Minutes before the Sunday service at the Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Elgin, a town of about 2,000 people in the southern state of Oklahoma, Pastor Dusty Deevers, 36, impeccably dressed and with a radiant smile, welcomes a hundred congregation.
In the lobby of the temple with pristine white walls there are some pamphlets with a drawing of what appears to be a lifeless baby.
“As you read this paragraph, three children are unjustly massacred in the United States,” it reads, referring to abortion as the “holocaust” of our times, a controversial and key issue in the campaign ahead of the upcoming elections on November 5.
These pamphlets are a clear link between religion and politics, increasingly united for part of the electorate in the United States.
The majority of those attending the religious service are young white families, with many children, who share the same ritual every Sunday.
At 10:45 the religious ceremony begins, with Deevers playing the guitar and singing along with the parishioners, and then gives way to a sermon based on a biblical passage from the Gospel of John.
Deevers, a senator born in Elgin with six children, a master’s degree in Divinity and a business in real estate, preaches from the pulpit on Sundays and proposes laws on Mondays as a senator from the Oklahoma Capitol, where more than 80% of legislators are Republicans.
He represents the political-religious duality that characterizes most local leaders.
A common duality in the call Bible Belt of the United States, to which Elgin belongs: a vast part of the country of strong religious and conservative convictions where few discuss who will win the dispute between the Republican donald trumpwho presents himself as Protestant, and the Democrat Kamala Harrisa woman who grew up in a Protestant and Hindu home and is married to a Jew.
Located in the southern United States, the Bible Belt is an extensive territory that includes at least nine states with a Protestant majority that Trump swept in the last presidential election.
And so it is expected to happen again on November 5.
It is a mostly red belt – the color that identifies the Republican Party – in which the political influence of religious leaders has grown in recent years and whose buckle is in the conservative state of Oklahoma.
“There is no way to disconnect Christianity from politics”
“What did you think of the service?” Deevers asks me, in a first attempt to discover who I am as we chat in a church office sitting around a table with other members of his close circle.
“Can I ask you some questions before starting the interview?” he says to me. “Of course,” I reply.
After a long conversation about religious matters, he tells me that in the short term his political agenda seeks to end abortion, eliminate pornography, and end the collection of income and property taxes.
They are ideas from the most ultra-religious conservative sector, increasingly influential within the Republican Party led by Trump.
But in the long term, its goal is much more ambitious: convert the United States, considered the first explicitly secular country in history, into a Christian nation.
And to carry out that mission, an essential part of the strategy is to occupy political positions until reaching the highest levels.
“Do you want to turn the White House into the kingdom of God?” I ask him. “Everything on Earth is the kingdom of God,” he evades.
His political vision is that “power structures must be changed.”
“This nation’s greatest hope, and the best person to fill the leadership void, is Christ,” he explains.
This is also what Aaron Hoffman, a father of five daughters who, at 37 years old, is preparing to be the pastor of a new Baptist church, believes.
Separating church from state, from their point of view, makes no sense. “There is no way to disconnect Christianity from politics”says.
The topic affects him so deeply that tears run down his cheeks as he explains that Americans have rebelled against Christ for too long, but warns that they can still repent. His vision for the future is that the laws of the country follow those of the Bible.
Walking through the church courtyard, with 35 degrees on this Sunday in July, one of the faithful who attended the service, Gina Desmarais, a white woman with light eyes, tells me that she has been blessed with four children.
Instead of sending them to school, she prefers to educate them at home, so that they follow Christian values. And if it were possible, would like to live in a country governed according to the teachings of the Bible.
“You can’t force people to be Christians, you can’t force their hearts. But policies and laws that are aligned with the Scriptures are good for everyone, even non-believers,” he says in a very calm voice.
Teach the Bible in public schools
That political vision of Protestant Christianity has had quite concrete manifestations in the Bible Belt this year.
In the state of Louisiana, for example, it was ordered that all school classrooms have the Ten Commandments hanging on the walls, while in Alabama, the Supreme Court determined that frozen embryos are “babies.”causing some IVF clinics to temporarily close for fear that medical staff would suffer legal consequences.
And in Oklahoma, the Superintendent of Public Instruction issued a mandate in June that makes Bible teaching mandatory in public schools of the state, generating widespread controversy.
Oklahoma being one of the states with the greatest shortage of teachers in the country, the news was not well received by many teachers who, tired of the salaries and the low budget with which the schools operate, claim that the mandate of the authorities goes against religious freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment of the country’s Constitution.
Susie Stephenson, a 44-year-old Protestant and primary school teacher, denounces that there is a hostile climate against teachers.
Although she is religious, her position is clear: “We must separate the church from the state”.
Frustrated with the management of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Republican Ryan Walterswho in May 2023 called the Oklahoma teachers union a “terrorist organization,” Stephenson resigned from his position.
“I am a Christian, faith is very important in my life, but I would not like someone else to teach the Bible to my children, how will I know how they interpret it!”
Walters, who holds a position elected by popular vote, declined an interview with BBC Mundo.
Stephenson thinks the move is part of a political agenda by conservative leaders promoting Christian nationalism in Oklahoma.
But what is Christian nationalism?
Samuel Perry, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and an expert in Christian nationalism, explains that it is an ideology that idealizes and promotes a fusion between American civil life and a conservative Anglo-Protestant ethnoculture.
In practice, he adds, There is a political strategy to activate that ideology in people who feel their influence is declining in the country, primarily among members of the white working class.
The examples of Louisiana and Oklahoma illustrate how schools have become one of the battlefields of the so-called “culture wars” waged by ultraconservatives and progressives throughout the country.
“Instead of imposing the Bible, they should worry about poverty in schools,” says Erika Wright.founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition, a parent organization seeking to improve public education.
In Oklahoma, poverty reaches 15% of the population, something that seems unthinkable in the richest country in the world.
“Trump was sent by God”
By establishing small churches in the poorest communities, Bible Belt pastors have a lot of influence among believers and many orient it towards the most conservative sector of the Republican Party.
And Trump has become the best vehicle for this group to make progress in recent years.
However, pastor and senator Dusty Deevers believes that Trump is not going as far as he would like. “It is tilting the Republican Party to the left,” argues. Therefore, when I ask him who he is going to vote for, he tells me that he is still not sure.
Other Oklahoma pastors, such as Jackson Lahmeyer or Paul Blair, support the Republican candidate unconditionally, as does the majority of the population in Oklahoma.
“Trump was sent by God to govern this country”explains Lahmeyer, founder of the group Pastors4Trump (Pastors for Trump), by phone, whose objective is “to mobilize the bloc of evangelical voters.”
Lahmeyer believes that “It was a divine miracle” that the former president survived the assassination attempt at a political rally in mid-July. “We were one step away from a civil war in our country.”
A former U.S. Senate candidate from Oklahoma (he lost the race to another Republican), Lahmeyer refuses to be identified as a Christian nationalist.
“That is nothing more than a label that the press has given us to represent us as a threat to democracy,” he says. “It’s not true.”
The pastor is not defined that way either. Paul Blairleader of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, a suburb of Oklahoma City.
“Excuse the clothes I’m wearing,” Blair says, dressed sportily, as we walk to his office inside the church.
Sitting at his desk, the pastor shows me his photos from his time as a professional football player on the Chicago Bears offensive line in the late 1980s.
Today Blair organizes training camps for pastors (Liberty Pastor Training Camps) where they study topics such as Christian influence in government or citizen defense of freedom, so that religious leaders “think biblically in all areas of life, including the areas of civil government, the economy, human sexuality, charity and family.”
He defines himself as a “patriotic pastor” and thinks that his country must return to the values of the founding moment, when in 1776 it was founded. signed the Declaration of Independence.
“The government cannot control the church,” says the pastor, who was a senatorial candidate in Oklahoma.
“However, Christians have always influenced the government”, he adds.
Blair believes that the legitimate winner of the 2020 election was Trump and that people imprisoned for their participation in the assault on the Capitol in January 2021 are “political prisoners.”
Now he hopes that on November 5, Trump, who won Oklahoma with 65% of the vote (one of the highest majorities in the country), will become president of the United States for the second time.
A hope shared by conservative Protestant political leaders who fight in their local congresses to legislate against everything they consider progressive, such as gender diversity, free sexual orientation or the defense of abortion as a right.
Trump and his vice presidential candidate, J. D. Vanceare the people who embody that fight.
Trump and abortion
The former president’s followers thank him, among other things, for the historic nomination during his term of three judges to the Supreme Court, ensuring a conservative majority in the country’s highest judicial body for several decades.
Thanks to that conservative majority, the Supreme Court In 2022, it eliminated the right to abortion that had been guaranteed in the country for almost half a century, leaving the decision in the hands of each state.
And that means Bible Belt states like Oklahoma and Arkansas have very restrictive laws on termination of pregnancy: it can only be carried out if the mother’s life is in danger.
In other states the law includes some exceptions such as when the fetus is not expected to survive, in the case of rape or if the gestation is a maximum of six weeks.
North Carolina is the only state in the belt that allows abortion up to three months of pregnancy, an exception that conservative Protestants consider unacceptable.
He abortion It is precisely one of the big issues in this election, since the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, the one with the most power in the Bible Belt, is not satisfied with what has been achieved and even advocates for a law that prohibits interruption throughout the country of pregnancy, something that may be possible if Trump returns to power.
Despite the differences they may have with Trump, whom many see as a New York libertine without deep religious values, the magnate opened the doors of the White House to well-known conservative Protestant leaders during his government and continues to participate in massive events with pastors. evangelicals who have given him their support.
With nearly 40% of the American population declaring themselves Protestant, according to the Pew Research Center, Republicans are making an effort to try to get the votes of those who cannot forgive Democrats for supporting women’s decisions. freely about the termination of pregnancy, among other things.
Despite denying that he is going to seek a national ban on abortion as president, which has cost him criticism among the most ultra-conservative, many believers see Trump as a candidate much closer to their faith than the Democrat. Kamala Harris.
While the Republican Party has historically represented conservative American values, such as respect for tradition, family and religion, along with ideas of individual freedom and economic liberalism, Trump’s appearance in the political arena a decade ago has given it a twist.
With Trump, a movement has been created within the party with a strong political-religious component that appeals to an important base of the American electorate.
For example, during his administration Trump signed an executive order to create a new office in the White House called the Faith and Opportunity Initiative.
“Faith is more powerful than government, and nothing is more powerful than God.”he said when signing the document.
The best-known face of evangelicals in the White House was Paula White-Cainwho delivered the religious invocation at her inauguration and was appointed government official in her capacity as special advisor to the Faith and Opportunities Initiative in the Office of Public Liaison.
When Trump lost the election in 2020, many pastors They came out to proclaim that the presidency had been stolen from them and many joined the newly created far-right movement. ReAwaken America Tourled by Oklahoma businessman Clay Clark.
Currently, they continue to organize events attended by evangelicals, gun advocates, anti-immigrants, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-communism, and anyone who feels that their way of life is under threat and that only Trump represents them.
It is not uncommon to hear or see banners at these events with phrases like “we are at war,” or “we are soldiers of God.”
The same slogans that are repeated over and over again on social networks, the perfect platform for the rapid expansion of these ideas in times when religious organizations have developed a gigantic online communications industry.
Some of those ideas are included in the Project 2025the controversial radical proposal by former Trump advisers to reform the federal government and key aspects of American life.
The project outlines four main goals: restoring the family as the centerpiece of American life; dismantle the administrative State; defend the sovereignty and borders of the nation; and guarantee God-given individual rights to live freely.
Although Trump himself has distanced himself from the project, many believe that the influential conservative and religious groups behind the initiative will impose that agenda on him if the Republican returns to the White House.
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