Photo: Cengiz Yar/AFP/Getty Images

MIKE PENCE WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL CHRISTIAN SUPREMACIST

IN U.S. HISTORY

Jeremy Scahill
November 15 2016, 8:27 p.m.
THE ELECTION OF Donald Trump has sent shockwaves through the souls of
compassionate, humane people across the country and the world. Horror that a
candidate who ran on a platform of open bigotry, threats against immigrants and
Muslims, and blatant misogyny will soon be president is now sinking in. Trump
appointed a white nationalist, Steve Bannon, as chief White House strategist
which was promptly celebrated by the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.
Bannon and other possible extremist Trump appointees, such as John Bolton, a
neocon who believes the U.S. should bomb Iran, and the authoritarian Rudy
Giuliani, are now receiving much deserved public scrutiny.
The incoming vice president, Mike Pence, has not elicited the same reaction,
instead often painted as the reasonable adult on the ticket, a counterbalance
to Trump and a bridge to the establishment. However, there is every reason to
regard him as, if anything, even more terrifying than the president-elect.
Pences ascent to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a
tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence and his fellow Christian
supremacist militants would not have been able to win the White House on
their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend. This may not be our
preferred candidate, but that doesnt mean it may not be Gods candidate to do
something that we dont see, said David Barton, a prominent Christian-right
activist and president of Wall Builders, an organization dedicated to making the
U.S. government enforce biblical values. In June, Barton prophesied: We may
look back in a few years and say, Wow, [Trump] really did some things that none
of us expected.
Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an
extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors.
With Republican control of the House and Senate and the prospect of
dramatically and decisively tilting the balance of the Supreme Court to the far
right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at bringing the fire and
brimstone of the second coming to Washington.
The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. Thats the
only legitimate government, contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the

radical religious right, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the
Heart of American Power. So when they speak of business, theyre speaking
not of something separate from God, but theyre speaking of what, in Mike
Pences circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic
system is God-ordained.
One of Trumps sons, Don Jr., reportedly said that his fathers vice president
would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy, while Trump would focus on
the vague mission of Making America Great Again. Trumps campaign
subsequently claimed the story was made up, though Trump has consistently
denied saying things he is on record as saying, so who knows? In any case, the
implications of a Pence vice presidency are vast. Pence combines the most horrid
aspects of Dick Cheneys worldview with a belief that Tim LaHayes Left
Behind novels are not fiction, but an omniscient crystal ball.
While Trump has flip-flopped on a variety of issues, Pence has been a
reliable stalwart throughout his public life in the cause of Christian jihad.
How the GOP foisted Pence on Trump is undoubtedly a fascinating story that
hopefully will someday be revealed. Obviously, Pence gave Trump badly needed
credibility with evangelical voters and the GOP establishment, but Pences
selection portends a governing apocalypse. While Trump has flip-flopped on a
variety of issues, from abortion to immigration to war and health care, Pence has
been a reliable stalwart throughout his public life in the cause of Christian jihad
never wavering in his commitment to America-First militarism, the
criminalizing of abortion, and utter hatred for gay people (unless they go into
conversion therapy to change their sexual behavior, which Pence has suggested
the government pay for).
He supported making the Patriot Act permanent and wants to ban the burning of
the U.S. flag. Pence does not believe federal law enforcement agencies should
have to get a FISA warrant to conduct domestic surveillance and voted against
requiring any warrant for domestic wiretapping. As governor of Indiana, he
did quietly sign a bill to limit the use of Stingray devices by local law
enforcement, though it was during the early stages of the Snowden revelations
and the public concern about government surveillance was intense.
Pence supported giving retroactive immunity to telecom companies implicated in
warrantless surveillance. He does not want congressional oversight of CIA
interrogations which Trump believes should include waterboarding and other
torture a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding. Pence has paid lip service to
the illegality of torture but said that enhanced interrogation has saved lives.
He has characterized relationship-building, non-coercive interrogation

strategies as Oprah Winfrey methods. Pence

is against whistleblower protections that would prohibit retaliation for reporting
crimes or misdeeds. In 2002, the ACLU gave him a 7 percent rating on civil
rights.
He wants the U.S. to resume the practice of holding new prisoners at
Guantnamo Bay or, as Trump put it, they plan to fill it up. Pence also supports
expanded use of the military tribunal system.
Pence has claimed that he wants to economically isolate Iran rather than
engage in a military attack. But should Israel decide to conduct pre-emptive
strikes against Irans nuclear facilities, he said in 2010, if the world knows
nothing else, let the world know this: that America will stand with Israel. He
supported a failed legislative effort to make it U.S. policy to use all means
necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic
Republic of Iran, including the use of military force. Both in rhetoric and policy,
Pence has compared radical Islam to the evil empire of the Soviet Union
and said that he and Trump will name the enemy and marshal the resources of
our nation and our allies to hunt them down and destroy them before they
threaten us.
Well see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it
belongs, Pence promised.
As has been widely reported, as governor of Indiana, Pence signed a law
requiring fetal tissue from abortions to be buried or cremated, making his state
one of the most medieval in its approach to reproductive rights. The fetus burial
law, which Pence claimed would ensure the dignified final treatment of the
unborn, was suspended at the 11th hour by a federal judge, who said it was
likely unconstitutional. Pence has been at the forefront of the movement to
defund Planned Parenthood. Well see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of
history where it belongs, Pence promised. He has long sought to have 14th
Amendment protections applied to fetuses, arguing that they should be declared
persons. In Congress, Pence voted to criminally punish doctors who performed
late-term abortions, except in cases where the womans life was in danger. A
doctor who kills a human fetus faces up to two years in prison, according to
that law.
Pence opposed efforts to widen hate crimes laws to include attacks on LGBT
people. He tried to block federal funding of HIV treatments unless they came
with a requirement to advocate against gay relationships. Pence opposes nonstraight people serving in the military. Homosexuality is incompatible with

military service because the presence of homosexuals in the ranks weakens unit
cohesion, he said.
Pence believes the only truly safe sex is no sex and once (falsely) claimed on
CNN that condoms are a very, very poor protection against sexually
transmitted diseases.
Pence supports the wall Trump has said he will build, believes in selfdeportation, and has staked out one of the most virulent positions against the
U.S. taking in refugees from Syria. In defending a proposed ban on Syrian
refugees entering Indiana, Pence said it was necessary to ensure the safety and
security of all Hoosiers. He has advocated for greater militarization of the socalled war on drugs, including escalated military patrols. Pence denounced
activists and others protesting recent police killings of unarmed AfricanAmericans, charging they seize upon tragedy in the wake of police action
shootings. He said he found it offensive to use a broad brush to accuse law
enforcement of implicit bias or institutional racism and that really has got to
stop. He has said that police officers are the best of us.
Pence is a strong supporter of stop-and-frisk programs, which in New York were
used overwhelmingly against people of color. Its on a sound constitutional
footing, said Pence, who added that he wanted the practice expanded
nationwide. Stop-and-frisk literally saved lives in New York City when it was
implemented, and its been implemented in cities around the country.
One interesting difference between Pence and Trump centers on the First
Amendment. Trump has made clear he believes in waging war against a free
press and has encouraged hostility toward journalists covering his campaign.
While in Congress, Pence was a major force behind trying to get a federal shield
law to protect journalists rights to maintain confidential sources. A former
radio talk show host, Pence said he was inspired to act by the case of then-New
York Times reporter Judy Miller, who was imprisoned for refusing to answer
questions about her sources during the scandal over the outing of undercover
CIA operative Valerie Plame. No such law was ever passed and the bill provided
wide latitude to nullify the protections of journalists in national security
situations.
When he joined the ticket with Trump last summer, Pence claimed they
were internally reviewing the campaign policy on the treatment of journalists
covering Trump events. If anything, the situation worsened as the campaign
moved forward.
On health care, Pence is now on board with repealing the Affordable Care Act,
though as governor he did embrace the law in a pretty bold act of hypocrisy. He

also supported denying non-emergency care for people who cannot afford a
Medicare co-payment and opposed expanding the Childrens Health Insurance
Program.
Pence is what might be termed climate change curious, though earlier in his
political career, he wrote an essay in which he asserted, Global warming is a
myth. The global warming treaty is a disaster. There, I said it. More recently,
Pence has kind of acknowledged the fact-based nature of human action
contributing to climate change but opposes ending any of the industrial,
governmental, or corporate practices responsible. He has consistently advocated
withdrawing from climate change agreements and treaties. Pence has an
impressively atrocious record on environmental issues and a slavish devotion to
big energy and big oil companies.
He opposed government assistance to U.S. workers who lost their jobs because
of free trade agreements and has supported every neoliberal trade program
since his time in public office. Pence was a loud proponent of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership until he joined Trump on the ticket, and now he claims to be
pondering the wisdom of the agreement.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence sit together during an event at the Pastors
Leadership Conference at New Spirit Revival Center on Sept. 21, 2016, in
Cleveland, Ohio.
Photo: Evan Vucci/AP

MIKE PENCE WAS raised Catholic, in a Kennedy Democrat household, but he

has been a devout evangelical since being converted at a Christian music
festival in Kentucky while in college. Pence now describes himself as a Christian,
a Conservative, and a Republican, in that order. Even his political action
committees name gives off a crusader vibe: Principles Exalt a Nation.
Pence opposed imposing restrictions on no-bid contracting, which may help
explain his close relationship to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater. In
December 2007, three months after Blackwater operatives gunned down 17
Iraqi civilians in Baghdads Nisour Square, Pence and his Republican Study
Committee, which served the purpose of advancing a conservative social and
economic agenda in the House of Representatives, organized a gathering to
welcome Prince to Washington. But their relationship is not just forged in wars.
Prince and his mother, Elsa, have been among the top funders of scores of antigay-marriage ballot initiatives across the country and have played a key role in
financing efforts to criminalize abortion.
Prince has long given money to Pences political campaigns, and toward the end of
the presidential election, he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump/Pence
Super PAC Make America Number 1. Princes mother kicked in another $50,000.
Ironically, Erik Prince who portrays himself as a mix between Indiana Jones,
Rambo, Captain America, and Pope Benedict is now working with the Chinese
government through his latest private security firm.

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, participates in a House Oversight and

Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Oct. 2, 2007, in
Washington, D.C.
Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
THE PRINCE FAMILYS support for Pence, and the Christian supremacist
movement he represents, has deep roots.
Erik Princes father, Edgar, built up a very successful manufacturing business in
Holland, Michigan, and became one of the premier bankrollers of what came to
be known as the radical religious right. They gave Gary Bauer the seed money to
start the Family Research Council and poured money into James Dobsons Focus
on the Family. Ed Prince was not an empire builder. He was a Kingdom builder,
Bauer recalled soon after the elder Princes death. For him, personal success
took a back seat to spreading the Gospel and fighting for the moral restoration
of our society. Erik Princes sister Betsy married Dick DeVos, whose father,
Richard, founded the multilevel marketing firm Amway and went on to own the
Orlando Magic basketball team. The two families merged together like the
monarchies of old Europe and swiftly emerged as platinum-level contributors to
far-right Christian causes and political figures.
The Prince and DeVos families gave the seed money for what came to be known
as the Republican Revolution when Newt Gingrich became House speaker in 1994
on a far-right platform known as the Contract with America. The Prince and
DeVos clans also invested heavily in a scheme developed by Dobson to engage in
back-door lobbying activities by forming prayer warrior networks of people
who would call politicians to advocate for Dobsons religious and political agenda.
Instead of lobbying, which the organization would have been prohibited from
doing because of its tax and legal status, they would claim they were praying
for particular policies.
The Princes consistently poured money into criminalizing abortion, privatizing
education, blocking gay rights, and other right-wing causes centered around
their interpretation of Christianity. The family, especially Erik, was very close to
Richard Nixons hatchet man, Watergate conspirator Charles Chuck Colson.
The author of Nixons enemies list, Colson was the first person sentenced in the
Watergate scandal, after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the
investigation of the dirty tricks campaign against Daniel Ellsberg, the
whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Colson
became a born-again Christian before going to prison, and after his release, he
started the Prison Fellowship, which sought to convert prisoners to Christianity

to counter what Colson saw as the Islamic menace in U.S. prisons. Erik Prince
funded this as well and went on prison visits with Colson.
Theres a coalescing idea that somehow, obviously, God is doing something
with Trump.
All of these figures, bankrolled by the Prince family, are the ideological and
theological ascendants of Mike Pence, who called Colson a dear friend and
mentor. Colson and his allies viewed the administration of Bill Clinton as a
secular regime and openly contemplated a faith-based revolution. In the early
90s, Colson teamed up with conservative evangelical minister-turned-Catholic
priest Richard Neuhaus and others to build a unified movement. That work
ultimately led in 1994 to the controversial document Evangelicals and Catholics
Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium. (Note: I wrote
extensively about this in my book Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most
Powerful Mercenary Army and drew heavily on that for this story.) Pence has
described himself as a born-again, evangelical Catholic.
The ECT manifesto declared:
The century now drawing to a close has been the greatest century of missionary
expansion in Christian history. We pray and we believe that this expansion has
prepared the way for yet greater missionary endeavor in the first century of
the Third Millennium. The two communities in world Christianity that are most
evangelistically assertive and most rapidly growing are Evangelicals and
Catholics.
The signatories called for a unification of these religions in a common missionary
cause, that all people will come to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
They asserted that religion is privileged and foundational in our legal order and
spelled out the need to defend the moral truths of our constitutional order.
The document was most passionate in its opposition to abortion, calling abortion
on demand a massive attack on the dignity, rights, and needs of women.
Abortion is the leading edge of an encroaching culture of death. It also called
for moral education in schools, advocating for educational institutions that
transmit to coming generations our cultural heritage, which is inseparable from
the formative influence of religion, especially Judaism and Christianity.
The ECT signers, according to author Damon Linker who worked for Neuhaus
for years had not only forged a historic theological and political alliance.
They had also provided a vision of Americas religious and political future. It
would be a religious future in which upholding theological orthodoxy and moral
traditionalism overrode doctrinal disagreements. And it would be a political

future in which the most orthodox and traditionalist Christians set the public
tone and policy agenda for the nation.
In November 1996 the month Clinton crushed Bob Dole and won re-election
an organ of what Linker termed the theoconservative movement, Richard
Neuhauss journal First Things, published a symposium titled The End of
Democracy? Acknowledging that it might be viewed as irresponsibly
provocative and even alarmist, the symposium bluntly questioned whether we
have reached or are reaching the point where conscientious citizens can no
longer give moral assent to the existing regime. A series of essays raised the
prospect of a major confrontation between the church and the regime, at
times seeming to predict a civil-war scenario or Christian insurrection against
the government, exploring possibilities ranging from noncompliance to
resistance to civil disobedience to morally justified revolution.
Chuck Colson authored one of the five major essays in the issue, as did the
extremist judge Robert Bork, whom Reagan had tried unsuccessfully to appoint
to the Supreme Court in 1987. Colsons essay was titled Kingdoms in Conflict.
Events in America may have reached the point where the only political action
believers can take is some kind of direct, extra-political confrontation of the
judicially controlled regime, Colson wrote, adding that a showdown between
church and state may be inevitable. This is not something for which Christians
should hope. But it is something for which they need to prepare.
Dobson said the essays laid an indisputable case for the illegitimacy of the
regime now passing itself off as a democracy, adding, I stand in a long
tradition of Christians who believe that rulers may forfeit their divine mandate
when they systematically contravene the divine moral law. We may rapidly be
approaching the sort of Rubicon that our spiritual forebears faced: Choose
Caesar or God. I take no pleasure in this prospect; I pray against it. But it is
worth noting that such times have historically been rejuvenating for the faith.

Mike Pence looks out over the crowd as President Barack Obama answers a
question at the Republican GOP House Issues Conference in Baltimore, Maryland,
on Jan. 29, 2010.
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
TODAY, PENCE AND his allies have warded off the return of another secular
Clinton regime that their ideological and theological prophets once contemplated
overthrowing. They will now have the opportunity to build the temple they have
long desired. Secular viewers forget that King David wasnt always such a nice
guy in the Bible, but he was Gods chosen man, said Jeff Sharlet. So theres a
coalescing idea that somehow, obviously, God is doing something with Trump.
Donald Trumps grasp of the bible is certainly not up to the standards of Pence
and the religious zealots behind him. Two Corinthians 3:17, thats the whole
ballgame, Trump declared in the same way he spits out Make America Great
Again in front of an audience at an evangelical college on the campaign trail.
People laughed. At him. It is Second Corinthians.
Perhaps that episode is telling. The radical religious right doesnt need to save
Trumps soul. As they saw in the campaign, Trump has staked out a hateful
agenda one that tracks quite well with the crusades of Pence and his fellow
apostles. Even if elements of Trumps vile rhetoric and his various threats were
a psychotic form of performance art, or mere opportunistic political strategy, as
some suggest, they have set the stage for the pursuit of a civilizational war that
poses a dire threat to vulnerable populations throughout the world. President
Obama, Hillary Clinton, and a slew of prominent Democrats have publicly said

that Americans should give Trump a chance. With Mike Pence seated at the
right hand of the father, running foreign and domestic policy, they will do so at
their peril.