(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

The 2023 session of the West Virginia Legislature saw a number of egregiously awful bills proposed on a number of fronts. Particularly heinous legislative proposals were the product of white Christian nationalism, a white supremacist and Christian theocratic ideological framework that has been a core part of American society throughout our history but has been reinvigorated by the rise of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement lead by Donald Trump and his ilk.

Why did the white Christian nationalists in the WV legislature feel the need to propose 18 anti-LGBTQ+ (particularly anti-trans) bills, bills depriving pregnant persons of bodily autonomy and personal sovereignty? Bills forcing their brand of Christianity into the lives of others via taxpayer-funded institutions like public schools? Bills attempting to whitewash American history by depriving West Virginia students of the ability to learn about what they incorrectly label critical race theory and vilify?

Robert P. Jones, president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), writes that “The newly released 2022 supplement to the PRRI Census of American Religion–based on over 40,000 interviews conducted last year–confirms that the decline in white Christians (Americans who identify as white, non-Hispanic and Christian of any kind) as a proportion of the population continues unabated.” Jones explains that “White evangelical Protestants have experienced the steepest decline. As recently as 2006, white evangelical Protestants comprised nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%). By the time of Trump’s rise to power, their numbers had dipped to 16.8%. Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans.”

With numbers like those, it’s not at all surprising that the white Christian nationalists who make up so much of the ranks of evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics want to take full advantage of the minority tyranny enabled by our political system and want to encourage low voter turnout. The current Republican supermajority (the GOP being the preferred party of white Christian nationalists) in the WV legislature was made possible by small majorities of the less than 43% of registered voters who turned out in the 2022 WV election cycle. Republican legislative agendas and policy proposals do not have the backing of a majority of Americans so their best electoral hope is to be as anti-democratic (democratic with a small “d”) as they can be.

Why the cruelty and the targeting, though? I’d argue it’s mostly a diversion. Two things these folks are very good at are projection and gaslighting. If a white Christian nationalist accuses a person or group of something, it’s a safe bet they’re guilty of it themselves. Case in point: the recent allegations of widespread sexual assault and molestation against the United Churches of Christ. These are only the latest allegations of such behavior against large Christian church organizations. The Southern Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church and many others have faced such allegations, some going back decades.

This certainly helps explain why white Christian nationalists are so bent on accusing the LGBTQ+ community and drag queens of sexual perversion toward children. Targeting trans persons, drag performances, people using whatever public restroom they wish or a book about the pubescent experiences of a non-binary author makes for a useful slight-of-hand to divert attention from the thousands of documented cases of child sex abuse by those in positions of spiritual authority.

Then there’s the aforementioned gaslighting. This is a very effective tool for white Christian nationalists. They spew hyperbolic rhetoric and try to make you feel crazy about, for example, supporting gender-affirming care for minors or supporting abortion rights. Right-wing social media is wall-to-wall hysteria about legal minors having elective sex change operations and so-called “late-term” abortions, both of which they claim are extremely common. Only, no, they’re not. There are no data to support that parents/guardians are routinely allowing their dependents to have a sex change operation (not one case has been documented in West Virginia), and abortions after 21 weeks of gestation (the fetal viability limit adopted under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey) represent, on average, about 1.3% of abortions annually, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Fortunately, the white Christian nationalists in the WV legislature are not overly successful. The vast majority of their extremist legislation proposed this session did not make it to the Governor’s desk. Bills on teaching intelligent design (aka creationism), displaying “in god we trust” in all public schools, colleges and universities, banning the teaching of “CRT,” and more, failed. Their opposition to majoritarian democracy will continue, but they’re on the wrong side of history and their extremism and hate is headed nowhere but history’s dustbin.

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Eric Engle is assistant state director for American Atheists and 2022 recipient of the Freedom From Religion Foundation Freethinker of the Year Award.