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Moms for Liberty Summit: Trans-Bashing, Book-Banning & Christ-Washing American History [1]
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Date: 2023-07-18
The past forty-plus years have given rise to numerous right-wing political and religious organizations that have impacted the politics of the country. These include Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America, Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, the Tea Party, QAnon, Trump’s MAGA Army. Outrage, moral absolutism, anti-government sentiment, attacks on the “other”, and the wielding of political power are the connective tissues to all these groups.
To paraphrase actress Gloria Swanson in the movie Sunset Blvd.: “America. Moms for Liberty is ready for its close-up,” and greater scrutiny then its been given thus far by the mainstream press.!
The recent Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors National Summit at a Marriott hotel in downtown Philadelphia was not only a display of the toxicity that will surround the 2024 election cycle, but also provided an example of Christ-washing American history. The overriding meme of the summit wasn’t so much “Make America Great Again,” as it was to “take our country back for Christ.” Speaker after speaker railed about the breakdown of American society; “the whole society has decayed” said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: Donald Trump told the gathering that if Republicans lose in 2024, “there’s no coming back.” Other “contenders” for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination railed against “wokeism,” “transgenderism,” “critical race theory,” and “climatism.”
Among the prominent Christ-washers was Tim Barton, the son of the Christian Right’s favorite “historian” David Barton and current president of Wallbuilders, the Christian nationalist organization founded by his father. As Chrissy Stroop reported for Religion Dispatches (
https://religiondispatches.org/apocalyptic-rhetoric-at-moms-for-liberty-summit-illustrates-political-challenge-of-2024/), Barton told the crowd that, “The most influential source for the Founding Fathers was the Bible” and that America might not survive, “Because you removed the Biblical foundation that allowed freedom to work.”
Stroop, who grew up attending evangelical Christian schools, reported that “Appeals to divine authority and divine callings, as the right-wing organizers behind Moms for Liberty are well aware, can be an effective means of mobilizing people for political action—particularly in conjunction with the targeting of scapegoated ‘others’. In addition to Tim Barton’s sacralized ‘history,’ their summit featured a ‘For Such a Time as This’ award ceremony—a reference to the Hebrew book of Esther, in which God uses a woman to save the ancient Jewish people, a story that evangelicals invested in ‘spiritual warfare’ commonly invoke as an example to emulate (much like they used the biblical story of the Battle of Jericho in the run-up to the January 6 insurrection).”
Trump, the multi-indicted and twice-impeached former president received “the most enthusiastic reception” and “used the most explicit God talk,” Stroop noted. He “referred to the ‘joyful warriors’ in the audience as victims of ‘demented persecution,’ spoke of the importance of religious liberty, bragged about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade thanks to justices he appointed, and claimed that Moms for Liberty’s political opponents ‘hate religion’ and ‘hate God.’”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the rapidly expanding Moms for Liberty, founded in 2021 as an “anti-government extremist group.” “MFL made its name in school board meetings, protesting COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates. Their efforts quickly evolved into combating inclusive education and LGBTQ+ acceptance in schools and communities by pushing the narrative that children are being indoctrinated and sexualized through a radical “Marxist” agenda. Their tactics include advocating bans of books about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, attacking the inclusion of hard histories in school curriculum, and targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community,” the SPLC’s Maya Hensen Carey recently reported (
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2023/06/29/moms-liberty-summit-injects-extremism-mainstream).
Fox News’ David Marcus commented that “the media, for the most part, were not allowed into the breakout sessions where strategy was discussed, but can you really blame them for this?” After all, wrote Marcus, “Time and again the news media has twisted Moms for Liberty words into unrecognizable knots of hatred. Why would the group welcome more of that?”
In a thorough going report on the Summit, The Daily Beast’s Kate Briquelet noted that Moms for Liberty are an important enough of a group to have attracted numerous protesters (
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-moms-for-liberty-summit-in-philly-we-saw-ron-desantis-furry-panic-and-lots-of-trump-merch). And that while “none of these training workshops were open to the media, … several reporters would still gain access. “
MfL co-founder Tiffany Justice spoke at the “Such A Time As This” awards show, which Briquelet noted was “named after the Bible verse Esther 4:14 and in reference to God putting them in a position to fulfill a purpose.” Justice told the audience: “I just feel like we have been called to do this in a very special way.”
She went on: “The mission statement of Moms for Liberty is that we're fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government. And it has helped us to stay on mission, right, to be controlling the national conversation right now in the media. America is seeing who you are right now. And it is beautiful, beautiful.”
Noting that leftists were out to destroy the movement, Justice said: “You and I both know, if you don’t stand now, what’s the future for your children? It is bleak. It is dark. There will be—there will be death. I do not know how else to say that except for the fact that if you are a student of history, if you watch what has happened in this world before … There are beautiful times, there are some very dark times.”
Mother Jones’ Kiera Butler also attended the Summit. Her story was headlined “My Deeply Unsettling Return to the Moms for Liberty Conference” and subtitled: “Beneath the ‘joyful warrior’ cosplay was a startlingly dark agenda” (
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/07/moms-for-liberty-conference/).
Butler noted that “Moms for Liberty’s growth in political influence has been remarkable. Of the 500 right-wing candidates the group endorsed for school board last year, three-quarters of whom had never before run, 275 won their races. In Florida, the group says, 80 percent of its endorsed candidates won.”
Butler also described what is now being called the “Hitler Oopsie,” Prior to the Summit, “The leader of a chapter of the group in Indiana had published a newsletter for its members that prominently displayed a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler: ‘He alone who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future,’ it read. An image of the newsletter went viral, and the incident made national news—and, … not in a good way. Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. pulled out of speaking at the summit a few days later. His campaign claimed it was because his schedule had changed, but you had to wonder if the stain of Hitler didn’t have something to do with it. ‘We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history,’ the Indiana chapter chair wrote in her public apology. ‘We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology.’”
Some mainstream reporting on the Summit was perhaps just as troubling as the activities inside the Marriott. Butler noted that “ABC had published an even-handed article by two journalists who painted a picture of a level-headed bunch of no-nonsense moms fed up with an increasingly illiberal approach to education. ‘Democrats seek to paint these moms as members of the GOP base rather than swing voters up for grabs, highlighting how Moms for Liberty has backed book bans,’ they wrote.
“Reading ABC’s piece a few days after the conference ended, I marveled not at its neutral tone, but at how much simply had been ignored. Had these reporters and I actually been at the same conference? Had they heard about the breakout session where JC Hall argued that to celebrate the emancipation from slavery was to erase the accomplishments of great Black Americans? Had they not seen the Hitler Oopsie transform before their eyes from an embarrassing gaffe to a badge of valor?”
“But there was also a more troubling possibility,” Butler wrote: “Maybe, the reporters hadwitnessed all that I had, and it just seemed a new kind of normal.”
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