Nate Gowdy/Mother Jones
Toward the end of the sweltering first day of the Republican National Convention yesterday, I hiked a few blocks away from the red-clad crowds and MAGA merch to Milwaukee’s ornate symphony hall. There, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was going to deliver the keynote address at a daylong “Policy Fest” hosted by the arch-conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. Earlier in the day, participants were able to attend sessions covering the border, the Department of Defense, the economy, and of course, Project 2025, the 920-page political roadmap for the next Trump administration that the think tank helped draft. On the other hand, Carlson, who now hosts a show on his own network, had a much broader remit: The title of his presentation was “The Good Life.”
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance had been named as Trump’s running mate a few hours before, and the crowd, which didn’t come close to filling Milwaukee’s ornate symphony hall, murmured approvingly when Tucker referred to him. “I’m not gonna make the case for J.D. Vance,” he said. “I’m gonna tell you what I just saw, which is that every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligning against him.” Not only is Vance a “nice guy,” Carlson explained, “he’s like one of the only members of the Senate with a happy marriage.” The crowd chuckled appreciatively.
Then I expected to hear the now-familiar trope that Democrats hate Vance because he’s a normal, American Dream embodiment of a salt-of-the-earth guy. But Carlson didn’t just trot out the usual complaints about Democrats being elitist. With a quick pivot to the assassination attempt on Trump, he explained how the political left is the latest incarnation of an ancient evil. “The assassination attempt against President Trump reminded a lot of people this weekend, a lot of people, there is a spiritual battle underway.” He added, “There are forces within every society—because they reside in the human heart—that are against people. They are dedicated to the destruction of people and the civilizations that people build.”
Motivating those on the political left, Carlson told the crowd, were “forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human.”
The idea that we are in the midst of a spiritual war between good and evil is not only a talking point for Carlson, but a central conviction among adherents of the New Apostolic Reformation, the ascendant loose network of charismatic pastors and self-appointed apostles and prophets who believe that the faithful are being called to fight for Christian control of the United States. It’s an unusual point of departure for Carlson, a lifelong Episcopalian, one of the more staid Protestant denominations.
Carlson has described his complicated relationship with the Episcopalian church, but recently he has hosted prominent people in the far-right Christian universe on his show. His guests have included former Claremont Institute fellow and Christian pundit Santiago Pliego; Megan Basham, a journalist who writes about Christianity for the conservative publication The Daily Wire; and far-right Idaho pastor Doug Wilson. In his interview with Wilson, Carlson argued that “Christian nationalism” was a phrase used by Democrats to “make Christianity seem like a threat to the country.”
At the Heritage Foundation event, Carlson further refined this point. Motivating those on the political left, Carlson told the crowd, were “forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human.” He added, “The group that makes them angry…I guess we would say now is Christians. Christian nationalists—the people who pray outside abortion clinics, people who celebrate Easter, not ‘Trans Visibility Day’—these are the real enemies.” The idea that Christians suffer persecution is also central to the beliefs of the New Apostolic Reformation. “What group do they dislike most?” he asked. “What group are they absolutely terrified of, and hoping to eliminate? Well, it’s Christians.”
After Carlson’s speech, I caught up with a few of the audience members as they adjourned to the Heritage Foundation happy hour next door. I asked them about what they saw as the role of religion in government.
One of the attendees was Catalina Stubbe, the national director of the rightwing parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty, who had come to the Heritage event because Moms for Liberty is “very close friends with the Heritage Foundation.” What did she think about the separation of church and state, I asked. “Our country was based and founded on biblical values,” she said. “I don’t understand why people want to separate something that is not only beautiful and well-made, but also defends the individual as a human being.”
I also talked to former Texas state senator Don Huffines, who made headlines in 2022 for refusing to fire a staffer who admitted to being a member of the white nationalist Groyper movement. Carlson’s speech, he said, had been a highlight of the day. Like Stubbe, he saw no reason to separate church from state. “All the founders of our country automatically understood that Christianity and biblical studies were vastly important to what they were creating,” he told me. “So we’ve been really off track from where we were originally.”
Another Texas attendee was Rochelle Brooks, a GOP delegate who was decked out in a bright red dress, an American flag scarf, and a cowboy hat festooned with Trump pins. Brooks said she believed that people misunderstood the Founding Fathers’ concept of the separation of church and state. “They’re saying the state can’t create a religion,” she said, “they’re not saying you have to exclude religion from the state.” She liked Trump because “he didn’t play identity politics,” which, as a Black woman, she found “demeaning and degrading.” I asked her if she thought Trump was a godly candidate. “He hasn’t done anything against my values and my beliefs,” she said and paused. “It’s not for me to judge him.”
