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The September 14, 2021 Hanover County Public School Board meeting in Ashland, Virginia began with a prayer. As everyone in the room rose to their feet, a school board member bowed his head and gave an “invocation”:

“Gracious God, we come before you tonight, and ask that you be with us, as we deliberate on the issues before the Hanover School Board. We ask that you be with us, as we listen intently to those who come before us. Please help us to use wisdom and your guidance as we make decisions that better our community and on behalf of all students and faculty and staff and parents of Hanover County, and in all things that we do, we pray that thy will be done. This is my prayer. Thy will be done. Amen.”

Following this explicitly evangelical prayer, the crowd put their hands over their hearts as a group of white elementary school children led the room in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and its declaration that the United States is “one nation, under God.”

As the Pledge of Allegiance ended, I looked around the meeting room. Two local officers serving as security guards stood on opposite sides of the room; both were white and unmasked. Earlier, when I entered the building with my mask on, one of them escorted me in, looked down at me, snorted, then said, “You won’t find many people with masks.” I nervously smiled beneath mine, “I thought it was the law.” “School’s not in session,” he said with a shrug. We parted ways when entering the meeting room. It was quickly apparent that, other than the school board members, almost no one was wearing a mask and nearly everyone was white. The school board and superintendent were all white men, other than the school board chair, a Black woman.

I attended this meeting to explore how white Christian nationalism informed the anti-critical race theory “crusades” in secular public-school board meetings. Christian nationalism is a cultural framework through which a pervasive set of ideals merge American and Christian group membership, shaping political action. Since Christian nationalism is a flexible ideology enabled by white supremacy, its examination across a range of contexts is critical to understand its significance outside of religious institutions as well as its relationship to white identity politics.

At this school board meeting, the ritual of prayer followed by the Pledge set the stage for a 60 minute-public comments section—each speaker had three minutes, and no one was allowed to applaud or express signs of approval or disapproval. I was surprised to find that white Christian nationalism was inextricably embedded and enacted in Hanover County’s agenda and procedures.

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Hanover County, Virginia, only 26 miles northwest of Richmond but considered rural rather than suburban, is staunchly Republican in the Tea Party mold. Residents voted for Trump two to one in the 2016 and 2020 elections. The population is 86% white and 9.5% Black. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have a “camp” in the county and a booth at the annual Hanover Tomato Festival, where the Virginia Flaggers have given away free Confederate flags. Until 1950, Hanover provided no high school education to Black people, and the county was among the last to fully integrate in Virginia.

In June 2020, as the Movement for Black Lives swept through the country, Hanover residents formed a “community service organization” called the Hanover Patriots, which they believed was necessary, in their words, “after our entire nation was rocked to its core with civil unrest and uncertainty…to keep a watchful eye on our neighborhoods, schools, and local businesses…to interface with local law enforcement and keep our community safe!” The Hanover Patriots eventually “evolved” into the HanPat School Partnership. The group announced that, “Many families have moved here not only for the schools, but also for Hanover county’s traditional values. Yet sadly, both of those things are being attacked by outside activist groups and political & personal agendas.” In May 2021, they held an “anti-equity rally” over “COVID-19 mandates as well as school policies relating to equity,” stating: “We will use our 1st Amendment right to tell [the school board] we WILL NOT have our students indoctrinated with progressive politics, [Critical Race Theory], and other racist, divisive policies.”

In July 2021, the HanPat School Partnership hosted another demonstration. They declared, “We do not need this hate ideology pushed on our kids. It’s disguised in their nice little word they like to use called ‘EQUITY’!” Protestors included a white girl outfitted in red, white, and blue with a sign held high over her head: “I AM NOT AN OPRESSOR.” Another poster said: “CREATING RACIAL TENSION.” A final placard summarized, “How to Identify Critical Race Theory in the Classroom,” in a twenty-one-bullet point list of buzzwords: “Social justice or restorative justice”; “Systemic/structural/institutional racism”; “Power structures or racial hierarchies”; “White privilege/fragility/supremacy/culture/prejudice”; “Identity”; “Ally or ally-ship”; “Social constructs”; “Black lives matter.”

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Critical race theorists analyze social practices, such as the law, while rejecting “colorblindness” as an ideal because consciousness about race is necessary to address systemic racism. According to critical race theorist Gary Peller, crucial to the “critical” part of CRT is the understanding that “no objective and neutral idea of merit can explain the distribution of wealth and power in America.” Therefore, critical race theory is an instrument to advance the opportunities of all people, including whites, who are undermined by the ways the professional classes define “merit.” This approach demonstrates how racism is structural and material, and that race, class, religion, gender, sexuality, and dis/ability are relational. Critical race theorists such as Peller have pointed out that CRT is not a racist ideology that declares all white people privileged oppressors, and it is not taught in K-12 public schools. I teach critical race theory in some of my undergraduate-level university classes; it is also taught in graduate school and law school.

However, explaining what critical race theory is does not matter to those adamantly campaigning against it in public schools. Peller says as much when he observes that the CRT-panic, “taps into a dependable reservoir of racial anxiety among whites. This is a political strategy that has worked for as long as any of us can remember, and CRT simply serves as the convenient face of the campaign today—a soft target.” At stake in the assault against CRT is the teaching of texts and implementation of policies that address white supremacy, structural racism, and Black experiences.

(Image source: Evelyn Hockstein for Reuters)

Currently, 25 states have enacted or are considering laws to “ban teaching CRT.” Texas now precludes any teacher from exploring the state’s history of enslavement if any student should “feel discomfort, guilt, [or] anguish… on account of the individual’s race or sex.” Critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw has observed that white children are “once again the front line in this current war against critical race theory in the classroom — it’s a tried-and-true method of racial retrenchment.” Anti-racism has been re-cast as racism against white people.

Coverage of the anti-CRT crusades in Virginia has mostly focused on Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, where suburban development and diversifying demographics factored in the state’s Democratic “blue” shift around 2015. The anti-CRT propaganda push by people like Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools and former Director for Public Affairs in the Department of Justice under President Trump, has garnered attention on Fox News for encouraging CRT resistance during pubic school boarding meetings. Video clips of white parents erupting over mask mandates, CRT, and policies that support transgender students have proven popular in stoking outrage on social media.

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I have followed how the debates over critical race theory have played out in Hanover County since May 2021. I listened to audio recordings of Hanover County’s Public School Board meetings, watched over livestream, and I attended in-person. At the meeting I attended in September, the first and only Black speaker, a woman, removed her mask and gave a brief history lesson from slavery and Reconstruction to the Black codes and Jim Crow. She then mentioned the film Birth of a Nation, a movie by D.W. Griffith, and said that it, “displayed negative and derogatory images stereotyping Black people, creating fear in the Black population. 106 years later, in 2021, we are still trying to erase those degrading images and stereotypes.” She proposed that Hanover public schools offer an African American history class and develop a diversity, equity, and inclusion policy, “so that no one is discriminated for who they love, their race, or their economic class, in order to close the achievement gap.”

Throughout this testimony, the unmasked white woman a seat down from me sighed, squirmed, and muttered under her breath, her audible and visible expressions of disapproval impossible for me to ignore. During the public comments, as white speakers spread racist, dangerous misinformation while railing against CRT, masks, and trans students’ rights, expressions of approval grew deafening. 

I was struck by how the Black woman’s description of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 Birth of the Nation, a film that portrays the Ku Klux Klan as protectors of the white Christian nation, was not far removed from the present situation in Hanover and many parts of the country. In 2019, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—formed in 2011 in Pelham, North Carolina, just across the Virginia border—garbed in white hoods and robes held a “recruitment rally” outside the Hanover courthouse. The Loyal White Knights have opened their ranks to native-born white Christians of multiple denominations in order to “restore America to a White, Christian nation founded on God’s word” and were one of the many white supremacist factions that participated in the Unite the Right violence in Charlottesville in 2017. Loyal White Knight member and Hanover County resident Harry Rogers struck two Black Lives Matter protestors in 2020 with his truck after driving over a median by a Confederate monument near Richmond. Before he was arrested, Rogers boasted about the attack on a Facebook live video, “This Chevrolet 2500 went up on the curb and through the protest. They started scattering like (expletive) cockroaches. It’s funny if you ask me.”

In October 2021, the Loyal White Knights spread propaganda flyers around two Black-majority neighborhoods in nearby Henrico County that stated, “[Matthew] Maury, [Stonewall] Jackson, [Jefferson] Davis, [Rober E.] Lee, and [J.E.B.] Stuart—Heroes That Opposed Federal Aggression—Their Spirits Are Still Alive—Commies, You Took Down Statues, You’ll Be Took Down Too…100 percent Americanism. Pray for white Americans.” In January 2021, the Loyal White Knights mailed anti-Black letters and posted antisemitic messages throughout Hanover, Henrico, and Amelia Counties: “Greetings fellow Patriot! The BLACKS cost us the election of our GREAT LEADER. All over America, we plan to send them a message on Inauguration Day.” The letter instructed white people to place a slice of watermelon and Kentucky Fried Chicken in front of Black residences so that members could “get to the right houses.” Business store fronts were plastered with flyers with Nazi swastikas and “we are everywhere” printed on them.

Notably, the Loyal White Nights were far from the only citizens in Hanover County who advocated messages of Christian nationalism. At the school board meeting in September, one unmasked white man began, “Tonight, I want to talk to you about the truth of mask mandates,” and then he quoted scripture: “Ephesians Chapter 5, Verses 11-14. The Bible reads, take no part in the unfruitful work of darkness, but instead expose them…For anything that becomes visible is light. Awake oh sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” After this invocation to Christ in a debate about public schools, he preached about our age of “great misinformation, fear, and government overreach,” pleading, “it is time for everyone to wake up, fix our eyes on Jesus Christ. We the people do not comply with this government overreach; we the people do not comply with this illegal and unethical mask mandate for the sake of our children.” He concluded, “there’s not one scientific study that supports children wearing masks,” which is untrue.

Another unmasked white man began his testimony with a preamble about teaching his sons the “golden rule,” a reference to biblical verses about treating others as you would like to be treated. He then recited a quote attributed to, but not spoken by, Martin Luther King Jr. that was also used by Republican Glenn Youngkin during his successful campaign for governor of Virginia: “it’s the content of your character, not the color of skin.” He continued, “the recent controversy over CRT does nothing but demoralize,” then said, “most everyone has a part in slavery, not just white over Black; a Black man became the first American slave owner. Anthony Johnson, an African sold in Virginia who completed his indentured servant contract, became a landowner and used a Black man, John Casor, to work his fields indefinitely, making Casor the first slave.” There was an eruption of loud applause as the speaker walked back to his seat wearing a smug grin.

Anthony Johnson was a captive African who became one of the few Black landowners in 17^th-century Virginia, but his life morphed into a meme and manipulative trope used by right-wing pundits such as Glenn Beck to assert that slavery “is a human problem…it’s not a white condition or a Black condition.” Johnson’s case has been used to invert the narrative that American slavery was predicated on white supremacy. Tellingly, the speaker employs the Johnson myth-story after a quote erroneously accredited to Martin Luther King Jr. that is oft-recited when white people defend anti-Black racism through colorblind ideology. Reading directly from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech gives the seemingly neutral, decontextualized phrase “it’s the content of your character, not the color of skin,” racial meaning: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The debates about critical race theory also included diatribes about policies that provide rights to transgender students. An unmasked white woman warned the school board not to let “biological males in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms,” speciously referring to a sexual assault case in Loudoun in June 2021, when a cisgender male student wearing a skirt raped a cisgender female student in a school bathroom before the transgender student policy went into effect. This mother then made a joke met with laughter, “My two teenage boys will swear up and down that they identify as a girl to see naked girls,” effectively calling her sons sexual predators while categorizing transgender students as such, when evidence shows that trans people are targets rather than perpetrators of such violence. After this crude attempt at humor, the speaker threatened that if the board decided to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion policies with tax-payer money, there would be a mass exodus from public schools to homeschool co-ops.

The Hanover Patriots have a hand in supporting a “brand new homeschool co-op” advertised as an affordable alternative to public school for grades preK-5 located at the Oasis Church in Richmond. Harbor Christian Academy offers small classes “to supplement your homeschool education…taught with a Christian worldview,” concentrating “on core educational principles built on a Christian foundation.” The HCA Board of Directors are white women who often speak during Hanover school board meetings.

In the United States, homeschooling is almost entirely deregulated. In Virginia, parents are required to notify local school districts that their children will be homeschooled, but there is an exemption for “religious beliefs.” A high school diploma is required to homeschool children, but that can also be waived based on “religious belief.” The annual assessment of homeschooled children’s learning progress allows for “moral, philosophical, or religious exemption.” Effectively, Virginia parents can homeschool their children without subject requirements or assessments. According to Homeschoolers Anonymous co-founder R.L. Stoller, three of the most popular curriculum companies in homeschooling—Abeka, Bob Jones, and ACE—started as providers to white-only religious private schools and their curricula are full of historical revisionism, Christian Nationalism, and straightforward racism.

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White Christian nationalism is shaping not only homeschooling curriculum and debates at public school board meetings, but American politics broadly. White Christian nationalism was rampant at Republican governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s campaign events, namely the Family Research Council’s annual political advocacy conference held at Cornerstone Chapel, a predominantly white nondenominational church in Leesburg, Virginia. The senior pastor of Cornerstone, Reverend Gary Hamrick, invited Youngkin to a service, where he spoke during worship as he sought votes. Politicking from pulpits is not new, and Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, a self-identified Catholic, did his share at predominantly Black congregations. However, Youngkin played a role in founding Holy Trinity Church in McLean, Virginia, a “non-denominational church with Anglican roots and a contemporary charismatic expression,” where he serves as a lay leader. He also opened campaign staff meetings with a prayer. During the Cornerstone service, Youngkin testified to his faith and said that his campaign grew out of “an amazing call on my prayer life,” promising that after taking the oath of office “on a holy Bible” he would lead the Commonwealth “in a moment of prayer” to give thanks and ask for guidance.

A day after Youngkin’s victory, Republicans began to rally around “parental rights.” The Metric Media network, an organization funded in part by “a Catholic political advocacy group that launched a $9.7 million campaign in swing states against the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,” has published tens of thousands of articles about CRT nationwide through its 1,200 sites masquerading as local news in 50 states and Washington DC. Between January and November 2021, 28 Metric Media “local news” sites in Virginia published 4,657 articles about CRT in public schools. In turn, Youngkin capitalized on this anti-CRT momentum. He promised to ban critical race theory in schools on his first day in office, a sign that the anti-critical race theory crusades will be formidable tool in the 2022 midterm elections. White Christian nationalism is impacting local, state, and national politics in ways that are underexamined, through mundane practices of U.S. citizenship that intersect with tactics of electoral politics.

During the public-school board meetings that I observed, conspiratorial thinking about critical race theory, transgender student policy, and mask mandates, converged in narratives and enactments of white Christian nationalism. Framed by evangelical prayer and biblical verse, expressions of approval and disapproval that flouted the public comment rules attested to the militancy of white ignorance and feelings of white immunity. The anti-CRT crusades reimagine and defend the United States as a Christian nation in which white cisgender heterosexuality is the norm. Challenging this dynamic of authority requires disrupting the mythological power of one nation, under one God.

Jessica Johnson is a Visiting Scholar of Religious Studies at the College of William & Mary and a Sacred Writes/Revealer Writing Fellow. Her ethnographic study of the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire, was published by Duke University Press in 2018.

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This article was made possible in part with support from Sacred Writes, a Henry Luce Foundation-funded project hosted by Northeastern University that promotes public scholarship on religion.