In Texas, a coalition of organizations called the Remnant Alliance is mobilizing congregations to take over local school boards.
STEVEN MONACELLI; monacelli@texasobserver.org
Monacelli is a freelance investigative journalist in Dallas. Last week, the Texas Observer published his reporting about the Remnant Alliance.
Monacelli told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “The Remnant Alliance was first announced in May-June 2023. The groups that make up the Alliance are nine different groups, some of which have been founded in the past four years, some of which go back further. What is notable about the majority of these groups is that their leaders are also members of the Council on National Policy, an organization that goes back to 1981 and the Reagan Revolution. [CNP] is effectively a secretive networking group for the Christian Right in particular, [and has] played a role in connecting major donors with activists who help plan and execute long-term political strategies.”
The Alliance is “making serious headway when it comes to bringing pastors and congregations into the fold,” Monacelli added. “A number of metrics show this is happening, [including] stats promoted by the organizations that [they have] hundreds if not thousands of pastors teaching biblical citizenship. [Biblical citizenship] encourages these pastors and congregants to view political activism as spiritual warfare––political activism as an avenue for spiritual revival.”
Monacelli describes how his research into school board races in the state of Texas brought him to the deeper connections that hadn’t been covered in-depth before, including reporting on groups like Kenneth Copeland Ministries––the ministry of the richest pastor in the U.S., based in north Texas. Monacelli attended a publicly-posted meeting where he found a collection of leaders all talking about how the “word of God relates to the Constitution. In this particular politically active church, 19 congregants had run for mostly local offices in 2022.” Their rhetoric around spiritual warfare has overlap with the New Apostolic Reformation [NAR] in particular, though the founders and leaders of the Remnant Alliance are “not necessarily a part of that specific theological lineage that scholars have described as the NAR… [But] the rhetoric has suffused into the culture.”
Monacelli brought attention to two important focuses of his reporting that might be overlooked. “First is the separation of church and state, and how these efforts fit into a broader effort to chip away at that separation. If you really listen to the language they use, like ‘the word of God comes before the Constitution,’ [it] indicates that [the U.S.] should be embedding Christian values into our law.”
The second point is related to the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision in the U.S. code that prevents nonprofit organizations from endorsing political candidates. “I don’t have hard evidence that these churches are violating the Johnson Amendment, but they are playing tapdance around it. There is an effort by the pastors and the Alliance to set the ground for the electoral politics they’d like to see. They talk about the sort of candidates [congregants] should support and the values [candidates] should have if they are truly biblical worldview candidates. It’s just a matter of handing off these energized congregants” to corporations like Patriot Mobile, which do engage in politics and have dumped [money] into local school board races as well as other conservative organizations like Turning Point USA. “Other organizations are popping up in a similar role––some more directly affiliated with churches than others. The Truth & Liberty Coalition, [for instance], has released a list of candidates that they say isn’t an endorsement.
“Like it or not, religion is going to be one of the main stories driving politics, particularly in Texas. My story focused on Texas, but [the Alliance is] active in other states, including swing states like Pennsylvania. If you look at where Citizens Defending Freedom has chapters, that’s where the Alliance is likely to be active if they’re not already: Florida, Texas, Oklahoma. It’s happening big in Texas, but it’s a multistate effort. The overlap with swing states is pretty telling. And it’s not everywhere in Texas; it’s usually in hotbed, fast-growing suburban areas around metropolitan cities, where demographics are shifting. [These places] may not be completely red, so they can play a big role in state level politics. If things shift on that level, then they can shift on a national level––and then suddenly everything looks very different.”
