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Christian Right Politics in 2020
American politics changed in unimaginable ways in 2020: the arrival of COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, and the rise of right-wing conspiracists questioning democratic elections. Those with “best laid plans” for the U.S. presidential election season found them “often going awry.” Keeping the political messaging on course despite the oddities of the pandemic and protests may have seemed like a daunting task. And yet more citizens heeded the call to vote than ever before. That is an impressive outcome for both Democrats and Republicans alike. To better understand how the pandemic shaped the political communication, I consider the messaging of two Christian Right political organizations responsible for mobilizing Republican ground troops.
Evidence examined includes key public statements and over five hundred emails sent to supporters by the Family Research Council (FRC) and the Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC). The identification and qualitative evaluation of strategic themes from this material draw upon my experience conducting participant observation at Christian Right political events. While various doomsday statements were voiced by evangelical pastors about coronavirus, these two organizations represent the most important, strategically reasoned, and influential Christian Right political voices in contemporary politics. FRC’s president, Tony Perkins, was tapped by Trump to chair the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, established FFC in 2009, growing it into the leading social conservative “get out the vote” organization. Both organizations have multimillion-dollar budgets raised through large contributions and endless pleas for financial donations through direct mail, email, publications, and training events. Both organizations gave President Trump full-throated support throughout his presidency.
The outcome of this assessment of FRC and FFC political messaging demonstrates that support for Trump’s presidency continued despite the external shocks of the pandemic and BLM protests. FRC and FFC messaging included familiar political issues—abortion, antitransgender rights, and religious liberty. However, COVID-related restrictions brought a new urgency to concerns over religious freedom. Likewise, BLM protests presented new opportunities to highlight threats to “law and order” as well as the hypocrisy of the “liberal Other” (constructed as concerned about COVID contagion in church congregations but not among BLM protesters). Each of these, the pandemic and BLM protests, became manifestations of forewarned threats of social chaos at the hand of “pro-abortion,” “socialist,” “radical,” and “secular” enemies. Therefore, understanding their reaction to the pandemic and BLM protests offers insights about how familiar political messaging is deployed to frame external shocks to maintain momentum and motivate supporters. Having warned of political and social threats for years, FRC and FFC interpreted these events as manifestations of threats from a foreign and domestic Other. And the articulated threats became prophesy to prime supporters to expect election fraud and to question the legitimacy of the election.
Our Guy
The day after Trump’s first impeachment, December 18, 2019, Mark Galli, then editor in chief of Christianity Today (CT), wrote: “Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.” Claiming that Trump had “dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration,” and just as CT had spoken out against Nixon and Clinton, Galli found Trump unfit for office. Immediately, over two hundred evangelical leaders penned a letter of outrage, defending their support of Trump:
We are Bible-believing Christians and patriotic Americans who are simply grateful that our president has sought our advice as his administration, has advanced policies that protect the unborn, promote religious freedom, reform our criminal justice system, contribute to strong working families through paid family leave, protect the freedom of conscience, prioritize parental rights, and ensure that our foreign policy aligns with our values while making our world safer, including through our support of the State of Israel. (Becker et al. 2020)
Signatories included Christian Right political stalwarts, such as Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Mike Huckabee, Robert Jeffress, Richard Land, and Eric Metaxas. The historian John Fea (2020) likened evangelical Trump supporters to the “ruthless fawning flatters” of the medieval Europe court clergy who “took so keen an interest in the affairs of state that he neglected chanting the liturgy.”
Throughout 2020, Perkins and Reed echoed this pro-Trump message. In August, Perkins explained the integration of “Bible-believing Christians” in the Trump administration: “The administration is filled . . . Mark Meadows, long time friend of mine . . . the vice president . . . Mike Pompeo . . . Dr. Carson . . . Some may not like me to say this but unfortunately the administration has cherry picked a lot of our people” (Perkins 2020c). Perkins agrees with “98% of the administration policies,” which could explain why FRC spent “over $20 million in this election cycle” (Perkins 2020c).
Published for the campaign season, Ralph Reed’s (2020b) For God and Country explained the Christian case for Trump. As a “strong supporter and good friend of his,” it was Reed who had hosted Trump’s debut on the evangelical political stage at an FFC policy conference in June 2011 (Reed 2020b). Reed likens the discrimination against socially conservative Christians to persecuted Catholics during Kennedy’s campaign and to African Americans fighting for civil rights. When discussing Trump, Reed (2020b:14) references Oskar Schindler, whose “shortcomings did not rob his righteous acts of their rich moral content.” For Reed (2020c), Trump:
puts America first, defends our country, keeps us from being ripped off by China, turns the economy around . . . stands for innocent human life, appoints originalists to the court, defends Israel, dismantles ISIS and supports our First Amendment right to freedom of speech and religion.
Reed’s (2020b) book closes with “Promises made. Promises kept”—listing Trump administration achievements. Perkins echoes this, claiming Trump is the “best President Christians have ever had” with “promises made, promises kept” (Perkins 2020a). FRC’s voter guide details “the Trump administration accomplishments on life, family and religious freedom.” One of the many benefits Trump bestowed was an executive order setting aside the Johnson amendment, which prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofits from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Therefore, by the 2020 campaign, FRC and FFC could legally and openly endorse candidates.
FRC and FFC highlight three key concerns addressed by Trump: abortion, antitransgender equality, and religious freedom. On the first, immediately following inauguration, Trump reinstated the “gag rule”—blocking U.S. aid to international organizations performing or “promoting” abortion. The Trump administration targeted the “Obamacare HHS [Health and Human Services] contraceptive mandate,” exempting organizations from purchasing insurance that included coverage for contraceptives and abortions. Trump officials supported the Hyde Amendment, designed to ensure federal tax dollars were not used to support abortions. Further changes to HHS included protections for pro-life health care groups from federal discrimination; termination or changing research contracts that involved the use of fetal tissue from abortion; promises to veto any legislation that weakened federal pro-life policies; and, on a global stage, the administration endorsement of the Protecting Life in Global Health Policy.
Trump became the first sitting president to give a pro-life speech at the March for Life in Washington, DC. On September 29, 2020, FRC emailed supporters a Witherspoon Institute comparative voter guide—“The 2020 Election: a clear distinction on abortion”—emphasizing Trump’s pro-life actions and warning that Biden was “actively promoting federal funding for the abortion industry” (Closson 2020). Abortion, always a key focus of Christian Right intervention, continued to be used to rally voters (S. Diamond 2000; Lewis 2017; Wilson and Djupe 2020). In line with the finding of the Wilson and Djupe study examining FRC emails to supporters, my review of the 462 emails FRC sent to supporters in 2020 indicates that 38 percent of those included the word abortion. This issue was only overshadowed by the mentions of Trump, which appeared in over 50 percent of FRC emails, increasing in frequency in the last six months of 2020. Trump’s action on pro-life issues clearly reflected FRC values.
The second Christian Right concern voiced by the Trump administration was opposition to transgender equality (Castle 2019). Various Trump directives reinterpreted federal antidiscrimination policies. For example, the Departments of Justice (DoJ) and Education rescinded guidance allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice. The DoJ and the Department of Defense changed policies that allowed transgender military personnel to continue to serve and prohibited those diagnosed with gender dysphoria to join the military unless they serve according to their biological sex. HHS removed nondiscrimination requirements that adoption and foster care providers receiving government funding must not discriminate on the basis of same-sex marriage or transgender identity. During 2020, USAID updated its Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy to note biological differences between males and females and reiterate the importance of the heterosexual family. On May 27, 2020, FRC praised Trump’s “pro-religious freedom pivot from his predecessor’s disastrous policies” and the HHS for protecting the medical community who “want to be faithful to their religious beliefs and a biological understanding of sex.”
Christian Right opposition to transgender equality is now ubiquitous. During participant observation at FRC’s 2019 Values Voters conference, I listened as keynote speakers repeated concerns about increasing expansion of transgender rights—including a workshop entitled Speech, Sex and Silenced Parents: The Darkening Landscape of American Education. Post-Obergefell, Christian Right organizations dialed back antihomosexual rhetoric and dialed up antitransgender rhetoric. Trump administration policies reflected this agenda.
Thirdly, FRC celebrated the Trump administration’s defense of religious liberty. Within the first few months, Trump signed the Religious Liberty Executive Order requiring federal agencies to promote and protect religious liberty and free speech. The DoJ issued guidelines and a Religious Liberty Task Force to implement them. Secretary of State Pompeo and Attorney General Barr both made religious liberty a focus in international forums (e.g., International Religious Freedom Alliance) and Supreme Court advocacy (e.g., Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue). FRC was delighted with the appointment of Perkins as chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Samah Norquist, wife of Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist, was appointed to USAID as chief adviser for religious freedom. According to the USAID (2020) press release, this “elevated the U.S. Government’s prioritization of religious freedom as a moral and national security imperative . . . [and] solidifies religious freedom as a foundational principle of American foreign policy.” Celebrations of the Trump administration’s defense of religious liberty intensified as state and local responses to the pandemic attempted to curtail church gatherings.
The Trump administration’s most long-lasting contribution to Christian Right politics was the appointment of approximately 193 federal judges, 51 federal appeals court judges, and 3 Supreme Court justices. Most of these, and significantly all Supreme Court appointments, are constitutional originalists, active in The Federalist Society and expected to support Christian Right positions on abortion, transgender identity, and religious freedom. On June 26, 2020, FRC emailed supporters about the importance of “taking policy over personality” in their praising of Trump’s judicial appointments. Trump had matched “Obama’s record in judicial appointments in just 3.5 years. . . . Just imagine what President Trump could do if he gets another term.” During congressional hearings for Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all questioning from Democratic senators was dismissed as “Trump bashing” (FRC email, Sept. 29, 2020). Looking to the Georgia runoff held in January 2021, Ralph Reed warned that Democrats “will also expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court so they can pack the Court with a majority of radical Left Justices” (FFC, Nov. 10, 2020). Republican-appointed justices do not always ensure favorable outcomes, but for the Christian Right, it is better than the alternative.
Election year partisanship is usual, but the intensity of the Christian Right support for an incumbent Republican president is a little unusual. Unlike Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr., Christian Right leaders agreed that, after four years in office, Trump had delivered on campaign promises. He had made a deal with them and delivered on that deal. Their organizations and their issues were enjoying unprecedented political success. Therefore, despite a prior visible lack of a theology-based morality, Trump was now firmly their guy.
Pandemic Freedom
Going all in for Trump in 2020 limited the possible responses to the pandemic by the Christian Right. Neither Trump nor the Christian Right could ignore it. As a result, FRC and FFC messaging focused on articulating the enemy (i.e., China and congressional liberals) and how these were threatening the free exercise of religion. The BLM protests, discussed below, gave them a respite, first, to shift the political narrative away from Trump’s response to COVID-19 and, second, to establish a correlation between COVID-19 and voter fraud.
From the start, FRC rhetoric followed that of the White House. Throughout February and March, for example, FRC emails echoed Trump, referring to COVID-19 only as the “Chinese coronavirus.” On March 3, the advice parceled out in FRC emails and the radio program Washington Watch similarly echoed Trump: guest Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), a medical doctor, likened COVID-19 to “the regular old flu” and dismissed the need for masks: “Those are totally not necessary. The face masks do . . . nothing to prevent somebody from getting the virus” (FRC email, Mar. 3, 2020). By May, FRC claimed that Trump had “solved the supply problem, the equipment problem, the ventilator problem” (FRC email, May 19, 2020). Alternatively, FFC, whose operational priority is voter turnout, was almost silent on the pandemic with emails mentioning coronavirus only twice—both times in relation to early-voting mail-in ballots and the need to begin get-out-the-vote efforts early.
In February, only four FRC emails mentioned the coronavirus, but this jumped to over twenty-five emails per month in March, April, and May as Congress debated COVID-related stimulus packages. The stimulus legislation presented opportunities to target Democrats, who FRC claimed were using stimulus money for “Planned Parenthood loans, taxpayer-funded abortion, cash for illegal immigrants, marijuana banking, state bailouts, rigged elections, freed felons, and a complete redefinition of the family” (FRC email, May 15, 2020). While FRC occasionally appeared to advocate for some economic stimulus, they simultaneously dismissed it as a ruse for Democrats to pursue “immoral actions.” With the stimulus discussion quieter after May, the average mention of the pandemic in FRC emails fell to approximately eight per month for the remainder of the year.
FRC and FFC continued to convey a pro-Trump, anti-Democrat theme. For example, in early October, when Trump and the First Lady had contracted COVID-19, FRC issued a prayer request for their recovery, but the rest of the email focused on the Democrats’ approach to the stimulus bill: “Anyone who would take a deadly situation and use it to push a grab bag of liberal non-starters cares about campaigning—not compromise. We’re grateful for the White House’s adamance that any agreement with Pelosi must be pro-life, pro-family, and pro-freedom” (FRC email, Oct. 2, 2020). Messaging focused on Planned Parenthood and Pelosi rather than, for example, the lack of personal protective equipment.
While direct mentions of the coronavirus in FRC emails waned in the second half of the year, worries about the impact of local and state regulations on church gatherings rose to the fore. Social distancing restrictions presented a strategic opportunity to sing another politically familiar tune: religious liberty. Many churches moved to online services to ensure support and community for isolated members (see Knoll’s Chapter 15 here). Others found regulations limiting gatherings as an afront to the First Amendment right to exercise religion. On May 21, FRC hosted a meeting between Trump and thousands of conservative pastors after which the president told reporters: “The churches are not being treated with respect by a lot of Democrat governors. . . . I want to get our churches open” (Dupree 2020). FRC expressed outrage that regulations on in-person gatherings stifled the “essential church” worship while allowing “for casinos, tattoo parlors, abortion clinics, and liquor stores to operate with little or no restrictions, while churches around the country are still being held to a different—and even discriminatory—standard” (FRC email, Oct. 10, 2020).
The protestations appear to be based on political objections, but notably much of this outrage focused on (immoral) businesses, which were permitted to remain open, while church services—where collection plates serve as essential financial income—were not. The Alliance Defending Freedom and others supported church ministers to sue public officials in sixteen states—from California to Maine and Minnesota to Mississippi—“claiming that stay-at-home orders and safer-at-home restrictions violate their religious freedom rights” (Posner 2020). The threat to religious freedom became the interpretive lens for understanding the threat of the pandemic.
Religious liberty is familiar Christian Right rhetoric, and FRC deployed it regularly in celebrating Trump administration interventions during the pandemic (Wilson and Djupe 2020). For example, Trump’s Commission for International Religious Freedom, chaired by Perkins, called on North Korea, Iran, and Russia to release those imprisoned because of their religious faith to protect them from the pandemic. Trump officials appealed to the UN to ensure abortion was not defined as an “essential service” during the pandemic. While those international interventions were celebrated, the primary focus of FRC communication to supporters was the protection of religious liberty at home.
One significant win came when the Small Business Administration confirmed that churches and religious groups would be eligible for coronavirus relief. FRC ensured that Planned Parenthood would not be eligible for similar relief under the CARES Act. FRC sang the praises of the Trump administration as DoJ interventions focused on the right of congregations to worship despite state or local bans on large gatherings. They praised HHS, who pushed hospitals to allow clergy to see patients despite health-based prohibitions on visitors. They applauded as the Department of Homeland Security and DoJ deemed clergy as “essential,” allowing them to minister to their congregations and to those in the hospital. Twelve states deemed worship as an “essential service,” thus exempting them from social distancing guidelines. FRC wrote to supporters praising Trump warning state officials to “do the right thing. . . . Allow these very important, essential places of faith to open right now for this weekend. If they don’t do it . . . I will override the governors” (FRC email, May 27, 2020).
In early October, Perkins hosted evangelical pastors at “Freedom Sunday” held at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, challenging “unconstitutional steps to restrict . . . and silence” churches and calling for “the resumption of church services in obedience to the scripture,” citing Hebrews 10:25, which called believers to be “not neglecting to meet together” (FRC email, Oct. 11, 2020; Hernandez 2020). As Wilson and Djupe (2020) note, the FRC deployment of religious freedom rhetoric signals a shift in understanding themselves as a persecuted minority. Here, as the election tightened, the religious freedom rhetoric located an actual threat: if you stop supporting Trump, Democrats will restrict your right to worship. Postelection, this justification for supporting Trump because he protected religious freedom is understood as prophecy: they took away our right to worship, so we lost.
While FRC voiced concern about the threat to religious gatherings, they appeared cognizant of organizational responsibilities, or perhaps insurance liabilities, in the face of the pandemic. FRC moved their political gathering, Values Voters 2020, online. They reduced the content to evening sessions with keynote speakers and offered all content for free to those who shared contact data. This public call for religious freedom enabled FRC to capitalize politically on concerns of local pastors/supporters wanting to worship, while avoiding potential liabilities of an outbreak at their own events. The business of religion, for both pastors dependent on the offering plate and for political leaders concerned about organizational liabilities, should continue.
Dogged support for Republican handling of a health crisis is not unusual for Christian Right organizations. During the 1980s, as Reagan refused to listen to scientific explanations for the spread of HIV and the AIDS crisis ravaged thousands of American citizens, Christian Right leaders seized the opportunity to link health and moral behavior. Then, the message was clear: the Lord will protect his own. During the pandemic, support for Trump echoed this suspicion of science and the need for moral behavior—church attendance—without which the immoral Democrats would prevail.
Despite Trump heeding scientific advice early in the pandemic, as the election season progressed and the economic impact of COVID-19 became clear, Trump’s messaging shifted: the COVID obsessed should not be allowed to undermine American economic and religious freedom. Social distancing and mask wearing were for the weak. Christian Right churches, local and megachurches, needed congregations. Just as they had followed Reagan’s cues, Christian Right leaders again seized the opportunity to assert the rights of the religious against the advice of science. Both Trump, FRC, and FFC seemed to welcome the opportunity presented in the summer to shift the message to more comfortable terrain: “law and order” and liberal hypocrisy.
Riot Resistance
On May 25, George Floyd was arrested for allegedly passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. During that arrest, the police officers held him down, putting a knee on his neck for almost nine minutes, killing him. Floyd’s death was one of many high-profile deaths of African Americans, which gave birth to the BLM movement. Over the summer, BLM protests took place across America with the New York Times estimating 15–20 million participating in the “largest movement in US history” (Buchanan, Bui, and Patel 2020). The BLM protests became infused with anti-Trump sentiment and met with white-led counterprotests. According to Pew Research, in June, support for BLM was high among all adults (67 percent), both white (60 percent) and Black (86 percent) (Thomas and Horowitz 2020). However, this support among whites was clearly partisan, with Democrats far more supportive (92 percent) than Republicans (37 percent). This mild support among white Republicans dropped over the summer, with only 16 percent in support of BLM by September.
FRC messaging offers insight into reasons fueling this decline. In a May 30 email, Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana police officer, expressed concern about Floyd’s “death from excessive force by Minneapolis police officers.” In early June, Perkins penned a piece for the Washington Times explaining that “mob violence and police brutality result from a morally bankrupt America” (Perkins 2020b). Perkins began with a recognition of the personal and systemic problems in the police department:
As one who served as a police officer for over a decade on the street, I would say that if the department approved of the tactic of kneeling on the neck of a man who was handcuffed and on the ground, there are bigger problems in Minneapolis than Derek Chauvin. The failure of the other officers to intervene would suggest this type of brutality is pervasive. (Perkins 2020b)
Perkins understood the “breakdown of law and order” as the consequence of removing “God from public life” (FRC email, June 16, 2020). By September, the law-and-order rhetoric was dialed up. Correlating with a shift in Republican concerns, FRC emails claim that Trump’s call for law and order is misread by the Left as a “racist message” (Sept. 3, 2020), where calls for “restoring order isn’t just controversial but racist too” (Sept. 4, 2020). Defending Trump’s law-and-order position comes to overshadow Perkins’s previous recognition of police brutality.
Throughout the summer, concerns over law and order intensified the symbiotic political relationship between Christian Right leaders and Trump. On May 31, protesters in Washington, DC, set fire to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the “Church of the Presidents.” The fire was quickly extinguished, and damage was minimal. Nevertheless, for Christian Right leaders, the assault on this place of worship became symbolic that protests had gone too far.
On the morning of June 1, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and Liberty University’s Falkirk Center, tweeted a call for Trump to use the Insurrection Act against protesters. On the same morning, Christian Right–endorsed Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) urged Trump to use the Insurrection Act “to deploy active-duty military forces to these cities to support our local law enforcement and ensure that this violence ends tonight, not one more night” (Carney 2020). Later that day, Trump berated governors’ responses to violence as “weak” and conveyed the need to “dominate” protesters, offering to send National Guard troops (Idliby 2020).
While none of the above is meant to imply cause, they do give a glimpse of the political atmosphere on the morning of June 1. That afternoon, Trump gave a law-and-order speech in the Rose Garden and then walked to St. John’s for a photo opportunity. Layfette Park, sitting between the White House and St. John’s, was full of peaceful protesters. Trump directed Park Police and National Guard troops to drive protesters out of the park. Police with riot gear began shooting tear gas. Protesters were beaten. And a path was cleared for Trump. In the iconic photo, Trump holds up a Bible in front of the church. Without speculating as to Trump’s intent, the visual can be read as a nod to his religious base. Having once boasted that he could commit murder in Times Square and still have loyal followers, he could now deploy federal force to clear peaceful protesters while holding the “sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17).
Christian Right leaders responded with praise for Trump. Johnnie Moore, of the President’s Evangelical Advisory Board, lauded him as being in “total command” and “defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate, and anarchy” (Gjelten 2020). Franklin Graham and Pastor Robert Jeffress echoed that Trump was “absolutely correct” in removing protesters (Jenkins 2020). Perkins (2020b) claimed in his Washington Times op-ed that very morning that “mob violence and police brutality result from a morally bankrupt America.” He did not respond directly to Trump’s actions. His email to supporters the following day, entitled “What We Need Is Hope,” did not mention Trump’s clearing of Layfette Park (FRC email, June 2, 2020). The only reference to the events of the previous day was a brief lamentation over the small fire set by protesters threatening this piece of history with going “up in flames” (FRC email, June 2, 2020). Perkins repeated the “mob” rhetoric, keeping the focus of his constituents on the enemy of “law & order” rather than Trump’s controversial clearing of Layfette Park.
Ralph Reed (2020c), who spent much of the summer promoting his book For God and Country, responded to Trump’s walk to St. John’s: “It was symbolic, that is important. . . . The bully pulpit of his office conveys a message. . . . We are not going to allow our country . . . to be run over by rioters and looters and terrorists, and I’m glad he did it.” He echoed concerns about religious liberty: “I think it was good for him to go to a house of worship, particularly when liquor stores and massage parlors and abortion clinics have been allowed to be open during the COVID-19 pandemic, but churches have been ordered closed and Christians have been arrested and given citations for trying to worship” (Reed 2020c). When asked about the violence, Reed responded:
I agree with what the president said yesterday. We need to take our streets back. . . . We need to restore order first and after that we need to look towards an agenda that will ensure police brutality is dealt with. . . . I personally am a strong supporter of school choice and allowing young African American children . . . We need to allow them to go to a home school or private school or Christian school where they can learn and get off on the right foot . . . but first we have to secure the streets.
Reed deftly weaves together the fundamentals of the Christian Right worldview with seemingly unrelated issues of violent protesters, racial tension, moral corruption, homeschooling, economic and religious freedom, and law and order.
In supporter emails, Reed mentioned the protests only twice before the election, and each time he stayed focused on the get-out-the-vote message: “Despite the pandemic, national unrest while rioters destroyed cities over the summer, and more—we have never wavered in our commitment to getting Christian voters to the polls” (FFC email, Oct. 29, 2020). However, after the November elections, with the Georgia Senate runoff election looming, Reed invoked the protests, regularly claiming, “for months we’ve watched as radical Democrats have been rioting in the streets, tearing our beloved nation apart, and trying to steal the election” (FFC email, Nov. 11, 2020). Reed threated that the radical Left would “close the doors to our churches,” “impose cruel abortion policies,” and, in an indirect appeal to white Christians, “destroy the prosperity and the freedom that you and I have enjoyed” (FFC email, Dec. 15, 2020). Arguably, with the possibility of a Democratic Senate, Reed chose to deploy threat-laden messaging to motivate Republican voters.
During some of the protests, activists vandalized federal buildings or toppled statues of white leaders seen to symbolize racism and oppression. On June 25, President Trump signed an executive order titled Protecting American Monuments, Memorials and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence, which clearly linked the protests throughout the summer with “left wing extremists,” “Marxism,” and a “mob” with “ignorance of our history.” The order implies that these same protesters “indiscriminately” vandalized those who fought against civil rights, communism, and were now targeting statues of Jesus in houses of worship. Jurisdictions that “permit the desecration of monuments” or refuse to prosecute protesters for these acts would not receive federal grants (Trump 2020b).
Following Trump’s intervention, and in the context of Independence Day, Christian Right outrage at the BLM protests assumed a patriotic tone. Perkins expressed concerns about the destruction of “statues of great men” and the “renaming of important landmarks,” which “erase American history” (FRC emails, June 25 and July 2, 2020). Perkins asked, “When angry mobs tear down our statues and vandalize monuments, it’s ‘justice?’” (June 26, 2020). FRC celebrated Trump’s position: “While Virginia tries to flush its history down the city’s tubes, the administration is coming after anyone who defaces, damages, or tries to remove any monument by force” (FRC email, July 15, 2020). Perkins noted that President Trump had made it clear: “If these agitators want to vandalize sacred places, they’ll pay for it. . . . As President Trump pointed out, there isn’t a shortage of ignorance among these rioters” (July 15, 2020).
The law-and-order rhetoric offers a flexible language for identifying the enemy. Following Trump’s Fourth of July speech, FRC sung his praises: “Passionate at times, eloquent at others, it was the speech of a man who realized it wasn’t just his presidency at stake—but his country” (FRC email, July 7, 2020). The same email identified the “liberal” enemy: “Meanwhile, no one is quite sure what the mob’s solution to this crisis is (if they seek a solution at all). Their idea of justice divides. Their idea of equality silences. . . . And maybe for angry liberals, that’s the point” (FRC email, July 7, 2020). FRC reiterated this message of the “liberal,” “socialist” threat in approximately 30 percent of emails to supporters in 2020.
Throughout the summer, FRC railed against professional baseball players’ symbolic protest in support of BLM and claimed BLM desires to “annihilate America” through violent revolution (July 27, 2020). FRC asserted that BLM activists were Marxists and had financial connections to China (Gonzales 2020). China, first responsible for coronavirus, was now responsible for BLM protests. “America’s civil unrest,” FRC supporters were told, “has been fomented by foreign agents or Marxist ideologues” (Sept. 25, 2020). Yet FRC made a careful distinction between admonishing racism and denouncing the BLM movement. For years the Christian Right movement has pointed out that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, advocated eugenics to control the Black population (reiterated in FRC email, Sept. 3, 2020). FRC continued to link the issues of racism and abortion—wondering why it is OK to question the death of one man, George Floyd, but wrong to protest “millions” of deaths through abortions (June 11, 2020). FRC drew a careful distinction between BLM and the importance of all God’s children: “Americans overwhelmingly agree that the lives of black people have as much value as the lives of white people and people of every skin color. Black lives don’t just ‘matter’ (that’s such a utilitarian word); they are precious in God’s sight because they reflect his image” (Sept. 25, 2020).
The BLM protests gave Christian Right political leaders an opportunity to shift the discussion away from the pandemic and to reiterate familiar rhetoric about political threats. For example, the juxtaposition of the BLM crowds protesting and the COVID-19 restrictions on church gatherings outraged Perkins:
after months of force-fed fearmongering, the outbreak found itself in an unusual place: the backburner. Suddenly, concerns about social distancing were non-existent. Liberal leaders, who were doing everything they could to keep Americans locked down, were standing behind podiums, urging people to get out and protest. Now, after a couple of weeks of mob demonstrations, the Left wants to blame someone else for the surge of infections: Donald Trump. (June 23, 2020)
Perkins blamed the rise in cases on the protests, particularly among young people, ironically wondering, “Maybe people believe that the virus wasn’t that bad at the riots” (June 23, 2020). Perceived threats to religious freedom, exacerbated by COVID-19 social distancing regulations, were set in contrast to BLM protest and presented an opportunity to call out the unfair treatment of (white) evangelicals and, ultimately, a threat to the Christian Right worldview.
High Stakes
FRC and FFC emails help trace the reaction of the Christian Right to the atmosphere of the public square in 2020. The staple issues (e.g., abortion, antitransgender rights, and religious freedom) provided organizations with a familiar language to animate voters. But the two key external events—the pandemic and the BLM protests—provided unique opportunities to confirm President Trump as an ally in the moral fight. COVID-19, the “China virus,” intensified apprehensions of a threatening foreign Other and of science-based policies threatening religious liberty. BLM intensified threats to law and order from largely African American protesters. At first glance, the account above may not be that different from previous campaigns, not that different from the expected behavior of interest groups, not that different from reactions to previous external disruptions to the familiar political rhythm. But in 2020, the stakes of strategic politics turned out to be just a little higher than previous electoral cycles.
Political responses to COVID-19, such as attempts to ensure enfranchisement, presented an opportunity to prime FRC and FFC supporters with a narrative explaining electoral defeat. Throughout the campaign, Trump raised the possibility of voter fraud due to the increase of mail-in ballots. Over the summer, both FRC and FFC parroted the worry that the election could be “stolen” from Trump. On September 14, Reed’s emails predicted “rampant voter fraud” in Georgia. Two weeks later, he repeated this worry:
President Trump said, there “is going to be fraud like you’ve never seen. . . . We might not know for months because these ballots are going to be all over.” . . . Voter fraud is going to be rampant this year due to changes in many state’s early-voting policies, the expansion of mail-in voting, and the early reports we’ve already heard of Trump ballots being dumped. (Sept. 30, 2020; emphasis theirs)
According to a video obtained by the Washington Post of a Council for National Policy meeting in August, Reed advocated “ballot harvesting,” collecting and delivering absentee ballots: “Our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches. . . . We’re going to be specifically going in not only to white evangelical churches, but into Hispanic and Asian churches and collecting those ballots” (Williams 2020). Note that the call did not mention Black churches. This may indicate an expectation that Hispanic and Asian evangelicals were more likely to support Trump (see Burge 2017). In Georgia, the law only allows a third party to return a ballot if the voter is disabled or in the hospital and then only by a family or household member. If anyone else returns the ballot for the voter, it is tampering. If Reed’s team planned to ballot harvest in Georgia, it was not difficult for him to predict election tampering.
FRC first mentioned the “enormous potential for voter fraud” in emails on May 6 and then at least once a month until August. In September, FRC emailed approximately twice per week warning of voter fraud. For example, FRC claimed that George Soros had “advocated for widespread ‘vote-by-mail’ which can be ripe for fraud” and would lead to a “socialist, godless state” (Sept. 17, 2020). Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the first to announce he would object to the certification of President Biden, spoke at FRC’s Values Voter Summit (VVS) in September. Other voter fraud conspiracy theory advocates, Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, joined President Trump as speakers at VVS 2020. Again, following the election, FRC emailed twice per week about voter fraud. With the Georgia runoff election on the horizon, Perkins emailed supporters that “voters saw how Democrats abused the process in the name of COVID, how they twisted and changed election laws without legislatures’ consent” (Dec. 8, 2020). Washington Watch and FRC events regularly hosted election fraud proponents, such as Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and the American Conservative Union lobbyist Matt Schlapp.
On November 9, Ralph Reed emailed: “We put everything into the 2020 elections, and you and I both know that Donald Trump won re-election in reality. We CANNOT allow the Democrats to steal these seats from us too.” Reed’s emails continued to claim the election was stolen throughout November and December. Each email warned of the dangers of losing the Senate; in December Reed wrote: “Radical extremists Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are doing everything they can to BUY the election and steal away victory from conservatives David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler” (Dec. 28, 2020). Reed’s rhetoric warned of the “radical policies” and the threat to Christian values from Democrats.
These warnings fed into the postelection Stop the Steal movement, reaching a crescendo as Congress prepared to certify the Electoral College ballots on January 6. As protesters gathered in Washington, DC, on the evening of January 5, 2020, Perkins broadcast an intercessory prayer event live from the Mall. Perkin’s guests were Senator Marshall (R-KS), Representatives Jody Hice (R-GA) and Gohmert (R-TX)—all adamant that there was “massive” election fraud and all who, the next day, voted to reject the Electoral College outcomes in Arizona and Pennsylvania (Perkins 2020d). The event reflected FRC’s call to action: “Pray. Vote. Stand.” The slogan evokes Ephesians 6:13: “Therefore take the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” During the election, Perkins had repeated this phrase incessantly in his radio broadcasts, on Facebook videos, in supporter emails, in almost every in-group publication, and via the FRC “Pray. Vote. Stand.” speaker series.
In October, Chino Hills pastor Jack Hibbs had cohosted “Freedom Sunday” with Perkins, encouraging evangelical pastors to “open their doors” and let congregations worship without masks or social distancing. On January 5, Perkins and Hibbs prayed:
Against all of the reports that is a foregone conclusion . . . that you would shock, Lord, America with your grace and your mercy . . . spare judgement . . . and remove from power those that are against the unborn child’s life . . . a miracle that would rock this nation . . . shake us to the point . . . and establish righteousness . . . give senators strength, backbone and frankly guts to do the right thing . . . may people throw off the yoke of playing it safe and be men and women of God and do the right thing. (Perkins 2020d)
Perkins then claimed that the nation is in a “predicament” because churches closed their doors and now believers must have “courage and boldness.”
Interest groups are by their nature oppositional and rally supporters with calls to action that articulate potential threats. The evocation of Ephesians 6 as a call to action is not surprising or out of character for FRC to deploy in an election year. There is no evidence in group emails or other communications gathered for this research of either Perkins or Reed advocating violent insurrection. In fact, immediately following the events of January 6, both Perkins and Reed denounced the violence at the Capitol. Reed emailed supporters the next day with a clear message: “The violence at the U.S. Capitol is an assault on everything we stand for. It has no place in the life of our nation, and I condemn and repudiate it. It does not represent our movement or the cause of Christ” (Jan. 7, 2020). Likewise, Perkins wrote: “The violence at the U.S. Capitol building against Congress and Capitol Police is wrong and dangerous for our republic. Lawlessness is not the way, and such actions makes it difficult for law-abiding Americans to fight the good fight” (Jan. 7, 2020).
Having said that, FRC and FFC rhetoric priming supporters for electoral fraud raised the electoral stakes. Standing on the Mall on the evening of January 5 repeatedly claiming a fraudulent election offered a theological endorsement for calling American democracy into question. Casting one’s lot in presidential politics is always risky. But at present, both Perkins and Reed continue with their high-stakes endorsement of Trump as “the best President Christians ever had.”
Conclusion
This examination of the political messaging of the FRC and the FFC sheds light on the professionalism of these organizations and how they adapt to external shocks by offering supporters a consistent lens for interpreting political events. Both Reed and Perkins were absolutely clear that Trump had been the most Christian Right–friendly president ever. In the words of both Reed (2020b) and Perkins (2020a): “Promises made. Promises kept.” Trump was their guy.
While COVID-19 threatened to hijack any campaign agenda, both Trump and Christian Right political leaders were able to shift the narrative to the familiar tropes of anti-intellectualism/antiscience, the lack of values of liberal hypocrites, and threats to religious freedom. The discussion of BLM explains the correlation between this need to shift the message away from the threat of the pandemic and toward the emerging threat of BLM and liberals. Attempts to ensure voter enfranchisement during the pandemic presented an opportunity to prophesy—priming supporters with an explanation for electoral defeat. Close examination of the language in emails and public statements demonstrates how political messaging was deployed to frame external shocks and offer a familiar lens—of the threatening other—with which supporters could understand current events. The Christian Right response to COVID-19 and to BLM protests, therefore, echoed their ongoing moral agenda, where the threat to conservative Christian values had already reached pandemic proportions.