By Robert Downen | 17 March 2025
The Texas Tribune
Testifying this month against bills that would put more Christianity in Texas public schools, the Rev. Jody Harrison invoked the violent persecution of her Baptist forefathers by fellow Christians in colonial America.
Harrison hoped the history lesson would remind Texas senators of Baptists’ strong support for church-state separations, and that weakening those protections would hurt people of all faiths.
Instead, she was rebuked.
“The Baptist doctrine is Christ-centered,” Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, responded sharply. “Its purpose is not to go around trying to defend this or that. It is to be a disciple and a witness for Christ. That includes the Ten Commandments. That’s prayer in schools. It is not a fight for separation between church and state.”
The Texas State Board of Education adopted a new Bible-infused curriculum for elementary school students.
These new lessons elevate Christianity over the other major world religions.
This curriculum is unconstitutional, un-American, and deeply un-Christian. pic.twitter.com/QEq2RF7pQ3
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) November 25, 2024
Harrison was not allowed to reply, but in an interview said she was stunned that a lawmaker would question a core part of her faith. The exchange, she said, perfectly encapsulated why she has fought to preserve church-state separations — the same religious protections that Campbell said are a distraction from bills that might bring school kids to Christ.
“It was a wake up call,” she said. “I don’t think people — even many churches — realize that this is going on right now, and that is alarming.”
Efforts by the Christian Right to put more of their religion in public schools are not new. But the tone of those debates in Texas has shifted this session, with bill supporters and some lawmakers openly arguing that such legislation is crucial to combating dropping church participation rates and what they say is a directly related decline in American morality.
Last month, a Texas Senate education committee advanced two bills that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms and allow school districts to set aside optional prayer time during school hours. And last week, that committee also heard testimony on a bill to mandate that schools teach an anti-communist curriculum — which supporters said is crucial to reaffirming that America is a Christian nation.
As usual, the Christian Nationalists are getting their history wrong. The Constitution is not based on the Ten Commandments. Nor would Texas have been the first. Kentucky tried to put the Ten Commandments in public schools 5 decades ago.
The Supreme Court said no. In 1980. https://t.co/M3cvPngJkY
— Andrew L. Seidel (@AndrewLSeidel) June 20, 2024
Throughout those hearings, lawmakers and bill supporters frequently said that church-state separation is a myth meant to obscure America’s true, Christian roots. They argued that many of America’s ills are the natural consequence of removing Biblical morality from classrooms. And they framed their legislation as an antidote to decreasing church attendance, communism or eternal hellfire.
“To realize that only 25% of our kids in schools today have been in a church is absolutely horrific and something that we all need to work on to address,” said Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, repeating a statistic offered by one bill supporter during testimony. “That should make everybody listening absolutely scared to death,” he added.
Such statements have struck even longtime scholars and observers of the Religious Right as setting a new, more strident tone after years in which terms like “religious freedom” were the norm. Many in the movement had avoided explicitly centering Christianity in bills because doing so could prompt court challenges and discrimination complaints.
The shift, experts said, reflects a Religious Right emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the second Trump administration and the broader normalization of Christian nationalism in the GOP.
“Christian nationalist leaders think they’ve been handed the keys to the kingdom,” said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in schools. “Now they’re trying to unlock as many locks as they can.”
The growing influence
Recent polling from the Public Religion and Research Institute found that, of all Americans, about 10% adhere to Christian nationalism and 20% sympathize with aspects of it. Experts say that, despite accounting for a small segment of the broader country, Christian nationalists and their allies have been able to incrementally accumulate power through a long-term political strategy and a well of deep-pocketed donors.
It’s not your imagination, Christian nationalism is closely linked to White nationalism and to Trumpism.
If you’re on the left or in the middle — a must watch.
The movement is about gaining power, control over our lives and it’s growing. The future prospects are alarming.… pic.twitter.com/kbTlJpERiT
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) April 14, 2024
In Texas, the Christian Right’s rising influence has coincided with the state GOP’s alignment with two West Texas oil billionaires, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who have given tens of millions of dollars to push their far-right religious and social views. And groups like Project Blitz, a coalition of Christian groups with deep Texas ties, have used that long-term approach to steadily normalize their views and chip away at church-state separation without drawing widespread opposition.
Project 2025: a blueprint for a conservative takeover | The Take
How a new Christian right is changing US politics – BBC News
Why Trump Is Partnering With Christian Nationalists | Robert Reich
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