After Hurricane Harvey devastated the Texas coast in 2017, three affected churches sued FEMA, claiming the agency’s policy against providing relief funds to religious organizations was discriminatory. The matter was resolved when a pressure campaign by political figures associated with the religious right—including Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton—resulted in the agency allowing direct funding of churches. By itself, the case may not seem very significant. But as journalist Katherine Stewart reports in The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of the Religious Right, it arose from a disturbing context: the decades-old, well-organized, amply funded political effort to institute a conservative Christian theocracy in the United States.
As Stewart shows how the evangelical Christian church came to dominate politics, the alarm she raises can be neither ignored nor dismissed as conspiracy-mongering. She makes clear that Christian nationalists’ reach into current power structures—including Trump’s White House—demands urgency from those who would protect church-state separation. As November’s election looms, The Power Worshippers is a timely political exposé, indispensable reading for 2020 voters regardless of their religious beliefs.
Stewart devotes each chapter to a different topic, using a first-person reporting style to guide readers through a complex network of pastors, power brokers, politicians, think tanks, data miners, attorneys, billionaires, and those persuaded by all of the above to vote according to “biblical values.”
