False Prophets:
The 2022 List
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Governor, Texas
Greg Abbott is in his third term as Governor of Texas. He has previously served as the state’s Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. Abbott, who is Catholic, is an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump, a loyalty that bought him Trump’s endorsement for reelection. Abbott has promoted and signed several far-right bills into law that restrict reproductive rights, immigration, gun reform, and LGTBQ+ rights. He is especially known for his cruelty towards the parents of trans children, and for bussing asylum seekers and migrant families out of the state in a political stunt that the Archbishop of San Antonio says promotes human trafficking. The Washington Post lists Abbott as “said no or did not respond” when asked if he would accept the results of the 2022 election. -
Political strategist and Catholic activist
Few Christian-nationalist charlatans have lived as many lives as Steve Bannon. Once a media mogul at alt-right propaganda site Breitbart News, Bannon joined Donald Trump’s bandwagon and inner political circle early on. First as 2016 campaign CEO and then as White House chief strategist, he injected a dangerous strain of Christian nationalism into the new administration from the very start.
A self-described “proud Christian Zionist,” Bannon’s attempts to build the Christian-nationalist movement have included leading the effort to overturn election results, using smartphone location data to target Catholic church attendees for conservative organization CatholicVote, working to start a “gladiator school for culture warriors” at an 800-year-old monastery in Rome, and partnering with far-right Catholic activists like Milo Yiannopolus to undermine Pope Francis and “transform the Catholic Church” in a conservative direction. His show “War Room” often hosts conservative Christian activists like Father Frank Pavone and fellow False Prophet Sean Feucht.
Bannon’s solicitation of donations to build a wall along the southern border netted him federal and state mail fraud and money laundering indictments. Trump gave Bannon a federal pardon, but he remains under state indictment as of September 2022. In July 2022, he was convicted in federal court on two criminal counts of Contempt of Congress for defying the January 6 House committee.
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Activist and Founder of WallBuilders
David Barton, a self-taught pseudo-historian and activist, is one of the intellectual architects of modern Christian nationalism and a lead organizer of efforts to pass Christian-nationalist state legislation. He has his hand in so many parts of the religious right that investigative journalist and author Katherine Stewart refers to him as the “Where’s Waldo of the Christian nationalist movement.”
His 2012 book "The Jefferson Lies" was riddled with so many lies of its own that the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson withdrew the book after pastors protested it and History News Network called it the "least credible history book in print.”
Barton is the founder of WallBuilders, an organization dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built.” Among other harmful distortions of history, Barton and WallBuilders teach that the separation of church and state is a “modern fabrication,” a view that has influenced and swayed multiple fellow False Prophets including Doug Mastriano and Lauren Boebert.
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U.S. Representative, Colorado
Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) gained notoriety as a gun-rights advocate, helping to organize a 2019 rally opposing Colorado’s red flag law attended by several alt-right figures. Until recently, Boebert and her husband owned Shooters Grill, a restaurant where staff were encouraged to openly carry firearms. Boebert is a big proponent of the Big Lie, telling people on January 5th, 2021, that the 6th would be Republican’s “1776 moment.” Boebert has repeatedly claimed the separation of church and state is not what the founding fathers intended.
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U.S. Representative, North Carolina
Representative Ted Budd currently represents North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District and is the owner of a multi-million-dollar gun store and shooting range. He is the Republican nominee for the open U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. Rep. Ted Budd graduated from the evangelical Dallas Theological Seminary, which according to his campaign website, he attended in order to "acquire a Biblical lens for all of life" -- presumably including his approach to governing.
Budd consistently pushes an explicitly Christian nationalist agenda as a Congressman and Senate nominee. He is a sponsor of the Capitol Ministries Bible Study for members of Congress, which is led by Ralph Drollinger, a pastor who called COVID-19 a form of God's wrath against environmentalists and LGBTQ persons.
Budd has said he does not like discussing his faith in public, which means that he does not use as much religious rhetoric as some of the other False Prophets of Christian nationalism. This is a helpful reminder that academic researchers define and identify examples of dangerous Christian nationalism as much by identity and policy as by rhetoric and symbolism, and Budd supports policies that would give power to conservative Christians while opposing equal rights for others.
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Governor, Florida
Ron DeSantis is the current governor of Florida, a former US Congressman, and a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He is a far-right Catholic whose rhetoric and policies endorse religious control of the government. As governor, DeSantis has supported theocratic positions that distort the Gospel and attack equal rights, including signing the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” education law, attacking Disney’s corporate tax status in retaliation for its LGBTQ support, and vetoing funding for low-income birth control at the request of conservative Catholic bishops. He has also placed religious ideologues in key positions across state government. DeSantis regularly undermines democracy: He has attacked voting rights in the dishonest name of voter fraud, and, when asked by the Washington Post if he would accept the results of the 2022 election, he refused to comment.
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Activist and Worship Leader
A relative unknown outside of conservative Christian circles before 2020, John Christopher “Sean” Feucht – a worship leader from Bethel megachurch in California – has pivoted from his recent failed congressional campaign to cornering the market as the unofficial soundtrack of the MAGA movement.
Feucht is a prodigious organizer for the far-right’s extremist agenda. He organized and headlined a tour of protest concerts called “Let us Worship” in cities that saw both COVID-19 restrictions and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 – including in Minneapolis, where he held a “worship concert” alongside members of the Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups in George Floyd Square.
The “finale” concert of the tour took place on the Washington Mall and was billed as both a protest against restrictions on churches and a celebration of the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
In 2021, Feucht held a 9/11 Memorial event in Washington D.C. called “Pray for America. Pray for President Trump.” Feucht is a regular presence on the ReAwaken America Tour with fellow False Prophet Michael Flynn, visiting churches and other venues across the country to spread election denial and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories in Jesus’s name.
Feucht’s new row house on Capitol Hill — dubbed Camp Elah — is being positioned as a “hive of 24/7 prayer, mobilization, and ministry” to engage with friendly lawmakers and other supporters. Feucht is already a familiar face to many of Congress’ most extreme lawmakers, having led a worship service alongside two fellow False Prophets, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, on the steps of the Supreme Court this summer.
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U.S. Representative, Texas
Representative Mayra Flores (R-TX) was recently elected to Congress in a special election in June 2022, and is now running against a popular incumbent whose district changed in redistricting. As documented in a Religion News Service article called “The particularly Pentecostal flavor of Mayra Flores’ Christian nationalism,” Flores’ pastor carried out a “Make America Godly Again” outreach effort on her campaign’s behalf.
Flores has called Biden “president in name only,” and has called for his impeachment. Her campaign slogan -- “God, family, country” -- espouses not just her faith but her governing priorities. Prior to her election, Flores tweeted using #QAnon, but claims she actually did it to express opposition and now chastises reporters who ask her about it. These tweets have since been deleted.
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Retired General and Conspiracy Theorist
Originally known as a disgraced former general, Donald Trump’s first National Security Adviser, and a leading figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Michael Flynn – pardoned by Trump after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI – has since reinvented himself as a fringe conspiracy theorist and the headliner of the national ReAwaken America megachurch tour, spreading election denial and QAnon lies across the country in Jesus’s name while earning criticism from pastors for twisting their faith.
Despite no longer serving in an official capacity, Flynn has become a symbolic leader for the intertwined MAGA, QAnon, and Christian nationalist movements, which have nicknamed him “America’s general.” He has amplified disinformation about Covid-19, calling it a “fabrication” and a hoax intended to help Democrats steal the 2020 election. He has parroted the most vile antisemitic and Islamophobic talking points, and continues to push the Big Lie to thousands of people who still consider him a credible source of information.
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Evangelist
Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, is a prominent evangelist himself and perhaps the nation’s most insidious Christian nationalist. Graham is the president of Samaritan’s Purse and president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), roles that allow his supporters and the media alike to overlook and even excuse his vitriolic Christian-nationalist politics, hatred, and conspiracy theories.
Graham, who is notorious for his homophobia, has said that Pride Month is “an entire month set aside to celebrate a lifestyle that God defines as sin,” and that celebrating Pride is like celebrating “lying, adultery, or murder.” In 2020, Graham held politically tinged prayer rallies around the country and claimed that “God’s hand intervened” on election night to “stop the godless, atheistic progressive agenda from taking control of our country.”
Since Trump left office, Graham has gravitated more and more towards MAGA and QAnon conspiracy theories about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and the IRS’s latest hires, embracing the kind of rhetoric that experts say incites political violence.
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U.S. Representative, Georgia
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) might be the most extremist and openly Christian nationalist lawmaker in the country and would probably tell you so herself. Elected to Congress in 2020, she was one of the first QAnon supporters to hold public office, and two years later now openly embraces the label of “proud Christian nationalist” -- even selling t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase and posing for a Trump-esque photo-op with a Bible and multiple wall crosses.Greene has been a promoter of far-right, white-nationalist conferences, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and violence against Democrats, which led to her removal from all House committees in February 2021.
She was also suspended from Twitter in 2021 for spreading COVID disinformation. She has ties to extremist militia groups such as the Three Percenters, and in Facebook posts from 2018, claimed that the school mass shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, were false flag operations (e.g., hoaxes to generate attention).
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U.S. Senator, Missouri
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) became the junior senator from Missouri in 2019. Following the 2020 presidential election, Hawley was the first U.S. Senator to announce an effort to overturn the will of the voters by opposing Congressional certification of the Electoral College results based on false allegations of voter fraud. He was infamously photographed raising a fist in solidarity with insurrectionists outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Prior to his initial run for office, Hawley worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious-right law firm where he participated in developing the legal strategy for the Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case against the Affordable Care Act's contraception-coverage mandate. Since taking federal office, Hawley has consistently espoused Christian nationalist viewpoints.
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Former Secretary of State Candidate, Michigan
Kristina Karamo is a community college professor, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Michigan, and one of the nation’s most prominent Christian nationalist election deniers. Karamo recently received a master’s degree in Christian apologetics from the evangelical Biola University, which has been called one of “the Absolute Worst Campuses for LGBTQ Youth.” She frequently ties her staunch conservatism to her interpretation of Christianity, saying things such as “the fundamental problem in society is the rejection of Christ.”
After the 2020 election, Karamo gained prominence by appearing frequently on Fox News to detail her experience as a poll worker, falsely claiming the election was stolen. She went as far as to testify in front of the State Senate that sacks of votes were dropped off at her polling station in the middle of Election Night. Karamo is part of the “America First Secretary of State Coalition,” a cohort of Secretary of State candidates fighting for “conservative principles and solutions to the corrupt election process nationwide.”
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Former Gubernatorial Candidate, Arizona
Kari Lake was the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nominee for Governor of Arizona, and a former news anchor at Fox 10 in Phoenix. Her gradual shift from mainstream journalist to one of the most prominent election deniers and right-wing extremists in the country was evident on her Twitter account, where she frequently shared misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and election fraud. Lake’s campaign for governor is centered around support for Donald Trump’s election-denial Big Lie and her demands that the 2020 election be illegally “decertified.”
A June 2022 article from the right-wing Pentecostal website Charisma News asked, “Is God Raising Up Kari Lake as a New Breed of Prophetic Politician?” The author wrote, “She doesn't just speak; she prophesies in almost everything she says…because she relentlessly tells the truth, she may be one of the most dangerous women in America today—and exactly the type of person the Holy Spirit can use to bring real change to America… God is using Kari Lake to stir up the hearts of people with a similar desire for the truth and freedom—and a return to Him, as Lake says, ‘in our hearts and homes.’”
Lake is endorsed by former President Donald Trump. She accuses Democrats of having “a demonic agenda,” and has called for her Democratic opponent as well as unspecified journalists to be jailed for election crimes. If she becomes governor, Lake says she will not recognize federal gun laws, will ban vaccine mandates, and will ensure “election integrity” -- a troubling claim from a candidate the Washington Post says “said no or did not respond” when asked if she would accept 2022’s election results.
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Former U.S. Senate Candidate, Arizona
Blake Masters is a venture capitalist and the Republican nominee for Arizona’s U.S. Senate race. Masters emerged from the orbit of far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, having served as COO of Thiel Capital and President of the Thiel Foundation. Inspired by his vicious anti-immigrant rhetoric and other extremist and nationalist statements, he has been endorsed by multiple prominent white nationalists and antisemites including Gab CEO Andrew Torba, Charlottesville terrorist Nick Fuentes, and founder of the neo-Nazi blog Daily Stormer Andrew Anglin.
Masters is also endorsed by former President Donald Trump and has been referenced as the “Future of the GOP” by Tucker Carlson. His supporters believe that his campaign is entirely rooted in being "based," which is slang for “anything that owns the libs.” The Washington Post lists Masters as “said no or did not respond” when asked if he would accept the results of the 2022 election.
Masters does not use as much religious rhetoric as some of the other False Prophets of Christian nationalism, but nevertheless identifies as a Christian while promoting policies that would build power for conservative Christians and deny equal rights to others. His campaign is an important reminder that academic researchers define and identify examples of dangerous Christian nationalism as much by identity and policy as by rhetoric and symbolism.
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Former Gubernatorial Candidate, Pennsylvania
Doug Mastriano -- a Pennsylvania state senator and the Republican nominee for Governor -- has been called “the poster child for Christian nationalism.” He denounces the separation of church and state, claiming that the country was founded on Christian beliefs by “these Christian founders of ours.” Mastriano attended the pre-insurrection Trump rally on January 6, 2021, spoke at an earlier “Jericho March,” intended to help overturn the election in Jesus’s name, and is now suing the January 6 Committee. As governor, Mastriano would have the power to appoint the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, giving him profound influence over the state’s election certification process.
Mastriano’s inner circle includes QAnon conspiracy theorists, self-described prophets, and close Trump allies. He is supported by and connected to Sean Moon of Rod of Iron Ministries, a militant sect of the Unification Church which glorifies the AR-15 rifle as an instrument of God’s justice, and is closely connected with the New Apostolic Reformation movement and its promotion of dominionism and authoritarianism. When the Washington Post asked if Mastriano would accept the results of the 2022 election, he did not reply.
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U.S. Representative, Illinois
Farmer and Representative Mary Miller (R-IL) came under fire shortly after being sworn into Congress for quoting Hitler in a speech and saying he was “right about one thing.” Miller -- whose website bio states that her “family and faith in God always come first” -- is endorsed by former President Trump, who stumped for her during the 2022 primary. During her first term in Congress, Miller voted in lockstep with fellow False Prophets Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, supporting the Big Lie and working to take away rights from their fellow Americans.
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Pastor and President of Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group
Tony Perkins is a Southern Baptist pastor, president of the Family Research Council (designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), an influential Washington D.C. insider, and a leading architect of the religious right’s political infrastructure. In 2018, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appointed Perkins to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Hindu American Foundation criticized Perkins' “long history of hateful stances against non-Christians.”
As manager of Woody Jenkins’s 1996 US Senate campaign, Perkins signed business contracts with former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. Perkins also once served as a State Representative in Louisiana, where he authored and passed the nation’s first Covenant Marriage law. Perkins is a strong supporter of the “Big Lie,” signing a letter from the Conservative Action Project asking battleground state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump slates of electors. In January 2022, Perkins said that criticizing Christian nationalism for its ties to January 6 equates to "shaming Christians for trying to impose their beliefs on America."
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Catholic Bishop
Although the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States has more than its fair share of conservative culture warriors, the Catholic Church is rarely associated with Christian nationalism, which makes sense: It is an international denomination headquartered in its own city-state. There are, however, a growing number of exceptions, foremost among them Bishop Joseph Strickland.
Currently the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tyler, Texas, the Most Rev. Joseph Strickland has courted controversy with his radical political agenda for more than a decade.
In 2012, shortly before the presidential election, Bishop Strickland led a rally in downtown Tyler asking the faithful to turn toward God prior to the election and penned an op-ed accusing the Obama administration of challenging “fundamental truths that once were and still should be the bedrock of our society,” calling on Christians to elect politicians who reflect their religious values.
Bishop Strickland’s turn toward extremism found a new gear in 2020, embracing anti-science talking points during the height of the Covid pandemic that had already been rejected by the Vatican, then explicitly arguing that Catholics cannot vote for Democrats. His anti-LGBTQ views, subtle support for QAnon, and outward hostility towards immigrants, climate science, and even his fellow, more moderate bishops have made him a cult hero among Christian nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and other corners of the far-right fringe.
Bishop Strickland supported Donald Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen election, attending the Christian nationalist “Jericho March” and “Let the Church Roar” #stopthesteal rally in Washington, DC, on December 12, 2020, considered to be a dry run for the January 6 insurrection rallies.
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U.S. Senator, Ohio
J.D. Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022. He rose to prominence as a venture capitalist and as the author of the bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, which one reviewer called "a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class.” Vance converted to Catholicism and firmly believes the state should resemble Catholic teaching.
Professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the book “Jesus and John Wayne,” says Vance’s defense of toxic masculinity -- including his praise of the Kenosha murderer Kyle Rittenhouse -- “is closely linked to Christian nationalism.”
In 2016, Vance called Trump an "idiot" and potentially "America's Hitler," but six years later, Vance now openly campaigns with Trump and fellow False Prophet Marjorie Taylor Greene at bizarre QAnon rallies, eagerly accepting the ex-president's endorsement. He has also flip-flopped on the violent, white nationalist Charlottesville march, dismissing criticism of the event as a "ridiculous race hoax." Vance is also endorsed by Tucker Carlson and right-wing billionaire Peter Theil.