Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Project Blitz, a Christian Nationalist Assault on State Legislatures
May 5, 2021
State capitols, such as the one in Oklahoma above, are targets of the White Christian Nationalist Project Blitz. (Ben Dunham)
By Bill Berkowitz
In its earliest incarnation, Project Blitz’s efforts seemed like a batch of run-of-the-mill – albeit noxious -- conservative evangelical proposals. The model legislation it was pushing included having "In God We Trust," on display in public buildings and on license plates; having "the role of religion in the constitutional history of the United States" "be publicly displayed in court houses and other state and local buildings throughout" the states; having The Bible taught "as an elective course in public schools; cranking out "proclamations" recognizing Religious Freedom Day, Christian Heritage Month, Year of The Bible, and Christmas Day.
However, as Katherine Stewart, a journalist and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, has noted, there are graduated phases in the Project Blitz arsenal. Stewart told The Guardian that, “The first category consisted of largely symbolic gestures, … But the point of phase one was to prepare the ground for phases two and three, which aimed to entangle government with their version of religion in deeper ways. Considered individually, these bills making their ways through state legislatures appear to have a scattershot quality. In reality, they are very often components of a coordinated, overarching strategy.”
Project Blitz is an undertaking by Christian nationalists to move its political and social agenda through state legislatures across the country. Launched in 2015, it is a coalition of Christian right groups, including the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF), the National Legal Foundation, and Wallbuilders Pro-Family Legislators Conference, that aim to establish a Christian nationalist narrative.
In 2018, veteran journalist Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at the Massachusetts-based Political Research Associates, first exposed Project Blitz by reporting on its 116-page playbook for the 2017-8 legislative cycle. In 2018, Project Blitz “was responsible for at least 75 bills in 2018 that advance Christian nationalism,” Rachel S. Mikva, the Herman Schaalman Professor in Jewish Studies and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary, wrote in USA Today.
Clarkson participated in an online webinar titled “Stopping the Blitz: A Coordinated Response to State Campaigns,” hosted by the PFLAG Academy Online. Salon’s Paul Rosenberg reported that participants included Alison Gill, legal and policy director at American Atheists and Elizabeth Reiner Platt, Director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at Columbia Law School. Rosenberg noted that “Clarkson presented an overview of Project Blitz, along with its background, Gill delved into the components of Project Blitz — legislative ‘prayer caucuses’ formed to pass legislation and the state policy guide Clarkson discovered to guide them — and Platt spoke about the meaning of religious freedom, how the religious right has distorted it, and how even those who oppose the religious right tacitly may accept key aspects of its dishonest framing.”
“We do not often surface a document that fundamentally changes the way we view a subject. In the case of the strategy paper of Project Blitz, we have just that,” Clarkson said in his introduction. “The Project Blitz playbook shows us that while the Christian right see the bills as distinct, they are also envisioning a political building process that leads to a comprehensive vision of a conservative Christian nation, and even the more totalitarian idea of conservative Christian Dominion.”
Alison Gill pointed out that the agenda of Project Blitz is “deceptive”: “It allows [Christian nationalists] to get lawmakers on the record on these issues, and achieve victories that they can then build on and work together as a caucus. This is meant to be easy things to achieve that don’t give away the entire project.”
Perhaps the most contentious and consequential part of Project Blitz’s agenda relates to the question of religious liberty, as “this is the real attack on equality, and the most impactful policy changes,” Gill said. “For example, policy statements that are passed as resolutions that favor married heterosexual couples, or maintenance of birth gender, which is a very awkward phrase I’d never heard before seeing it in this document.” Bills in this category “are basically religious exceptions to the law, either broader or more narrow … that would allow people to discriminate on the basis of their religion.”
Elizabeth Reiner Platt pointed out that religious exemption rulings and bills are at the heart of Project Blitz’s assault, as they ”limit rather than enhance religious liberties.”
In November 2019, Clarkson, writing for Political Research Associates, reported that Project Blitz was using the name “Freedom for All” as a “rebranding, which seems to be more of a debranding, [and] may have been wise in the wake of the disastrous public response to Project Blitz. But the move was neither as nimble or as swift as [Lea Carawan, executive director of the CPCf] claims.”
In late January, Alison Gill told The Guardian’s Theodore R Johnson that, “Very few bills managed to be pushed forward last year due to the pandemic. Those issues that are contentious in the culture war will continue to move forward this year, and will affect LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and non-religious people and women and reproductive access.”
“It’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side,” David Barton, founder of the Christian-right organization WallBuilders and one of four members of Project Blitz’s steering team, told state legislators in a call that was made public. “It’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this.”
Johnson reported that “Gill said that after Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the court in 2018, some states pushed a flurry of reproductive rights laws which would limit women’s access to abortion. The Christian right could be further emboldened after Amy Coney Barrett’s controversial appointment to the supreme court in October. ‘In a lot of ways, and I think the reproductive bills are a good example of this, they’re not just passing laws that do negative things, they’re trying to set up future cases that will then go before the court, that can be used to advance an agenda,’ Gill said.”
It is clear that Project Blitz is playing the long game
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