Quick civics question. When you last voted, did "National Association of Christian Lawmakers" appear on your ballot? Did you vote for the group, its founder, or its agenda?
Of course not. But while you were watching the President fight reflecting pools and foreign allies, this unelected lobby has been quietly writing the laws that govern your kids' schools, your doctor's office, and your right to marry. In 31 states. Here's how it works.
The Bill Factory
NACL was founded in 2019 by Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator, and it doesn't do what a normal advocacy group does. It doesn't just lobby for bills; it writes them, finished, ready to introduce, and hands them to member legislators in statehouses across the country. That's why you'll sometimes see nearly identical bills pop up in Texas, Ohio, and Louisiana in the same legislative session, sponsored by different people who've never met, pushing the same paragraph-for-paragraph text. It's not organic. It's a franchise model for lawmaking, and the franchise has locations in 31 states.
The current menu includes a Texas-style abortion ban template, a mandate to post "In God We Trust" in public buildings, and, as of this year, a "Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act" aimed at public school curricula. Some state-level NACL affiliates have gone further, floating proposals to ban same-sex marriage outright and tie US currency to gold and silver. Theocracy and goldbug economics, same catalog.
The Man Behind the Catalog
Rapert isn't shy about the goal. He's called gay marriage "a stench in the nostrils of God" and publicly asked whether America can remain free "with drag queens running this place." He's described the separation of church and state as a myth, and framed his organization's work as part of a "spiritual struggle" against "Satan and his forces." Reasonable people can hold deep religious convictions. What's different here is that Rapert isn't asking Americans to be persuaded of his theology. He's writing it directly into statute.
David Barton, an architect closely tied to the network's legal strategy, has been blunter still with school boards weighing similar policies: "Hopefully somebody will sue you... We can win at that." That line is the tell. These bills aren't drafted to survive a straightforward constitutional challenge on their own merits. They're drafted to *invite* one, on the bet that a friendly Supreme Court will use the case to redraw the line between church and state for everyone, not just the district that gets sued first. The unconstitutional bill isn't a drafting error. It's the strategy.
What Separation of Church and State Actually Protects
It's worth saying plainly, because the messaging around these bills counts on people forgetting it: the First Amendment's establishment clause doesn't ban religion from public life. Nobody is coming for your right to pray, attend church, or raise your kids in your faith. What it bans is the government using its power to install one religion's rules over everyone else's, including the many other Christians, and the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and nonreligious Americans who don't share this particular reading of scripture. Separation of church and state isn't an attack on faith. It's the thing that keeps any single faith from being weaponized against every other one, including, someday, whichever faith currently holds power.
Research backs up what's at stake if that wall comes down further. PRRI's 2025 analysis found Christian nationalist belief associated with roughly a 40 percent decrease in support for LGBT political candidates, consistent across party lines. This isn't a fringe cultural preference playing out in a few red counties. It's an organized, well-funded, cross-state legislative apparatus with a specific and stated goal, and it currently has infrastructure in nearly two-thirds of the country's state legislatures.
Notice What They're Counting On
None of this required a national vote, a constitutional convention, or an honest public argument about whose beliefs should govern American law. It required a template, a mailing list, and legislators willing to introduce someone else's bill as their own. The people building this machine are counting on the daily chaos to keep you from noticing a theocracy being assembled one statehouse at a time.
Notice.
Their god may be real to them, and they're free to worship as they please. But no one elected him to govern the rest of us. And no one elected the lobby cashing in on his name.
Not left. Not right. Just tired of liars pretending we're stupid.
Sources
● Rolling Stone, "Christian Nationalists Are Building a Legislative Machine"
● NPR, "An Ohio pastor-turned-lawmaker backs a Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act for schools," May 2026
● NBC News, "Inside the anti-LGBTQ effort to put Christianity back in schools"
● Americans United for Separation of Church and State, "Federal anti-transgender 'bathroom ban' and other policies are rooted in Christian Nationalism," 2025
● PRRI, "Christian Nationalism: A 'Stained-Glass Ceiling' for LGBT Candidates?", 2025
