How Christian Nationalists Make Human Rights Conditional

Yesterday, we covered the origin of the White Christian Nationalist interpretation of the Apostle Paul’s writings. In their reading of the Bible, Paul is the true hero of the New Testament and the original WCN male victim.

Before I get to today’s piece, I am not here to explore other interpretations of Paul, though I’m happy for anyone who’s curious to read yesterday’s comments. My goal has always been to deconstruct WCN views, explain their origins, and help readers recognize WCN in the wild.

Now let’s continue.

In Project 2025’s prologue, Kevin Roberts - president of The Heritage Foundation; extremist Catholic; possibly affiliated with the Catholic cult Opus Dei; said the second American revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it to be - equated the fundamental rights our Constitution grants with a passage in Romans.

Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought.

Project 2025, page 13

Roberts lays out what this phrase means in the sentences before he introduces it.

When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish.

Project 2025, page 13

According to them, doing what we ought means the following:

• Accepting that we were born with a sinful, broken nature because of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Genesis Garden of Eden (St. Augustine’s invented Doctrine of Original Sin)

• Rejecting the bondage of our original natures by embracing WCN faith - again, they do not agree about how one becomes a Christian - and becoming SPIRITUALLY free. To them, WCN spiritual freedom is the only true freedom, which instills adherents with the tools to do not what they want but what they ought.

• WCN spiritual freedom divorces a human being from their self. Their bodies belong to WCN God; their freedom comes from doing what not what they want but what they ought (as defined by WCN men); thus, they have no right to physical human rights or bodily autonomy.

Here’s how Religion News defines this tenet of WCN dogma. In an article on the SAVE Voter Suppression and Elimination Act that aims to rob millions of women of the right to vote, Rabbi A. Brian Stoller explains WCN CONDITIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS thusly:

Americans’ freedoms flow not from the “inherent natural rights” Washington described, but from the country’s Christian character. In that framework, rights are not simply guaranteed — they are conditioned by a particular understanding of national identity.

SOURCE: Religion News, Christian nationalism makes our rights conditional — just look at the SAVE Act, 25 March 2026 HERE

This 21 August 2025 article from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation explains who would be considered fully human in a WCN freedom to do not what we want but what we ought society:

Christian Nationalism Envisions a Specific Preferred Citizen. Christian nationalism embraces a historical narrative of the United States being created by White, male, Christian, able-bodied, heterosexual capitalists. This group (and their wives and children) is believed to deserve preferential access to civil rights, social benefits, and political power.

SOURCE: Charles F. Kettering Foundation, How Christian Nationalism Weakens Democracy and What Can Be Done about It, 21 Aug 2025 HERE

White Christian Nationalist able-bodied, heterosexual capitalist men are at the top of society.

This won’t be a matter of saying I’m a Christian or I’m a Christian Nationalist. Those in power will design a constant litany of purity tests to 1. keep themselves at the top; 2. create a useful cult of sycophants; and 3. make examples of anyone who threatens their hold on power.

We can see this dynamic between Pete Hegseth and his spiritual daddy, Doug Wilson. Hegseth projects WCN masculinity to his subordinates but becomes a simpering, genuflecting puddle in the presence of his spiritual daddy. That’s because Wilson is the one at the top of the hierarchy here - the one who really controls the Pentagon in my view - and Hegseth must perform these purity tests to please his daddy.

Wives and children of WCN men above will be property of their husbands but will have more rights than anyone beneath them.

The females will remain property from womb to tomb. They won’t be able to vote, work outside the home, or hold public office. Their human rights will be conditioned upon ENFORCING THIS HIERARCHY and grooming children to play their WCN roles as adults.

Their WCN husbands will be graded on how well their wives and children conform, part of the purity tests mentioned in the previous section. Recalcitrant wives and/or children could cause a WCN man not to advance, so of course, he will be free to punish his family however he pleases.

Everyone else in society will fall beneath these two tiers. Their conditional rights will be decided by this general system:

• White able-bodied heterosexual capitalist men who are Christians but not Christian nationalists.

• Their white wives and children. In both of these tiers, there’s hope for more White Christian Nationalists. Rights will be conditional to entice these two groups into the next tier.

• White people who refuse to embrace Christianity, with men having more rights than women and children.

• Peoples of Color, regardless of immigration status, religion, or full embrace of WCN. No matter how much they comply, this group will always fall behind white people, and they will be divided into male/female/children tiers similar to above. This was never about illegal immigration.

• The disabled. This will likely include mental illness and political dissent as well as physical disabilities, all of which will be classified as derived from demon-possession and spiritual sin. I’m not listing political dissent separately, because I believe it will be framed as mental incapacity in order to institutionalize people against their will.

• The elderly. Treated similarly to the disabled. See above.

• People who transgress WCN religious laws. This will include the LGBTQIA+ community and transgender people, as well as those who refuse to form traditional WCN families and conform to prescribed WCN roles. Non-compliant women and those of other faiths and no faith will face a slew of punishments here.

In order to push back against this system, the rest of us have to define basic human rights, list what they are, and fight for a system grounded in the recognition of those rights.

We’ve started that process as a group at the We the People tab in this space. GO HERE to access it. I reproduced our running list below:

A new Constitution with fundamental rights spelled out in the document, not an attached Bill of Rights. It specifically states that ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL and spells out that this country will no longer give preference to rich, white, Christian men. Make equal rights for ALL POPULATIONS part of the Constitution.

1. Make abortion and bodily autonomy for women and the LGBTQIA+/trans communities Constitutional rights.

2. Make marriage equality a Constitutional right.

3. Build equal rights for women into the Constitution. Given this country’s history, it won’t be enough to say ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL. We must spell out what we mean.

4. State that Peoples of Color ARE EQUAL PEOPLE. Spell out what that means. And commit to a dollar amount of reparations for slavery of Black people and robbery of Indigenous people.

5. Universal Healthcare is a basic human right.

6. A home is a basic human right.

7. Food is a basic human right.

8. Water is a basic human right.

9. Define separation of church and state as NO RELIGION BELONGS IN GOVERNMENT. PERIOD.