Thread by @ashtonpittman

NEW: At the Supreme Court, Mississippi's solicitor general presented a secular case for why Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

But hours later, MS Attorney General Lynn Fitch voiced different ideas.

"God selected this case," she declared. "He was ready."
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If Fitch is right and the U.S. Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade, it will have been Donald Trump who paved the way—boosted by an army of Christian dominionists who believe they are tasked with establishing God's kingdom on earth.
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"Trump comes in and has the support of normal evangelical organizations like Family Research Council, but what he picks is kind of this whole interesting list of pentecostals that I used to call the D-list. He made them the A-list,” says Dr. @AntheaButler.
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Trump’s new A-list included wealthy, eccentric pentecostal TV preachers and Christian dominionists who teach that Christians must seize the reins of earthly power through “spiritual warfare” to establish God’s kingdom on earth in advance of Christ’s return.mississippifreepress.org/20178/god-sele…

"What's hard for people to understand about Christian dominionism is that it's not just about being evangelical. It’s about a certain way of looking at the world & saying Christians are supposed to rule in every area, sort of the ‘7 mountains’ of power."
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Throughout his presidency, Trump elevated the causes of Christian dominionists like no president before him. He surrounded himself with New Apostolic Reformation leaders such as megachurch pastor Paula White, who he named as White House spiritual adviser.
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"We believe Amy Coney Barrett has the endorsement of heaven behind her," Christian dominionist Lou Engle declared in July 2018.

But Trump selected Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Kennedy. He wouldn't elevate Barrett to the Supreme Court for two years.
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In 2018, Engle's ministry said it "knew we needed a seat of government—a judge’s seat—that would align with God’s merciful intent and shift the court, not just from liberal to conservative, but from rebellion to righteousness."
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Barrett is a Catholic member of the ecumenical religious community known as People of Praise. Its founder is a Catholic deacon and a leader of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a Pentecostal sect of Catholicism with ties to dominionists like Lou Engle.
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"The (church) of God is being summoned to the bench! It’s time to wage war in the heavenly realms…It’s time to partner with the cloud of witnesses & the angelic armies unto a 3rd Great Awakening & the shifting of our courts," Engle's 2018 newsletter said.
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In late 2018, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves struck down MS's abortion ban:

"With the recent changes in the membership of the Supreme Court, it may be that the State believes divine providence covered the Capitol when it passed this legislation."
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Rocking back and forth in his office chair on Sept. 4, 2020, Lou Engle compared abortion to slavery:

“We’re at a moment that, if things don’t shift, we could be heading toward a civil war. But I believe God can shift this Supreme Court in these days.”mississippifreepress.org/20178/god-sele…

Two weeks later, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that 87-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died.

Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed to replace her, confirming Amy Coney Barrett just days before the 2020 election.
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"Republicans are heavily invested in getting judges who will overturn Roe,” Amy Coney Barrett once said in a Jan. 18, 2013 speech. “And Democrats are heavily invested in getting judges who will preserve the central holding of Roe."
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In a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court brief in the Dobbs abortion case, Intercessors For America compared the nation’s fate if Roe v. Wade is not overturned to President Abraham Lincoln’s warning that the the Civil War was God’s judgment for slavery.
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Former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant: "They said, ‘Oh, you passed this (15-week abortion ban) so it would go to the Supreme Court, and you might be able to overturn Roe v. Wade. It’in that true?’ Absolutely, you got me again."
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Former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said abortion became available in America because of “demonic spirits that have found their way into a willing body of public officials and activists and judges.”
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Former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant recently compared "the horrors" of abortion to the Holocaust.

"This is as bad in comparison to what Germany was doing to the Jews," he said.
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“In short, in a single term, the Supreme Court could demolish pillars of the progressive movement,” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said during a speech in Wisconsin focused on the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2016. 
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Though Hillary Clinton won the overall popular vote in 2016, voters who told exit pollsters that the Supreme Court was “the most important factor” in how they voted broke for Trump 56%-to-41%.
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If liberals and progressives and Democrats have begun paying more attention to the Supreme Court since 2016, Christian @FredClarkson says, it’s “too late.”

“Way too late. … My entire life is like a spectacle of cognitive dissonance.”
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For years, Clarkson said, he has watched Christian dominionism’s influence on the nation’s culture and on the levers of power grow without “an appropriate response” from the media or more democratic-minded Americans.
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"Nowhere in the U.S. has any affected community or politically oriented entity to the left of the Christian Right responded to any of the evolving strategy & institution-building that the Christian Right and the general right has done," @FredClarkson says.
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"They take the stability and the moderation of contemporary society for granted, and they don’t believe you when you tell them it’s being threatened by people who are really good at what they’re up to,” says @FredClarkson.
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In a statement on Thursday, Jan. 20, the Center For Reproductive Rights acknowledged that it could lose the Dobbs case and that the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Saturday, Jan. 22 “could be its last.”
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MS Atty Gen. Lynn Fitch: “Now we move on to the next step until we get that wonderful opinion that overturns Roe v. Wade and go to a new world, a post-Roe world, and get to make exciting things happen...for those precious unborn children...& their mothers.”mississippifreepress.org/20178/god-sele…

AG Lynn Fitch called her office’s work in the Dobbs case “a God thing” and declared that “we today turned the page on Roe v. Wade.”

"We’ve all been called. We’ve all been waiting. And now it’s here...and we’re going into a new world post-Roe v. Wade.”
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'God Selected This Case': The Christian Dominionist War On Abortion, Part II.

Part I is in the next tweet. Part III is coming soon.
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‘To Rule History With God’: The Christian Dominionist War On Abortion, Part I
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A special thanks to @AntheaButler and @FredClarkson for lending me their expertise for this series. You should follow them if you're interested in the interplay between American religion and politics (and you should absolutely be paying attention to it).
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If you like our in-depth journalism, please support more paywall-free work like this by following the Mississippi Free Press @MSFreePress and with a one-time or recurring donation to our non-profit at mfp.ms/donate. 💜

Dr. @AntheaButler is the author of "White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America." amazon.com/dp/1469661179/…

*Christian dominionist expert @FredClarkson says, this should say. Not "Christian Fred Clarkson

Correction to this tweet: It's supposed to say "Christian *dominionist expert @FredClarkson," not "Christian Fred Clarkson."

https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1487100526575632396