This week brought two chilling reminders that, despite America’s constitutional commitment to secular government, Christian nationalism is thriving in the Trump era. From the Alabama Supreme Court’s stunningly theocratic ruling on the legal status of embryos to the MAGA-aligned groups designing Donald Trump’s Christian nationalist second term, it has never been clearer that Republicans are at war with our fundamental separation of church and state.
The resurgence of Christian nationalism will come as no surprise to anyone who has watched Trump’s MAGA movement merge with a constellation of extremist preachers and apocalyptic prophets. Many of them, including prominent Mississippi Pastor Shane Vaughn, believe Trump was anointed by God to rule America. A growing number of evangelical voters now view the former president as the second coming of Jesus Christ and frame the 2024 election as a battle not just for America’s soul but for the salvation of all mankind.
That level of certainty in Trump’s divinity can justify a lot of extreme antidemocratic — and even violent — behavior. After all, shouldn’t a “good” (read: Trump-aligned) Christian be willing to do anything to ensure God’s anointed leader returns to the White House next year?
What’s truly shocking is tracking how the GOP’s embrace of Christian nationalist ideology has weedled its way into our government, most concerningly on the state Supreme Courts that will hear all manner of legal challenges to the 2024 election results. But the corrosive impact of Christian nationalism goes beyond just Trump, as Alabama’s Supreme Court again reminded us this week.
In a sweeping ruling that reads like a biblical sermon, Alabama’s conservative justices ruled that the frozen embryos used for in vitro fertilization (IVF) are legally people. As a result, doctors and those handling embryos can be held legally liable for destroying them, the same as if those doctors had murdered the woman seeking those embryos for an IVF procedure.
The court offered no scientific rationale for its decision. Instead, Chief Justice Tom Parker discards the consensus scientific opinion on embryos entirely in favor of a long lecture on biblical moralism. The casual reader could easily mistake Parker’s diatribe for something published by Iran’s ultra-conservative ayatollah.
“The theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the people of Alabama encompasses the following,” Parker wrote. “(1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
Parker’s ruling makes no effort to hide his preference for Christian biblical legalism over the Constitution. He also shows no concern with the 14 percent of Alabamians who don’t identify as Christian and might have some strong feelings about being forced into treating a judge’s conservative interpretation of Christian doctrine as law.
Unfortunately for the rest of the country, the GOP is full of powerful activist groups eager to expand Alabama’s example to the national stage.
As Axios first reported this week, Trump-aligned think tanks, including the powerful Center for Renewing America, are actively building a roadmap for integrating Christian nationalist principles into a second Trump administration. Those principles include invoking the Insurrection Act on Trump’s first day in office to crack down on liberal protesters, banning immigration of non-Christians into the United States, overturning same-sex marriage and banning access to contraception.
Putting Christian nationalism front and center in Trump’s second term is also a key part of Project 2025, the very public effort by Trump allies to reshape the executive branch into a tool of unchallenged one-man rule. Trump’s Christian nationalist allies don’t hide these efforts because they don’t view them as something shameful. Rather, they consider themselves the vanguard of a so-called “moral restoration” of the United States, which can only be achieved by destroying the democratic structures that allow non-Christians to immigrate, vote and seek public office in this country.
According to Project 2025’s authoritarian manifesto, “Freedom is defined by God, not man.” In the Christian nationalist reading of American history, too many non-Christians enjoy too much freedom, and even unconstitutional actions are justified if they return America to Trump’s imagined national past. If only God can define Americans’ freedom, it matters a great deal that a critical mass of Republicans view Trump as the reborn Christ.
The Republican Party’s separation from democracy is accelerating, and the extreme theocratic actions of the Alabama Supreme Court should be seen as the first salvo in Christian nationalists’ effort to reshape every aspect of American life and law. If Trump is elected this November, expect to see conservatives across the country pushing to reshape their state judiciaries — and the rest of the country — in Alabama’s antidemocratic image.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.
