For and by Christians: How Idaho’s influential Christian Nationalist group wants to reshape the state
In the future that the Idaho Family Policy Center envisions, every public school classroom in the state would begin the day with teachers reading from the King James Bible.
Verse by verse, over 10 years of school, children would hear their teachers recite the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, and the repeated exhortations that Jesus Christ is God. Students who didn’t want to listen would have to bring a note from their parents.
The policy center’s attempt to make that vision a reality — a bill introduced this year in the state Legislature — failed to get traction. But the policy center’s president, Blaine Conzatti, is playing the long game. “We're going to introduce it again next year, and I am confident and optimistic in the chances of success.”
His organization has swiftly become the largest conservative policy organization in the state, having a hand in successfully pushing some of Idaho’s most controversial bills in recent years, including laws restricting access to abortion, puberty blockers and controversial library books.
The U.S. Supreme Court has considered mandatory Bible reading laws to be unconstitutional for the last six decades. But after a series of recent rulings, an emboldened movement of Christian nationalists — conservatives who want to use government to elevate their religion over other faiths — hope the constitutional walls dividing church and state are poised to come tumbling down.
The Idaho Family Policy Center is part of a national network of like-minded groups. It’s closely aligned with Doug Wilson, an incendiary Idaho pastor whose theocratic gospel has earned fame and condemnation. And now, it has allies in the White House.
The policy center’s growing influence over Idaho lawmakers alarms Liz Yates, a program manager at the Western States Center, a nonprofit that tracks extremism. Yates said the organization’s goals are ultimately “anti-democratic.”
“They are trying to install a theocracy in which the authority of government comes not from the people, but from the Bible,” Yates said. “And people who don't subscribe to that form of Christianity are the ones who are excluded."
Indeed, Conzatti stressed that he would allow only Christians to serve in public office.
https://www.investigatewest.org/investig...e-17951285
In the future that the Idaho Family Policy Center envisions, every public school classroom in the state would begin the day with teachers reading from the King James Bible.
Verse by verse, over 10 years of school, children would hear their teachers recite the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, and the repeated exhortations that Jesus Christ is God. Students who didn’t want to listen would have to bring a note from their parents.
The policy center’s attempt to make that vision a reality — a bill introduced this year in the state Legislature — failed to get traction. But the policy center’s president, Blaine Conzatti, is playing the long game. “We're going to introduce it again next year, and I am confident and optimistic in the chances of success.”
His organization has swiftly become the largest conservative policy organization in the state, having a hand in successfully pushing some of Idaho’s most controversial bills in recent years, including laws restricting access to abortion, puberty blockers and controversial library books.
The U.S. Supreme Court has considered mandatory Bible reading laws to be unconstitutional for the last six decades. But after a series of recent rulings, an emboldened movement of Christian nationalists — conservatives who want to use government to elevate their religion over other faiths — hope the constitutional walls dividing church and state are poised to come tumbling down.
The Idaho Family Policy Center is part of a national network of like-minded groups. It’s closely aligned with Doug Wilson, an incendiary Idaho pastor whose theocratic gospel has earned fame and condemnation. And now, it has allies in the White House.
The policy center’s growing influence over Idaho lawmakers alarms Liz Yates, a program manager at the Western States Center, a nonprofit that tracks extremism. Yates said the organization’s goals are ultimately “anti-democratic.”
“They are trying to install a theocracy in which the authority of government comes not from the people, but from the Bible,” Yates said. “And people who don't subscribe to that form of Christianity are the ones who are excluded."
Indeed, Conzatti stressed that he would allow only Christians to serve in public office.
https://www.investigatewest.org/investig...e-17951285
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"