Sunday Essay - Christian Nationalism
From pastors who refused integration to Trump the “family values” candidate — this was never an accident.
I had intended to start Watching & Reading with essays on books and eventually move into movies and TV Shows that I found interesting. But with the death of James Dobson and the release of season two of Amazon’s Shiny Happy People, this felt too timely to wait on.
The series doesn’t sugarcoat it. Survivors and experts say outright that the Duggar family wasn’t just reality TV — it was part of a decades-long project to fuse religion with politics. Season two makes clear this was never about one family, but about the machinery that still shapes America today.
And this isn’t the first time the alarm’s been raised. Amazon’s Bad Faith, released in 2024, traced the same arc — how evangelical leaders methodically built political power over decades. Shiny Happy People adds another layer, showing the human cost inside the families and communities that carried the project forward. Together, they tell one story: none of this is accidental, and it hasn’t gone away.
The Blueprint
The roots trace back to the 1960s. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. Phyllis Schlafly mobilizing against women’s rights. And then James Dobson — smoother, subtler, harder to pin down. He sold himself as a parenting expert, but what he was really selling was obedience, patriarchy, and fear dressed up as “family values.”
Dobson’s Focus on the Family normalized purity pledges and patriarchal discipline across living rooms nationwide. Teen Mania youth rallies cranked it up — stadiums full of teenagers chanting for Christ like it was a rock concert. These weren’t oddities. They were training grounds.
Reagan’s Bargain
What made it all stick was Ronald Reagan. Folksy, smiling, Hollywood-polished, he gave the Moral Majority a mainstream glow. Reagan wasn’t a zealot, but he was pragmatic. He saw the movement’s value and welcomed them in. That alliance made the religious right respectable overnight. Suddenly Dobson and Falwell weren’t just Christian radio preachers — they were shaping national policy with a seat at the White House table.
Reagan’s “morning in America” glow gave the movement its legitimacy. And once they had it, they never let go.
The Pipeline
The real genius of the system was that it didn’t just target parents — it went after kids. Homeschool curricula, purity pledges, Focus on the Family radio shows, Teen Mania stadium tours — an entire ecosystem where children never breathed outside air. The shiny, happy family on TV was the bait. The goal was a generation raised to obey first and ask questions never.
Those children are adults now. They sit on school boards, write laws, and push Project 2025. What looked like eccentric homeschooling — denim jumpers, Bible workbooks, purity rings — was training for political power. Raise them in submission, shame them into silence, then unleash them into government and culture.
And the public paid for it. Vouchers and “school choice” diverted tax dollars from public schools into private religious academies. Public schools were starved, then blamed for failing. Meanwhile, those redirected funds bankrolled the indoctrination pipeline.
The Silence That Protects Power
The cost was more than politics. A culture built on obedience and patriarchy leaves children vulnerable. Taught to fear authority, trained to keep silent, they became easy prey. And when abuse happened, the system protected men in power, not the victims.
It’s the same pattern revealed in the Epstein files: different worlds, same dynamic. Power shielded. Silence enforced. Victims ignored. It’s unlikely that much from those files will see the light of day.
The Cultural Subtext
The first wave of “school choice” wasn’t about God — it was about race. When civil rights forced schools open in the 1960s, white flight and “Christian academies” sprang up overnight. Parents didn’t want their kids sitting next to Black kids, but they stopped saying it out loud. The new code was “values,” “safety,” and “parental rights.”
As overt racism became less acceptable, the target shifted. Women’s Reproductive rights. Gay and lesbian rights. Now it’s trans people. The scapegoat shifts, but the strategy doesn’t: demonize a group, rile up supporters, consolidate power. Even now, conservatives claim they can “accept” LGB but not “the other letters” — as if slicing up people’s identities is progress.
Martin Luther King Jr. warned that white men would sell out their entire democracy rather than share power. This movement has proven him right, again and again, just swapping scapegoats as the decades roll by.
The Myth of “Judeo-Christian Roots”
One of the most persistent slogans is the call to “return America to its Judeo-Christian roots.” It sounds noble, even historical. But it’s fiction.
The “Judeo” is window dressing. This project has no interest in pluralism or Judaism. It wants Christian dominance, full stop. And the bigger lie is that America was ever founded on those roots. The Constitution is explicit: no state religion, no religious test for office. Jefferson and Madison fought to escape theocracy, not to enshrine it. They knew what happens when governments claim divine authority — Europe had centuries of holy wars to prove it.
Dobson’s heirs aren’t returning America to its roots. They’re pushing the very theocracy the founders designed the Constitution to prevent.
Beyond Trump
Some people comfort themselves by imagining this dies when Trump does. It won’t. Trump didn’t invent the machine — he just rode it like a carnival barker. Behind him stand a hundred polished men in suits waiting their turn. They won’t be the three ring circus Trump has become. They’ll be more disciplined, and more effective.
Trump is the proof that the movement doesn’t care who carries the banner. They’ll crown anyone who pushes their agenda. Trump — the thrice-married casino mogul, serial adulterer, convicted felon, the least Christian man alive — was suddenly their poster boy for “family values.” That’s not hypocrisy, that’s clarity. They don’t care about virtue. They care about power.
People need to actually listen to what’s coming out of Washington. The language of “values” and “freedom” is cover. The project behind it is cold, deliberate, and ongoing.
The Point of No Return
That’s what makes Shiny Happy People — and Bad Faith before it — feel less like entertainment and more like a mirror. The leaders behind these movements aren’t relics of the past. They’re still here, still pushing, still writing the next playbook.
We laughed at the Duggar spectacle. But while we were entertained, they were implementing their plan. Forty years later, the country looks exactly like what they envisioned: democracy chipped away, fear weaponized, religion woven into law.
They’re not coming. They’re already here.
Further Reading
If you’d like to stream Shiny Happy People or Bad Faith, consider using the affiliate links in the post. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and it helps support the work I’m doing here.As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Stay Connected
📖 Subscribe to Line & Verse for weekly chapters and essays.
📸 Follow along on Instagram: @caleb_writes
🧵 Join me on Threads:
📘 Facebook: Caleb Reed