Project 2025 – Christian States of America: this is how religious conservatism advances in the US

From January 1, 2025all classrooms in Louisiana’s public schools, colleges and universities must, by law, include a poster with the ten Commandments no smaller than 11 by 14 inches and in a “large, easy-to-read font.” The posters, which will be funded by private donations, must include four paragraphs of context, explaining that the laws of Moses were “a prominent part of the American public education for almost three centuries.”

There are several ways to interpret this news. One is the folkloric way, painting a biased postcard of this country founded by communities eager to practice their faith without feeling the encouragement of some European State. According to 2019 data, 40% of Americans still accept creationismthat is, the idea that it was God who created the human being in his current form; seven out of ten believe in angels and Heavenand the US remains, despite the decline of faith, the country on Earth with the largest number of Christians. Of the 535 congressmen, between the Senate and the House of Representatives, only one says not be affiliated with any religion.

Another way to interpret the news is as part of a political and judicial trend increasingly evidentLouisiana’s Ten Commandments law, which was passed by the Republican supermajority in the state House and confirmed by Gov. Jeff Landry, is one more brushstroke on the broad canvas of conservative christian politics that are making their way in the US with renewed force.

In the last six years, the Supreme Court, made up of six conservative and three progressive judges, has backed legal initiatives by conservative Christian groups in varied causes. The high court recognized the right of a Colorado Christian Pastry Chef to refusing to make a cake for a gay couple; allowed companies not to cover, in health insurance for employees, the contraceptive methods; o made 112 decisions that limited public restrictions during the pandemic with arguments based on religious freedom.

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In cases most similar to the law approved in Louisiana, the Supreme Court has also expanded the right to religious expression in public spaces, relaxing a little the constitutional separation between Church and State. Two years ago, the court upheld a state high school football coach’s right to pray in public after games. A precedent that Louisiana Republicans have invoked when formulating their biblical legislation, perhaps thinking of the lawsuits that progressive associations will file.

But the most relevant example of these decisions is that of the abortion restriction. Since the Supreme Court suspended federal protection of women’s right to decide regarding pregnancy in 2022, 14 states have completely banned abortion and seven have limited it with parameters from 60 years ago.

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The Supreme Court has also ruled in the other direction: knocking down the challenge, for example, to the mifepristonethe abortion pills used for two decades. But, if the well-funded evangelical groups If the groups that have promoted these laws, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, were given more room to maneuver, the American legal landscape would change completely. Among other things, many of them related to the rights of gays and the transgender community, they now want to eliminate the “no fault divorce“, that is, the ability to get a divorce without having to legally prove that the other person is to blame for the marriage not working. Something that has been dismantled in the United States since 1969.

Beneath this trend is an alliance between conservative Christians, especially evangelicals, and Donald Trump. The former Republican president adopted the conservative agenda of these groups and allowed them, among other perks, to elect many of the judges of the different judicial circuits, including the Supreme Court. In return, they have provided him with the most appetizing electoral support: one in four Americans considers themselves evangelical, and 80% of white evangelicalsaccording to Associated Press estimatesvoted for Trump in 2020.

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Beyond the laws that are gaining ground, this alliance is increasingly noticeable at Trump rallies and other Republican events. Political events often include sermons in which priests claim that a divine struggle is taking place and that Donald Trump is an emissary of God; there are collective prayers in honor of Trump and those imprisoned for participating in the attempted sedition assault on the Capitol in 2021; there are comparisons between Trump and Jesus Christ, and a whole miasma where politics and religion They are getting closer, in substance and form..

The palpable messianism of Donald Trump, that leader called to restore the greatness of the Christian America in the face of the degradation that the corrupt democratic cities exudeand whose legitimate second presidency would have been usurped in 2020, may be rooted in a feeling of decay. Many white Christians They say they feel oppressed in the US: the truth is that, for 30 years, the proportion of Americans who identify as Christians has dropped from 90% to 63%. Those who do not identify with any religion went from 5% to 29%. Donald Trump would be the imperfect champion who restored the country’s spirituality.

Since one notable proportion of Christians are becoming radicalized, swelling movements with Manichean and apocalyptic overtones such as QAnonparishioners of other political faiths may feel increasingly uncomfortable going to church, according to some scholars of religious belief in the United States.

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“The drop in the percentage of Americans who say religion is important in their lives is amazingespecially in a short period of 10 years,” said Michael Emerson, a Rice University sociologist specializing in American Christianity, to the agency Bloomberg. “The intimate bonds between religion and a series of political and social positions, for many people, it either scares them away from religion as such or it leads them to distance themselves.

That is why the November elections can mark an enormous fork On the path of the conservative Christian movement: if Donald Trump wins, there are signs, collected in the thick and detailed Project 2025which will promote laws with religious connotations regarding the reproductive rights or the rights of sexual minorities.His own notion of “Making America Great Again.”

From January 1, 2025all classrooms in Louisiana’s public schools, colleges and universities must, by law, include a poster with the ten Commandments no smaller than 11 by 14 inches and in a “large, easy-to-read font.” The signs, which will be paid for by private donations, must include four paragraphs of context, explaining that the laws of Moses were “a prominent part of the American public education for almost three centuries.”