God and politics: A once-fringe Christian movement gains influence in Indiana government – IndyStar

Editor’s note: This article is part of IndyStar’s project on Christian nationalism, funded by The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit that trains and supports journalists. 
When Indiana lawmakers banned transgender health care options in 2023, it was a victory for Christian conservatives who’d been advocating for the law for years.
But for Ryan Welch’s family, it launched a nightmare. Welch and his wife, Lisa, are the parents of a transgender son who had socially transitioned at 14 and was receiving hormone therapy when the law took effect.
The Indianapolis family joined the ACLU and other families in suing the state, fearful their son’s depression and anxiety would return if he were forced to detransition. They lost the battle in court. So they sought the care hours away, out of state.
Fast forward to 2025, and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith intimated at an Indianapolis convention for religious conservatives — one of several that took place here this past summer — that wins like these are only the beginning.
“The Lord spoke to my heart, saying, ‘Micah, Indiana needs to remember that the battle is not over,’” said Beckwith, a pastor. “2024 with the Trump administration was not the finish line. There’s a battle that will continue to rage.” 
That battle is a spiritual one, and it’s for the soul of the nation, conservatives like Beckwith say. 
Indiana has seen its share of both Christian leaders and “culture war” legislation spread by conservative think tanks to red states.
Lately, a set of ideas that pushes Christianity further into public life — based on the belief that church and state shouldn’t be separate — has taken root. Considered by some to be fringe or extreme, rhetoric embracing the idea has become more prominent in state politics. 
It reflects a growing national political movement that academics call Christian nationalism, which is based on the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and its laws should prioritize that religious perspective in governance. In the background, the U.S. Supreme Court has been increasingly ruling in favor of religious conservatives since President Donald Trump made his three appointments to the court.  
It’s seen at the state level not only through the election of Beckwith, a pastor and flippantly self-professed Christian nationalist, but also through an uptick in model legislation injecting religion into public policy governing schools, transgender rights, adoption and other areas of Hoosier life.
Conservatives who spoke with IndyStar dismiss the label and concept of Christian nationalism as a left-wing slur to brandish all Christians as seeking theocracy, or government rule by religious authority. Those who study the topic or oppose it say it’s distinct from Christianity, and is anti-democratic and more focused on obtaining power. Not all Christians, experts say, are Christian nationalists.
Whatever the ideology is called in 2025, the political movement behind it has always existed — it’s just better organized, financed and represented in the halls of government than ever before. 
It’s finding a home in Indiana, where 33% of Hoosiers surveyed by the Public Religion Research Institute are considered by the researchers as Christian nationalist adherents or sympathizers. The basic premise they embrace, according to the institute, is maintaining a Christian identity as a nation.
While religious conservatives may be encouraged to see their moral values embraced by leaders who create public policy, others are concerned. They fear a hardline interpretation of the Bible could prevail in governance and that Scripture could be used to justify authoritarian rule and discrimination against their neighbors who are non-white, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community or not Christian.
“That is, in my view, one of the biggest dangers, because the whole Satan rhetoric in the history of Christianity has always been used to totally dehumanize a human being,” said Matthias Beier, a United Methodist minister and associate professor at the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. 
Welch believes the transgender community, which is an estimated 1% of the U.S. population, is being targeted as a wedge issue ― a galvanizing force to advance a broader extremist agenda.
“If they establish a foothold here, where does it stop?” he said.
There’s been a noticeable uptick in bills introduced by the Indiana General Assembly that are promoted by groups that seek to make religious conservative viewpoints law. 
One such consortium of groups, called Project Blitz, has been publishing pamphlets of model “religious freedom” legislation since at least 2017. 
In 2022, several of these ideas popped up among the legislation filed in the Indiana legislature, including a resolution “recognizing the importance of the Bible in history” and a bill mirroring RFRA but for adoption and foster care placement agencies.  
Other bills based on Christian views, such as those to ban transgender girls from girls’ school sports and ban gender-affirming care for minors, made their way to Indiana amid a public campaign waged by the Family Policy Alliance, which was founded as the lobbying arm of the Christian group Focus on the Family.
But 2025 brought the largest cluster, with at least six resolutions or bills introduced containing a religious tie or ideas that groups like the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, for example, spread. These included a bill to require public schools to display the Ten Commandments and a resolution “recognizing the importance of repentance” and submission to Jesus Christ.  
There’s significant overlap between the authors of the legislation and the 13 Indiana lawmakers who have gone through the Family Policy Alliance’s “Statesmen Academy,” a weeklong training for lawmakers early in their career on how to lead and craft policy in a Christ-centered way. This year’s training was held in Indianapolis.  
Two lawmakers who’ve attended these trainings told IndyStar that it’s a place for Christian lawmakers to talk openly about the challenges of leading in such a tense, polarized time. They said they talk in broad strokes about conducting themselves ethically, but also about policy that aligns with a Christian worldview. 
The goal is “not to indoctrinate anybody,” said state Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond.
State Sen. Tyler Johnson, R-Leo, sees the goal of the Family Policy Alliance training as encouraging lawmakers to allow their Christian worldview to guide their policymaking.
“I don’t feel like I’m imposing that,” he said. “We’re trying to set a moral code into law, not necessarily a religion, but my faith informs my decision-making.” 
The line has been tested in public debate over a bill that’s been introduced two years in a row to allow public schools to hire religious chaplains to counsel students. 
While chaplains could be of any faith, the likelihood of them coming from a Christian church is higher in Indiana than other faiths, and this could make students from religious minorities feel isolated, argued Maliha Zafar, executive director of the Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network.
“We just need to ensure that our public schools remain a place where students of all backgrounds and religious denominations can feel comfortable receiving an education and feeling supported,” she told IndyStar.
Raatz, a coauthor of that legislation, said he doesn’t see the chaplains bill as violating the separation of church and state, as its critics allege. He sees chaplains as an optional tool for families whose schools struggle with counselor shortages.
Nor does he see a line crossed with the bill, which didn’t pass this year, to require displays of the Ten Commandments in schools, because biblical principles are embedded in our nation’s founding and legal principles.
“I think the proof is in the pudding that it probably works best that way, from the history of the nation and what we’ve been accustomed to as a country with the laws and such that we live by,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean we’re Christian nationalists, either, right?”
But groups like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State view this rationalization as part of the framework of Christian nationalism, even if lawmakers don’t want to embrace the term.  
“It’s not a flattering label,” said Andrew L. Seidel, vice president of strategic communications for Americans United. “And it is, for the most part, something that a lot of politicians are going to reject.” 
What once was on the outside is now mainstream, said Robert Dion, a University of Evansville political science professor.
Not long ago, lobbyist Eric Miller was the face of the religious right in Indiana. Miller founded Advance America, a political action group that championed pro-Christian values such as protecting marriage and sought to intertwine politics with evangelical principles. 
Dion said Miller and his movement were part of the conservative coalition and were instrumental in helping the Republicans achieve a supermajority in both chambers of the Indiana General Assembly.
Still, Miller, who did not respond to interview requests for this story, failed to win the Republican nomination for governor in 2004, unable to translate his effectiveness as a lobbyist into an elected official.
Fast forward to 2025, and Beckwith stands front and center as a political insider in Indiana, finding allies in other officeholders like Attorney General Todd Rokita.
“The people holding the reins now, the people in command, are part and parcel of that movement. They’ve moved in in a big way,” Dion said.  
Beckwith and Rokita both spoke at SOCONCON 2025, a social conservative conference hosted by the Family Policy Alliance in Indianapolis this past summer.
In just one example of religious activities seeping into their taxpayer-funded official roles, Rokita’s and Beckwith’s offices jointly produced a 30-page Church’s Bill of Rights, a legal guidebook on how religious institutions can engage in the electoral process and voter education activities without risking their tax-exempt status.
Beckwith also asked the state for more money for faith-based initiatives, including mental health. He has held pastoral roundtables as part of a statewide initiative to unite faith leaders and address pressing issues such as foster care and parental rights in education.
Beckwith doesn’t just say churches should be free of government coercion. He says that they should take an active role in politics and possibly providing services for the state. 
Some Christian leaders are pushing back. The Rev. Aaron Ban, lead pastor of St. John’s United Church in Chesterton, Indiana, said he believes churches are not equipped to provide social services on a large scale.
Ban was part of a text-message group chat where he and other pastors sent Beckwith passages from Scripture once a day on topics like immigration.
The pastor said he has no illusions that the group will convert Beckwith to another version of Christianity. They just want Beckwith to know that he’s not the only Christian voice speaking on political issues.
“I think he’s a very interesting human being,” Ban said. “I think some of his ideas are dangerous.”
Beckwith, a pastor at Life Church in Noblesville, adopts the label Christian nationalist mainly as a way to thumb his nose at those who call him that. It’s not a label he finds disparaging, nor is it one that he takes seriously.  
“I just kind of go like, ‘Hey I love Christ, I love the nation, so sue me,’” he told IndyStar in an interview this fall at his lieutenant governor office, in which a black sign bearing the words “God” over “One Nation” sat on a mantel.
Indiana has had other evangelical leaders. Former Gov. Mike Pence was unabashedly evangelical — his credibility with conservative Christians helped Trump win the White House in 2016 with Pence as his running mate.
Pence supported a defeated effort in 2014 to amend the Indiana Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. He oversaw the enactment of Indiana’s Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, modeled after national legislation from the 1990s. The bill was viewed as sanctioning discrimination against the LGBTQ community and later amended.  
Conservative Christian activists say they don’t see it as using the power of government to push their faith onto other people. They simply don’t want to be restricted by the government from exercising their own religious beliefs.   
There’s a line there, said Curt Smith, board chair at the Indiana Family Institute ― but the trouble is defining that line. What some might view as a threat, he might view as an accommodation.  
“I think sometimes when you’re feeling pushed and harassed by the culture, you might want to overreact and use the power of government to make things right,” said Smith, whose group is the state affiliate of the conservative Family Policy Alliance. “I’m more interested in striking the right balance so that religious freedom is enhanced and protected, but not to have one particular point of view prevail or have a set of doctrines enacted.” 
Smith said he has no desire to see a Christian worldview prevail through anything other than persuasion.  
Welch worries about the future and wonders how far religious conservatives will go to carry out their political agenda.
“As soon as you can gain ground on one group, you can start doing that to other groups,” he said. “I think that the attack on trans people is very much related to racism. It’s a step toward those things.”
A separate analysis conducted with the Brookings Institution and PRRI found that seven in 10 adherents to Christian nationalist ideas embraced the “replacement theory,” or the idea that immigrants are invading the country and replacing the existing culture. More than half disagreed that white supremacy was still a problem in the U.S.
But some religious conservatives in Indiana told IndyStar they reject the notion that Christian nationalism is tied to white supremacy or racism.
When Ryan McCann first started his work with the Indiana Family Institute about 20 years ago, Democrats controlled the House and had run the governor’s office within recent memory.
He doesn’t see anything new or different about the ideas gaining some steam in the Indiana Statehouse now. The difference is that Republicans just have more power. 
“I think we’re just kind of focused on it a little bit more because the people in power are talking about it,” said McCann, who’s now the institute’s executive director. “In my circles, people have been talking about this my entire time.” 
There may be another reason for the upswell in conversation: The share of Americans who identify as Christian, though still the majority in the country, has declined 15% since 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.
The stakes are high for people who adhere to Christian nationalist beliefs, said David Bodenhamer, executive director emeritus of Indiana University’s Polis Center and a constitutional historian. They are concerned that the drop in Americans identifying as Christian is evidence of a declining society.
“They’re worried that — I think at some level — that they could be held responsible by their creator, by their God, whatever God that is, for letting this happen,” he said. “If you believe that there is an afterlife and you’re going to be judged by what you did or did not do to protect and to advance the faith, then this is a big punishment.”
McCann said he thinks polarization ― the depletion of overlap between Democrats and Republicans ― is adding volume to the fight.
Both sides believe their moral code, whether secular or religious, is the correct one.
The recent assassination and subsequent martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA Faith organization’s goal is to “push back against secular totalitarianism in America,” has further energized the movement.
“I think before Charlie’s murder, people would look at me and they’re like, ‘Man, guy’s always talking about Jesus and faith and government and it’s super weird,’” Beckwith told IndyStar in his office at the Statehouse. “And now they’re like, ‘Tell me more. We want to know more.’ … I’ve gotten more comments and messages about like, ‘OK, I’m ready to listen.’” 
Contact IndyStar investigative reporter Alexandria Burris at aburris@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @allyburris and on Bluesky at‪@allymburris.bsky.social‬. Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on X @kayla_dwyer17.

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