Pray Vote Stand, the Family Research Council’s annual conference for religious-right activists, convenes in Washington, D.C. this week. Formerly known as the Values Voter Summit, this year’s gathering features Christian nationalist speakers and Republican politicians and offers attendees an opportunity to get trained to run for their local school board, a major focus of right-wing groups looking to build political power and mobilize conservative voters in 2024.
Presidential candidates addressing Pray Vote Stand include former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Vice President Mike Pence. Other politicians on the speakers list include Sens. Josh Hawley and Lindsey Graham, Reps. Scott Perry and Mary Miller, and North Carolina’s notoriously anti-LGBTQ Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
Also speaking is Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified School District school board in California and part of a three-member majority made up of attendees at Christian nationalist pastor and political activist Jack Hibbs’ church, Calvary Chapel Chino Valley. The combative Shaw, elected in 2022, has used her position and majority to implement anti-LGBTQ policies that are being pushed by Hibbs and copied by other right-wing-dominated school boards.
Hibbs, who regularly spreads misinformation about U.S. history and other topics, is also speaking at Pray Vote Stand. Among Hibbs’ recent pronouncements was the false claim that Founding Fathers who were slave owners “took very good care of their slaves” and were committed to “work for their freedom.”
Gina Gleason, executive director of Hibbs’ political group Real Impact, is offering a session on how churches can engage in ballot harvesting to help conservatives win elections.
Another Pray Vote Stand sponsor promoting school board takeovers is the Colorado-based Truth & Liberty Coalition, which is offering a breakout session on “changing the culture through the local church.” The Truth & Liberty Coalition is the creation of dominionist and Christian nationalist leaders Andrew Wommack, Lance Wallnau, David Barton, and others.
Truth & Liberty’s session will be hosted by Executive Director Richard Harris and Andrew McFarland, who hosts a call-in show sponsored by the group. Harris is actively involved in efforts to recruit, train, and elect conservative Christian school board members throughout Colorado. A slate backed by the Truth & Liberty Coalition took over the Woodland Park school board in 2021, after which the board cut services, fired teachers, and installed a new superintendent who imposed a right-wing curriculum.
In an invitation to an April 2023 candidate and campaign worker training, Harris claimed that students are “being indoctrinated by public schools in ungodly, divisive and harmful philosophies such as embracing homosexuality, redefining the murder of unborn babies as ‘healthcare,’ and that America is an illegitimate nation.”
“The Church must arise in this day and hour and lead this generation back to Christ and His Word,” Harris wrote, adding that Truth & Liberty wants “every school district in this state to teach only edifying and morally upright curriculum with an accurate and patriotic view of American history.”
At a recent Truth and Liberty Coalition conference held at Wommack’s Charis Bible College, Harris introduced Ted Mische, described as the leader of the National School Board Coalition. Mische warned that public schools are indoctrinating children in anti-God “wickedness,” claiming that some Colorado school districts are teaching students how to make meth. Mische touted his efforts to recruit, vet, and train candidates and community supporters.
The school board candidate training at Pray Vote Stand is being conducted by Kingdom in Politics, whose leader Aamon Ross says God called him into political work to make a “generational” impact. It is cosponsored by FRC’s political arm, which offers “School Board Boot Camp” videos that portray “government schools” as infested with leftist indoctrination.
According to Kingdom in Politics’ website, its vision is to “raise up 100,000 Kingdom-minded believers to lead in our cities, counties, states and nation” over the next 10 years. More from the website:
Kingdom minded strategists are needed to fight ungodly legislation and craft new laws that will benefit your state. Kingdom ideals must fill the government space at all state levels.
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Our freedoms are slowly being whittled away by power brokers and institutions that depend upon us giving in to their demands. But true liberty comes from God and He has equipped the Church with the ability to administrate a free society.
Ross ran the successful 2018 campaign of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who celebrated his 2022 reelection by dedicating “every square inch” of Oklahoma to Jesus, saying, “[With] the authority that I have as governor, and the spiritual authority and the physical authority that you give me, I claim Oklahoma for you.”
Other Pray Vote Stand workshop offerings include sessions on the 2024 election map, future Supreme Court justices, and how religious-right activists can “go on the offense” now that the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority has weakened the separation of church and state.
The Family Research Council is an anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, advocacy organization that in 2020 sought and received IRS status as a church with its president Tony Perkins as its religious leader, an inherently dishonest strategy that other religious-right organizations have employed to shield themselves from scrutiny and oversight. Right Wing Watch reported in 2018 that Focus on the Family, another large religious-right nonprofit that once housed FRC, had convinced the IRS to allow it to classify itself as a church.
The 2023 Pray Vote Stand conference takes place Sept. 15-17, with the optional school board training on Sept. 14.
