At Pray Vote Stand Summit, religious right leaders reckon with GOP pivot on abortion

(RNS) — Since July, when the Republican National Committee dropped a federal abortion ban from its national platform, several traditional religious right leaders have suggested that they have been betrayed, raising questions about whether evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics would support former President Donald Trump’s current campaign for the White House with the same vigor as in 2016 and 2020.

At the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, the religious right’s annual confab held in the first week of October, some speakers took the occasion to denounce the decision: “Tragic and disgraceful,” said Robert P. George, the Princeton University legal scholar, of the disappearance of the anti-abortion plank.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who founded the event as the Value Voter Summit in 2006 and is still its principal organizer, chided the RNC’s political expediency: “If (Democrats) are making this one of their top issues and the Republican response to it is crickets, well, it’s not going to motivate the base,” he told the crowd gathered at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.

But if they were upset by the RNC’s pivot this summer, by the time the summit was in session, they had already moved on to denial. Speaker after speaker invoked Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, as a triumph that resulted in effectively banning most or all abortions in more than 20 states.

Others simply dismissed the notion that Trump planned to soften on abortion if he returns to office. Janet Durig, executive director of the anti-abortion Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, asserted during a panel titled “Kamala Harris’s Attack on Life and the Family” that a new Trump administration “would be pro-life, which they would be.”

Ben Carson, saying “we are making progress,” pleaded with anti-abortion voters to stop fighting amongst themselves.

California pastor and radio host Jack Hibbs stated plainly, “I want someone in the White House who will save more babies’ lives than Kamala Harris. There’s no doubt about that. I’m voting for Donald Trump.”

Travis Weber, from left, hosts a panel discussion about transgender issues with Walt Heyer and Jennifer Bauwens during the Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Video screen grab)

The conference organizers also showcased other issues that would rally evangelical Christians to Trump. Particularly salient was the issue of transgender identity, which at Pray Vote Stand eclipsed even abortion as the next big front in the culture wars. Panels at the conference included, “What’s Really Behind the Transgender Movement”; “Protecting America’s Daughters: Title IX and the Fight for Fairness” (opposing transgender girls participating in high school sports); and “How the Biden-Harris administration Is Eliminating Parental Consent for Children’s Health Care.”

Outlawed in more than 25 states, transgender medical interventions for minors remain extremely rare, but at Pray Vote Stand the issue was a springboard for the politics of outrage. Nearly every speaker hit on the theme, often casting the practice as a specifically anti-Christian conspiracy. “The trans movement is about erasing a family union, which is meant to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” declared Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at FRC, in one panel.

The issue was often framed as a new front in the fight against abortion. Cissie Graham Lynch, daughter of the evangelist Franklin Graham, said, “The Biden-Harris government oppresses and destroys life,” and the Democratic Party “encourages children to question their God-given gender … has a zeal for abortion.”

Matt Krause. (Photo courtesy First Liberty Institute)

The Christian nationalist idea of religious liberty, which typically involves the right of conservative Christians to discriminate, was another prominent cause. And the good news for several of its champions was that, regardless of the upcoming election’s outcome, their agenda is sure to advance due to the current makeup of the Supreme Court. Matt Krause, a former Texas state representative and now an attorney with the Christian legal nonprofit First Liberty Institute, said, “I think we have a great story to tell about restoring faith in America.”

That story, as Krause tells it, begins with what he called the big lie of separation of church and state. He regaled his audience at Pray Vote Stand with a potted history, familiar to anyone who knows the work of the Christian nationalist historian David Barton, in which, from Thomas Jefferson to the present day, the establishment clause of the Constitution has been misinterpreted, and judicial decisions from the 1940s to the 1960s bolstering it were “erroneous rulings.”

Krause related a string of successes First Liberty Institute and its fellow travelers in the right-wing legal ecosphere have had in getting their cases before the Supreme Court. “We’ve had four cases at the Supreme Court in the past 20 months,” he exulted. “Our religious liberty rights are being restored at an incredible pace.”

The goal, Krause said, is to impose Christian religious symbols and ideas wherever possible in the public sphere. “Restoring faith in America could mean restoring the Ten Commandments and cross displays. Where they have been taken down they can go back up.” He advocated for direct religious involvement in public schools and sectarian invocations for city councils, school boards and state legislatures.

“What is the new test at the Supreme Court? History and Tradition, right?” he asked, referring to a key phrase in the Dobbs decision. “And there’s nothing more historical or traditional than the Ten Commandments,” he said.

At a breakout session titled “Running for Office and Engaging Your Community,” Aamon Ross, founder of a video podcast called “Kingdom in Politics,” said, “We should think of government as the next big mission field.”

The 2020 election, according to the speakers, validated these schemes. They also maintained that Trump won the 2020 election and had it stolen out from under him. “I believe 2020 awoke a sleeping giant. People like me got involved in election litigation. Get into the fight,” said Mike Berry, executive director of the Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute, in a panel titled “The 2024 Election: What You Should Know and How To Engage.”

Berry explained how he worked with pro-Trump election board members in Georgia to require recount procedures involving hand recounts prior to certification of the results. His proposed rules are regarded by most experts as an attempt to disrupt the election procedures, and a Georgia judge ruled earlier this week that they are “unconstitutional, illegal and void.”

Berry also boasted about his group’s defense of voter intimidation efforts. ‘The other side made it a crime to engage in intimidating or harassing behavior,” he scoffed. “We need to be able to fully exercise our First Amendment rights on November 5.”

Election denial was not the only conspiracy theory making the rounds at Pray Vote Stand. The menace of a “One World Government” — one that will purportedly be imposed on God-fearing Americans by means of a conspiracy between the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization — was the subject of a panel titled “A Conversation About Global Governance and the WHO.”

Gabe Lyons participates in a panel during the Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Video screen grab)

Responding to Perkins, who asked, “Was COVID-19 a test of global governance?” Gabe Lyons, founder and president of THINQ Media, a producer of evangelical Christian Ted Talk-style presentations, responded, “Yes! They want no privacy, all control. Global currency. This is the one nation to resist their plans, but with the COVID-19 restrictions they are training you to accept it.” His recommendation? “Engage with your county sheriff.”

The remedy for many of the ills identified at Pray Vote Stand was to get out the conservative Christian vote. A particularly telling exchange toward the end of Krause’s seminar on First Amendment jurisprudence concerned the use of churches to mobilize the base.

“I’m confused. Is the Johnson Amendment gone?” a woman asked Krause, referring to the IRS rule that prohibits charities from promoting political candidates.

Krause answered, “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” The audience laughed knowingly. “It’s supposed to be there, but nobody is ever prosecuted for it. Not one church has been prosecuted,” he said.

But if it were, he made clear, he’d be ready to take the case. “So if you want to be one of those pastors, call us. That’d be a great test case as well.”

(This story was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.)