To understand the sinister forces working to influence the November election, pay close attention to the expanding alliance between religious, political and economic powers arrayed against American democracy, scholar Kristin Kobes Du Mez writes in a recent Substack post.
The expanding and strengthening coalition between Trump strategists, tech billionaires and Christian nationalists known as “TheoBros” is providing the ideological and financial muscle behind the right-wing’s authoritarian agenda, says Du Mez, professor of gender, religion and politics at Calvin University and author of the bestselling book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
“What we are witnessing right now is an ever-widening network — not just the TheoBros and Trump’s inner circle, but both of these networks now interlinked with the power of tech billionaires. That means we’ve got old-school oil money flowing together with 21st-century tech money, a nearly bottomless source of funds on hand to advance this agenda,” she warns in the Oct. 9 “Du Mez Connections” post titled “TheoBros, TechBros & Trump.”
“What do TechBros and TheoBros have in common with Trump and his inner circle? All think their respective causes will be better served by ending American democracy. They want a strongman at top — their strongman. To hell with democracy, and with the rest of us,” she writes.
The TheoBros have promoted a militant form of patriarchy within evangelical congregations and are working to seize political control to impose their version of God’s law and the rest of society, Du Mez explains.
That’s a trend covered in her new film, For Our Daughters, which uncovers the sexual and spiritual abuse of girls and women at the hands of conservative Christians and churches more concerned about personal power and political influence than justice and love.
The movement also is described in Kiera Butler’s recent Mother Jones article, “To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the ‘TheoBros,’” which Du Mez presents as an essential read for understanding the religious motivations of the American theocracy movement.
Butler explains how and why these younger, more conservative and tech-savvy fundamentalist Christians have determined pluralistic democracy is diametrically opposed to faith.
“Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth — and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who are obsessed with the U.S. Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments.”
“Many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments.”
TheoBros consume the biographies of dictators, extol nations that execute gay people and warn against “the perils of multiculturalism,” Butler writes.
Their message has begun to overlap with that of Trump running mate JD Vance, who has increasingly embraced themes of hypermasculinity, misogyny, ethnonationalism and concerns about declining birthrates, she adds. “If you want to know some of the actors who red-pilled Vance, or at least those who flock to him, you need to meet the TheoBros.”
Du Mez also urges reading an article about the foreword Vance penned for Dawn’s Early Light, a new book by Project 2025 architect and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.
Project 2025 is the Christian nationalist blueprint for replacing the federal government with a Christian nationalist theocracy. Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the plan were undermined when he chose Vance as his running mate, Alex Shephard explains in his report in The New Republic.
“Vance has deep ties to the Heritage Foundation, and in particular to Kevin Roberts, who has been president of the right-wing think tank since 2021 and is the architect of Project 2025,” Shephard says. “Vance has praised Roberts for helping to turn the organization ‘into the de facto institutional home of Trumpism’ and has endorsed elements of Project 2025.”
In his foreword to Roberts’ book — originally titled Burning Down Washington to Save America and now delayed for publication until mid-November due to public backlash against Project 2025 — Vance claims it is time for conservatives to “load the muskets” to take back America.
Tim Dunn on the cover of Texas Monthly
Another article Du Mez suggests documents the effort of Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks in forging the state into a theocracy with the intent of going national with their Christian nationalist campaign.
“Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days,” Ava Kofman writes for ProPublica. “With its high concentration of movement leaders, conservative pastors and far-right megadonors, Texas has become the country’s foremost laboratory for Christian nationalist policy, and many of its experiments have been bankrolled by Dunn and Wilks.”
In addition to seeking to limit government, taxes and regulations, Dunn and Farris have spent millions to help re-elect Trump in order to replace representative democracy with Christian theocracy, the article warns.
Both men are pastors described as “thoroughgoing Dominionists” who want state and national laws and institutions to adhere to biblical teachings. Yet both also have denied being Christian nationalists, Kofman explains.
“Instead, like most Christian nationalists, the two men speak about protecting Judeo-Christian values and promoting a biblical worldview. These vague expressions often serve as a shorthand for the movement’s central mythology: that America, founded as a Christian nation, has lost touch with its religious heritage, which must now be reclaimed.”
Du Mez says it’s time Americans pay more attention to these interests and their collaborative efforts to defeat democracy: “In some ways it’s a relief to see the mainstream media start to pick up on these dynamics, but it may be too late. The repercussions are chilling.”
Related articles:
Sorry, Tim Dunn, you are a Christian nationalist | Opinion by Rodney Kennedy
Du Mez, Bass and Tisby warn: Project 2025 is a Christian nationalist blueprint
Project 2025 isn’t as scary as Kamala Harris, Heritage Foundation president says
Meet the Theobros, who want you to know they’re right about everything | Analysis by Rick Pidcock