Square inches and Project Blitz

“It’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side; it’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this,” David Barton said, or so he was quoted in the Sunday NY Times. Barton is a historian and one of just four members of a steering committee aiming to flood state governments with legislative action meant to turn America into the kind of Christian nation Barton and his cohorts believe it should be.

What he's talking about is a bill in the Minnesota legislature designed to make it legal for a teacher to put a sign up in his or her classroom that says, "In God We Trust." Or, legislation in Oklahoma to allow foster care agencies to discriminate according to their own beliefs.

The whole movement, the Times says, something called "Project Blitz," is being mounted to move America back to what Barton and others consider the nation's Christian roots. Today, it's "In God We Trust" in public schools, and tomorrow it's promoting legislation which would allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against the LBGTQ's among us. Think wedding cakes.

Their animus isn't based in out-and-out discrimination, or so says Katharine Stewart, whose book The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, probably preaches a different sermon, but to our economy. They can prove, they say, that LBGTQ people simply cost society so much more. In other words, they claim it's a pocketbook argument that only secondarily has to do with sin or righteousness.

A reference at the end of Ms. Stewart's op-ed bowled me over, a quote from a man named Bill Dallas, another Project Blitz steering committee member, who is working the social media angle in an effort to get out the vote among Christian fundamentalists. “What we do is track to see what’s going to make somebody either vote one way, or not vote at all.” Stewart then quoted Mr. Dallas, in a video introduction he made with an organization in Florida, where he brought up the name of someone very near and dear the hearts of those who determine mission and purpose at the college where I taught for 37 years. "In October 2016, Mr. Dallas offered a neat summary of his political philosophy," Stewart says, "one built on an idea by Abraham Kuyper, 'There is not a place in the universe where Christ does not shout out, ‘Mine!’ "

Should Dordt College--now "University"--have minted a coin anytime in the last 20 years, that line would have been in-scripted on one side or the other, maybe both.

Mr. Dallas and Mr. Barton are, without a doubt, among the 80% of Christian evangelicals who believe God almighty in his infinite wisdom brought Mr. Donald Trump into the Presidency of the United States, at such a time as this, to right the course of a nation tumbling headlong toward paganism, a kind of savior who will end abortion once and for all, a leader to protect them from the evil seeking to destroy Christianity and its followers.

Wow. Mr. Dallas and Mr. Barton use Abraham Kuyper, my Abraham Kuyper, to buttress their "whack-a-mole" mission.

I could cry.