Sarah Posner on the ever-evolving Christian Right in the US

Sarah Posner is a journalist who has been covering the Christian Right and Christian nationalists in the US for years, including at Talking Points Memo, where she seems to more often publishing the last couple of months.

In a column from last November, she reminds us that the mainstream media for decades largely tiptoed around the role played by the Christian Right in the Republican policy, even though they have played visible and important roles there since the late 1970s. Here she recalls how the legacy media covered that beat very superficially even into the early 2000s:

Back in those days, some, but certainly not all, newspapers and magazines were still reluctant to run investigative stories on the Christian right. Stated reasons included having recently published an article about religion, or an assumption that their readers would not have heard of the religious leaders who were the subject of the story. Tacit reasons were an allergy to covering religion critically at all, out of fear of being accused of disrespecting people’s faith, particularly, evangelical Christians. Those people, this reasoning went, say they just want to protect babies and families and express their piety in public. Who are we to judge? Some editors thought the religious right was too fringe to be relevant, or that the Republican Party did not actually care about them, and only used them for their votes every fourth November. [my emphasis] (1)

She recalls this example of the Christian Right’s practices:

Back in 2014, TPM published one of my stories that no one else wanted to touch. I had been working on it for several years, my reporting taking me around the United States and even to Israel, which plays a central role in many evangelicals’ apocalyptic theology and domestic politics. Former members of the International House of Prayer (IHOP) accused the organization and its leader, Mike Bickle, of myriad abuses, rooted in his demands for total capitulation to his unconventional, apocalyptic theology that required participation in a round-the-clock prayer room in a strip mall in suburban Kansas City, Missouri. Submission to his program of prayer and fasting in this insular, totalizing environment, Bickle convinced his acolytes, was essential to join an army of spiritual warriors who would bring about the militaristic, bloody, and world-altering second coming of Christ. [my emphasis]

The current US Ambassador to Israel, Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, used his official role to promote the idea that God somewhere in the mists of time had permanently promised Israel a much bigger geographical presence than it now holds, which would include territory that is now part of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, even parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. When that remark understandably drew criticism, Huckabee resorted to typical Christian Right obfuscation, saying that he was speaking theologically, not politically, whatever that may mean coming from the US Ambassador to Israel. (2)

Of course, pure religious piety, however misguided, isn’t the only factor at work with the Christian Right’s influence on the Republican Party. As Posner notes there, “It is maddeningly possible for the country to be led by an authoritarian fundamentally at odds with the desires of the majority, owing to how this movement, fueled by deep-pocketed donors, has become the core of the Republican electorate.”

And, as she reported earlier this month, this faction of the Republican Party is enthusiastically supporting Trump’s war of aggression against Iran, waged of course in conjunction with Israel. As she put it, the Christian nationalists “are intensifying their messaging that Trump is divine, that he is persecuted like Jesus was, that his war is destroying Iran and protecting Israel from Iranian savagery, all while igniting a Christian revival in America.” (my emphasis) (3)

She also notes that there are complications within the MAGA movcment/Trump cult between some rightwingers like Tucker Carlson who are criticizing Trump’s Iran War and giving it what sure looks like an antisemitic spin. “That is why an organization like the NFAB is making a bubble within a bubble — that is, a Christian Zionist bubble inside the MAGA bubble. They need to shield followers who might be at risk of absorbing MAGA anti-war messages. And so the Trump-cult group, the National Faith Advisory Board “is making a bubble within a bubble - that is, a Christian Zionist bubble inside the MAGA bubble.”

The idol of the Christian Right:

Notes:

(1) Posner, Sarah (2025): Traditional Media Never Took the Christian Right Seriously. TPM 11/04/2025. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/traditional-media-never-took-the-christian-right-seriously> (Accessed: 2026-11-04).  (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

(2) Clayton, Freddie (2026): Outcry after Ambassador Mike Huckabee suggests Israel has God-given right to Middle East land. NBC News 02/22/2026. <https://www.nbcnews.com/world/israel/outcry-us-ambassador-mike-huckabee-israel-god-right-middle-east-rcna260133> (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

(3) Posner, Sarah (2026): Trump’s Evangelical Leaders Are Working Overtime to Spin the Iran War. TPM 04/06/2026. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/trumps-evangelical-leaders-are-working-overtime-to-spin-the-iran-war (Accessed: 2026-11-04).