Long before President Donald Trump formed a close bond with far-right white Christian nationalists and promoted the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was really born in Kenya instead of the United States, critics accused the religious right of being racist. The Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., founder of the Moral Majority, was a staunch defender of segregation and Jim Crow laws during the 1950s and 1960s — although he later reversed that position.

In a blistering article published on August 4, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte argues that a major Trump ally in the MAGA movement—Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk — is using fundamentalist Christianity to obscure a racist agenda.

Kirk, Marcotte notes, said, in 2016, that he embraced a “secular worldview” — and in 2018, he criticized other Republicans for failing to respect the “separation of church and state.”

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“By 2022,” Marcotte observes, “he was falsely claiming the separation of church and state is ‘a fabrication’ made up by ‘secular humanists.’ Kirk’s commitment to theocracy isn’t half-baked. He believes in the Christian nationalist concept of the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on far-right Christians to control not just all government, but media, business and education. This idea drove many of the rioters to the Capitol on January 6, where some displayed Appeal to Heaven flags to demonstrate their belief in total Christian Right domination.”

Marcotte continues, “There are many reasons that Kirk underwent this change. Religious fanaticism is central to Donald Trump’s base of support; the Capitol insurrection was evidence of this. And while the Religious Right has steered Republicans for decades, the situation grew worse during Joe Biden’s presidency, as right-wing media churned out ever-more-radical content denouncing LGBTQ rights and women’s equality.”

The Salon journalist emphasizes that Kirk’s transition from “secular” rhetoric to full-blown Christian nationalism goes beyond anti-gay and anti-feminist views and is “deeply rooted in the history of white evangelicalism” and its “racism.”

“Kirk, like decades of Christian Right leaders before him, has found that loudly proclaiming your faith is an effective way to whitewash overt bigotry against people of color,” Marcotte explains. “And he has much to answer for when it comes to race-baiting. As Ali Breland of Mother Jones reported in 2024, Kirk has ‘hosted far-right and white supremacist figures on his podcast and has tweeted in support of whiteness, earning praise from white supremacists.’ This isn’t by accident, either. Kirk routinely expresses his own racist views.”

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Marcotte continues, “He suggested Black pilots are unqualified. He blamed a Black fire chief in Austin, Texas, for flooding deaths that occurred a three-hour drive away from the city. He denounced the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act and tried to discredit the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘awful’ and ‘not a good person.’”

Kirk, according to Marcotte, also praised the late evangelical pastor John MacArthur — who defended slavery as godly.

“MacArthur was no outlier in his views, which is why he’s received such an outpouring of praise from the Christian Right since his death,” Marcotte warns. “As historian Randall Balmer detailed in an influential Politico Magazine article published in 2014, the modern Religious Right was formed for ‘protecting segregated schools’…. Early in his career, Falwell gave a sermon in which he declared that integration ‘will destroy our race eventually,’ warning that after school desegregation, legalized interracial marriage would be next…. Since the racist cannot justify their views rationally, instead they blame God, who is conveniently never around to answer questions.”

Marcotte adds, “It’s a pathetic excuse for small-minded people. No wonder Charlie Kirk embraced it so wholeheartedly.”

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Amanda Marcotte’s full article for Salon is available at this link.