The Harrison Butker story is so much weirder than you know

“The headline could just be, ‘Man who kicks ball for a living and has no other job criticizes women who want to be nurses, surgeons and U.N. Secretary General,’” said Brad Onishi on the Straight White American Jesus podcast episode that featured discussion about the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. “He literally gets up in the morning and his employment is to kick one ball in one direction. And he’s telling everyone else what the essence of their vocation should be.”

Butker has been making headlines because of his speech at Benedictine College, a conservative Catholic school in Atchison, Kan., during which he claimed his wife’s life started after she met him, converted to his religion and became his homemaker. He also spoke out against President Biden and LGBTQ people.

In the days after his speech, it seemed half of the country was appalled at his words and  the other half wanted to buy his jersey to support him.

O.S. Hawkins, chancellor of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has been posting pro-Butker articles on social media. Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has jumped in as well, voicing his support for Butker’s words about what theological conservatives consider the created order.

However, the NFL’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Jonathan Beane, declared Butker’s views “are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Tavia Hunt, wife of Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, disagrees with the NFL. She took to Instagram to post her support for Butker’s view of women. And her daughter, Gracie Hunt, appeared on Fox and Friends to say, “I really respect Harrison and his Christian faith.” Chiefs coach Andy Reid and quarterback Patrick Mahomes have voiced their disagreement, but support Butler’s right to free speech.

And the Benedictine sisters of Mount St. Scholastica released a statement condemning Butker’s comments while claiming they “want to be known as an inclusive, welcoming community.”

On one hand, this could be a story about how we choose to promote the celebrities who champion our causes or demonize those who do not. It also could be a piece about how many on the right attempt to silence Black athletes such as Colin Kaepernick who speak out about social justice, while celebrating the likes of Butker who demonize social justice.

But the further we look into Butker’s story, we begin to realize the causes we support often have a lot more going on behind them than we realize. In the case of conservative Christians, the consequences of their cause are deadly.

Butker, Benedictine College and the Traditional Latin Mass

“We need to stop pretending that the ‘church of nice’ is a winning proposition,” Butker proclaimed in his address. “It is safe to say that over the past few years, I have gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind.”

“With his reputation preceding him, to think Benedictine College didn’t know what he was going to say would be naive.”

With his reputation preceding him, to think Benedictine College didn’t know what he was going to say would be naive. In fact, Butker said President Minnis reached out to him on behalf of the board and “used his gift of persuasion” to convince Butker to come.

Many people are assuming the Benedictine sisters who released their statement are connected to the college. But they haven’t been involved with the college since the early 1990s. The college itself hasn’t made any statement because they agree with Butker, as evidenced by their invitation and their ultraconservative policies that include prohibitions on female students wearing swimsuits.

A monk close to the college said the leadership wanted to know what kind of reaction the sisters would get and have decided to double down in their support of Butker.

For Butker, the ideal not-so-nice church as a “winning proposition” is found in the communities of the Traditional Latin Mass, often referred to in shorthand as TLM.

“I attend the TLM because I believe, just as the God of the Old Testament was pretty particular in how he wanted to be worshipped, the same holds true for us today,” Butker explained. “It is through the TLM that I encountered order and began to pursue it in my own life.”

Then he challenged the graduates: “The TLM is so essential that I would challenge each of you to pick a place to move where it is readily available.”

Those are fighting words within modern Catholicism.

The Traditional Latin Mass in fear of demons and diversity

The current controversy surrounding the Traditional Latin Mass began in the 1960s when Pope John XXIII introduced the Second Vatican Council that, among other things, changed the liturgy used during Mass from Latin to the language people understood. The new liturgy also utilized active participation by both lay men and women from all races.

The Traditional Latin Mass had been in use since the Middle Ages and is spoken, as the name implies, in Latin. Not many people speak Latin today.

While the vast majority of Catholics were willing to move on to the new liturgy they could understand and resonate with, an extreme minority stayed passionately committed to the TLM.

One of the few who opposed the new liturgy was the Frenchman Marcel Lefebvre, who started the Society of Saint Pius X, known as SSPX, in Switzerland as a way of training Catholic seminary students according to the Latin tradition. He and the SSPX were excommunicated in 1988 by Pope John Paul II for consecrating four of his priests as bishops without Vatican permission.

As an attempt to reconcile differences and heal old wounds, Pope Benedict eventually lifted the excommunication of the SSPX in 2009 and put them simply in “inferior standing,” which is less than total communion but better than being excommunicated.

Basil Dannebohm, a former ministerial executive and legislator who writes for Baptist News Global, spent many years investigating conservative, radicalized Catholics from the inside. He shared his perspective in an interview for this piece.

“They contest that only they can thwart these efforts because they allege that the devil hates Latin.”

“In addition to the obvious radicalism that Butker is espousing, there are others within fringe movements of the Catholic Church who allege that demons are taking control of everything both in the church and state,” Dannebohm said. “They contest that only they can thwart these efforts because they allege that the devil hates Latin.”

And with the opening up of the active lay participation in the Catholic Mass to men and women from all races, fear of diversity naturally became paired with fear of demons.

Perhaps the paranoia that demons are on the attack by pushing diversity is why Butker told the women they were being attacked by “diabolic lies.”

Coming to America

While training seminary students in Switzerland, Lefebvre discovered the Jesuits were closing down one of their college campuses in Saint Marys, Kan. So he purchased the campus in 1978 with the dream of turning it into a United States fortress for preserving Pre-Vatican II tradition.

St. Marys is located an hour’s drive west of Atchison, and the school there is not the same as Benedictine College where Butker spoke. But what happened at St. Marys influenced what Butker believes. St. Marys is the entry point for SSPX in the United States.

Within months of Lefebvre purchasing the property, the Immaculata Church burned to the ground. As Dannebohm explained, the church never had the momentum, money or means to rebuild.

Then suddenly, during the final two years of the Trump presidency, they raised an estimated $42 million to rebuild. Construction began shortly after Trump lost his bid for re-election. The new elaborately adorned church was dedicated May 3, 2023.

The school at St. Marys had operated for five decades and had earned a reputation for itself.

“Growing up, from Kansas, we were always told by our religion instructors that the SSPX was a cult. There was a stigma associated with St. Marys,” Dannebohm recalled.” No Catholic of good sense would go anywhere near the campus because they were considered a secretive, wacko fringe element of the faith.”

But the SSPX church throughout the United States began to grow by attracting people who didn’t get along with their own post-Vatican II parishes. And what was once considered to be a fringe group on the high plains of Kansas now has most of the town leadership and residents of St. Marys as members of the SSPX.

Antisemitic propaganda and the ‘degenerates’

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SSPX is a promoter of antisemitic propaganda. This goes back to Lefebvre himself, who favored the pro-Nazi Vichy regime of France during World War II and called the liberation of France “the victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of Petain. It was the invasion of the barbarians without faith or law!”

The SSPX includes priests who have called for “locking Jews into ghettos because ‘Jews are known to kill Christians.’” They also believe “a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy has destroyed the Catholic Church.”

This matches Dannebohm’s investigation. He recalled a time when he hired two young men to do some yard work for him in 2015. He overheard the young men he contracted blaming 9/11 on the Jews.

“They alleged that the Jews caused 9/11. They went on to claim that the LGBTQ movement is comprised of what they referred to as degenerates.”

“At first I thought they had to be joking around,” he explained. “They alleged that the Jews caused 9/11. They went on to claim that the LGBTQ movement is comprised of what they referred to as degenerates. In 2015, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, these twenty-somethings proudly claimed that Black people are inferior. They were going through this deranged litany of paranoia, conspiracy and racist nonsense long before QAnon had become QAnon.”

A few weeks later, an investigation was under way regarding property defacement at Bethany College in nearby Lindsborg, Kan., with white nationalist propaganda. When Dannebohm saw the video footage, he noted: “I saw spray painted on the sidewalk the word ‘degenerate’ and I instantly remembered them using that word in their diatribe of hatred.’”

As it turned out, the two young men who were working on Dannebohm’s lawn were the two who defaced Bethany College.

“Degenerate: It’s a common word used among white supremacists today,” Dannebohm said. “They seem to use it as a code word to identify themselves with each other.”

Butker used that same word in his speech when he talked about “degenerate cultural values.” And he shared a common antisemitic trope when he spoke against the Antisemitism Awareness Act, claiming, “Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.”

Identity Evropa

The young men contracted by Dannebohm were part of a white nationalist militia commune called Identity Evropa. According to the SPLC, Identity Evropa “is at the forefront of the racist ‘alt-right’s’ effort to recruit white, college-aged men and transform them into the fashionable new face of white nationalism.”

When Dannebohm asked an associate in the intelligence community what he thought of these groups, his colleague said: “I know they’re going to be problematic and unfortunately their impact is not going to be taken seriously.”

Dannebohm’s associate told him of a letter allegedly written by Identity Evropa’s director that was circulated among the groups telling them to “infiltrate Catholicism and Orthodox seminaries and start spreading their agenda.”

Identity Evropa’s Kansas branch was located about 20 miles from another white nationalist commune that had two more well-known members — Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh.

According to an SSPX priest in St. Mary’s, McVeigh and Nichols visited an SSPX priest in St. Marys the day before they rented the truck they used in the Oklahoma City bombing. As the Kansas Reflector reported, “The road to the January 6 insurrection goes back to Kansas.” But very few people know about the meeting between McVeigh and the SSPX priest.

The SPLC warns that the SSPX “has chapels and schools across the United States.”

The president meets the pope

When President Donald Trump met Pope Francis in 2017, the two men had been trading words over Trump’s support of building a wall at the southern border.

“This is not the gospel,” Francis said.

Trump responded, “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.”

When the two men finally met, the photo of the smiling Trump next to the scowling Francis became the butt of jokes everywhere. It was especially humorous given the stark contrast to the more jovial meeting Francis had with President Barack Obama two years earlier.

According to Dannebohm, sources close to the White House said Trump was seething over Francis’ support of Obama and lack of enthusiasm for Trump.

“It was apparent that Trump wanted revenge on the pope. The idea that the pope favored a Black man, a Democrat, a former president over him was probably a major blow to his obviously fragile ego,” Dannebohm said. “It seemed that not too long thereafter, he had a Latin Catholic priest from a group called the Fraternity of Saint Peter come bless the Oval Office.” The FSSP, as they are known, are another group of priests associated with the Latin mass movement.

This was more than likely facilitated by Steve Bannon, a TLM Catholic, who was working in the White House, Dannebohm said. “You can imagine how it plays out: Trump likely calls, through Bannon, a Latin Mass priest to come in and bless the White House, who in turn gives Trump a little statue of Our Lady of Fatima.”

As Dannebohm explains, Our Lady of Fatima is the Catholic term for certain apparitions of Mary, most of which are fear based. The radical fringe Catholics today are so obsessed with over-the-top Marian apparitions that Francis issued a statement last week about them.

Bannon’s funding of influencers

“Bannon likely recognizes through his radical definition of Catholicism, ‘I know a group who absolutely despises the pope.’ And he starts funding many of them who he identifies as key influencers,” Dannebohm said.

The first group Bannon aligned with was Church Militant, which Dannebohm says was until the Trump era widely regarded by Catholics as “the National Enquirer of the church.” It appeared that Bannon somehow convinced Church Militant to sign radical conservative influencer Milo Yiannopoulos to work for their news team. Yiannopoulos would later convert to traditional Catholicism. Then Bannon put his podcast on with the radical Catholic website.

Like Bannon, other staunch supporters of MAGA began funding influencers such as Taylor Marshall, a former Presbyterian pastor from Dallas who was largely unknown at the time. With the support of many far-right donors and disenfranchised Catholics, Marshall wrote a book called Infiltration, which claimed Freemasons were the ones who controlled the Second Vatican Council that did away with the TLM.

“Literally within months, the man rose to stardom among the estranged radical Catholics,” Dannebohm said. “A group which I have often referred to as schismatics in drag.”

Another person funded by far-right donors was Michael Matt, publisher of the radical traditional Catholic newspaper known as The Remnant. According to Dannebohm, “Matt rode that wave of conspiracy to fame alleging, ‘The Vatican is satanic.’ He spoke at various Trump rallies in Detroit.”

Recent converts to the radical traditional Latin mass movement include Candace Owens and Jordan Peterson’s wife, Tammy. Radical Catholic influencers including Father James Altman and Bishop Joseph Strickland, who had been removed from Catholic leadership, both began speaking at CPAC and spreading conspiracies about the church and state being operated by Satanic operatives. Defrocked radical priest Father Frank Pavone laid an aborted fetus on an altar in support of Trump. Another controversial priest in Wisconsin began wearing MAGA hats during his sermons, superimposed Trump’s hair over his Facebook profile picture, and started what he referred to as a militaristic Grace Force, aimed to combat the infiltration of evil in both the church and state.

A priest removed from active ministry in the Archdiocese of Denver, David Nix, was instructed to become a hermit but instead became a podcaster and is alleged to have been re-ordained by a radical Catholic Bishop who is widely considered to be a spiritual mentor to actor Mel Gibson, who also is a radical TLM Catholic.

Mel Gibson, of course, is linked to Jim Caviezel through The Passion of the Christ movie. Dannebohm recalled: “I know a lot of people respect him because they associate it with Christ, but I find him very disturbing. I recall one occasion hearing that Jim Caviezel alleged that the Clintons consume the adrenal fluid of babies that are aborted and that is how they stay so powerful and so vibrant. Like others in the radical Catholic movement, I suspect he believes the fat from the aborted fetus is melted down and reconstituted in the candles that are used in Satanic Black Masses. I’ve heard this radical conspiracy in those circles more than once.”

“All of the sudden, this fringe traditionalist group that only a decade before looked like they could easily pass as Waco 2.0 were starting to get this surge in their movement.”

Dannebohm explained: “All of the sudden, this fringe traditionalist group that only a decade before looked like they could easily pass as Waco 2.0 were starting to get this surge in their movement. The growth consisted largely of people who existed in fear and identified with the rhetoric being circulated among the supporters of the Latin Mass. It only makes sense that they found this fringe group because of radical Catholic influencers, who by and large had direct links to Steve Bannon and other powerful MAGA donors. 95% of the growth in the movement was due to an influx of converts. It used to be that a neophyte to the Catholic faith would quietly continue to learn and observe for a few years before offering any sort of opinion on matters of the faith. But not this group. These people instantly launched podcasts and blogs and became influencers. They had an opinion for everything and nobody was correct but them — not even the pope himself.”

Tax-free wealth

One of the benefits for these influencers is the ability to make big money without paying any taxes.

“Most of them seem to operate as nonprofits, thus being afforded the luxury of not paying taxes,” Dannebohm said. “So you have probably about 40 key players who are making big money off of fear and division.”

Catching the attention of the FBI

During the Trump administration, fear and fervor spread, fueled even more by the Bannon and MAGA–backed influencers, as the extremists continued to infiltrate Catholic seminaries.

“The particular seminary I investigated had a rifle range. They taught the students how to assemble assault rifles,” Dannebohm said.

When Dannebohm asked an Afghan war vet why he brought a backpack with an assault rifle to church, the vet responded, “Because the Freemasons or the Biden people may try to come in and infiltrate us.”

Dannebohm witnessed gun trades going on in the parking lot of the seminary.

Eventually, the FBI began to take notice. “In Richmond at Saint Joseph’s Church, the FBI was investigating because there were allegedly some seriously sinister things going on or at least being discussed by members that caused some red flags for some of the more stable-minded parishioners.”

Jim Jordan and the GOP defending ‘freedom of religion’

When the FBI came knocking, former FBI Agent Kyle Seraphin leaked an eight-page dossier about the investigation.

“The FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass,” he wrote.

As a result, chief law enforcement officers from 20 states signed a letter condemning the investigation to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In response, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray, who denied the accusations, saying, “We do not conduct investigations based on religious affiliations or practices, full stop.”

Garland added, “We have a rule against investigations based on First Amendment activity, and Catholic churches are obviously First Amendment activity.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican of the insurrection movement, claimed the FBI was “targeting Catholics, targeting people of faith, specifically for their faith views.”

But Dannebohm disagrees. “These people were not typical Catholics,” he said. “They were fringe operators who had exiled themselves from the papacy, Catholics in name only, who were trading guns in the parking lot, who were conspiring to participate in the January 6 insurrection, and set on causing disruption to anything that contradicted their agenda.”

He later added, “The FBI’s investigation into McVeigh and others at St. Marys, Kan., is a good indication that Traditional Catholicism has been a breeding ground for domestic terrorism for years. It makes you wonder what’s going on in traditional fringe Catholic parishes today that led the FBI to investigate — only to be stopped by Jim Jordan.”

Sexual abuse coverups, the KBI and church fundraising

In addition to the FBI investigating TLM Catholics for their potential promotion of domestic terrorism, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation began an investigation of sexual abuse coverups.

According to the Kansas City Star, the KBI had received 186 reports of abuse as of February 2020. One St. Marys woman named Jassy Jacas said, “At the time I met them, they had said eight different (SSPX) priests with incidents that happened in Kansas.”

But as Dannebohm, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse himself, details, when former Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt began his investigation into clergy abuse, the SSPX ministries failed to cooperate.

Supporters of the TLM were so convinced the sexual abuse investigations were attacks by government-aligned demons that they began giving money to the SSPX instead of shying away from the mounting sexual allegations. The more money came in, the more St. Marys refused to cooperate and played the demon-fighting card.

As a result, after 45 years, they suddenly raised $42 million to rebuild their church.

Then Kris Kobach, a major supporter of Trump, dropped the investigation upon replacing Schmidt as Kansas attorney general.

Pastors and politicians as hyper-masculine demons slayers

Men grasping for power tends to result in an over-the-top focus on masculinity. As Benedictine College has become more extreme since the Trump administration, they brought in Jared Zimmerer as their content marketing director and Great Books adjunct professor.

Zimmerer previously worked for Bishop Robert Barron at Word on Fire Ministries, who appears to have a fetish for muscle men.

As Dannebohm explains their “Theology of the Bodybuilder,” he says, “Adherents to this nonsense believe that you have to make yourself buff and ripped for the Lord and be a warrior for Christ. Many of them fat shame larger men. I doubt the likes of GK Chesterton or Thomas Aquinas would look kindly on that sort of behavior.”

All the priests at Word on Fire were massive, buff men. “They like others who adhere to this bastardized Frassati rhetoric believe this was how you honor the Lord, and how to be real men,” Dannebohm said. “This is a big thing among these trads. They refer to it as ‘true manhood.’ They have overnight father and son outings that include ax throwing and firearms training. I can only surmise that the toxic masculinity must hang over the campsite as thick as the campfire smoke.”

Perhaps that’s why Butker, along with Sen. Josh Hawley, spoke at the recent Stronger Men’s Conference, where controversy ensued when a shirtless man swallowed a sword and climbed a pole. It wasn’t just evangelicals in attendance.

“The Stronger Men’s Conference was attended by a lot of these very radicals I’ve investigated over the years,” Dannebohm noted.

“There’s one who wrote a book called Terror of Demons: Reclaiming Traditional Catholic Masculinity. Again, you’re going back to this demonology that bogusly alleges that the demons will fear you because you’re buff. And you’ve got to be this way for the safety and protection of your family. You’ve got to teach your kids to shoot. … Apparently that makes the devil scared of us. And how do we keep the devil scared of us? Apparently we speak Latin to him because the devil’s scared of Latin. To a stable person it sounds like superstitious nonsense but to men like the author, it’s a firmly rooted belief.”

Butker’s rise from altar boy to keynote speaker

Many people have mentioned that Butker’s mother is a physicist, which is ironic given Butker’s words about women staying home and tending to their husbands and children. So he was not raised to be as extreme as he became.

When Butker first signed with the Chiefs, he began serving as an altar boy in his TLM parish and loved getting his photo taken. He also began serving as an altar boy for the Chiefs chaplain, who is a diocesan priest authorized to offer the Latin mass.

But while people attending Mass recognized him as the Chiefs kicker, he remained relatively unknown.

“It was only after he became intertwined with these radical Catholic influencers such as Bishop Joseph Strickland, Taylor Marshall and the Bannon crowd — that he started getting venues to speak at,” Dannebohm explained. “Influencers in the traditional Catholic movement are a lot like gypsies: the same crowd of influencers migrate together from event to event selling their snake oil to anybody who will listen.”

Butker’s businesses

Contrary to what many are saying, Butker’s job isn’t merely being a kicker. He actually owns multiple businesses.

His business partner is Austin Wright, who changed his last name from Quick after he was caught secretly recording a top staffer of Illinois Congresswoman Cheri Bustos while posing as a priest.

While the former district director for Bustos  admitted her comments that led her to resign were inappropriate, she added, “The only person that came in and asked me that question was a gentleman in a collar who was a priest or priest in training and he presented himself as a member of the Roman Catholic church and he’s illegally taping me? I’m shocked.”

Quick deleted his social media, changed his last name to Wright, became a Catholic influencer, and went into business with Butker helping Catholic churches leverage their properties as “long-term assets and not liabilities.”

Courting the evangelical vote

One of the reasons Butker became so popular is that he is an effective asset to a variety of Catholics. As the product of the TLM, Butker fully supports the radical agenda of traditional Catholics. But as a young athlete, mainstream Catholics consider him to be an effective communicator to the youth.

In his speeches, Butker uses antisemitic, homophobic and white supremacist code language. But most people don’t recognize that language. So it slips past the ears of the general public while stoking the excitement of the extremists.

While those extremist groups have traditionally condemned everyone who is different than them, they began courting conservative, masculinity-focused evangelicals since the 2022 midterms.

“It was around the recent midterm elections when the radical traditional Catholics really started accepting the evangelicals and playing nice in the sandbox of extremism. Until then it was really just a circular firing squad,” Dannebohm explained. “There was supposed to be this epic red wave that didn’t happen. I think it made them fear that their movement would become discredited and they knew they had to broaden their horizon. You can’t keep saying a group is going to go to hell if you need their support. That’s where Butker came in handy. He attracted people they needed from groups they couldn’t reach.”

“Soon enough, the more he opens his mouth, the more people will realize he’s crazier than an outhouse rat and the sane crowd will distance themselves.”

“They have their football player now,” Dannebohm said. “Butker is now going to become a poster child for radicalism within the church because he’s a Latin Catholic, but he hasn’t quite gone full on nutty enough to be dismissed by normal, pew-going people. At the present, he retains some credibility thanks in large part to his profession. Soon enough, the more he opens his mouth, the more people will realize he’s crazier than an outhouse rat and the sane crowd will distance themselves.”

Given Butker’s appeal to the “God of the Old Testament” being “pretty particular about how he wanted to be worshiped,” how that God commanded genocide, how Butker rejected the “church of nice,” how he used coded language for white nationalist extremist groups that have a history of violence, it seems some authorities should have some questions for him.

Eucharist Conference

Many of the problems the Catholic Church now faces in the United States are unique to the U.S., thanks to the infiltration of the TLM extremists, the funding of MAGA-aligned donors and the rhetoric of Trump.

But in addition to the political mess, the Catholic Church in America is dealing with division over its followers disagreeing with traditional Catholic teaching on the nature of the Eucharist. So they’re planning “the first national Eucharistic Congress in 83 years.”

The original lineup of speakers featured Butker. But amid all the media surrounding Butker’s commencement address, Butker was quietly removed and replaced with Cardinal Blaise Cupich, who according to Dannebohm is “despised by Rad Trads” because they believe he is a “homosexual demonic infiltrator. Naturally, they reached this conclusion because his eminence is a supporter of Pope Francis.”

Stoking fear for financial gain

Whatever role Butker may play in the Catholic Church as reaction to his speech dies down, the reality is that many Catholic leaders agree with him.

So how do we sort between the militia groups, the TLM, the influencers, power-driven priests and regular Catholics? And do any of these people really believe the conspiracies they’re promoting?

“I think Butker saw the opportunity for an audience,” Dannebohm said.

As for the influencers, Dannebohm theorizes: “I don’t think they believe half the stuff they say. I don’t think Taylor Marshall truly believes a bunch of gay men got together in Switzerland and said, ‘We’re going to form a lavender mafia, we’re going to become Freemasons, and we’re going to hijack the Catholic Church.’ I don’t think anybody of any measurable degree of good sense believes that. But opportunistic radical influencers know fearful, often unstable people will pick up what they’re putting down. QAnon very vividly demonstrated that.

“Most of this radical stuff began really taking off in the church when QAnon became something people began taking seriously. Most of these guys, I think they look at it and say, ‘That’s making good money. I lack the qualifications to do much else, this looks like a venue in which I can thrive.’ … And they aren’t just thriving; these guys are making bank. One particular fringe bishop told a priest friend of mine, ‘I am not going to ever be hard up for money because the extremists will fund me.’”

And that’s precisely the problem. The Trump campaign, through Steve Bannon and other MAGA-aligned donors, is funding influencers who are stoking the fear of extremists who are training one another in weaponry, who have a track record of violence, who actually believe they’re in a fight with demons, and who are infiltrating Catholic seminaries.

The solution may be complex. But a few things seem pretty clear.

Christians need to stop crying persecution whenever the government investigates these groups. The FBI and the KBI need to resume their investigations without interference from Jim Jordan or Josh Hawley. Conservatives who don’t support the extremists need to recognize how their support of Butker in their culture war is being used to bolster the extremists and then stop sending money to these influencers and nonprofits.

And those of us who know how to deconstruct these theologies of fear need to continue doing so. The safety and security of our country depends on it. And that’s not a conspiracy theory.

As Dannebohm said, “It’s a frightening point in history when fringe cells that previously had to operate underground, when unstable extremists like Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh used to have to plot and scheme way out in the middle of nowhere, are now able to operate at coffee hour after Mass.”

One of his colleagues told him, “I’m scared to death if Donald Trump doesn’t win the election in November. You can bet that these radicalized parishes, these very people, these Harrison Butker types, are going to be marching back into our nation’s Capitol again, inciting more violence, invoking the name of Jesus and calling foul.”

Dannebohm agrees. “The FBI was onto something,” he said. “In the 1970s it was Jonestown. In the 1990s it was Waco. Today, it’s commonplace.”

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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