of the superficiality and lack of dedication and commitment to biblical fidelity of state churches, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, though they don't hold back on contempt for any mainline Protestant church that originated out of European national origins, and they despise the Eastern Orthodox Church.
These far right wing religious conservatives completely ignore the biblical text, especially the very words of Jesus himself, when it comes to laying the groundwork for their takeover of the United States government. They are willing to use violence against their enemies to achieve their purposes because they believe God is holding their coat-tails and cheering them on. That makes them anti-Christian, if the perspective of the Apostolic authors of the New Testament are right about it.
I heard a comment on a talk show yesterday that puts all of this in perspective. Conservative Evangelicals claim to believe that the Bible is without error, and authoritative in all matters of Christian faith and practice. They believe Jesus is the divine Son of God, the savior of humankind, and his interpretation of the gospel is completely accurate.
Jesus told his followers, who were subjected to pagan, Roman rule over their own land, to "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven." [Matthew 5:44, NRSV]
So if your church is helping you identify your enemies, instead of encouraging you to love them, then it's not a church and it's not Christian.
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