Christian nationalism is central to the Texas GOP primary runoffs for Senate and attorney general

From Houston Public Media:

Next month, the president’s Religious Liberty Commission — led by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — will make its formal policy recommendations to President Donald Trump. Patrick, speaking last week, hinted at the direction of his recommendations by arguing there is no such thing as separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution.

Patrick’s remarks point to the growing influence of Christian nationalism on conservative politics in Texas and nationwide.

Sam Martin, the Frank Church Chair of Public Affairs at Boise State University, studies the intersection of religion and American politics and previously taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“Texas is to conservative politics and Christian nationalism and these kinds of ideas what California is to progressive ideas,” Martin said. “”What Texas does has ripple effects in ways that other red states like, say, Idaho or Wyoming or even a place like South Carolina just simply do not.”

Martin noted that, among other avenues, the growth of Christian nationalism in Texas influences the rest of the country through public school education.

“A vast majority of textbooks that get written have to be approved first by Texas, because they buy so many of them,” Martin said.

On Tuesday, the conservative-leaning U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas officials in ruling the state can compel public schools throughout the state to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

Power in the name of Christ

Invoking religion is nothing new in Texas politics. Speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, near Dallas last month, Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, attributed his acquittal of impeachment charges in 2023 to divine intervention.

“There’s only one reason I got through all of that, and it’s by the grace of God. He absolutely delivered me, and he used the people of Texas to deliver me,” Paxton said.

But a little more than a week earlier, a Tennessean pastor injected himself into the Texas Senate contest in an unprecedented manner. Podcaster Joshua Haymes spoke with Pastor Brooks Potteiger about the Democratic Senate nominee and former seminarian, Texas state Rep. James Talarico.

“I pray that God kills him. Ultimately, that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ,” Haymes said.

“Right,” Potteiger said. “We want him crucified with Christ.”

What made this significant is that Potteiger is the pastor and personal religious adviser of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The secretary has introduced regular Christian worship services at the Pentagon.

Michael Emerson, a fellow in religion and public policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said Potteiger’s call to “crucify” Talarico has a double meaning.

“If you’re more on the kind of political violence side,” Emerson said, “you can take it word for word. If you want to take it as, ‘Oh, he’s also saying he’s not truly a Christian, and so we need to pray that he comes to the right side and truly understands what Christianity is.'”

Talarico declined to comment to Houston Public Media on Potteiger’s remarks, pointing to his own social media response at the time:

Emerson described a spectrum of Christian expression in politics.

“On the Republican side, then, you have Christian or evangelical conservative Republicans. Then, within that you have Christian nationalist Republicans, and then within that you have Dominionist Christian nationalist Republicans,” he said. “Dominionists, meaning the goal is to come close to having a theocracy, to have biblical teachings supplied to every aspect … of political life.”

Talarico also has his own definition of Christian nationalism, which he outlined in a January interview on Ezra Klein’s podcast.

“I define it as the worship of power in the name of Christ,” Talarico said. “These politicians want a Christian nation, unless it means providing health care to the sick or funding food assistance for the hungry or raising the minimum wage for the poor. And so, it seems like they want to base our laws on the Bible until they read the words of Jesus.”

A sense of loss and a need for restoration

Christian nationalists themselves have a different take: restoring Christianity — or their interpretation of it — to its proper role in the public sphere. Martin said that idea strikes a strong chord with conservatives in many pockets of the country right now, particularly across Texas.

“There’s a sense of loss and a need for restoration,” Martin said, “where the country is described in this story as having been founded, as fundamentally Christian, as foundationally Christian, and secular or non-religious elites then get cast as having betrayed this original inheritance of the Christian founding, and you get this call for strong political action as necessary to restore a lost moral order.”

Martin said that plays into a number of political battles in the culture wars, on issues ranging from abortion to the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

Republican state Sen. Mayes Middleton, who is running for Texas attorney general, has been at the forefront of the latter fight. The candidate used Talarico to illustrate the point when Middleton himself spoke at CPAC.

“He’s a lunatic by the way,” Middleton said. “And this guy claims to be a pastor, and he said it’s un-Christian and un-American to put the Ten Commandments in schools. So, what was my response to that? I donated Ten Commandments posters to the schools in his district and gave them in his honor. He didn’t like that very much.”

Martin said the attorney general’s race illustrates how some candidates are testing just how far religion can be translated into actual state power.

“That office turns ideology, ideas, into lawsuits, into legal opinions, into governing power,” Martin said.

That circles back to Patrick’s claim, as chair of the Religious Liberty Commission, that the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. Patrick’s statement that the commission would, in May, issue recommendations to “ensure that Americans’ religious liberty is safeguarded against evil forces” has been removed from the commission’s website.

“What I think Patrick is doing, and what this commission seems to be heading toward, is attacking the very fundamental idea that government should remain, let’s say, institutionally separate from religion,” Martin said. “And that is a hallmark of Christian nationalist practice.”

As for why this should matter to Texans, Emerson points back to the race for U.S. Senate as the Republican primary runoff election, set for May 26, draws closer.

“[Paxton] will continue to appeal, and he’ll appeal quite strongly, to Christian nationalist Christians, because he’s seen as protecting them, defending them, and it has mattered less and less over the last decade what his personal life and moral character might be,” Emerson said.

That will become all the more important if Paxton defeats Sen. John Cornyn in the primary runoff to become the Republican nominee. Emerson said the stakes for the general election that would follow would be enormous.

“If the Republican Senate candidate wins, that will put further wind in the sails for the national movement, and not just the state, [for] Christian nationalists,” Emerson said. “If the Democrat wins, it could very much change the next few years.”

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and houstonpublicmedia.org. Thanks for donating today.