{"id":677,"date":"2026-05-03T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/?p=677"},"modified":"2026-05-03T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T13:00:00","slug":"christofascism-is-here-inside-the-slow-demolition-of-us-public-health-adrienne-matei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rjbarrett.redirectme.net\/?p=677","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Christofascism\u2019 is here: inside the slow demolition of US public health | Adrienne Matei"},"content":{"rendered":"


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In February 2025, Robert F Kennedy Jr began his tenure as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with an unusual message for the federal department responsible for protecting public health.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s greatest challenge, he said, was not just chronic disease but a \u201cspiritual malaise\u201d, a kind of soul-sickness derived from America\u2019s moral decline.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpiritual and physical maladies thrive on one another,\u201d Kennedy told HHS employees in his first address. The solution, he said, \u201cmust begin with a spiritual question\u201d, of personal responsibility and inward vigilance against the dark forces that would keep Americans \u201csedated\u201d and \u201ccompliant\u201d.<\/p>\n

Weeks later, the White House moved to cut 20,500 jobs across the very agency tasked with protecting public health.<\/p>\n

This March, as the US faced its worst measles resurgence in 34 years \u2013 one he has largely ignored \u2013 Kennedy again warned the nation of the same nebulous threat.<\/p>\n

This time, he took a more militant tone. \u201cMalevolent forces\u201d, he told an audience of doctors-in-training, must be met with \u201cspiritual warfare\u201d, waged through the \u201csacred ritual\u201d of eating dinner together as a family.<\/p>\n

Now over a year into his tenure, Kennedy champions personal discipline while casting institutional science as a dark force in a cosmic struggle against the light. He has promoted pseudoscientific or unproven remedies, including vitamin A for measles, peptides for longevity and the nutritional benefits power of raw milk, while sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.<\/p>\n

Because of his granola aura as a former environmental advocate, Kennedy\u2019s invocation of the \u201cspiritual\u201d can initially sound benign \u2013 more hippy than doctrinaire.<\/p>\n

Yet his repeated references to spiritual forces are more than run-of-the-mill wellness vernacular. <\/strong>They are a signal that the Christian nationalist movement that helped propel Trump into office is now reshaping the public health agency from the inside.<\/p>\n

The effect is corrosive, eroding the nation\u2019s shared epistemological reality \u2013 like a worm working its way through brain tissue.<\/p>\n

A war from within<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cThe \u2018warfare\u2019 thing is a dog whistle to stoke Christian nationalist ideology,\u201d says Savannah Tate, the daughter of megachurch pastor Benny Tate.<\/p>\n

Tate grew up immersed in the movement, caught between patriarchal forces and biblical literalism. She left the faith in her early 20s. Now 32 with a doctorate in psychology, she speaks about her experience publicly.<\/p>\n

Christian nationalists \u2013 a sprawling religious-political ecosystem of factions and networks \u2013 argue that American law should reflect a singular Christian vision of the country. That project would elevate biblical law, erode the separation of church and state, and hollow out pluralism and democracy.<\/p>\n

Some in the Trump regime openly claim the label, such as Russell Vought, Trump\u2019s director of the office of operations and budget and a key author of the ultra-conservative Christian thinktank Heritage Foundation\u2019s Project 2025, which has come to function as a Christian nationalist blueprint for governance.<\/p>\n

Terms such as \u201cspiritual warfare\u201d and \u201cspiritual attack\u201d, Tate says, are central to the movement\u2019s vocabulary \u2013 part of a binary, warcentric and mystical rhetoric leveraging fear and disinformation to keep people on their toes against enemies both tangible and spiritual. Maga Christian nationalism is dominionist, meaning it seeks to place its militant version of Christian authority over institutions, culture and government.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s speech, taken together with the rhetoric of other Maga leaders, reflects a broader pattern of strident religious language moving into the highest levels of government.<\/p>\n

Trump himself described his second term as \u201ca war from within\u201d against \u201canti-Christian bias.\u201d JD Vance has courted Turning Point followers by calling Christianity \u201cAmerica\u2019s creed\u201d, advancing the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation, rather than a democracy grounded in equality.<\/p>\n

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Secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, who belongs to a Christian nationalist church and has a tattoo of a Christian nationalist symbol, considers America a \u201cChristian nation in our DNA\u201d. And House speaker Mike Johnson has long backed Christian nationalist aims that would roll back civil rights for women and LGBTQ+ people, or sentence doctors who perform abortions to \u201chard labor\u201d.<\/p>\n

Not all would describe themselves as Christian nationalists. But the label matters less than the legislation. Regardless of what they call themselves, the cumulative effect of their language and policy is a coordinated, full-throated attack on secular democratic institutions that protect everyone equally.<\/p>\n