Damned Christians

[Fake Messiah]

'They’re relentless.' How a Christian group turns beliefs into bills

The Center for Christian Virtue began as a little-known group of anti-pornography crusaders in Cincinnati over 40 years ago. Now, it is Ohio's largest Christian policy group with headquarters directly across from the Statehouse.

Over the past decade, CCV has lobbied on more than 300 bills and created a network of religious schools and churches. Since 2020, its revenue has quadrupled, raising more than $4 million last year.

CCV is backed by major conservative groups and figures such as the Heritage Foundation. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was slated to be a keynote speaker at CCV's Sept. 26 gala.

CCV has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its anti-LGBTQ stances. The group's president previously dismissed the center as "liberal political hacks" on social media.

The Center for Christian Virtue's growing influence represents a shift in how Christian conservatives engage with politics in Ohio and nationwide. The libertarian bent in Republican politics is fading. Now, Christian lobbyists are shaping the legislative agenda in red states like Ohio.

"We are starting to see a trend that also reflects the national trend right now, of a conservative party that is more about forcing Christian values on everyone and less about a ‘live and let live,’ free-market philosophy," said Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who has challenged Ohio's abortion restrictions.

In 1993, CCV pushed through a ban on Cincinnati laws protecting gay people from discrimination. That was repealed 11 years later.

In 2004, the group led a successful ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriages in Ohio. That language became moot in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in a case brought by Cincinnati native Jim Obergefell.

The Christian lobbyists were instrumental in changing state law to allow every private school student to take advantage of taxpayer-funded scholarships, known as EdChoice vouchers. Public school leaders vehemently opposed the change, which sparked a legal battle.

CCV also helped pass a ban on most abortions, which blocked access to the procedure for months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Ohio made national headlines after a young rape victim was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion.

“They work hard, and they’re relentless. They’re not afraid to take on big battles,” said state Sen. Kristina Roegner, a Republican in Akron's metro area who sponsored the 2019 abortion ban. Her son-in-law works for Christian Business Partnerships, CCV's chamber of commerce for Christian business owners.

Despite their growing influence, the Christian lobbyists aren't always victorious. In 2023, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment to protect abortion access and rejected the CCV-backed abortion ban. Voters also shot down an effort to make it harder to amend the state constitution, which was aimed at blocking the abortion measure.

Williams, a Republican who represents a district outside Toledo, sought out CCV while running for the state Legislature in 2022. Since then, he’s worked with the Christian lobbyists on several bills, including one to ban gender-affirming care for minors and prevent transgender girls from participating in women’s sports.

Williams also sponsored a CCV-backed bill to ban public drag performances outside of adult cabaret venues, called the “Indecent Exposure Act.”

Through its Minnery Fellowship, CCV offers online training for pastors to help them “speak to the difficult cultural and political issues facing their members today,” according to the fellowship's website. A page on CCV’s website advises pastors how to legally support political candidates and get their congregations to engage with legislation.

Baer said there are more than 4,000 "church ambassadors" in CCV's network.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/po...181115007/

[Fake Messiah]

White Christians' fear of Black people is dangerous. A notable Catholic fueled the hysteria.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Charlie Kirk, a Christian nationalist, repeatedly used language similar to 1 Peter's description of the devil, speaking of “Black criminals” who are “prowling” around looking to kill White victims. He is not the first Christian to speak like this. As I'll explain, similar inflammatory rhetoric from a prominent Catholic in the late 1990s has also shown to be dangerous and deadly to Black Americans.

The Catholic political scientist and professor John DiIulio Jr. coined the term “superpredator” to describe particularly delinquent boys, especially those who are African-American. His 1995 article “The Coming of the Super-Predators” using dubious statistics, DiIulio deduced that a staggering new wave of youth crime was inevitable, and according to him, “the trouble will be the greatest in black inner-city neighborhoods.”

In 1996, DiIulio wrote an even more racist and unapologetic warning about Black youth titled, “My Black Crime Problem, and Ours.” Therein, he used talking points that have since been thoroughly debunked, such as that there were no racial disparities between cocaine trafficking sentences, that the war on drugs and death penalty were both racially unbiased, and several other racist claims about Black criminality.

DiIulio's articles had a major impact on the way the public, politicians, police, and governmental entities—even President Bill Clinton—treated young people, and especially young Black boys, in recent years.

Using Christian language, DiIulio argued that “moral poverty” was to blame for the upcoming societal threat posed by young boys. His solution, therefore, was “religion” and investing in churches to provide services that would boost social and economic development, especially in low-income Black neighborhoods.

At the time, DiIulio was celebrated as a kind of prophet, someone who was brave enough to tell it like it is. By the end of the 1990s, almost every state had toughened its criminal laws concerning young people.

What DiIulio created was a caricatured image of violent Black men that harkened back to similar views during slavery. In the superpredator stereotype, young Black boys and men were not fully human; they were animal-like predators with no conscience, ability to tell right from wrong, or capacity for human emotions like love and empathy. They were more like the “prowling devil” looking for their next victim that would—in the eyes of the White public—most likely be one of them.

On Charlie Kirk’s Facebook page, in his September 10, 2025 video, he stated bogus statistics, like that 1 in 22 Black men will become murderers in their lifetime, which is statistically impossible to predict for many reasons. He argued that Black people commit the most crime in America, which is also patently false. Yet, like many did with DiIulio, right-wing American Christians laud Kirk as one who wasn't afraid to stand up and proclaim the “truth.”

Even right now, the criminal legal system’s pendulum is swinging rightward once again with the Trump administration weaponizing public fear of “inner-city violence” while ignoring the predominately White male domestic terrorists using guns to murder children in their schools, adults in public, worshippers at church, and even Charlie Kirk at his own public debate.

After Donald Trump took the presidential office for the second time; racial profiling, targeted violence, detainment, and deportation are now focused on the immigrant communities in the United States.

https://www.blackcatholicmessenger.org/w...dangerous/

[Fake Messiah]

The fight over Christian nationalism in a small Tennessee town

They are self-described "Christian nationalists" who question modern values, such as whether female suffrage and the civil rights movement were good ideas, and call for mass deportations of legal immigrants far in excess of President Donald Trump's current plan. Another thing they sometimes say: "Repeal the 20th Century."

Podcasters move in.

Mr Isker and Mr Engel announced their move to Gainesboro last year on their podcast Contra Mundum - Latin for "against the world".

On their show, which is now recorded in a studio within Ridgerunner's Gainesboro office, they have encouraged their fans to move into small communities, seek local influence, and join them in their fight to put strict conservative Christian values at the heart of American governance.

"If you could build places where you can take political power," Mr Isker said on one episode, "which might mean sitting on the [board of] county commissioners, or even having the ear of the county commissioners and sheriff… being able to do those things is extremely, extremely valuable."

On X, Mr Engel has popularised the idea of "heritage Americans" - a fuzzy concept but one that applies mainly to Anglo-Protestants whose ancestors arrived in the US at least a century ago. He says it is not explicitly white, but it does have "strong ethnic correlations".

He's called for mass deportations of immigrants - including legal ones - writing: "Peoples like Indians, or South East Asians or Ecuadorians or immigrated Africans are the least capable of fitting in and should be sent home immediately."

Their hardcore views have alarmed residents, with some locals setting up an informal resistance group.

"I believe that they have been attempting to brand our town and our county as a headquarters for their ideology of Christian nationalism," says town matriarch Diana Mandli, a prominent local businesswoman who until recently owned a pub on Gainesboro's central square.

But business is brisk. Around half of the lots are already under contract. Mr Abbotoy anticipates that the first houses will be built and new customers will begin moving in at the beginning of 2027.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c997j105941o.amp

[Fake Messiah]

People Who Left 'MAGA Christianity' Share What It Really Took To Step Away

HuffPost spoke with former followers of “MAGA Christianity” about their experiences being a part of these communities — and why they made the decision to step away from them.

Growing up Southern Baptist, Anna Rollins said that Christianity was presented as nearly inseparable from Republican identity, with patriotic symbols and language woven throughout church life. “Faith and freedom were often talked about in the same breath,” she said. “We often sang patriotic songs in church services, in addition to hymns. Nationalism was tightly woven in with Christianity.”

Sugiuchi, a Georgia-based writer whose upcoming memoir “Unreformed” recounts her experience in a white evangelical reform school, illuminates how these pressures can escalate: “MAGA Christianity is a cult. I know because I was in it,” she said.

Leaving isn’t easy; it can take everything to break free. In her experience, she had to escape to survive, reflecting that many believers are effectively brainwashed and may not even recognize the influence shaping them.

“I’m terrified about the merging of politics and Christianity,” said Sugiuchi. Over the years, she’s spoken about these concerns and fears in essays and interviews. She warns that if people of faith remain silent, others risk being swept into systems of control, citing the rapid expansion of unregulated faith-based organizations and the use of religious freedom claims to undermine civil rights.

“And now, as an adult, we have a president whom many equate with God… and surprise — the White House, and the country, is literally being torn to pieces,” she said.

“If there was one message I received in my formative years when it came to the intersection of faith and politics, it was simply this: Vote Republican. There was no other option,” Cara Meredith, author of ”Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation,” told HuffPost.

“If you identified as Christian, you voted for the Republican Party; it was a matter of good and evil, of the side God clearly stood on and the side God clearly did not stand.”

For Sugiuchi, the turning point came after years of trauma rooted in white evangelical extremism. At 15, she was sent to Escuela Caribe, an evangelical reform school, for failing to be a “subservient adolescent female.” There, she and her peers endured what she describes as near-unimaginable oppression, all justified as being “for our own good, in the name of Jesus.”

“By keeping silent, other people were being abused in the name of religion,” she says. “As a survivor, it’s the cruelest way to abuse a child. It completely destroys your faith in humanity.”

With Scheeres’ help and that of others, Sugiuchi ultimately helped shut the school down. Today, she maintains her own faith practice but has no connection to organized religion.

Levings, author of the New York Times bestseller “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy,” describes MAGA Christianity as the overlap between authoritarian Christianity and Christian nationalism.

According to Levings, modern churches have done little to protect their congregations from nationalist influence, and because authoritarian parenting has shaped family life for over 50 years. The result, she explains, is that the meaning of being a Christian in America has fundamentally changed.

She points to trauma bonding within churches, unaccountable pastors who accelerated the nationalist turn, generations raised without robust critical thinking skills, and a steady stream of misinformation that reinforces groupthink.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leaving-m...a4c3879fa2