The second-highest-ranking official in Indiana, Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, openly identifies as a Christian nationalist. This self-description has ignited a fierce debate across the state, from the pews to the Statehouse, forcing residents to confront a fundamental question: What is the proper role of faith in public life, and what does it mean for the future of a pluralistic state? This is not an abstract debate; it has manifested in direct legislative action, crystallized by a controversial resolution that put the state’s competing visions on a collision course.
The third story in this series will look at the history of Christian populism and white supremacy in Indiana. It will also introduce an active player who is connecting Christian leaders with our state legislators in order to bring about social and political change.
At its inception, it’s hard to deny that Indiana was made up mainly of Christians.
Jim Madison, professor emeritus of history at IU Bloomington, said religion had a hold from the beginning.
“Predominantly Christian, predominantly Protestant, especially Methodist, the largest denomination in Indiana,” he said. “Baptist, Disciples of Christ, those are sort of the big three.”
Madison, an author of three books on Indiana history, said that similar to the founding fathers though, those early Hoosiers had a plan to include every faith.
“In that first Constitution in 1816, it is very explicit that all religions are most welcome in Indiana and that no religion is necessary,” he said. “You can be an agnostic and atheist or anything you want to be when it comes to religious faith.”
In the 200 years since, Madison said many have tried to ignore Indiana’s and the nation’s tradition of religious freedom.
“Christian nationalists seem to believe that their notion of what America is, a nation based on their God, is so right that it has to be the rule of law in our nation,” he said. “Where you start with answering a public policy question with ‘what would God want me to do?’”
One of the key happenings in the state’s recent past blamed for paving the way to eroding religious freedom was passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 2015.
RFRA laws exists in many states primarily to make the government show a strong state concern if a law forces someone to do something against their religious beliefs.
Indiana’s law had two controversial provisions though: One allowed corporations and individuals to file lawsuits in cases where they felt their religious rights were violated. The second allowed these persons to sue each other over these violations, without the government being part of the suit.
Opponents of RFRA said these provisions promoted discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community by making it easy to win court cases by citing religious beliefs.
Supporters said the Indiana law was nearly identical to 19 other state RFRA laws as well as the federal RFRA law that’s in effect in federal jurisdictions.
“I think RFRA was a fundamental point in Indiana’s history in the last generation,” said Madison. “The context here that beginning in the nineties some Hoosiers and some Americans began to think that gay people were not just immoral, but part of their business was to restrict them.”
Madison cited former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as an early Christian nationalist leader in the state who pushed RFRA through to further his own religious agenda.
By early April of that year, protests by Hoosiers and out-of-state businesses managed to convince lawmakers to pass an amendment making it clear that businesses could not discriminate when providing services.
The controversy cost the state $60 million in revenue according to Visit Indy.
“It was in some ways a very sad moment in some ways a bright moment in Indiana’s history,” Madison said.
Madison said this event was proof that Christian nationalist laws and views often end up costing the state.
“You want to attract the best and the brightest people to Indiana to work at Eli Lilly Company,” he said. “They’re not going to come to a state that has this kind of law on the books, young people just aren’t going to put up with this.”
But laws reflecting this belief system keep coming. Madison cited the near total abortion ban in 2023 and the increased use of publicly-funded vouchers that allow students to attend private, sometimes religious schools.
Madison doesn’t necessarily have a problem with religion bringing a level of morality to the government.
“There is a place for religious belief in government, but I don’t think we want to go very far with putting particular religious belief into active policy because again, the question will be ‘whose religious belief,’” he said. “Which religious belief, which policy? Who’s going to decide that?”
On the most common point made by Christian nationalists, which is that the separation of church and state only applies to Christians as a one-way street, Madison said the founding fathers didn’t want a repeat of the religious oppression in Europe.
“They were determined that the churches would not have a voice in government, that they would be separate from government,” he said. “Government is one thing, religions another thing, we’re going to build a wall between them and keep them separate so that we can go about our governmental duties of providing for the general welfare of all the people.”
He said there is evidence of this in the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights.
“I happen to believe powerfully in America’s constitutional foundations, in our democracy, in our rule of law,” he said. “I’m as patriotic on those subjects as any American, but the Christian nationalists do frighten me.”
In Indiana, a lot of groups influence state politics from the ACLU to the Chamber of Commerce to the Citizens Action Coalition.
One of those influencing groups is the Indiana Family Institute (IFI), a group that, in their own words, does “policy work at all levels of government so that God honoring public policies will help Hoosier families and not hinder them.”
IFI was even present at the signing of RFRA according to a photo posted by the American Family Association of Indiana.
IFI is also allied with Focus on the Family, the national organization most known for its anti-LGBTQ+ policies and reproductive rights policies.
IFI is the home of the Church Ambassador Network (CAN), a ministry that connects state leadership with pastors.
Its mission statement reads “Our ultimate goal is to see our cities and state transformed through the power of the gospel.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to work at the intersection of faith and public life, having been called into this when I was in high school,” said Josh Hershberger, the director of CAN.
Hershberger said the network began in Iowa in 2014 and launched in Indiana in 2019. The program is now operating in more than 20 states, or about half of all Focus on the Family-affiliated organizations in the country.
“Our goal at the Church Ambassador Network is to build relationships between pastors and governing officials for the purpose first of ministering to them as a person, but also partnering with them, for the common good,” he said.
Typically, CAN tends to work with “more theologically conservative” churches that believe in the ultimate authority of scriptures.
Last legislative session, Hershberger said CAN ministered with 90 percent of Senate Democrats, 92 percent of Senate Republicans, and 90 percent of both House Democrats and Republicans.
“In state government, it is an absolute pressure cooker,” he said. “And so just the pastors coming up and just saying a word of prayer, how can I support you? How can I help you…can help some of those individuals say, ‘Hey, this is something I can do long term and not just one or two terms.’”
Hershberger doesn’t care for or associate with the term Christian nationalist as he views the term as meaning an “unbiblical worship of country.”
“I find that label very unhelpful,” he said. “Because it can mean so many things to so many people.”
Instead, he refers to the work he’s doing and encouraging fellow Christians to as “Christian Citizenship,” or as he describes it, “a love for Christ that compels us to serve our neighbor, our zip codes, and ultimately our country.”
Hershberger sees the separation of church and state as not barring the influence of religion on politics, primarily because it is impossible to do so, he said.
“Almost every critical piece of legislation in that building is impacted by someone’s worldview,” he said. “And so someone’s morality is being legislated in that sense.”
He said that since everyone is made in God’s image, they are serving a greater good by bringing His law into politics.
“Based on that beautiful fact, we should promote human flourishing as God created it,” he said. “And we’re confident that if we do that, we’re not selfishly legislating some form of our own subjective morality, but rather that we are promoting God’s principles in an institution that he created.”
Hershberger said CAN has made connections that eventually led to policy changes. He cited the CarePortal, a program that connects the Department of Child Services with faith-based community programs to provide welfare resources in communities, and the passing of a Religious Release Time Law in 2024.
HB 1137, signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb, requires a student to be excused from school to attend religious instruction during the day as long as it is off campus and self-funded.
“By the way, that’s not just a Christian release time, it’s any instruction that would be religious.” he said. “So other faiths could take advantage of it as well.”
And while CAN doesn’t outright encourage pastors to endorse political candidates, Hershberger said it does want pastors to preach biblical principles and “encourage their congregants to be good citizens and vote according to those principles.”
David Cook is one of the pastors CAN has worked with. He preaches at Calvary Baptist Church in Greenwood.
He was interested in praying with public officials after reading about it in scriptures.
“Then at Josh’s initiative, he just called and explained what they were doing, and I said, ‘that’s exactly what I’ve been praying for,’” he said.
Cook said he’s met and regularly keeps up with several state representatives thanks to CAN.
“We’ll be texting each other and talking about how we can pray for them and what it is that they’re passionate about right now,” he said. “It’s led to several long-term relationships like that where we can just regularly ask how to pray for them.”
Cook said he hasn’t met with lawmakers to bring about policy changes, but he does see the value in bringing a biblical worldview into the public sphere.
“When the morals that the government operates under line up with the true right and wrong of the universe, that then the conditions are created in which people can flourish,” he said. “We’re looking for human flourishing, and we believe that the teachings of the Bible are the best route to get there.”
“We would like to see government laws written from that moral perspective, which is informed by the Bible,” he said. “And I can understand why that would sound to an average person like someone who wants to enforce the entirety of the Bible on the people, which is not what we’re trying to do.”
Left unchecked, some scholars say, the religious and political fusion that Christian nationalists seek to create has to potential to cause dramatic changes in our country and state by undermining pluralism, freedom of conscience, and democratic principles.
Andrew Whitehead, a professor of sociology, the executive director of the Association of Religion Data Archives, and a research fellow for the Charles F. Kettering Foundation said that connecting voters with representatives is a part of a healthy democracy.
“But only helping certain folks connect with their representatives for some political end sounds more like a political action committee,” he said.
Whitehead said in order to set forth the hierarchy that Christian nationalists are aiming for, no obstacle is too large.
“We find that over and over, with evidence, of a willingness to even set aside democratic ideals in order to gain the desired political outcomes,” he said.
In his book ‘American Evangelicals for Trump,’ Andre Gagne focused on the evangelical supporters of Donald Trump, what he referred to as “neo-charismatic Pentecostals.”
“It’s the most important expression of Christianity at the moment globally, and it’s the fastest growing expression of Christianity at the moment,” he said.
That population is focused primarily in the global south, with one exception. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Pentecostalism is projected to grow from 55 million followers to nearly 85 million in the United States by 2050.
“What happens politically in the U.S. will have geopolitical implications at the global level,” Gagne said.
“If they have the opportunities that are given to them, and they could put people into political positions, they will seek in the end to create some form of hegemony and make sure that Christianity is preeminent,” he said.
And while not a single person interviewed for this series said that they wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, the path could continue to travel toward that with every law passed that reflects a more Christian morality.
“The problem is we have, even among Christians, many different interpretations of the Bible,” said Indiana State Rep. Matt Pierce. “We have people of other faiths. And so the question is, whose faith is going to rule?”
That battle to determine the future of Indiana is only going to get larger. Indiana saw the introduction and failure of House Resolution 53 earlier this year, which asked state House representatives to ‘submit themselves to Christ.’
Representative J.D. Prescott and Bruce Borders also introduced House Bill 1231, an attempt to require the display of the Ten Commandments in schools. That too failed in committee.
Some sort of bill requiring the Ten Commandments in schools is likely to make a return at the next legislative session. Indiana’s Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith said he wants to see the 10 Commandments in schools across Indiana.
“I wanna see the 10 Commandments on the wall,” he said. “I wanna see the Declaration of Independence on the walls of classrooms. I wanna see the Constitution on the walls of classrooms. It is because it’s longstanding historical tradition. What we’re doing is we’re not really giving preference to a religion; we’re giving preference to the moral creed of our foundations.”
The State’s ongoing battles against DEI, abortion rights, and free inquiry on college campuses, like the defunding of research at the Kinsey Institute, can also be linked to Christian nationalist rhetoric.
“The state has loved using religious language and figures throughout history to try to suppress any kind of dissent, said Adrianne Meier, a pastor at St. Thomas Lutheran in Bloomington. “I think that it’s all kind of falling under these puritanical understandings of Christianity in ways that are dangerous to everyone.”
David Greene, a Senior Pastor at Purpose of Life Ministries and the President of the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis said he grew up in Cave City, Kentucky and witnessed the KKK preach hate while claiming it was about defending the country.
When he sees Christian nationalism play out at the government level, it reminds him of Indiana’s darker past.
“So how do you gel people who are, on one end, creating fear in others, demonstrating hated and divisiveness, but carrying a cross,” he said. “When I hear these things coming out of our state house, for me it’s alarming because it’s almost takes me back to that. The only thing is we swap robes for nice suits, but a lot of the rhetoric is still yet the same.”
“We have to be careful that we don’t take the flag and just wrap it around the cross and create a lot of confusion about what ‘Christianity’ looks like.”