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Breaking News! Oklahoma Supreme Court Rejects Religious Charter School!

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2024 //
25

Good news! The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against public funding for a religious charter school. Many were watching closely to see how the court ruled. A decision that went the other way would have rebuffed the tradition of separation of church and state and erased the distinction between charters and vouchers. The fact that Oklahoma’s ultra-conservative Governor Kevin Stitt and its State Commissioner of Education Ryan Walters strongly supported the religious charter school idea makes the decision even more startling.

CNN reports:

An effort to establish the first publicly funded religious charter school in the country has been blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

The court Tuesday ordered the state to rescind its contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in a 6-2 decision with one recusal.

“Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school,” wrote Justice James R. Winchester for the court. “As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian. However, St. Isidore will evangelize the Catholic faith as part of its school curriculum while sponsored by the State.”

A charter contract for St. Isidore was approved by a state board last year.

Charter schools in Oklahoma are privately owned but receive state funding under the same guidelines as government-operated public schools.

The fight over the school exposed a fault line between two of the state’s top Republican politicians. Gov. Kevin Stitt strongly advocated for the school, saying when the contract was approved that it was “a win for religious liberty and education freedom in our state.”

But the school’s charter status was strongly opposed by Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who filed the lawsuit against it and predicted the state could be forced to fund other types of religious education if St. Isidore succeeded.

“The framers of the US Constitution and those who drafted Oklahoma’s Constitution clearly understood how best to protect religious freedom: by preventing the State from sponsoring any religion at all,” Drummond said in a statement Tuesday. “Now Oklahomans can be assured that our tax dollars will not fund the teachings of Sharia Law or even Satanism.”

PLEASE OPEN THE LINK TO FINISH THE STORY.

[Thanks to reader FLERP for alerting us to this story.]

Categories Charter Schools, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

Ohio: The Corrupt GOP Politicians Defunding Public Schools and Their Students

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2024 //
6

Marilou Johanek is a veteran journalist in Ohio. She writes here about the Republican politicians who used their power to impose universal vouchers on the state. The main beneficiaries are children of the affluent who are already enrolled in private and religious schools and who can already afford the tuition. The losers are the vast majority of public school students, whose schools are underfunded.

What does the future hold for states that skimp on the education of the next generation while lavishing billion-dollar subsidies on the families of the well-off?

Johanek writes:

My way or the highway may be your boss’s motto and your cross to bear. But if that is the mantra of publicly elected officials in a representative government — as it sure seems to be in Ohio — all of us have a problem. A big one. 

The political bosses in Ohio conduct the people’s business with take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums. They’re not running a democracy; they’re dictating decisions made. They do not entertain questions about their extremist agenda to ban invented threats, ignore real ones, claw back rights, reduce women to breeders, welcome polluters to state parks, or defund public education to pay for private schools. 

When challenged over their arguably lawless mandates, Ohio Republican leaders mount a full court press to dismiss, disparage, intimidate, and circumvent countervailing forces that dare confront absolute power. Consider the all-out effort of GOP chieftains to scuttle a statewide lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Republican fetish to fund private schools with hundreds of millions of apparently unlimited public tax dollars.

The partisans sprang into action to protect the $1-billion-dollar-and-counting boondoggle they created last year with universal vouchers that pay private school tuition for the affluent few at the expense of the many — a majority of Ohio students who attend traditional public-school districts. Ever since GOP lawmakers — led by Ohio Senate President and go-to financier of diocesan schools Matt Huffman — opened the government dole to any private school student with their voucher change slipped into the state budget, unaccountable public spending on private schools has exploded.

The amount of tax dollars going to students already attending private, mostly religious schools tripled the first school year uncapped voucher money was there for the taking. Many of the private school families sweeping up the easy cash earn north of $250,000 annually. The initial Republican rationale for diverting state educational funding from public to parochial schools was that the public handouts offered low-income families in failing school districts access to better school options. 

But that excuse was a ruse to subsidize religious education with taxpayer money and gradually starve public education of critical financial support. The flood of public funds to prop up Catholic schools came from the same general revenue pool that was supposed to keep public school districts afloat not be shortchanged by private education giveaways.  

The fallback for fiscally depleted districts is school levies that fail more often than not. Which, as every public school parent knows, means likely cuts to staff, extracurricular programs, student support services, and capital improvements, decades overdue, shelved again.

Little wonder that more than 200 school districts across Ohio have joined a growing coalition contesting the unprecedented release of public funds to every private school family — regardless of income or quality of home district — in a lawsuit bound for trial. 

They argue the private school “EdChoice” voucher expansion breaking the public education budget violates the state constitution by creating a separate, unequal and segregated school system of privatized education bankrolled with money the state is constitutionally obligated to spend on public education alone. Meanwhile public school students go to class in crappy buildings erected in the 1950s (because there’s no money to build a new ones) and enjoy fewer, if any, electives in music and art, or reading tutors, or enough counselors, AP course offerings, gifted services, or small class sizes, etc. 

The billion-dollar windfall to offset private school tuition many families can afford would be a godsend to public schools making do with less. God bless those who choose to send their students to expensive parochial institutions. But none of us agreed to collectively finance your private school choice that, frankly, serves a private interest, not a public one.

We agreed instead to fund what serves the greater good, not what satisfies individual preference. We do the same with other public services (besides free public education) when our taxes support local law enforcement, fire protection, mental health resources, metro park amenities and other community systems that benefit everybody. The lawsuit to strike down Ohio’s harmful universal vouchers recently added the Upper Arlington school district, in a suburb of Columbus, to its ballooning list of participants.

Ohio’s Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted personally pressured the district to pass on the legal fight before the school board voted to join it. Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Dave Yost tried and failed to get a Franklin County court to dismiss the voucher lawsuit altogether. Huffman, the architect of the school privatization scheme in the legislature, refused to sit for a lawsuit deposition. 

He even balked at submitting written answers. Finally, the Lima Republican appealed to the Republican-majority state supreme court (he engineered) to judge him above accountability per the litigation. The GOP my-way-or-the-highway bosses aren’t finished trying to out-maneuver public school advocates fighting for fair and equitable public funding. But their secret is out. 

In the school year that just ended, taxpayers forked over a billion dollars’ worth of tuition payments for a slice of well-off students enrolled in pricey private schools. That’s not okay with public school families eying another school levy or their kids will do without. The state’s autocrats bosses should be on notice; their take-it-or-leave-it dictate on universal vouchers went too far. 

It provoked a public education crusade willing to see you in court, Messrs. Huffman, Yost and Husted. So save the trial date. It’s Nov. 4. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Fake, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame, Vouchers

Louisiana Requires “10 Commandments” in Every Public School Classroom

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
67

Louisiana became the first state to enact a law requiring that the “Ten Commandments” be displayed in every public school classroom. Others have proposed such laws, but they didn’t pass. Governor Jeff Landry, who is Catholic, signed the law in a Catholic school, which is somewhat strange since the law applies only to public schools.

The New York Times reports that the bill is part of a larger agenda to turn the U.S. into an explicitly Christian nation. Despite the fact that the Founders wrote extensively against religion controlling the state and said in the Constitution that there could be no religious test for office-holders, the religious right continues to shove their religion—and only their religion—on everyone else

The crowd at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, La., applauded Gov. Jeff Landry as he signed bill after bill this week on public education in the state, making it clear he believed God was guiding his hand.

One new law requires that transgender students be addressed by the pronouns for the gender on their birth certificates (“God gives us our mark,” he said). Another allows public schools to employ chaplains (“a great step for expanding faith in public schools”).

Then he signed into law a mandate that the Ten Commandments be hung in every public classroom, demonstrating a new willingness for Louisiana to go where other states have not. Last month, Louisiana also became the first state to classify abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.

“We don’t quit,” Mr. Landry, a Republican, said at the signing ceremony.

Taken together, the measures have signaled the ambition of the governor and the Republican-led Legislature to be at the forefront of a growing national movement to create and interpret laws according to a particular conservative Christian worldview. And Mr. Landry, a Catholic who has been vocal about his faith’s influence in shaping his politics, wants to lead the charge.

It’s ironic to see a Catholic leading the charge, because for many years, the U.S. was strongly anti-Catholic. Governor Landry’s new evangelical allies would not have welcomed him into the country or their tent. Anti-Catholic sentiment was so powerful in the 19th century that most states wrote into their state constitution that no public money could be sent, directly or indirectly, to any religious institution. Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently about the “separation of church and state.”

“Separation” benefitted both the church and the state, by keeping churches free of government regulation, and by keeping the government free of sectarian meddling. Under our Constitution, everyone is free to practice their religion or no religion, and the state cannot (should not) be used to enforce religious doctrine.

But the goals of the new religious dominionists is to make America “a Christian nation” and to impose their beliefs through law on everyone else, whether they are Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Deist, Unitarian Universalist, Satanists, or any of the hundreds of other religions or sects in this country.

The Ten Commandments is purely symbolic. It’s one step in the plan to outlaw abortion, ban in-vitro fertilization, ban contraception, ban same-sex marriage, criminalize homosexuality, and restore the primacy of the father in families. It is the leading edge in a rightwing putsch to control the government and all of us.

Will posting this religious document solve any problems? Will it reduce crime or promiscuity or adultery? Donald Trump is a philanderer who has broken that commandment.

The Ten Commandments say nothing about abortion or gay rights or the rights of racial minorities or voting rights.

The Ten Commandments are a wish list . We should all strive to be better people. Hanging the Commandments on the wall doesn’t change anyone’s behavior. If they did, they should be hung in every prison cell. Let’s see how that works.

Categories Extremism, Hypocrisy, Louisiana, Religion, Separation of church and state

States Are Spending Billions on Vouchers, Mostly for Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2024 //
28

In the past few years, Republican-controlled states have established or expanded expensive voucher programs. The so-called “wall of separation” between church and state—a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson—is crumbling. Republicans and the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court are taking a sledgehammer to that wall, to make sure that public money underwrites tuition at private and religious schools. Public schools enroll the vast majority of American K-12 students, from 80-90%. They are being stripped of resources so that a small minority can go private.

Laura Meckler and Michelle Boorstein wrote in The Washington Post:

Billions in taxpayer dollars are being used to pay tuition at religious schools throughout the country, as state voucher programs expand dramatically and the line separating public education and religion fades.


School vouchers can be used at almost any private school, but the vast majority of the money is being directed to religious schools, according to a Washington Post examination of the nation’s largest voucher programs.


Vouchers, government money that covers education costs for families outside the public schools, vary by state but offer up to $16,000 per student per year, and in many cases fully cover the cost of tuition at private schools. In some schools, a large share of the student body is benefiting from a voucher, meaning a significant portion of the school’s funding is coming directly from the government.

In just five states with expansive programs, more than 700,000 students benefited from vouchers this school year. (Those same states had a total of about 935,000 private school students in 2021, the most recent year for which data are available.) An additional 200,000 were subsidized in the rest of the country, according to tracking by EdChoice, a voucher advocacy group. That suggests a substantial share of about 4.7 million students attending private school nationwide are benefiting from vouchers — a number that is expected to grow.

The programs, popular with conservatives, are rapidly growing in GOP-run states, with a total of 29 states plus D.C. operating some sort of voucher system. Eight states created or expanded voucher programs last year, and this year, Alabama, Georgia and Missouri have approved or expanded voucher-type programs. Some recently enacted plans are just starting to take effect or will be phased in over the next few years…

In Ohio, the GOP legislature last year significantly expanded its voucher program to make almost every student eligible for thousands of dollars to attend private school. As a result, more than 150,000 students are paying tuition with vouchers this year — up from about 61,000 in 2020. About 91 percent of this year’s voucher recipients attend religious schools, the Post analysis found. When vouchers for students with autism and other disabilities — who typically seek specific services — are removed from the list, the portion going toward religious education rises to 98 percent. (Unless otherwise noted, the Post calculations exclude schools for students with disabilities.)

In Wisconsin, 96 percent of about 55,000 vouchers given this school year went toward religious schools, The Post found. In Indiana, 98 percent of vouchers go to religious schools. (Indiana state data only specifies the number of vouchers for schools with at least 10 recipients.)
In Florida, several programs combine to make every student in the state eligible for vouchers, with more than 400,000 participating this year. At least 82 percent of students attend religious schools, The Post found. Florida is first in the nation in both the number of enrolled students and total cost of the voucher program — more than $3 billion this year.


And in Arizona, more than 75,000 students are benefiting from the Empowerment Scholarship Program, which pays for any educational expense. In 2022-2023, three-fourths of the money — about $229 million — went to 184 vendors. Most of that money went for tuition, 87 percent of it to religious schools.


Arizona also has an older voucher program, funded by tax credits, which last year subsidized tuition for at least 30,000 students. (The state tracks only the number of scholarships given, and one student can receive multiple scholarships.) Since this program was created in 1998, 19 of the 20 schools that received the most money were religious, according to a state report. Those 19 schools received about 96 percent of the $767 million spent between 1998 and 2023 at the top 20 schools.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Putting Chaplains in Schools is a Very Bad Idea

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2024 //
31

Peter Greene describes the new movement to place chaplains in schools to act as mental health counselors. The politicians behind this demand want Protestant evangelical chaplains, no doubt, but the schools will have requests for all sorts of religions. Not only from the myriad Protestant sects, but from Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Unitarians, Buddhists, Hindus, and many others. There would certainly be a need for three Jewish chaplains: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. And every other religion will have divisions that must be addressed. Will there also be mental health counselors for kids who don’t want a chaplain?

Peter Greene writes:

The push for school chaplains is moving across the country, pushed by the National School Chaplain Association, a group that pretty clearly hopes school chaplains will be a means of putting a particular brand of Christianity in schools. 

So far the movement’s two big wins are in Texas and Florida, where the legislatures actually passed a law allowing anyone who wants to call themselves a chaplain to get into schools that set up the chaplain post. In Texas, the big pushback came from actual professional chaplains, and so far, one charter school has decided to bring in a “chaplain,” because a real chaplain has actual training, sometimes specialized, and follows a set of professional ethics and is not, in fact, just some untrained true believer who thinks Jesus wants him to go recruit some children. In fact, several states have said no to the amateur hour first-amendment-busting bill.

Ryan Walters of Oklahoma

Florida also passed a “chaplain” law, and that led to a predictable next step, which was for the Satanic Temple to announce that they would also be offering chaplains, with said announcement followed by Governor Ron DeSantis declaring that he couldn’t read the plain English of the law that he would forbid any such thing to happen. 

The law is written to avoid any obvious First Amendment violation; in fact, it doesn’t even require the “chaplain” to have a religious affiliation. But never mind– DeSantis will tell you what is and is not a legitimate religion.

Well, if Texas and Florida are going galumphing off into far right field, you know Oklahoma will be close behind.

So here comes SB 36, passed through the House and now facing the Senate. The bill is a step up from the versions in Texas and Florida and some other states by virtue of some amendments to the bill. It requires the “chaplain” to have some sort of “ecclesiastical endorsement from their faith group” indicating they are an “ordained minister or member in good standing.” It even requires them to have a bachelor’s degree and some graduate work. The House also added a “no proselytizing” clause. 

None of this really addresses the issue that chaplains are not trained as child mental health professionals. Nor does it make it any less a violation of the First Amendment.

Critics have noted that the bill has one particular religion in mind. But you know some other group is cued up and ready to go. And Oklahoma’s Education Dudebro-in-Chief Ryan Walters has come out swinging.

Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell.

Legislators have also announced their inability to read and their misunderstanding of the Constitutionopposition to the Satanic Temple. SB 36 simply wouldn’t invite the Satanic Temple to send ministers to school children, said one group. 

Instead, it gives permission for the local school boards to decide whether to implement a chaplain program, leaving the decision to the duly elected school board members who represent their community’s values. Additionally, parents can decide whether or not to let their child participate in the program.

All true, but it skips over the part where the Constitution forbids discriminating against an employer on religious grounds. This is not news. The Good News Club, a program of the Child Evangelism Fellowship way back in 2001 won its case before SCOTUS that it must be allowed to have an after school club like any other group. And that was followed by the Satanic Temple winning cases to have its own after school Satan club in districts, because the First Amendment is clear on not allowing the government to pick and choose which religions are okay.

Dudebro Walters is not a dummy. He most certainly knows all this (he was an AP history teacher). But he’s got an audience to play to. So here he is on Fox News, sitting in an office, playing the rightwing hits.

Asked to respond to the Satanic Temple’s stated intention to expose “harmful pseudo-scientific practices in mental health care,” Walters says 

I am not surprised that people who worship Satan lie. They are liars. What they are trying to do in worshipping Satan is ruin the lives of children, undermine the very Judeo-Christian values of this country and destroy our schools.

The Satanic Temple has always been pretty clear that they do not worship Satan, but are on a mission to push back against those with a theocratic bent. Walters declares 

Satanism is not a religion and we will not allow them in our school. Our bill will not allow Satanists into our schools. It will only allow religions, religions that we have protected in our country since the outset.

Sooo much baloney here. The IRS says that the Satanic Temple is a religion. And if we’re going to have state officials going around declaring what is and is not a real religion, there is all sorts of bad trouble ahead. This has been a tough line for us to draw as a country, because “since the outset,” we have not protected all religions. The Puritans of Massachusetts used to banish or execute folks of different religions– and I’m not talking about the Salem witch trials, but folks like Mary Dyer, who was executed in Boston for being a Quaker who wouldn’t stay properly banished. Or we could talk about when the Baptists had a fun nickname for the Catholic Church and/or the Pope– the whore of Babylon.

Please open the link to finish reading this outstanding article.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state

Dahlia Lithwick: How Religious Zealots Gained Control of the Courts and the GOP

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2024 //
35

This discussion, led by Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, is the most important information you will read today, this week, this month. It explains the theocratic movement that is taking control of the seats of power, imperiling democracy. It describes who they are. You will learn about “dominionism,” about “the Seven Mountains,” about a distorted view of religion that seeks power. They play the long game, with the goal of controlling our society.

This is the only post today. We really have to focus on the root issue in American political life today, the one that makes it impossible to address any problems. Religious extremism is it.

Lithwick is a lawyer, journalist, and senior editor at Slate. She interviews Rachel Laser, the president and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State—a nonprofit education and advocacy organization that works in courts, legislatures, and the public square to protect religious freedom—and Katherine Stewart, an author and journalist who has closely covered religious extremism for the past fifteen years; her latest book is The Power Worshippers: Inside The Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Her new book, Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, will be published next February.

Please open the link to Slate to read the arntire discussion. It’s terrifying.

Dahlia Lithwick: So Katherine, I think we’re going to start with you, and we’re going to talk about this movement. I would love to define it, because we put a lot under this rubric of white Christian nationalism.

Katherine Stewart: Let’s talk about what Christian nationalism is and what it isn’t. Christian nationalism is not a religion—it’s not Christianity. I think of it as a mindset, and also a machine. The mindset is this ideology, the idea of America as essentially a Christian theocracy or a Christian nation whose laws should be based on the Bible, and a very reactionary reading of the Bible. It’s also a political movement that exploits religion in this organized quest for power. As a political movement, it is leadership-driven and it’s organization-driven. It has this deeply networked organizational infrastructure that is really the key to its power. There has been five decades of investment in this infrastructure, and it’s the leaders of this network who are really calling the shots.

We can group their organizations into categories. I’ll throw out a few names, but this is by no means comprehensive. There are these right-wing groups like the Family Research Council. You have networking organizations like the Council for National Policy, which gets much of the movement’s leadership cadre on the same page, and brings them together with these very deep-pocketed funders. There are think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. And there’s a vast right-wing legal advocacy ecosystem that includes groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, with its $100-plus-million-per-year budget; also, the Becket Fund, Liberty Counsel, First Liberty Institute, Pacific Justice Institute—and they align with the aims of the Federalist Society and related organizations that mobilize enormous sums of money to shape the courts.

Another feature of this movement that is often overlooked is the pastor networks like Watchmen on the Wall and Church United, or groups like Faith Wins, that draw together and then mobilize tens of thousands of conservative or conservative-leaning pastors as movement leaders. If you can get the pastors, you can get their congregations. Often pastors are the most trusted voices in their congregations. So they reach out to these pastors, draw them into networks, and give them tools to turn out their congregations to vote for the far-right candidates that they want.

And then, of course, there’s this information sphere—or propaganda sphere—of the type that the Alitos, with their “Appeal to Heaven” flag, are clearly tied into. It’s a kind of messaging sphere that outsiders often simply don’t know about, but it’s incredibly self-contained and repeats over and over again a certain core set of messages.

Rachel, I think we know about the ways in which these movements and groups have targeted Congress and targeted the executive branch. We have seen the laying on of hands of the clergy when Donald Trump assumed office. We know a lot about Mike Johnson, we know a lot about Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the ways in which these religious ideas have embedded themselves in the other two branches of government.

But it’s harder and murkier to understand how it intersects with the courts. I would love for you to explain when this movement really turns its attention to the courts, and how this movement manages to bring this sprawling network to making change at the federal judiciary.

Rachel Laser: I think we have to start with the Federalist Society, which was founded in 1982. That was around the time when all of the religious-right groups were getting active. They were intentionally shifting their focus from school segregation to abortion. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, we saw this shadow network of legal groups forming. That accompanied what the Federalist Society was doing with the judiciary. The Alliance Defending Freedom was founded in the early ’90s, the Becket Fund in the early ’90s, First Liberty in 1997, Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice back in 1990, Liberty Counsel in 1989. So when we were seeing the “moral majority,” and this sort of burgeoning religious extremist movement in the country, they got really smart and decided to focus on the courts, and, boy, are we seeing the rewards of that today.

Stewart: And the movement is extremely strategic. Very patient. I think the key to their success is that long-range thinking and their strategy.

From the very beginning, they set about picking the right cases to bring to the right courts and they created these novel legal building blocks that would sideline, and in some cases obliterate, the establishment clause. They’ve turned civil rights law on its head, and expanded the privileges of religious organizations substantially, including the right to taxpayer money.

Katherine, you wrote a piece in 2022 describing how the movement gets supercharged. You flagged three things that happened after Dobbs: First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appears to have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years. Second, the theology of dominion—that is the belief that right-thinking Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society—is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

Can you talk about how those three themes are playing out now? I mean, we live in that world. That’s mifepristone, that’s EMTALA, that’s the in vitro fertilization decision out of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Stewart: By acknowledging the legitimacy of a state interest in zygotes and blastocysts and fetuses, they really provide a legal system with a set of purely religiously grounded rights that can be used to strip women of all kinds of rights and basically turn our bodies and lives over to federal and state authorities.

But Dobbs is really just the inevitable consequence of this movement’s power. They’re not stopping here. The movement leaders are determined to end all abortion access everywhere. When they say abortion, they also mean some of the most effective and popular forms of birth control, as well as miscarriage care that’s necessary to save women’s lives and health. We’re seeing the consequences of this all over the country, where women are suffering devastating health consequences when they can’t get the miscarriage care that they need.

I’ve been attending right-wing conferences and strategy gatherings for 15 years for my research, and they tell us over and over again what they intend to do, and then they do it, and then they boast about what they’ve done. They’re really not hiding, and their aims are not hard to discern if you’re paying attention.

In the last 15 years, the rhetoric of violence has become more extreme. Fifteen years ago, the religious right sometimes wanted to portray itself as just wanting a seat at the table in the noisy forum of American democracy, saying, “We just want to have our voices heard and be counted.” But the calls for dominion, the calls for total domination, have become louder and more explicit. And part of that is a consequence of the rise of a spirit-warrior style of religion, embodied in movements like the New Apostolic Reformation, which is a sort of charismatic Christian evangelical movement. It’s a relational network, rather than a formal denomination, and it’s grown enormously in recent years. It has deep roots in Christian Reconstructionism and Calvinism, but it didn’t really get going until Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright, these two Christian-right leaders, both said they had a dream.

They both seemed to have the same dream that God told them that they needed to take over the seven “mountains,” or spheres, of culture, which they identified as things like government, education, business, media, and the like. They shared these ideas with some figures like Lance Wallnau and Peter Wagner. Wagner was a key figure in the “church planting” movement—a movement of establishing or planting new churches. Wagner ran with the idea of taking over the seven mountains as taking back dominion from Satan.

That notion of “Seven Mountains” dominionism has spread very quickly—not just among networks like the New Apostolic Reformation and other charismatic networks, but the language and style of “Seven Mountains Dominion” and this sort of spirit-warrior religion has spread to other sectors of the movement that are not remotely identified with the NAR or charismatic Christianity.

NAR churches often cite the Watchman Decree, a very theocratic prayer, which references the seven mountains. They often fly the “Appeal to Heaven” flag. Now you have people like Mike Johnson, who’s affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, displaying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside his office and appearing on podcasts run by very overt “Seven Mountains” dominionists, and you have a lot of white-power and militia groups that were not particularly religious before—they were more focused on race—but now they’re adopting the language and style of “Seven Mountains” dominionism. So when you see Mike Johnson’s “Appeal to Heaven” flag, when you see the Alitos flying the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation, or that they’re members of these militias at all, but it really tells us who they’ve been talking to.

Most people in the mainstream, at the center right, really don’t know anything about this flag. They wouldn’t think to fly it. It’s like a relic of the revolutionary period. And it’s been revived now, and it’s being promoted by people on the extreme far right. So when they fly it, they’ve reinterpreted it as taking a stand for the idea of America as a Christian theocratic nation rather than a pluralistic democracy. They see it as a call for profound, and even violent, revolution. It’s really astonishing to see it flying over the Alitos’ beach house. Again, it doesn’t mean that they’re paid-up members of militia groups or charismatic Christian groups. It just means they spend their time in the same information and propaganda bubbles where this flag stands for God and country and armed insurrection.

Laser: If you believe that rights are God-given, instead of given by the people, then you can see how you can jump quickly to “and I can use violence to protect those rights.” That’s what has shown up in the polls.

PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute] did a poll on Christian nationalists, and they found Christian nationalists are about twice as likely as the rest of us to believe in political violence. That’s what we saw on Jan. 6 with the parading “Appeal to Heaven” flags that were at the insurrection. I think another important point to make here is the authoritarian nature of this Christian nationalist movement. This movement is rooted in the belief that America is a country given to European Christians, and that our laws and policies must reflect the same. If you believe that, you are antidemocratic, because democracy is rooted in equality. So the end goal of this Christian nationalist movement has to be the toppling of democracy to achieve their goal. And that’s why we saw so many of them fueling the insurrection.

The antidote to Christian nationalism is the separation of church and state, because it refuses to let Christian privilege into the law, it refuses to let conservative Christianity be the guiding principle in America. It insists that America keep to its promises that are embedded in our Constitution, of religious freedom as a basic human right. And that’s why Christian nationalists have gone after the separation of church and state, and that’s why their allies at the Supreme Court are on a crusade to eradicate church–state separation—because they are in lockstep with a movement that must get rid of church–state separation in order to accomplish its goals.

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My comment:

Will we be a theocracy or a society struggling to improve democracy? Please open the link. After reading this, you can understand why it is so important to the theocrats to destroy the separation of church and state and to funnel public money into religious organizations. That’s one of the crucial issues on the ballot in November. If you don’t want to be controlled by these power-hungry zealots, get active.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Stephen Dyer: Public School Funding in Ohio Drops Dramatically as “Choice” Expands

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2024 //
3

Stephen Dyer, former state legislator in Ohio, wrote in his blog “Tenth Period” that the 85% of Ohio’s children who attend public schools are being shortchanged by the state. First the state went overboard for charter schools, including for-profit charters and virtual charters and experienced a long list of money-wasting scandals. Then the state Republicans began expanding vouchers, despite a major evaluation showing that low-income students lost ground academically by using vouchers. As the state lowered the restrictions on access to vouchers, they turned into a subsidy for private school tuition.

He writes:

Since 1975, the percentage of the state budget going to Ohio’s public school students has dropped from 40% to barely 20% this year — a record low.

This is stunning, stunning data. But the Ohio General Assembly and Gov. Mike DeWine today are committing the smallest share of the state’s budget to educate Ohio’s public school kids in the last 50 years. And it’s not really close.

What’s going on here?

Simple: Ohio’s leaders have spent the last 3+ decades investing more and more money into privately run charter schools and, especially recently, have exploded their commitment to subsidize wealthy Ohioans’ private school tuitions. This has come at the expense of the 85% of Ohio students who attend the state’s public school districts. 

Look at this school year, for example. In the budget, the state commits a little more than $11 billion to primary and secondary education. That represents 26.6% of the state’s $41.5 billion annual expenditure. However, this year, charter schools are expected to be paid $1.3 billion and private school tuition subsidies will soar to $1.02 billion (to give you an idea of what kind of explosion this has been, when I left the Ohio House in 2010, Ohio spent about $75 million on these tuition subsidies). So if you subtract that combined $2.32 billion that’s no longer going to kids in public school districts, now Ohio’s committing $8.7 billion to educate the 1.6 million kids in Ohio’s public school districts. That’s a 21.1% commitment of the state’s budget. 

Some perspective:

  • That $8.7 billion is about what the state was sending to kids in public school districts in 1997, adjusted for inflation.
  • The 21.1% commitment currently being sent to kids in public school districts is by far the lowest commitment the state has ever made to its public school students — about 7% lower than the previous record (last year’s 22.2%) and 20% lower than the previous record for low spending in the pre-privatization era. 
  • The voucher expenditure alone now drops state commitment to public school kids by nearly 10%.
  • The commitment to all students, including vouchers and charters, represents the fifth-lowest commitment since 1975. Only four years surrounding the initial filing of the state’s school funding lawsuit in 1991 were lower. The lowest commitment ever on record was 1992 at 25.2% of the state budget. Don’t worry, though. Next year, the projected commitment to all Ohio students will be 25.3% of the state budget.
  • What is clear now is that every single new dollar (plus a few more) that’s been spent on K-12 education since 1997 has gone to fund privately run charter schools and subsidize private school tuitions mostly for parents whose kids already attend private school. 

What’s even more amazing is that even if charters and vouchers never existed and all that revenue was going to fund the educations of only Ohio’s public school students, the state is still spending a smaller percentage of its budget on K-12 education than at any but 4 out of the last 50 years. And next year it’s less than all but 1 of those last 50 years.

Ohio’s current leaders have essentially divested from Ohio’s greatest resource — its children and future — for the last 30 years.

Please open the link and finish reading the post. Ohio has also slashed funding for public higher education.

Does this disinvestment in children and higher education make any sense? Who benefits?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Politico: Explosion of Choice in Florida Dooms Many Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2024 //
17

Ron DeSantis has been determined as governor of Florida to privatize the funding of schools, and he has had a compliant legislature to help him achieve his goal of destroying public schools.

Andrew Atterbury of Politico wrote about the fiscal crisis of many public school districts as they lose students to private schools, charter schools, religious schools, and home schools.

Most vouchers are claimed by students already enrolled in private schools—a subsidy for the rich and upper-middle-class—but the public funds are causing serious enrollment declines in some districts. Those districts are now considering closing public schools as tax money flows to unaccountable private schools.

Atterbury writes:

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have spent years aggressively turning the state into a haven for school choice. They have been wildly successful, with tens of thousands more children enrolling in private or charter schools or homeschooling.

Now as those programs balloon, some of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools.

The emphasis on these programs has been central to DeSantis’ goals of remaking the Florida education system, and they are poised for another year of growth. DeSantis’ school policies are already influencing other GOP-leaning states, many of which have pursued similar voucher programs. But Florida has served as a conservative laboratory for a suite of other policies, ranging from attacking public- and private-sector diversity programs to fighting the Biden administration on immigration.

“We need some big changes throughout the country,” DeSantis said Thursday evening at the Florida Homeschool Convention in Kissimmee. “Florida has shown a blueprint, and we really can be an engine for that as other states work to adopt a lot of the policies that we’ve done.”

Education officials in some of the state’s largest counties are looking to scale back costs by repurposing or outright closing campuses — including in Broward, Duval and Miami-Dade counties. Even as some communities rally to try to save their local public schools, traditional public schools are left with empty seats and budget crunches.

Since 2019-20, when the pandemic upended education, some 53,000 students have left traditional public schools in these counties, a sizable total that is forcing school leaders to consider closing campuses that have been entrenched in local communities for years.

In Broward County, Florida’s second-largest school district, officials have floated plans to close up to 42 campuses over the next few years, moves that would have a ripple effect across Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood.

The district has lost more than 20,000 students over the last five years, a decline that comes as charter schools in particular experienced sizable growth in the area. Enrollment in charters, which are public schools operating under performance contracts freeing them of many state regulations, increased by nearly 27,000 students since 2010, according to Broward school officials.

Broward County Public Schools claims to have more than 49,000 classroom seats sitting empty this year, a number that “closely matches” the 49,833 students attending charter schools in the area, officials noted in an enrollment overview.

These enrollment swings are pressing Broward leaders to combine and condense dozens of schools, efforts that would save the district on major operating costs. So far, some of the ideas are meeting heavy resistance…

Enrollment among charters has increased by more than 68,000 students statewide from 2019-20 to this school year, according to data from the Florida Department of Education. More than a third of that rise happened in Broward, Duval and Miami counties alone.

Private school enrollment across Florida rose by 47,000 students to 445,000 students from 2019-20 to 2022-23, according to the latest data available from the state. Much of that growth is from newly enrolled kindergartners, with only a small fraction of these students having been previously enrolled in public schools, according to Step Up for Students, the preeminent administrator of state-sponsored scholarships in Florida.

A growing number of families also chose to homeschool their children during this span, as this population grew by nearly 50,000 students between 2019-20 and 2022-23, totaling 154,000 students in the latest Florida Department of Education data.

As all of these choice options ascend, enrollment in traditional public schools across the state decreased by 55,000 students from 2019-20 to this year, state data shows. But enrollment isn’t down everywhere. While Duval County has lost thousands of students, enrollment is up by more than 7,700 students at neighboring St. John’s County, the state’s top-ranked school district…

The state’s scholarship program is expected to grow, which could lead to more students leaving traditional public schools. While most new scholarship recipients previously attended private schools already, there is space for 82,000 more statewide — nearly 217,000 total — to attend private school or find a different schooling option on the state’s dime next school year.

Across the state, public schools are facing budget cuts, layoffs. and school closures, all to satisfy Gov. DeSantis’ love of school choice. Over time, billions of public dollars will flow every year to unaccountable private schools that are allowed to discriminate. And the outcomes will be worse, not better, as students flock to low-cost schools whose teachers and principals are uncertified.

It the main win for DeSantis is to subsidize the cost of private schools for parents whose children were already enrolled in private schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Texas: Governor Abbott’s Maniacal Passion for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2024 //
19

Politico reporters Liz Crampton and Andrew Atterbury report on Governor Greg Abbott’s determination to purge the Republican Party in Texas of any elected official who opposes vouchers. He managed to defeat some rural Republicans who put the needs of their communities over the demands of the governors. He has driven the state party to the extremist right by targeting moderate Republicans. He is fighting for a voucher program that will cost the state $2 billion a year by 2028 and serve mainly students already in private schools. In effect, the state would transfer billions to the mostly white, affluent kids in private schools while underfunding the public schools that enroll five million children, mostly black and brown.

Today are the runoffs that will determine whether Abbott has enough votes to pass a voucher bill. If he wins, he can deliver a plum to his wealthy and upper-middle-class supporters who send their kids to private schools.

Crampton and Atterbury write:

When nearly two dozen Republican state lawmakers defied Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to oppose a centerpiece of his agenda — the creation of a school voucher program — they knew they’d face political payback. 

But Abbott’s vengeance has been ferocious, even by Texas standards.

He helped knock off seven incumbents in the Republican primary in March and is targeting a handful more contests at the end of the month by handpicking conservative challengers and collecting millions of dollars from donors in Texas and beyond. Another two anti-voucher incumbents lost even though they weren’t specifically blacklisted by Abbott.

The enormous amount of money pouring into Texas Republican primaries from national pro-school-choice groups sets a new precedent as national interests become increasingly intertwined in state legislatures. Abbott’s targeting of former allies has escalated a Republican civil war that is defining Texas politics today, all in pursuit of enacting a voucher law that stands to remake K-12 education in the nation’s second biggest state.

“It’s just so unusual for an incumbent governor to campaign against members of his own party,” John Colyandro, a Texas lobbyist and former top aide to Abbott, said in an interview. “He was the pivot around which everything turned here.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott arrives to speak at the State Capitol during a rally in support of school vouchers.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s targeting of former allies has escalated a Republican civil war that is defining Texas politics today. | Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman via AP

Backed by deep-pocketed conservative figures like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, the school-choice movement has leveraged Republican majorities in state legislatures across the country to pass laws that provide families with lump sums to spend on private school tuition. The efforts, according to supporters, are meant to bolster parental rights by giving families the financial freedom to choose a different option for schooling their children.

Anti-voucher Republicans “thought they had a stronghold,” said Hillary Hickland, a candidate who was backed by Abbott and won her race in March. “They had this elitist air, that they know better for a community than the taxpayers, or the parents. And they were wrong.”

[Of course, it’s the height of irony to refer to the supporters of public schools as “elitists.” Abbott could not have knocked off his critics without the millions sent by out-of-state billionaires DeVos and Yass and in-state billionaires Dunn and Wilks.]

Ten states passed or expanded school-choice laws in 2023 alone. There are now 18 states that have education savings accounts, which allow parents to spend state funding on a variety of choices including private schools. Students are flocking to these programs, yet data shows that the majority of scholarships or vouchers are going to wealthier families already enrolled in private schools — not students leaving their traditional public schools.

But despite all the momentum across the country, voucher bills have repeatedly failed in Texas. That’s why Abbott and pro-school-choice advocates are continuing their big money push as early voting is underway for the primary runoffs next week. Even after knocking out a number of party defectors in March, Abbott and aligned Republicans are teetering on securing enough votes to pass school-choice when the Legislature returns with a new class in January 2025.

“We’re not counting our chickens, not stopping, not laying off,” said David Carney, a consultant with Abbott’s campaign, in an interview.

Abbott’s vendetta comes as other GOP figures are also going after fellow Republicans for perceived crimes against the party, notably Attorney General Ken Paxton’s targeting of incumbents for voting to impeach him. House Speaker Dade Phelan is among those under siege as he fights to defend his own hold on power in the runoffs next Tuesday.

In prior years, state legislature races in Texas typically cost about $250,000. But spending in some of these primaries has been upwards of $1 million, thanks to the involvement of pro-voucher interests attacking Republicans.

“We are outgunned here big time,” said Rep. DeWayne Burns, a Republican lawmaker fighting to keep in his seat representing a district encompassing Cleburne, Texas, a town on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth. “This is a true David v. Goliath situation and I’m the David here.”

The negative attacks on anti-voucher Republicans financed by PACs have gone beyond school-choice and targeted the incumbents for lacking conservative bona fides on issues like guns and the border — often in false or misleading mailers, texts and advertisements.

In one example, residents of Mineral Wells, Texas received mailers paid for by Libertarian PAC Make Liberty Win going after incumbent Rep. Glenn Rogers, who lost his primary in March to an Abbott-backed challenger. That mailer accused him of being “anti-gun” and warned that “if we don’t vote Rogers out, he will only drift further left.”

Rogers, a fifth-generation rancher and veterinarian who was first elected in 2021, said that he was also accused of being soft on the border, an attack line he believes Abbott chose because that issue resonates more with voters than vouchers.

“If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes truth to a low-information voter,” Rogers said. “Unfortunately we have a lot of low-information voters. That doesn’t have anything to do with their mental ability, it has to do with them keeping up. Eventually it becomes truth in their minds.”

Although Republicans boast big majorities in both chambers and control the governorship, school-choice proposals were repeatedly swatted down in 2023, even after Abbott made them a top priority and called special sessions to address the issue. The latest proposal would have given around 40,000 students access to about $10,500 in vouchers for private schooling or $1,000 toward homeschooling.

Republicans, many from rural areas, who have long been opposed to vouchers over concerns that it would jeopardize public education funding, banded with Democrats for an unlikely alliance that proved to be a thorn in Abbott’s side. Those lawmakers were spooked by an estimate that the vouchers program would cost the state more than $2 billion annually by 2028.

“I voted for my district and I have no regrets,” said San Antonio Rep. Steve Allison, who lost his primary. “What the governor did is extremely wrong. Me and the others that he came after have been with him 100 percent of the time on every issue except this one.”

Abbott has major money on his side. Among the constellation of PACs and donations from wealthy political players dumping money into Texas elections this year, there’s Pennsylvania billionaire Yass. A major school-choice supporter, Yass personally cut a check to Abbott for $6 million last year, which the governor called the largest single donation in Texas history.

Yass has also given to PACs backing pro-voucher candidates, like the School Freedom Fund, which is affiliated with the Club for Growth and has run multi-million-dollar TV blitzes.

DeVos’ PAC, the American Federation for Children Victory Fund, has pumped $4.5 million into the races — nearly half of what the PAC has promised to spend nationwide this cycle. Of the 13 anti-school-choice lawmakers zeroed in on by the PAC, 10 candidates either lost their race or were forced into an upcoming runoff.

“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school-choice and freedom in education — you’re a target,” Tommy Schultz, CEO of AFC, said when the fundraising organization was createdin 2023. “If you’re a champion for parents — we’ll be your shield.”

Another group, the Family Empowerment Coalition PAC, launched in June 2023 with the singular goal of defending incumbents from both parties who voted for school-choice. But the organization expanded its mission a few months later to include supporting primary challengers to incumbents who voted against the measure — and has spent at least $1.4 million this election cycle, according to data from Transparency USA, a political spending database.

Texas is just one state where the groups are getting involved. Make Liberty Win is also singling out anti-voucher Republicans in Tennessee and Ohio.

All that outside money comes on top of typical spending from big-name conservative donors in Texas, like Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks who each have donated at least $1.7 million to various lawmakers since July 2023, according to data from the Texas Ethics Commission compiled by Chrisopher Tackett, a campaign finance watchdog.

Abbott’s own PAC has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars this cycle to candidates seeking to unseat incumbents who opposed vouchers. He has handed out endorsements to challengers and shown up for appearances to back them on the campaign trail.

The Abbott campaign is projected to spend some $11 million during the primary races, including $4 million on the runoffs alone, Carney said. That’s a massive jump from the $500,000 he would typically spend for primaries, he said.

The governor touts school-choice as a means for parents to leave struggling campuses, often using districts in Houston and Dallas as punching bags. He recently pointed to Dallas schools having a resource guide about students identifying with a different gender and a Lewisville teacher dressing in drag as examples of why vouchers are needed — demonstrating how Republicans are leveraging the culture war to bolster support for vouchers.

“If you’re a parent in that situation, should you be trapped within a school district that’s focusing on issues like that?” Abbott said during a keynote address to the Texas Public Policy Foundation in March. “Of course not.”

By Abbott’s math, the Texas House is sitting at 74 votes in favor of school-choice considering who won their primary race and the candidates that reached a runoff. That count, though, would still put the House two votes shy of passing the landmark policy — upping the stakes for the runoffs.

“I came out with no ambiguity about where I stood or what I expected,” Abbott said. “If the governor puts something on the emergency item list, that means this is something that must pass. And if it doesn’t pass, there’s going to be challenges to deal with.”

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

The Ominous Flag that Flew over Justice Alito’s Vacation Home

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2024 //
17

We learned recently that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito flew an upside-down America flag in front of his home, a flag carried by January 6 insurrectionists to protest the 2024 election. He blamed his wife.

Now we learn that Justice Alito flew another seditious flag in front of his vacation home. It’s called “Appeal to Heaven,” and it’s closely tied to white Christian nationalism.

Justice Alito’s arrogance and disregard for judicial ethics is staggering. He has a lifetime appointment on a Court with a 6-3 conservative majority. He thinks he is above the law.

Sarah Posner wrote on the MSNBC site:

News that an Appeal to Heaven flag was seen flying outside the beach house of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito marks the second report in the space of a week that a symbol used by Jan. 6 insurrectionists was seen outside one of his residences. According to the report from The New York Times, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the flag was photographed flying at the home on multiple occasions between July and September 2023. Alito has remained silent about how and why the flag came to be flying at his property, but the more one knows about the background of the flag, the more chilling its presence at his house becomes.

This flag, which bears the words “Appeal to Heaven” and an image of a green pine tree, is an unmistakable emblem for an influential segment of Christian nationalists who claim the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, contrary to God’s will, and that believers’ spiritual warfare is essential to restoring God’s anointed leader to his rightful office. It was one of numerous Christian nationalist flags and other iconography carried by Trump supporters Jan. 6 and at the Jericho March, a series of prayer rallies that were like jet fuel for the insurrection. The Jericho March featured right-wing evangelical and Catholic speakers alongside militants such as conspiracist Alex Jones, Trump’s disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Oathkeepers founder Stewart Rhodes, now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy and other crimes.

After years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation.

The Appeal to Heaven flag originated in Revolutionary times as a call to take up arms against unjust rulers who ignored the pleas of their citizens. But after years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR’s founder, C. Peter Wagner, drew on existing strands and trends in charismatic Christianity to create a powerful network of self-proclaimed apostles and prophets who claimed to be leading a revolution in Christianity. NAR’s adherents, as religion scholar and MSNBC columnist Anthea Butler has written, believe “the government should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming.” They promote spiritual warfare, including spiritual “mappings” to identify demonic forces in communities, and “power encounters” like exorcisms “to cleanse not only people, but cities and communities.” They envision not only a Christian nation, but also a new Christianity at the head of it.

Sheets is a prominent “prophet” in the world of the NAR. He claims to receive dreams and visions from God about world events, including the 2020 election and its aftermath. According to the Times, in his 2015 book Sheets maintained that God had “resurrected” the Appeal to Heaven flag and urged his readers to “Wave it outwardly: wear it inwardly. Appeal to heaven daily for a spiritual revolution that will knock out the Goliaths of our day.” Sheets made multiple appearances in Christian media after the 2020 election, claiming that the election was stolen and that demonic forces were behind this supposed fraud. Christian nationalist support for Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results was suffused with themes of spiritual battles against mighty, seemingly unbeatable forces. The Jericho March’s overriding message was that the participants were brave warriors against forces of “corruption,” whose prayers were going to cause the “walls” of the “deep state” to fall, like the walls of Jericho in the Bible.

Matthew D. Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, and the author of a forthcoming book about the New Apostolic Reformation, told me that Sheets “believes he has a special anointing on his life, and a special anointing to bring the American government into alignment with his interpretation of Christianity, including, especially, the Supreme Court.” Sheets has claimed, for example, that his “apostolic decrees” helped swing the 2000 election to George W. Bush and that he prophesied changes at the Supreme Court after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist (who were replaced by Alito and John Roberts, respectively).

“Christian supremacists,” as Taylor describes Sheets and his allies, “would like to see the Supreme Court rule according to his interpretation of the Bible, that the law of God would become the supreme law of the land.” The court’s 2015 decision legalizing marriage equality dismayed Sheets, like many on the right, and he took a particular interest in the 2016 election. “They are praying for total changeover in American culture to restore America to its original covenantal purposes and covenantal arrangement with God,” Taylor said. “Abortion and same-sex marriage are seen as impediments to this.” While Sheets claims to be calling for a spiritual revolution, Taylor said, the Appeal to Heaven flag nonetheless signals “an implied threat of violence.”

After Sheets’ book, the flag’s use skyrocketed in evangelical communities connected to the NAR. It even received a boost from former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who said Sheets gave her one of her own. In 2020, the flag increasingly became highly associated with Trump and then the insurrection. Taylor said neo-Nazi and other extremist groups have since adopted it, as well.

According to Taylor, the flag’s use and significance spread like wildfire in some evangelical communities, even as other Americans were unaware of its popularity or meaning. But Alito is not just an ordinary citizen; he’s one of the nine most powerful jurists in the country. The leading proponent of the flag has very specifically taken an interest in the actions of the high court, and we already know from previous reporting that Alito is cozy enough with some evangelical activists to dine with them. 

Legitimate questions need to be answered about who else had access to the justice. And Americans cannot be kept in the dark about how this radical antidemocratic symbol came to fly outside his house. The public particularly needs to know before the court decides, in the coming weeks, Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution for Jan. 6. If Alito acquired the flag on his own and chose to fly it, the public needs to know why. The flag’s proponents want a Christian supremacist revolution against the government. Does Alito?

Sarah Posner is the author of “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Religion, Separation of church and state
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