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).

Christian nationalist ideologues and their garbled view of democracy

Remember back when now-Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was White House Press Secretary during Trump 1.0? Holly Meyer reported at the start of the first Trump Administration:

Remember back when now-Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was White House Press Secretary during Trump 1.0? Holly Meyer reported at the start of the first Trump Administration:

Did God really want Donald Trump to be president?

That's what White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders thinks, according to an interview she gave Wednesday for the Christian Broadcasting Network's news program.

"I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president," Sanders said, according to CBN News. "That's why he's there and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about." (1)

That simplistic kind of religious take doesn’t hold up well to serious secular or religious scrutiny.

This was really just a way of her saying that God is on Trump’s side which happened to also be her side. And it essentially takes political democracy as a hollow, meaningless shell. If God is making the choice of rulers, does it matter what the political institutions are?

In fact, the Christian Right fundamentalist religious segment actually puts a high emphasis on personal choice, blaming individuals for their own sin and making the individual’s choice on religious beliefs and affiliation the critical difference between going to Heaven or burning for eternity in Hell.

James Hudnut-Beumler, a Vanderbilt professor of religious history, gives a good, concise explanation of how a very selective use of Christian Scripture can be used to say that only leaders they support were put there by God.

It is rooted in an interpretation of Romans 13 that claims Christians need to obey leaders because God put them in positions of power for a purpose, Hudnut-Beumler said. In that section of the Bible, the Apostle Paul is explaining how to handle an oppressive, external authority, he said.

"Contemporary evangelicals, because they are so biblically driven, when they find a leader they particularly like, they love to go to Romans 13 in thinking about why people should obey or why God has perhaps raised up this leader in this time and what providential role this leader, in this case President Trump, should have," Hudnut-Beumler said. [my emphasis]

It strikes me that a more responsible Christian view than the Huckabee- Sanders one would be to see the US as a democracy in which citizens have a responsibility to choose between less-than-godlike candidates. And that God expects Christians to try seriously to make responsible choices.

Given the shortage of divine qualities among both voters and candidates, presumably God isn‘t entirely thrilled with either the elected officials or the very human voters who choose them.

Hudnut-Beumler there is politely observing that even Christians who are sincerely trying to apply their religious beliefs to contemporary political choices are attracted to a God-is-on-our-side view. It’s a way of dismissing personal and collective political responsibility without seriously thinking through the implications of the actions of governments being controlled by a Divine Being. While at the same moment ignoring the also-very-Christian notion of free will.

It also leads to such confused foolishness as that of one of the best known American Christian Zionists, John Hagee, leader of the Christians United For Israel (CUFI) group.

The staunchly pro-Israel, Evangelical pastor is the leader of America’s most prominent Christian Zionist organization, Christians United for Israel, and has used that influence to lobby the US government on a variety of issues—including Trump’s controversial choice to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (something foreign policy experts recommended against). But beyond his controversial Evangelical lobbying, Hagee has wielded his beliefs to rally against gay marriage and adoption, women, and even Jewish people.

“God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land,” the pastor claimed in a 1999 sermon. (He apologized almost a decade later, saying that “I grappled with the vexing question of why a loving God would allow the evil of the Holocaust to occur…I regret if my Jewish friends felt any pain as a result.”)

After Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people, Hagee blamed it on gay people. “There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” (He later semi-apologized, saying, “Neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise.”) [my emphasis] (2)

Notice that his qualification there is classic non-apology apology, with a touch of superficial humility. His Hurricane Katrina comment, of course, was an obvious endorsement of the ideas that God wants to kill people who are gay or tolerant of gays.

Here is a new interview with religious studies professor Anthea Butler on Christian nationalism and Christian Zionism: (3)

Notes:

(1) Meyer, Holly (2019): Sarah Huckabee Sanders says God wanted Trump to be president. She's not the only one who believes that. The Tennessean 01/31/2019. <https://eu.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2019/01/31/sarah-huckabee-sanders-says-god-wanted-donald-trump-president/2734206002/> (Accessed: 2025-31-05).

(2) Carnell, Henry & Van Pykeren, Sam (2023): He Claimed God Sent Hitler to Create Israel. Now He’s Speaking at the Pro-Israel Rally. What? Mother Jones 11/14/2023. <https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/john-hagee-hitler-israel-rally-christian-zionist/> (Accessed: 2025-31-05).

(3) The growing influence of Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism in the United States – UpFront. Al Jazeera English YouTube channel 05/30/2025. <https://youtu.be/nM8bXD2FpQ4?si=6T-czPMrvwuNqiXL> (Accessed: 2025-31-05).

Hoax studies and crackpot rightwing theories (including their favorite of the moment, "critical race theory")

I recently listened to some of a boring podcast featuring a writer named James Lindsay talking to a conservative Christian podcaster, Allie Beth Stuckey. Lindsay is the co-author with Helen Pluckrose of a book with a long slogan as its title, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody (2020).

Lindsay is also associated with a blog called New Discourses, which seem to be a rightwing anti-"wokeness" website. He was for a while associated with the New Atheist movement, which operates in the more-or-less "highbrow" intellectual space as Jordan Peterson and what was recently known as the Intellectual Dark Web. PZ Myers who also identified with that group expresses his disappointment with Lindsay, including his role at New Discourses, in The grift, oh the grift Pharyngula 08/09/2020.

He cites a conference at a white nationalist conference in London at which Lindsay, Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian appeared. Those three are listed as the first of several contributors at the New Discourses blog, which Myers says is owned by "Michael O’Fallon, who wants to promote conservative Christian Nationalism" and heads a group called Sovereign Nations.

Zack Beauchamp, reports on a project a few years ago by Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian in The controversy around hoax studies in critical theory, explained Vox 10/15/2018. It involved writing papers and sending them to academic journals advocating for philosophical/theoretical positions they didn't actually support. Several got published and the authors mocked the journals for publishing them. A "highbrow" version of "owning the libs," I guess.

The idea was that the authors wrote things they themselves claimed to be ridiculous and then claim it discredits the journals that accepted them because they should have recognized it as ridiculous. Beauchamp recalls a case that attracted attention in academia and among positivist-minded skeptics/New Atheists, in which physicist Alan Sokal placed an article on gravity in a journal called Social Text that he used as a kind of intellectual "sting." Ben Goldacre wrote a glowing mini-review of Sokal's later book on the action. (The Sokal affair Guardian 06/05/2003) Stephen Hilgartner took a more academic looks at the Sokal stunt in The Sokal Affair in Context Science, Technology, & Human Values 22:4 (1997).

Beauchamp notes, Sokal's stunt "was self-consciously more limited than the Pluckrose et al. sting." It was focused more particularly on a certain kind of argument about all of science as a social construction. Lindsay and his two collaborators were trying to discredit a larger and more amorphously designed philosophical/sociological kind of position. But Beauchamp also argues about it and the more recent one, "These hoaxes are not so much about academic hygiene as they are about discrediting one’s political opponents." Although it seems to me that Sokal was actually trying to make a point about the philosophy of science.

Hoaxing to "own" the other side can encourage bad habits. And as Beauchamp points out, achieving publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal is not an endorsement of the author's conclusion. It means that the article was judged to meet certain standards. And criticism of the article is part of scholarly, scientific, and academic processes. In fact, for someone just entering an academic field, an article by a leading figure in the field disagreeing with the article, even savaging it, can be great for the writer's academic career. Also in the 1990s, a sociologist named Daniel Jonah Goldhagen became a kind of rock star in the field of Holocaust studies with his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996) in just that way. His work was criticized by leading specialists in the field on good grounds, and few accepted the key conclusion of the book about the nature of German anti-Semitism. But the fact that so many leading Holocaust scholars gave it serious attention raised the book's and Goldhagen's prestige and fame.

But it's one thing to claim you made an experiment you didn't. Or to falsify the results. Or to plagiarize someone else's work. Or to libel someone in an article.

It's another matter to make a scholarly argument that may somehow not be completely in line with one's innermost beliefs. I'm not fond myself of Karl Popper's treatment of Hegel's legacy, for instance. But if I wanted to - I don't, but if I did, I could construct an argument in a paper to defend Popper's position. If I then persuaded some academic journal to publish it, it wouldn't in itself reflect any discredit on the journal if I came out after it was published and said, "Aha! I didn't actually believe that argument and the journal editors didn't figure that out! It might just mean I have some talent as a philosophical ghostwriter.

Beauchamp elaborates at some lengths on why he finds that the Lindsay-Pluckrose-Boghossian trios claim that their experiment/stunt discredits the field they sought to attack doesn't hold up well. The factors he cites apply to academic papers on hard-science topics as well as liberal arts:

[A]ny field can be hoaxed if you lie about the data you’ve gathered and hide your true intentions: The entire system depends on good faith and honesty. When people break it, by submitting bad-faith arguments or by manufacturing data, the system is not well-equipped to catch it.

My colleagues Brian Resnick and Julia Belluz, for example, have done extensive reporting on problems with statistical research in psychology and health, respectively. A shockingly large percentage of papers, even in leading journals, can’t be replicated in follow-up experiments. Part of the problem is researchers selectively reporting the results of their research to make their conclusions seem rigorous when they aren’t, a trick enabled by a kind of a statistical cheat called p-hacking.

Peer reviewers can’t tell if a statistical paper is flawed in this way, because by definition they don’t have access to research results that are excluded from the paper. They have to trust that the researchers came by their conclusions honestly; the entire peer review system depends on establishing a certain level of trust.

This is why it matters, as Engber notes, that the most striking papers from the hoax actually invented interviews and data from observation. “We know from long experience that expert peer review offers close to no protection against outright data fraud,” he writes. “These examples haven’t hoodwinked anyone with sophistry or satire but with a simple fabrication of results.”

In order to draw the big ideological conclusions about gender and identity studies that Pluckrose et al. want to, you need to show that this is something different from the standard problems with academic publishing. [my emphasis in bold]

Science is said to be a self-correcting field because claims can be evaluated and experiments validated by other researchers. Here, Popper's concept of designing scientific experiments that can invalidate claims is very important, though it may not have quite the universal relevance positivists claim for it. See: Stephen Thornton, Karl Popper (2021) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Section 4. Basic Statements, Falsifiability and Convention.

Here is another example of this particular Jordan-Peterson-esque train of rightwing argument from New Discourses .This is another example of a rightwing analysis treating the "critical race theory" trope as an extension of the crackpot, anti-Semitic, far-right Cultural Marxism theory: Matthew Nielsen, When Critical Theory Took on Race 06/09/2021.

It's frustrating to offer any kind of reality-check about propaganda constructions based on bad-faith arguments. In the case of the "critical race theory" the Republican are raving about today, it really means nothing much more to most of them than, "Scary black people! Scary black people!"

Nielsen explicitly calls the concept of critical theory as defined by Frankfurt School scholars Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse in the 1930s with the new Republican bogeyman concept "critical race theory." Nielsen calls the Horkheimer-Marcuse concept the "philosophical parent" of "Critical Race Theory," which he capitalizes for some reason. In the terms of the highbrow neighborhood in the far-right swamp, that the link between the crackpot conspiracy theory about "Cultural Marxism" and the current Republican "critical race theory" dog-whistle slogan.

The cultural-Marxism conspiracy theory is the idea that the Frankfurt School invented "postmodernism," which is just not so. Nielsen writes, "In other words, 'critical' arguments are formed and founded in rhetoric - only. You cannot test their claims with any instrument of measurement. This is Critical Theory in a nutshell."

In fact, the most famous and influential work of the Frankfurt School in the 1930s and 1940s were the Studies on Authority and the Family (1936) and the Studies in Prejudice sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, both of which were based on extensive original sociological research. Both looked at the "authoritarian personality," an idea describing how family and social structures produces a certain percentage of people who are psychologically very inclined to support authoritarian movements and regimes and to distrust democracy and the equal rule of law. An outstanding recent treatment of the subject is Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers (2020) by John Dean and Bob Altemeyer.

The notion that all this work was based only on rhetoric is worse than silly.

The Christian Right and the radical Republicans (a perennial topic)

Adele Stan (When Money Meets Jesus Democracy Journal Spring 2020) reviews a new book by Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2020). Stan's review includes a nice brief sketch of the Christian Right that has such a prominent role in the Republican Party.

And she reminds us that the relationship between the Christian Right and the Trumpified Republican Party, which seems unlikely on its face to people who aren't particularly familiar with the kind of white Christian nationalism involved, is not especially hard to understand:

From the outset, Christian nationalism has always been a con, sold to its followers on the false claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. David Barton, Stewart shows us, is the foremost purveyor of this myth; she notes that the publisher of Barton’s 2012 book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, felt compelled to withdraw it after National Public Radio checked Barton’s biblical citations only to find that “not one of them checked out.” ... But that hasn’t put a damper on Barton’s career as the right’s favorite “historian,” or in his career with the GOP. For nine years, Stewart notes, Barton served as vicechair of the Texas Republican Party, and in the 2016 presidential campaign, he ran a super-PAC that supported Ted Cruz’s candidacy.

The con is in Christian nationalist and religious-right rhetoric that falsely describes common methods of birth control as abortifacients, routinely and falsely links Muslim Democrats to terrorist groups, claims that “homosexuals” seek to “recruit” your children to their “lifestyle,” and posits that the Earth is a mere 4,000 years old. There’s the rhetorical con that is effectively rewriting the First Amendment to advantage its own religion over all others and compares the social safety net to “slavery.” To a constituency already so distanced from any objective notion of truth, the greatest liar of all the U.S. presidents is a Moses to his people. [my emphasis]

Fundamentalist Christianity has a strong authoritarian component. The desire for safety and order can quickly overwhelm nominal moral and religious scruples.

Al Gore wrote a book called The Assault on Reason (2007) about the danger represented by the continually radicalizing Republican Party, then grimly embodied in the Cheney-Bush Administration, and the dangerously accomodating Democratic Party. That is the ugly and still ongoing situation of asymmetric polarization in Americana party politics.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. ...

The single most surprising new element in America's national conversation is the prominence and intensity of constant fear. Moreover, there is an uncharacteristic and persistent confusion about the sources of that fear; we seem to be having unusual difficulty in distinguishing between illusory threats and legitimate ones. [my emphasis]

Gore was highly critical of the way the Cheney and Bush fear-mongered with fabricated "evidence" to invade Iraq:

Terrorism relies on the stimulation of fear for political ends. Indeed, its specific goal is to distort the political reality of a nation by creating fear in the general population that is hugely disproportionate to the actual danger that the terrorists are capable of posing. Ironically, President Bush's response to the terrorist attack of September 11 was, in effect, to further distort America's political reality by creating a new fear of Iraq that was hugely disproportionate to the actual danger Iraq was capable of posing. That is one of the reasons it was so troubling to so many when in 2004 the widely respected arms expert David Kay concluded a lengthy, extensive investigation into the administration's claim that Iraq posed an enormous threat because it had weapons of mass destruction with the words We were all wrong. [my emphasis in bold]

The tone of Christian fundamentalism in its various manifestations in the Christian Right relies heavily on a context of fear. Fear of Hell, fear of temptation, fear to punishment, fear ofd sex, fear of rejection. And they are particularly inclined to look for a Strong Leader and a political discourse of order and control to ease the fear.

And the sense that Trump is on Their Side is simply more important for the Christian Right than the actual religious adherence and personal conduct of the President. That fact stands out in the results of a recent Pew Research Center report, White Evangelicals See Trump as Fighting for Their Beliefs, Though Many Have Mixed Feelings About His Personal Conduct 03/12/2020:

On the whole, Americans care more about having a president who stands up for their religious beliefs than having one who personally shares those beliefs. Roughly seven-in-ten say it is either very (38%) or somewhat (31%) important to have a president who stands up for people with their religious beliefs.

White evangelical Protestants are particularly likely to hold this view. Two-thirds of white evangelicals say it is very important to have a president who stands up for their religious beliefs, about double the share who say it is very important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. And white evangelicals say Trump fits the bill: Fully eight-in-ten white evangelical Protestants say that the phrase “fights for what I believe in” describes Trump “very well” or “fairly well,” including roughly half who say this describes him “very well.” [my emphasis]

Yes, the political culture of Christian nationalism is white Christian nationalism.

And the "white" part of this sentiment is not restricted to fundamentalists:

White evangelical Protestants are not alone in their admiration of Trump. Among other groups of white Christians, smaller but still substantial majorities also express agreement with Trump’s policies and associate him with a number of positive traits, such as intelligence.

For example, roughly two-thirds of white Catholics say the phrase “fights for what I believe in” describes Donald Trump very well or fairly well, and 68% of white Catholics say “intelligent” is a fairly or very good descriptor of Trump. Similar shares of white Protestants who are not born-again or evangelical Christians say the same. And more than half of people in both groups say they agree with Trump on many, nearly all or all of the important issues facing the country.

The survey shows, furthermore, that growing numbers in all three of the largest white Christian groups (white evangelical Protestants, white Protestants who are not evangelical and white Catholics) think that their side has been winning recently on the political issues that matter to them. [my emphasis]

I take this as an encouraging sign, though, "Overall, just 5% of U.S. adults believe God chose Trump to become president because God approves of Trump’s policies."

There is a theological side to this, which is the idea that God in all-powerful (omnipotent) but that human beings have free will. But the entire concept of democracy and government by popular consent assume that individuals are capable of making free choices based on an understanding of their interests and desires. As Al Gore put it:

Our Founders rejected direct democracy because of concerns that fear might overwhelm reflective thought. But they counted heavily on the ability of a "well-informed citizenry" to reason together in ways that would minimize the destructive impact of illusory, exaggerated, or excessive fears. "When a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it is infinitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power," wrote Thomas Paine in his legendary pamphlet Common Sense, specifically warning that the Founders should not take the risk of waiting until some fear seized the public imagination, in which event their reasoning processes would be hampered.

So that is an interesting chink in the authoritarian psychological armor of the Christian Right. Most of them consciously realize that they are making conscious political decisions for which they have some responsibility. But the most striking finding of the Pew survey to me is how indifferent even Trump's Christian Right supporters are to his actual religious beliefs and personal conduct.

To conclude, I want to draw attention to the role the Christian Right has played in promoting a key authoritarian goal to weaken democracy, the attempt to replace actual judicial independence with pro-authoritarian idolgoical partisanship. Jimmy Carter wrote in his book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005):

Perhaps one of the strangest and most disturbing examples of this political effort by right-wing Christians has been to attack the federal court system itself, after Senate Democrats failed to approve a handful of the -most conservative nominees for federal judgeships. They ignored the fact that this was the same number as Republicans had successfully opposed among Bill Clinton's nominees. Senator Bill Frist, the highest-ranking member of the United States Senate, aligned himself in a public telecast with a fundamentalist religious group to promote false claims that Democratic senators who opposed a few judges were conducting "an assault against people of faith." The group's leader announced that the "activist" judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups." Dr. James Dobson, another sponsor of the event, called the Supreme Court "unaccountable," "out of control," and "a despotic oligarchy," and accused the justices of a forty-year "campaign to limit religious liberty." (At a subsequent press conference, President George W. Bush [ludicrously] disavowed the connection between religious faith and opposition to the appointment of federal judges.) [my emphasis]