The Power Worshippers Quotes

“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

“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

“Christian nationalism came of age in the American slave republic.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“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

“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

“in their insistence that public officials be guided by a “biblical worldview”; in the unabashed commitment to the subordination of women, part of the order and structure of the universe as God intended; in the fusion of the Bible with libertarian economics—even in their arguments for gun rights and against universal health care—today’s Christian nationalists follow the logic, if not necessarily the theology, laid down by Rushdoony.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“The fusion of hyper-capitalist ideology with hyper-Calvinist theology, purveyed by the likes of Fifield and chiseled in the granite of Rushdoony’s ponderous works, secured the financial future of Christian nationalism. America’s plutocrats understood that they had a friend on the Christian right. Just as the moguls of the 1930s and ’40s flocked to Fifield, a number of their heirs and successors attached themselves to evangelical leaders who hewed to this brand of thinking.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“This is not a book I could have imagined writing a dozen years ago. When an older couple from another town attempted to set up and lead a Bible club at my daughter’s public elementary school in Southern California in 2009, they might as well have been alien visitors showing up at a beach party. The purpose of the club was to convince children as young as five that they would burn for an eternity if they failed to conform to a strict interpretation of the Christian faith. The club’s organizers were offered free and better space in the evangelical church next door to our school, but they refused it; they insisted”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“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

“In the drive for homeschooling and the privatization of public education; in the providential history of Christian nation mythologizers; in their insistence that public officials be guided by a “biblical worldview”; in the unabashed commitment to the subordination of women, part of the order and structure of the universe as God intended; in the fusion of the Bible with libertarian economics—even in their arguments for gun rights and against universal health care—today’s Christian nationalists follow the logic, if not necessarily the theology, laid down by Rushdoony.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Christian nationalism exploits and intensifies inequality, and dominionism is its logical endpoint and the actual engine of the so-called culture wars.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“We don’t need lessons on patriotism from Christian nationalists. We need to challenge them in the name of the nation we actually have—a pluralistic, democratic nation—where no one is above the law and the laws are meant to be made by the people and their representatives in accordance with the Constitution.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“If we want to defend against Christian nationalists’ distorted notion of “religious liberty,” we don’t need to find a new principle. We just need to reclaim the genuine religious freedom that our founders established and that most of our citizens cherish.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“Forcing women to go through the side door to access essential forms of health care imposes logistical and financial burdens.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“over 16 percent of hospital beds in the United States are now in Catholic-run medical facilities. In some states the number exceeds 40 percent.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“There is no official count of the number of pregnant women who have turned to Catholic hospitals and clinics when something goes wrong, only to be denied the medical care they need.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“The “religious liberty” of Christian nationalists can cost you your dignity, your health, your job, and even your life.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“It is really about deciding what kind of nation the United States will become. 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

“Among the many sordid legacies that the Trump/Pence administration will leave behind, perhaps the most damaging over the long term may well be the infiltration of America’s judicial system with the progeny of the Federalist Society, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and their allies”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“In America today, there is nothing particularly remarkable about the financial pathways that lead from the public coffers to mega-preachers’ lives of bounty.”
― Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

“reducing public education to a consumer experience for parents that allows them to “choose” to funnel taxpayer money into schools that discriminate, teach pseudoscience and fake history, and promote contempt for those who are different isn’t a way to improve our system of education.”
― 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