Katherine Stewart > Quotes

“Listening to the debates about public schools on the Christian Right, one hears plenty of opposing opinions and a great deal of confusion. Some want to change the schools, others want to leave them. But the smart money seems to know what it is doing. It provides support for programs like the Good News Club, which slowly erode the support for public education in the country at large and in their own constituency in particular. And then it lays the groundwork for dismantling public education in favor of a private system of religious education funded by the state.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America’s Children

“As the historian and author Randall Balmer writes, “It wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools.”33”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“It is not a social or cultural movement. It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power. It does not seek to add another voice to America’s pluralistic democracy but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity, answering to what some adherents call a “biblical worldview” that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“The many paradoxes and contradictions of Christian nationalism make sense when they are taken out of the artificial ‘culture war’ framing and placed within the history of the antidemocratic reaction in the United States. To any outside observer, it must seem odd that Christian nationalists loudly reject ‘government’ as a matter of principle even as they seek government power to impose their religious vision on the rest of society. America’s slaveholders, too, revealed a similar inconsistency when they championed “states’ rights” and at the same time demanded the assistance of the federal government in catching runaway slaves and defending the slave system.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“the great disparity in wealth distribution is a significant contributor to the wave of unreason that has swept our politics and our culture. It has fractured our faith in the common good, unleased an epidemic of status anxiety, and made a significant subset of the population susceptible to conspiracism and disinformation.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“We have heard the single-issue, pro-life or -death refrain so many times that we no longer remember a time when America’s houses of worship, including conservative ones, tended to approach a vast range of issues that affect our society with the humility and appreciation of their complexity that is their due.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“What can one person do in the face of such a powerful and well-funded threat? To which I can only say: Put this book down and get to work now! Support your school community. Get involved in local governance. If you belong to a church or house of worship, work to bring your fellows to the side of justice and democracy. Find others who are committed to protecting the vote or involved in voter engagement and education campaigns. Reach out to those who feel politically disenfranchised. Tell them democracy matters. Tell them the republic is theirs—if they can keep it.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“Christian nationalism came of age in the American slave republic.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Mainstream conservatives who lament that the evangelicals who form Trump’s most fervent supporters have “lost their way” suggest that they have betrayed their roots in the movements that fought for the abolition of slavery and the end of discrimination. But the truth is that today’s Christian nationalism did not emerge out of the religious movement that opposed such rigid hierarchies. It came from the one that promoted them—with the Bible in one hand and a whip in the other.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Are we a nation in which one brand of religion enjoys a place of privilege? Are we a nation of laws—except in cases where the law offends the feelings of those who subscribe to our preferred religion? Will we recognize the equal dignity of all of our citizens? Or are we the kind of society that heaps contempt upon those groups that our national religion happens to despise?”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“You maximize the moral anguish of those whose “values” you share and protect their “rights” wherever possible. And you minimize the suffering of those who don’t belong to the group and treat their rights as merely selfish demands.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Among apologists for Christian nationalism today, the favored myth is that the movement represents an extension of the abolitionism of the nineteenth century and perhaps of the civil rights movement of the twentieth century, too. Many antiabortion activists self-consciously identify themselves as the new abolitionists. Mainstream conservatives who lament that the evangelicals who form Trump’s most fervent supporters have ‘lost their way’ suggest that they have betrayed their roots in the movements that fought for the abolition of slavery and the end of discrimination. But the truth is that today’s Christian nationalism did not emerge out of the religious movement that opposed such rigid hierarchies. It came from the one that promoted them — with the Bible in one hand and a whip in the other.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Contrary to myth, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Roe v. Wade, many secular and religious conservatives responded with delight. Here is what W. Barry Garrett, Washington bureau chief of the Baptist Press, a wire service run by the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote upon the announcement: “Religious liberty, human equality, and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.”50 Garrett’s position wasn’t exceptional. The 1971 convention of the Southern Baptists endorsed a resolution calling for the legalization of abortion to preserve the “emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother” as well as in cases of rape, incest, and “deformity.” The convention”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Pray for our CEF worker who has been accused of inappropriate behavior with the children,” she finally says in an agitated voice. “If these accusations are allowed to continue, Lord, it could devastate the man, and his family, and the ministry.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children

“Christian nationalism is not a religious creed but, in my view, a political ideology. It promotes the myth that the American republic was founded as a Christian nation. It asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but on adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Barton’s pseudo-history is too valuable to the Christian nationalist machine to let facts and scholarship get in the way, and his standing with his own audience has continued to soar.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“district schools are shown to outperform charters on important national measures, including SAT scores—even as they accept all students, including those with learning disabilities.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“What does it mean that the conservative church that’s growing in America is an end-times church? What does it mean that we are raising a generation of children to believe that they are the last generation? What is going to happen if we keep on telling them, ‘Don’t care about the environment, and bring on the war, because we’re going to be lifted out of here, and you can forget about loving your neighbors, because they’re just going to get blown away’?”
― Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children

“Their father told the kids that there is no hell! And my daughter says she wants to move away from our ‘fundamentalism.’ So I guess it’s up to me.” Her voice is almost ragged with exasperation.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children

“The religious right is quick to extol the principle of free speech when it comes to, say, public school officials preaching to children in their care or shouting at women through bullhorns outside of reproductive health clinics. And yet they are eager to regulate and restrict the speech of medical professionals delivering reproductive health services.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“We find in Scripture the imperative to love our neighbors and care for the least of these. That is by far one of the clearest messages”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“The roots of the present crisis in the American political party system lie at the juncture of money and religion”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“The judicial strategists of the Christian Right claim that all they want is “equal access” and “toleration.” But that isn’t in fact all they want. They don’t want equality; they want control. They don’t want toleration; they want the opportunity to practice their intolerance. They don’t want their religion to be included in the schools; they want the schools to be absorbed within their religion.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children

“With thirty-three days to go before the 2018 midterm elections, I am headed for the fellowship hall of the Unionville Baptist Church, about forty-five minutes outside of Charlotte, North”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“The end goal is to create a new reality on the ground in which women have no real ability to exercise a right that they are supposedly guaranteed.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“The most popular origin story of Christian nationalism today, shared by many critics and supporters alike, explains that the movement was born one day in 1973, when the Supreme Court unilaterally shredded Christian morality and made abortion ‘on demand’ a constitutional right. At that instant, the story goes, the flock of believers arose in protest and through their support to the party of ‘Life’ now known as the Republican Party. The implication is that the movement, in its current form, finds its principal motivation in the desire to protect fetuses against the women who would refuse to carry them to term.

This story is worse than myth. It is false as history and incorrect as analysis. Christian nationalism drew its inspiration from a set of concerns that long predated the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade and had little to do with abortion. The movement settled on abortion as its litmus test sometime after that decision for reasons that had more to do with politics than embryos. It then set about changing the religion of many people in the country in order to serve its new political ambitions. From the beginning, the ‘abortion issue’ has never been just about abortion. It has also been about dividing and uniting to mobilize votes for the sake of amassing political power.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty,” North once wrote, “to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”79”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“the Bible of Christian nationalism answers to the requirements of the individuals who fund the movement and grant it power at the highest levels of government”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“In God We Trust” was adopted as the national motto in 1956;”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“While many Americans still believe that the Christian right is primarily concerned with “values,” leaders of the movement know it’s really about power.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism