Sen. Josh Hawley delivered a Christian nationalist rallying cry at the religious-right activist conference Road to Majority on Friday morning, saying the Christian faith had “formed the soul of this country” and denouncing “the new priests of wokery” who he claimed are trying to “impose on us a religion of woke.”
“There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord,” Hawley said, declaring that “the time for Christians to rise is now.”
Hawley also struck a right-wing populist pose, denouncing corporations that he claimed were pushing “a Marxist agenda” and “religion of woke.”
“Corporations are not people, and there’s no reason why corporate America should control this country,” Hawley said, calling for “woke corporations” to “get out of politics.”
Hawley’s anti-corporate posturing is remarkable given his ardent support for the Hobby Lobby corporation and its lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act’s requirements for contraception coverage in insurance policies, a lawsuit that led the conservative Supreme Court majority to rule for the first time ever that a for-profit corporation could claim exemption from government regulations that run counter to the religious beliefs of company owners.
As Right Wing Watch noted about Rep. Jim Banks’ Thursday afternoon remarks, the denunciations of “wokeness” that are dominating today’s speeches at Road to Majority do not reflect the opinions of most Americans. Recent polls have found that a majority of Americans believe that being woke—which they understand to mean “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices”—is a positive thing, and they believe politicians’ attacks on “wokeness” are a “distraction” from more important issues.
