This is a blatant distortion. California churches do not pay for abortions any more than they pay for Viagra or for abdominal aortic aneurysm screenings. Instead, through the Affordable Care Act, they participate in health insurance exchanges that allow employers statewide to negotiate insurance coverage for their employees—some of whom happen to be women making use of reproductive care services. Characterizing this as churches paying for abortions is like saying that motorists are compelled to transport tractor-trailers from state to state because they share the same roads. But this sham narrative has become a popular talking point for the California Family Council and is perhaps too valuable in activating the base to set aside just because it’s not true.
Hibbs only works harder to heighten the tension in his narrative of martyrdom in the face of his church’s alleged complicity in California’s baby genocide. “We are currently in a lawsuit with the governor’s office to fight for the voice of the unborn child,” he says, his voice ringing with sanctimony, and the audience claps.
He pivots to the hot-button issue of the moment: California’s Healthy Youth Act, which took effect in 2016 and requires school districts throughout the state to provide students with comprehensive sexuality and health education, including information about HIV prevention. “It is the most radical sex education the state has ever seen,” he claims. “If it’s not yet in your child’s school, it’s coming. Listen, parents, pastors, leaders, there’s no opt out extended to the family. Your child must go through this curriculum.”
This, too, is a bending of the truth. There is no single course on offer. Rather, there are multiple courses and curriculum materials in use in various districts. Parents are legally allowed to opt out of lessons about comprehensive sexual health and HIV prevention in their entirety—and many of them do. What they may not opt out of is assemblies on bullying and harassment or social studies classes that discuss the contributions of LGBT people in history.
Domen has a handout, depicting alleged sex education curricula in public schools, to be distributed among the crowd. The one-page sheet is a lurid mash-up of graphics and text. Some of the materials strike me as inappropriate for the age groups that the flyer suggests they are reaching; others seem factually incorrect or even bizarre, and I can see why they might be concerning to parents. On the back of the sheet is a list of seventy-seven California politicians who have supported California’s Healthy Youth Act; all but one are Democrats.
When I later check with Laura Dudnick, a representative from the San Francisco Unified School District, she tells me that none of the graphics or materials on the handout are used in any district public school in the manner implied by organizers of this event. A few components of the graphics, which Domen’s handout suggests are utilized in elementary schools, are in fact used at the high school level, for example, and are not taught with the other components of the graphics with which they are grouped. Other materials in Domen’s handout, says Dudnick, are not taught anywhere in the San Francisco Unified School District.
Hibbs circles back to the bottom line: Vote red. “Christian leaders, who is going to do it? Who will stand for the family? Who will stand for marriage? Who will stand for our culture? So I want to encourage you: Get involved. Have your people—you know, it’s legal, register to vote at your church. It’s legal …
“And just so you know,” he adds, in what amounts to a final twisting of the truth, “I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I’m a Christian—which makes me a monarchist if you think about it!” The crowd whoops and claps their approval.
The organizers of the event are also keen to target their audience with a message about capitalist economics. Here, they turn to a video featuring Gloria Álvarez, a telegenic libertarian activist from Guatemala. The video is from Prager University, which is not a university and does not hold classes—not surprising, perhaps, given that its largest funders include the biblical-literalist fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks.
“Have you ever asked yourself why the U.S. is a country with much more freedom, much less corruption, and is much more prosperous than any of our countries in Latin America?” Álvarez asks in an urgent, rapid-fire tone. “The answer lies mainly in the American belief of having a limited government. Why? Because the more limited a government, the less corrupt it is. And the more limited the government, the more you will have individual freedom and personal responsibility. And given those things, along with hard work and talent, you can accomplish your life’s goals.”
Álvarez, whose grandparents fled Cuba, identifies as an atheist. But the bond between Christian nationalism and economic libertarianism has become powerful enough for both sides to overlook theological quibbles. In San Diego, activists understand perfectly well that breaking the link between Latinos and the Democratic Party requires undermining the economic message that voters are hearing from unions and other progressive sources.
“Is it because you think that when Democrats offer you free stuff, it means they really care about you?” Álvarez says. “Do you think that when the Republicans talk about enforcing immigration laws it means they are going to send you back? Let’s be honest: you didn’t come here for free stuff; you came for the economic opportunity that allows you work and earn money.” The audience murmurs its assent.
Following the video, a man in jeans and a nicely fitting blue jacket takes the stage. Pastor Netz Gómez comes from the Houses of Light, a “nondenominational” church in Northridge, California, but his role here is apparently to spread a certain amount of darkness around those toward whom the gathered faithful should direct their hate.
“Look, brothers, we’re seeing an invasion of humanism,” he says in impassioned Spanish. “Our schools, our laws, our senate is full of humanism, brothers, and I feel an outrage.” Then he shifts his aim from the dreaded humanists to the even more despised members of the LGBT community. “Homosexual groups, I have nothing against them,” he claims, before launching into a diatribe about the things he does, in fact, hold against them. “They are a minimum percentage, not even 3 percent. However, they’re influencing the entire population.” And “that is why we have to rise up in a holy indignation.”
There is a sad irony in inviting people of color who were themselves once—and indeed remain—objects of contempt for other groups of religious nationalists to turn around and discover their own objects of contempt. But for Gómez it is clearly just a matter of redrawing the lines between insider and outsider, and he is careful to reassure his audience that they are on the inside.
“Hispanic brothers, you came to the United States of North America as an instrument of God,” he says. “Some of you came here for work, others came here wet, others came here dry!” Everyone in the room laughs knowingly. “I don’t know how you guys came here,” he continues, “but what I know, brothers, is you are here as an instrument of God. And for those who are here as preachers, we have a tremendous responsibility.”
Then Gómez, too, pivots to the bottom line. “I loved what my brother is giving us. Check it out,” he enthuses. “He’s giving us a voter guide. It is important you see it. He’s giving us, on the first page, two governor candidates who were selected in the primary elections. Gavin Newsom, who is a democratic person, is a person who has promoted the homosexual marriage, is one of the spokespersons, one of the people who go to the front of the homosexual groups.”
Gómez clearly has no problem spelling out the “correct” conclusions to draw from the “nonpartisan” voter guides.
“Please notice here, for example,” he continues, pointing to another part of the voter guide, “where it talks about the lieutenant governor, there are two candidates and they are Democrats. There was no choice for a person with a little more of values.” Opening the cover, he says, “These two people who are listed here, one of the lieutenant governor candidates has 99 percent of a secular vision. Nothing of God. And the other candidate is a man who has 97 percent. It means that no one is good. Are you understandin
g me? There is no one to vote for.”
But just to reassure his audience that political talk at church is all well and good, he adds, “A lot of people are going to tell me, ‘No, brother, don’t meddle in political matters, because they’re going to shut down the church.’ It’s a devil’s lie, brothers. This thing is legal. Here it is written,” he says, gesturing toward a packet of papers, “so you don’t have the slightest doubt.”
The material to which he appears to be referring includes content from the Family Research Council associated with its Culture Impact Teams—and it is, if anything, still more partisan. The FRC’s manuals twist and spin a few Bible passages to prove that God opposes gun regulations, the Affordable Care Act, tax increases, public assistance (unless it passes through church coffers), climate science, and pretty much every other position associated with the Republican Party’s opponents.
Domen himself appears highly pleased with the Ocean View Church event, and it is abundantly clear that its partisan political nature comes directly from him. In the run-up to the gathering, his Twitter posts alternated between praise for Jesus and calls to “arrest Hillary Clinton” (June 18, 2018) and “DRAIN THE SWAMP!” (June 5, 2018). He has also retweeted a number of Trump’s statements attacking the Mueller investigation and the media, including one from February 2017: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
Donald Trump, Domen says, has “done more for the Church than many Christian presidents have … I believe it’s also divine that we are powering up Church United at the same time that America is under new leadership.” Domen celebrated Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election by attending the inauguration in Washington, D.C. In a photograph taken from the event, he appears relaxed and content.
Painting the blue state of California red may seem like a stretch target. But Domen is a picture of optimism. “Even though we have a supermajority liberal worldview in Sacramento,” he writes, “I’m hopeful that with Church United we can better partner together to address the spiritual problems affecting our communities so California can be golden once again.”
Church United is Domen’s work, and it is also very much the creation of a national movement. Christian nationalist organizations, many of them based in Washington, D.C., have provided him with critical resources, including funding, connections, partnerships, travel opportunities, and ideas.
It is easy to see why so many pastors are happy to sign on. Aside from the opportunity for cross-denominational fellowship, activism, and political engagement, there’s the free or subsidized travel. Church United sponsors annual trips to the state capitol in Sacramento, dubbed, “Awakening Tours,” where pastors learn about the legislative process, meet public officials, pray loudly under the rotunda, and “strategically target committee members” in order to defeat what Domen has called “the enormous evil facing California from the legislature.” Meetings with congressmen are often arranged with assistance from the Christian legal firm Advocates for Faith & Freedom, which also acts as a sponsor of the tours. “Most of the politicians were extremely encouraged by their visit from the pastors,” according to a report from one such gathering. “God definitely had His hand in the connection made between the pastors and their elected officials!”14
In addition to the Sacramento pilgrimages, Church United invites pastors to “Awakening” conferences in Washington, D.C. Activities have included a luncheon at the Heritage Foundation rooftop patio, which boasts inspiring views of the Washington Monument; a private screening of the antiabortion movie Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer; special tours of the Museum of the Bible; and meetings with right-wing lawmakers. Visiting pastors rub shoulders with movement VIPs like Christiana Holcomb of Alliance Defending Freedom, Ralph Drollinger of Capitol Ministries, and Star Parker of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE).
By all accounts, the D.C. visits are a success. As the Family Research Council summarized it, “Each of these pastors commits to pray for the nation, preach Christian citizenship messages, and partner with at least three other pastors. In May, FRC hosted our 13th annual national ‘Watchmen on the Wall’ conference in Washington D.C. Nearly 700 attendees from 41 states” attended.15 In this way, Church United acts as a supportive initiative that funnels its members into the Family Research Council’s vast pastoral network.
Aware of the need to expand the base beyond the once-familiar racial boundaries, the FRC adds, “We translated the event and key resources into Spanish,” and has held dozens of events specifically for Black and Latino communities.
Domen’s group relies critically on these tours, both to attract pastors and to provide a focus for their political activism. “The loudest message the pastors heard collectively from Congress was that they cannot change the country through public policy—the country will change through the people of God—especially when pastors engage,” Domen wrote after one Awakening tour. “They all understand the Kingdom impact pastors have. It is the people of God who will change California and its cities, one city at a time.”16
Church United’s busy schedule of activities costs money. It is unclear from the organization’s reporting where it comes from. The mailing address takes us to the Newport Beach, California, post office box of a real estate investment company run by Larry Smith, a businessman with close ties to other activist organizations. Smith currently sits on the board of Ralph Drollinger’s Capitol Ministries. He has also served on the board of the Family Action PAC, which seeks “to recruit and elect qualified leaders who will advance a culture in which human life and family are valued, personal responsibility is encouraged, and liberty thrives.” He donated at least $50,000 in support of California’s anti–gay marriage amendment, Proposition 8, which Domen campaigned in favor of before it passed in 2008. Domen told me that the FRC also donated approximately $50,000 to Church United efforts in 2018. “I have to raise the rest,” he said. “Mainly through the generosity of individual donors.”
Domen’s efforts appear to be bearing fruit. Fresh from an “Awakening” tour of the Sacramento capitol, Bishop Ed Smith of Zoe Christian Fellowship in Whittier, California, enthused, “I got challenged to tell people in our church to run for public office, to get involved in the legislative process, and to let their voice be heard through voting and in other ways. I want to encourage you as pastors in your church to be a voice and get people involved in the political process.”
Shortly after attending a pastor gathering, Smith delivered a sermon about Senate Bill 1146, the Equity in Higher Education Act, which prohibited gender discrimination at institutions receiving state financial aid. As Smith characterized it, SB 1146 would have allowed the government “to take religious freedom away” from faith-based institutions. “If they limit the Christian colleges and universities, then they’ll limit the high schools, the Christian high schools and then churches,” he warned. “The devil don’t know how to stop until we stop him!”17 Under pressure from religious groups, the antidiscrimination language was removed.
For Pastor Elias Loera of Fresno’s Family Christian Assembly, Church United has proved transformative, completely altering his previous understanding of the proper relationship between religion and politics.
“We’ve believed a lie for so long that the church and the state should be separated,” he said in a Church United promotional video.18 “But in my Awakening tour experience, there was a congressman that gave us a tour of the Capitol after hours, and he spoke up, when that was written by Thomas Jefferson, he was doing it to keep the politics out of church, not to keep the church out of politics. And that was, like, for me an awakening.”
As a Church United cluster leader, Loera says, he strongly encourages his members to involve themselves and their congregations in policy issues. “Getting back we had a different perspective. ‘Hey, guys, we’re supposed to be involved in this process,’ ” he says.
In early 2018,
under Loera’s coordination, the Fresno-Clovis cluster organized multiple events, including a twenty-one-day schedule of fasting. Twenty-two regional churches of various denominations participated: Baptist, Presbyterian, and charismatic, as well as members of “nondenominational” parachurch networks like Cornerstone and Vineyard. A Facebook notice for the annual Fresno-Clovis pastor’s breakfast announced the invited speaker: Tony Evans, the Dallas-based evangelical powerhouse who has established approximately eighty “church-school partnerships” throughout the Dallas area. Evans has flatly stated that the idea of church-state separation is unbiblical: “God never intended there to be such a separation in His world.”
Another Church United–affiliated pastor, Bob Branch, who leads the Springs Community Church in Temecula, drew similar conclusions. “I realized that I was conceding the public square to the enemy and to the tide of the culture, and that’s unacceptable,” he said in a Church United video.19 “Really in the final analysis, I thought wow, under my watch, I’m conceding the public square to the evil one. And I’m truly sorry and this is not okay. I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore.”
After attending an Awakening tour in Washington, D.C., Branch implemented a Culture Impact Team at his church to mobilize his congregation. In a sermon titled Finding Your Voice, he said, “You need to actually go and start taking your stand and be part of some pro-life efforts that are going on.” He continued, “Every single person in this room has a sphere. And if we actually became God’s change agents within those spheres, then we’re talking about 150 people impacting perhaps 10,000 people. And that infection spreads.”20
Mr. Branch makes no effort to disguise his ambition to spread the “infection” in hopes of mobilizing right-wing voters. Rob McCoy, pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, is equally forthright. “If we want to make a difference in this state we have to step into the culture mountain of influence of politics. The only commodity or currency in politics is winning elections,” says McCoy. “We have got to get folks in the congregations to step into this political mountain of influence.”21
The Power Worshippers Page 12
