Trump's Christian Nationalist Takeover of America's Public Schools
An exploration of where we are headed
While putting the Smackdown on the Department of Education and advancing a school privatization scheme are both devastating, Donald Trump is not content to stop there.
As Anne Lutz Fernandez explains in the UnPopulist, Trump and his lackeys are working in service of a warped and dangerous so-called Christianity - otherwise known as Christian Nationalism.
Trump, working with a GOP-controlled Congress, can inflict damage not just to American education but through it. The track record of MAGA-run states, the policy designs of Project 2025, and Trump’s own statements reveal a clear interest in using schools to sunder the separation of church and state.
Tennessee is no stranger to this march toward theocracy. Gov. Bill Lee is a Reagan acolyte, full in service to a unified, capitalist Christianity - the kind that lacks empathy and seeks to direct the lives of all under the state’s watchful eye.
Gov. Bill Lee made clear in his State of the State that he is a proponent of an alternative history known as “American exceptionalism.”
This theory is grounded in a sort of American evangelicalism – and certainly has strong ties to far-right Christian movements. To advance his “exceptionalism agenda” Lee has announced a partnership with conservative Hillsdale College – a private, Christian school in Michigan. Yes, Tennessee is such a great example of exceptionalism that we have to turn to a private college from Michigan to “properly” teach history.
The federal threat of a Christian Nationalist takeover gained significant traction as Trump remade the Supreme Court in his first term.
Fernandez notes:
Following Trump’s first-term conservative makeover of the Supreme Court, however, the nation’s highest court has signaled an interest in revisiting these issues. This has emboldened MAGA leaders in various states to start breaching the wall of separation between church and state, particularly at the K-12 level.
It seems states that buy-in to the theocracy concept are moving toward legal showdowns that could have national implications:
To those ends, these cases don’t merely challenge the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause directly. They also initiate a public struggle over their implementation that is intended to give the Supreme Court an opportunity to review and ultimately allow religion—specifically, Christianity—a greater place within public education. Indeed, the broader wave of state action appears intended to invite litigation, in hopes that fights elevated to this Supreme Court will result in the overturning of precedents prohibiting religious instruction and observance in public schools.
In case anyone is curious, Hillsdale College is rapidly advancing a network of charter and private schools with a decidedly Christian Nationalist bent. Yes, there are some in Tennessee - but Hillsdale’s President wants more - by violence, if necessary. Though with Trump in charge, it seems plausible schools will just be handed over to Hillsdale in some fashion.
In a recent issue of Hillsdale’s newsletter - Imprimis - President Larry Arnn talks about the current “culture wars” and notes that the battle for public schools has “not yet” necessitated violence.
I have said and written many times that the political contest between parents and people who make an independent living, on the one hand, and the administrative state and all its mighty forces on the other, is the key political contest of our time. Today that seems truer than ever. The lines are clearly formed.
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As long as our representative institutions work in response to the public will, there is thankfully no need for violence.
Well, good news for Larry - and bad news for those of us who value public education as a public good - Trump appears ready to sell out our schools. By dismantling the Department of Education, creating a Court that will blur the lines between church and state, and privatizing by way of a national voucher scam, Team Trump seems poised to move our nation into a new, Christian Nationalist era.
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I am sickened by this. When did so-called Christians become so filled with hate, violence, and gun-love? This is not the Christianity that I grew up with. It may be "Christianist," but it sure isn't Christian. Christ embraced all people, including prostitutes. The "Christianist" movement excludes people, especially LGBTQ+ (Hello, Nazi Germany). This bothers me a lot. I teach Muslim students as well as Christians, and who knows what other religions. I don't ask students what their religion is. I hope that we can survive the next four years of wannabe King donald.