Robinson began his speech by thanking God and declaring that anyone who doesn’t agree that the United States is a Christian nation is free to go live somewhere else.

“You can leave God’s country, and we will not miss you,” Robinson said.

Later, Robinson told the crowd that they are God’s regiment on Earth and “the living embodiment” of all those who have sacrificed their lives in defense of this nation.

“Tell our enemies on the other side of the aisle that will drag this nation down into a socialist hellhole that you will only do it as you run past me laying on the ground, choking on my own blood because I will not give up this nation to you!” Robinson bellowed. “It is not yours. You did not build it, you did not defend it, and you will not own it. We will. The Christian patriots of this nation will own this nation and rule this nation and help freedom survive for future generations.”

“Let’s be very clear,” Stone declared. “God himself gave Donald Trump the strength and the courage and the wisdom to pardon me. On the morning I was arrested—at 6:06 in the morning—the night before I’d fallen asleep reading the Bible. And when I heard the pounding on the door, I looked down, and the Bible was open to Psalms 16:8: ‘I will not be shaken.'”

Bishop Patrick Wooden of North Carolina is a viciously anti-LGBTQ right-wing pastor who has claimed, among other things, that gay men have to wear diapers because they routinely insert cellphones, baseball bats, and animals into their anuses.

Naturally, Wooden is close allies with North Carolina’s Christian nationalist Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is likewise vehemently opposed to efforts to promote LGBTQ rights and equality. With Robinson under fire over a clip Right Wing Watch posted of him ranting that Christians must take control of public schools because “there’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth,” Wooden is predictably coming to Robinson’s defense.

On Thursday, Wooden posted a video on his YouTube channel in which he praised Robinson’s comments, asserted that those who have criticized Robinson are racist, dismissed local LGBTQ leaders as “losers,” and reported that Robinson’s right-wing supporters had gathered with him Wednesday to hold “a big prayer meeting” amid the controversy. (...)

One of the nation’s most prominent religious conservative lawyers played a critical behind-the-scenes role in the lawsuit that Republican state attorneys general filed in December in a last-ditch effort to overturn the election of President Biden, documents show.

The lawyer, Michael P. Farris, is the chief executive of a group known as Alliance Defending Freedom, which is active in opposing abortion and gay rights. He circulated a detailed draft of the lawsuit that Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, ultimately filed against states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin in an effort to help President Donald J. Trump remain in office.

Mr. Paxton filed the lawsuit on Dec. 7, after making some changes but keeping large chunks of the draft circulated by Mr. Farris.

An additional 17 Republican attorneys general filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit. Within four days, the matter was rejected by the court.

But Mr. Farris’s role highlighted how religious conservatives supported Mr. Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to retain power by blocking certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. (...)

Mr. Farris’s involvement in the effort, which has not previously been reported, came as part of a broad push by religious conservatives to get Mr. Trump re-elected. Their role intensified after the pandemic hit in early 2020 and states began to loosen absentee ballot rules, which the religious conservatives feared would lead to a surge in participation by liberal voters.

Mr. Farris made a name for himself in the 1980s as the founder of a legal group that successfully pushed states nationwide to allow children to be taught at home, based on a belief that only through home-schooling, away from secular influences in public schools, could a broad Christian movement rise in the United States. (...)

E.W. Jackson, a right-wing pastor who was the Republican Party’s nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor in 2013, told religious-right activists at the Family Research Council’s “Pray Vote Stand” conference Thursday that Marxism, socialism, “transgenderism,” homosexuality, and abortion are works of the devil, and that “God wants to intervene in the rotten here and now and bring us out of this mess that we are in.”

Jackson, whose radio show is broadcast on the American Family Association’s radio network, told attendees that “the problem that we have in America is ultimately not political and ultimately not cultural. It is spiritual.”

The United States, he said, is a “providential” nation and “a gift from Almighty God”:

Patriotism comes from the word “pater,” meaning love of or honor of the father. And it’s not just about our Founding Fathers; it’s about the Father God who gave us this nation. And if you really believe that this nation is the gift that God gave to you, to your children, and to your grandchildren, then you ought to be willing to say, “I’m not going to let some bunch of Marxists and socialists and communists take this nation away and rob my posterity of the great gift that God has given us.”

Jackson told activists that Christians have a responsibility “to destroy the works of the devil,” adding:

Marxism is a work of the devil! Socialism is a work of the devil! Transgenderism is a work of the devil! Homosexuality is a work of the devil! Abortion is the work of the devil! And we say, “Satan, we’re going to tear your kingdom down!”

Jackson also denounced “critical race theory,” railing against the caricature of that academic field of study that right-wing groups have used to rile up and mobilize parents and activists, saying, “All of this racial division is the work of the devil.” He claimed that children as young as 3 months old are being taught that they are either an oppressor or the oppressed “based upon the complexion of your skin.”

“They used to tell me, ‘How can you as a Black man not support Barack Obama?’ I said, ‘It’s very easy—Barack Obama doesn’t support Jesus and I don’t support him,” he added. (...)

The bishops plan to discuss the draft at their annual meeting in November but have clarified there is no national policy banning politicians from communion.

But the pope, this month, advised bishops against denying the Eucharist for political reasons. "I have never refused the Eucharist to anyone," he said, adding it isn’t a "prize for the perfect."

Several Republican members of Congress, North Carolina state legislators, various candidates for office, and radical religious-right activists gathered at Temple Baptist Church in Mount Airy, North Carolina, last weekend for the North Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Salt & Light Conference.”

Among the politicians in attendance was Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who used his time in front of his home state crowd to declare that he is waging a “spiritual battle” in the supposedly “evil and vile” Washington, D.C., against people like Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her “cold, evil eyes.”

“I believe that the power of prayer will save this country in the coming decades,” Cawthorn said. “When I’m in Washington, D.C., I know a lot of you consider the place to be evil and vile, and I am here to tell you with first-hand knowledge, it is evil and vile. But I will tell you when I’m there, I don’t feel an overwhelming sense of darkness as if the devil has complete dominion of that area because I feel a spiritual battle going on on Capitol Hill. And patriots like all of you in this room, on your knees, praying that we have the cover within the spiritual fight is what it will take to save this country.”

“I have to look Nancy Pelosi in her cold, evil eyes every single day,” he continued. “She just passed a bill yesterday trying to say that we can abort babies on demand all the way up until right before the day of birth. When we hear this, when we hear the fact that if a baby comes through a botched abortion alive, sitting there on the table, they then still have the right to murder that child, we realize that when I quip and say, ‘I look her in her cold, evil eyes,’ it’s not a joke. These people hate us.” (...)