One Nation Under God:

Christian Nationalism, Project 2025,

What It Means for America

If you walked into Doug Wilson’s Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, you’d hear a message that resonates far beyond one small town. Wilson is one of many voices in a broader Christian nationalist movement that has gained new traction as President Trump and his administration advance goals long championed by this ideology. The movement blends hard‑line theology with a vision for reshaping American civic life, and it is no longer confined to pulpits or fringe gatherings. It has built schools, publishing houses, and media platforms designed to model what it calls a godly society, while promoting a revisionist reading of American history that casts the United States as a “Christian Republic.”

At its core, the movement envisions a nation governed by biblical law. Leaders describe America as a “backslidden Christian republic” that must be restored to its true foundation. Their ultimate goal is theocratic: a society ordered by Christian principles, with the belief that such a transformation would hasten the second coming of Christ. The strategy is incremental, beginning with families and communities and extending outward into schools, businesses, and eventually the legal and governmental systems. Project 2025 translates that theology into policy, offering a step‑by‑step plan to restructure the federal government around those same principles.

Legal objectives

The legal objectives are explicit. Proposals include amending the Constitution to reference the Apostles’ Creed, restricting public office to practicing Christians, revisiting Supreme Court decisions such as Obergefell v. Hodges (the 2015 ruling that legalized same‑sex marriage), and even echoing movement rhetoric that calls for a “household vote” system — where the male head of household casts a ballot on behalf of his family. While not formally part of Project 2025’s published policy, this idea resonates with legislative efforts like the SAVE Act. That bill requires voters to present documentary proof of citizenship, but women who changed their names through marriage often face extra hurdles: producing marriage certificates or court decrees to reconcile mismatched records. Men, who rarely change their names, are far less likely to encounter these barriers — making the law’s burden uneven and discriminatory in practice. Together, these proposals sketch a blueprint for reshaping the republic on biblical terms, replacing the neutral framework of secular governance with one that privileges a narrow religious identity.

From pulpit to Pentagon

Former Fox News host — and now Defense Secretary — Pete Hegseth has repeatedly amplified Wilson’s sermons and writings on social media, praising his vision of a “Christian America.” More than amplification, Hegseth is now building the U.S. military in the image of Wilson’s theology: banning transgender service members, scrubbing diversity initiatives, and framing the armed forces as a Christian bulwark against secular “domestic enemies.” His appointment reflected not conventional defense credentials but ideological fidelity to the movement’s Christian nationalist vision. His trajectory shows how Wilson’s once‑fringe theology has moved from a small Idaho church into the command structure of the Pentagon.

Personnel and power

Project 2025’s long‑term success relies on its federal agency staffing blueprint. The plan includes a vetted loyalist database of over 10,000 names and a Presidential Administration Academy to train appointees in movement‑aligned governance. While the number of graduates placed in federal roles has not been disclosed, the academy is designed to seed every department with loyalists who share the movement’s ideological goals.

At least 31 former Trump officials are tied to Project 2025, and several now hold senior roles. Russell Vought, who authored the project’s executive branch blueprint, has been renominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Peter Navarro, a Project 2025 trade chapter author, now serves as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Ken Cuccinelli and Paul Dans, both central to the project’s personnel strategy, have returned to senior advisory posts. E.J. Antoni, a Heritage economist who frames fiscal policy in explicitly Christian terms, has been nominated to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ben Carson has re‑emerged in housing policy. These appointments show that the vetted loyalist database is not theoretical — it is already being used to seed federal agencies with aligned personnel.

The strategy extends into the courts and enforcement systems as well. Project 2025 builds on the Trump‑era reshaping of the federal judiciary, where judges vetted by the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society now hold lifetime appointments. Many of these judges have issued rulings narrowing abortion rights, LGBTQ+ protections, and the separation of church and state. Affiliated groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty have been central to these cases, aligning litigation with Project 2025’s goals. The plan also envisions greater presidential control over prosecutors, including the power to remove local district attorneys who decline to pursue cases in line with federal priorities. Together, these moves ensure that both the enforcement and interpretation of law are brought under the influence of the movement’s vetted loyalist network.

Schedule F: The key lever

Schedule F, created by executive order in 2020, would reclassify tens of thousands of policy‑related civil service jobs, stripping them of long‑standing protections and making them subject to dismissal at will. Analysts estimate that as many as half a million roles could be affected, from economists and scientists to lawyers and analysts. By reinstating Schedule F, the administration could purge career officials and replace them with candidates drawn from the vetted loyalist database — transforming the civil service from a nonpartisan institution into an extension of partisan and religiously aligned governance.

President Trump has publicly distanced himself from the plan, saying “I have nothing to do with Project 2025. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely.” Yet on the campaign trail, he told Christian voters at the Believers’ Summit: “Vote just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore… Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” While his campaign later framed the remark as hyperbole, critics saw it as a chilling promise to dismantle democratic norms.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

In 2025, President Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE — by executive order, appointing Elon Musk to lead it. The name, a wink to Musk’s Dogecoin brand, symbolized a tech‑driven “disruption” of government. But DOGE’s real mission was not fiscal discipline; it was ideological restructuring. Agencies that advanced diversity, climate science, or public health were gutted or folded into friendlier departments, while DOGE’s official website exaggerated its impact by double‑counting cuts and rebranding existing reductions as new savings. Instead of delivering the promised $2 trillion in efficiencies, federal spending actually rose, exposing DOGE as a political instrument rather than a budgetary one.

Education as a frontline

Project 2025 places education at the heart of its agenda, calling for the elimination of the Department of Education and shifting control of curricula to states and local districts. The goal is not just administrative change but cultural realignment: replacing federal standards with instruction rooted in biblical morality and “patriotic” history. That vision includes a revisionist retelling of America’s past. Lesson plans are expected to emphasize the nation as a divinely inspired Christian republic, while downplaying slavery, Indigenous dispossession, and systemic racism. By controlling how history and morality are taught, the movement lays the groundwork for a society governed not by pluralism, but by biblical law.

Health, gender, and cultural language

In health policy, the movement has pushed to roll back vaccine requirements, weaken public health agencies, and frame reproductive care as a moral threat, even though most Americans see it as a medical right. Research shows that Christian nationalist affiliation is one of the strongest predictors of anti‑vaccine sentiment in the United States — more so than political party, education level, or income.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now serving as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has long been one of the most prominent anti‑vaccine voices in the United States. His appointment aligns with Project 2025’s broader effort to weaken public health infrastructure and sow distrust in scientific consensus. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy claimed he was “not anti‑vaccine” and described himself as “pro‑safety,” prompting a protester to shout, “He lies!” Senators from both parties challenged the discrepancy between his testimony and his decades of public statements linking vaccines to autism and chronic illness — claims that have been repeatedly debunked. Since taking office, Kennedy has purged top medical experts from advisory panels, amplified vaccine misinformation, and pushed policies that critics say will further erode public trust and lower vaccination rates. His actions reflect a core tenet of Christian nationalist governance: replacing scientific authority with ideologically aligned messaging, even when it endangers public health.

On gender, the movement rejects both science and lived reality. It insists on a two‑gender orthodoxy rooted in biblical law, while emerging science shows sex and gender identity exist along a spectrum. That binary framework — male and female, fixed and divinely ordained — has deep roots in Christian teaching and is now being re‑asserted in political form. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, nearly 14 million U.S. adults — about 5.5% of the population — identify as LGBTQ+, with nearly one in six adults aged 18–24 identifying as LGBTQ. Yet hardline Christian nationalists often dismiss these identities as a matter of personal choice, using that claim to justify efforts to roll back protections and narrow who counts as a legitimate participant in public life.

Language and the politics of erasure

Language ties these efforts together. The term “woke,” once a call to awareness and equity, has been reframed into a catch‑all slur used to delegitimize policies that help marginalized groups. By branding inclusion as ideological extremism, the movement normalizes rollbacks in rights and resources while casting opposition as moral purification rather than political discrimination. The result isn’t overt bans so much as a steady thinning of visibility, protections, and institutional support — the quiet bureaucracy of exclusion. That linguistic turn translates into policy: redefining diversity, equity, and inclusion as “politicized indoctrination” provides bureaucratic cover to dismantle programs that made public life more accessible to those long pushed to the margins.