If Democrats fail to realize their dream of a blue wave in Tuesday’s midterm elections perhaps the biggest factor will be the organizing power of the Christian nationalist movement. “If we do our jobs,” Ralph Reed of the Faith & Freedom Coalition boasted at the Values Voters Summit in September, “they are going to be more shocked than they were the last time.”
Among leaders of the Christian right, conversations about 2018 tend to begin with happy memories of 2016.
Political commentators may argue that some combination of racism and economic anxieties of the white working class put Mr. Trump over the top, but leaders at the Values Voters Summit took a different view.
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There wasn’t much doubt about how he and other speakers expected their people to vote. At the same event, J.C. Church, Watchmen on the Wall’s national director of ministry engagement and a founder of the Ohio-focused get-out-the-vote initiative Awake88, said, “the No. 1 thing” anybody can give you is “the supreme Christ.” But “the second greatest thing we can give this generation,” he swiftly added, “is the Supreme Court.”
“We can build a firewall for our children and grandchildren that they just might scale the seven mountains of influence,” Mr. Church continued. “Seven mountains” alludes to an aspect of Christian dominionist ideology, according to which God has commanded true Christians to gain control of seven areas of civilization — including government, business, education and the media.
