My Substack posts usually review research or other forms of evidence related to a practice in education that is under attack. For this post, however, I am interviewing Dr. Kevin Kumashiro about his insightful framing of Christian nationalism in education today.

Kevin Kumashiro is the former Dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, and an internationally recognized expert on education policy, school reform, teacher preparation, educational equity, and social justice. He just recently released a report entitled School Times for End Times: A Brief History of U.S. Christian Nationalist Activism and Public Education. You can access the report, which is free, online.

Okay, let’s get into it. Kevin, can you briefly first describe School Times for End Times for our readers?

Kevin: Thanks so much for interviewing me, Christine! School Times for End Times: A Brief History of U.S. Christian Nationalist Activism and Public Education is my attempt at mapping out about three and a half centuries of Christian Nationalism in the U.S. from the colonial era to the present, particularly its impact on public schools. I try to show aspects that repeated or cycled over time as well as aspects that were laid as precedent or groundwork for the current moment that we are in.

Christine: Okay. What led you to write this report at this current time?

Kevin: Although I had done some research on the Christian Right over the past couple decades, it was the 2024 elections that really sparked my interest in doing a deeper dive into history. I was especially curious about the blueprint for the incoming administration as laid out in Project 2025 and why it was that Christian Nationalist organizations (among others) would be so invested in such a wide range of issues, such as taking over and downsizing the government while expanding the military; cutting taxes for the rich while cutting services for the poor; and attacking courts, the news media, cultural arts, climate science, public health, higher education, and of course, public schools, in addition to attacking various marginalized groups. This report is my attempt to connect these dots.

Christine: What kind of things surprised you as you were researching this project? And what didn’t surprise you?

Kevin: I grew up observing Christian holidays in schools and attending Bible studies when I was a young kid and again as a college student, and I’d already done some research on the Christian Right before this report. So to be honest, I started this project thinking I knew quite a lot about Christian influences over schools and was surprised by just how much I didn’t know. One example is that Christianity—at least, certain versions of Christianity—has been very pervasive in education, both historically and institutionally. Historically, Christianity’s influence predates the beginnings of public schools in this country, while institutionally, as public schools emerged and evolved, Christianity would shape any number of aspects, from why we have schools and who should make decisions to what we should be teaching and by whom.

A second example is that there’s always been conflict between different groups of Christians. Even early national struggles over questions about freedom of religion were less between Christians and non-Christians and more between different groups of Christians over whose version of Christianity would dominate in public spaces. But in recent decades, we see intentional bridge-building that would culminate into a much more politically united New Christian Right (the social movement that first emerged in the post-Civil Rights Movement era).

Christine: Can you give a quick example of that bridge-building?

Kevin: There were efforts throughout the 20th century to bring together different denominations, but arguably the most impactful would be when various Christian leaders worked collectively to build a unified base to elect Ronald Reagan as president in 1980—which, by the way, was when we also saw the first iteration of the “Mandate for Leadership,” the predecessor to Project 2025.

Bridge-building leads to my third surprise, which is that Christian Nationalist tenets (like the idea that the United States was founded as a Christian nation) are very widely embraced, including by non-Christians. Christian Nationalist organizing may involve a small minority of people, but its ideology is shaping a much larger population.

You also asked, what was not surprising? Based on my previous research, I was expecting to and did see that Christian Nationalist engagement in education has fallen into two categories over time. One is de-institutionalization, or pulling back from the public sector, such as by creating Christian schools, homeschooling, and using vouchers to fund those; and the other is re-Christianization, or making public schools more and more guided by what some believe to be Christian ethics, particularly school curriculum. I was nonetheless surprised by just how numerous these strategies have been over the last century and how they have laid the groundwork for today’s policy landscape.

Christine: Okay, thank you. What do you want readers most to walk away with? I read the whole report, I actually went through it and studied it, and there’s a lot in there. What do you want readers to walk away with?

Kevin: I feel like there’s two big takeaways that I really hope readers walk away with. First is that the strategies of the New Christian Right have consistently occurred in two spheres—structural and cultural. The structural or legal sphere has focused on changing leaders and laws—from taking over elected school boards and shaping judicial appointments to establishing court precedents and developing model legislation (for easy adoption in states across the country)—and is the sphere that activists across the spectrum tend to prioritize and that the New Christian Right has undoubtedly been quite successful at. But of no less importance is what helps make possible these successes, which is the cultural or narrative sphere that has focused on shaping how people make sense of ourselves and our world. The New Christian Right has quite effectively done this by fomenting culture wars as a way to build a political base, particularly culture wars regarding gender and abortion, queer and trans people, and immigrants and refugees. I bring these up because, although these strategies have been very effective for Christian Nationalist organizations, they clearly can be effective for counter-movements as well.

Christine: Thank you. There were things in the report that struck me. One of the things that really struck me was the extent to which Christian nationalists see their role as hastening the end of times. And this is something I really hadn’t thought about. It’s an entirely different goal than I and most people I know have for the country and for our political action. How do you see building bridges of communication across that chasm of purpose, or do you see a possibility there?

Kevin: I would say, yes and no, depending on who we’re talking about. Like you, I was struck by the significance for Christian Nationalists of the notion of the End Times, which I’ll put simply as: there are some Christians who believe that the times that we’re in—the world as it is now—is filled with un-Godly evil, sin, danger, suffering, but that these times will end, signaled by the second coming of Christ that brings about salvation for the chosen. What I found interesting is the significant theological disagreement among Christians about what precedes that end and what role Christians (and non-Christians) play in accelerating its occurrence, such as the difference between post-millennialism and pre-millennialism, or, for instance, the difference between trying to make the world more Christian versus trying to protect one’s own group in a forthcoming battle between good and evil. All to say, there has always been diversity within organized Christianity, and that has included large social movements whose activities reflected what some of us see as priorities and values of a democratic and equitable society—such as the Social Gospel Movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that provided, among other things, social services for those in need. I imagine that there are similar groups today with whom we can find common ground around what it means to support everyone in finding wellness, health, liberty, joy, and the like—even if other groups may be closed to such bridge-building.

An even larger group for bridge-building are the many Christians and non-Christians who I mentioned earlier as not identifying with Christian Nationalism but are nonetheless embracing Christian Nationalist tenets, even if unknowingly so. This is a large swath of the U.S. public that might want to come on board with a more democratic vision for public institutions and education in general if we can leverage our skills as critical educators to coalesce.

Christine: Yeah, because the whole idea that, I think about how our work ought to be to try to make things better for people, and yet there are those who think that our work should be to hasten the coming of the next Armageddon.

Kevin: Yes, I think that connects to why the struggles over public schools have been so central to Christian Nationalist movement building. Before the United States was formed and before we had public schools, education consisted mainly of literacy instruction in some churches and homes with curriculum centered on the Bible. Early education for many White colonists, in other words, had a religious purpose of warding off the Devil and sinfulness, and as such, was considered an extension of the church. As common schools (the predecessors to public schools) were created, some Christians expected these schools to play a similar role in providing Christian education, and for a while, the schools did precisely that. However, since their beginnings, the common schools and the subsequent public schools have been sites of ideological and political struggle over what should be taught, and how, and by whom, and with what materials, and so on, including debates over what type of Christianity should be taught, in alignment with which denomination, or whether Christian ethics should be taught at all. In fact, just as the American Enlightenment would inform government, so too would it inform education, including the embrace of science as a tool for knowledge production; of various forms of diversity, including religious diversity; and of participatory democratic principles. Looking less and less like an extension of the local church, public schools would quickly come to be seen by some as anti-Christian, or at least, as antithetical to certain Christian ethics. As I mentioned earlier, Christian Nationalism thus developed a two-prong strategy of withdrawing (deinstitutionalization) while simultaneously trying to take over (re-Christianization).

Christine: I knew that there’s Christian stuff embedded within schools, like, you just look at what the holidays are, but I was struck by you pointing out that schooling isn’t religiously neutral, and that Protestantism, which I grew up with, is embedded in the curriculum and so forth, which makes the idea of non-sectarianism a lot more complicated than I had thought. Having grown up Protestant, I got to feeling like the fish in the water that can’t see the water, because that’s what they’ve been in all the time. What do you see as a way forward?

Kevin: A huge takeaway for me in preparing this report is the cyclical way that Christian Nationalism evolved over time, namely, by responding to increased democracy and diversity with increased regression. In other words, at times when sectors of society were advancing protections and support for marginalized groups or religious diversity, you see a doubling down on some of the most regressive aspects of Christian Nationalist tenets—from White supremacy, anti-indigeneity, anti-Blackness, and anti-immigration to male supremacy and rigid gender and sexual regulation—as during the founding of this country, and then a century later post-Civil War with Reconstruction, and then another century later during the Civil Rights Movement, and of course, right now as well.

So, hmm, how to move forward? One of the things that gives me hope is that the United States will only continue to become more diverse by race, by gender/queer/trans identities, and by religion/faith, and that this is happening at a time of historic levels of mass mobilizing. Christian Nationalism may be elevated to political dominance now, but its ascension cannot help but to be temporary as its tenets and political projects themselves are contested from within and without. I hope that my report adds to the growing body of work in the public space that reveals how its increasingly violent regression is and has repeatedly been an anxious attempt to cling to power as it declines, not unlike the warmongering of the neocons in this moment when the American empire is in decline, or the recent historic upward redistribution of wealth and plundering of natural resources in a moment when neoliberalism and corporatocracy are being exposed. I think our job is not to retreat, but to keep naming the moment (calling out the hegemony of things like empire, oligarchy, nationalism) and building the world as it could be.

Christine: That’s really helpful. You begin and end the report by discussing a range of attacks on education and democracy today, including anti-DEI, censorship, privatization, and defunding initiatives. How does the history of Christian nationalism help us understand recent developments in legislation in the courts? And you may have already responded to that.

Kevin: The longest section of the report covers the last 80 years, with particular focus on the groundwork being laid for the legislative and Supreme Court bombshells of recent years. For example, following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Christian Nationalists engaged in three strategies that still reverberate today. One was to turn to academic frameworks to make certain policy priorities sound more palatable, as when resisting mandatory desegregation by drawing on academics championing school choice and vouchers. A second strategy was to engage in long-term, sometimes decades-long strategies that lay the groundwork for changing law and policy, including establishing court precedents, developing model legislation, shaping judicial appointments, and taking over school boards and other efforts to dominate electoral politics. A third strategy was to inflame culture wars as a way to build their political base, as when shifting from defending racial segregation to opposing abortion. Versions of all three strategies continue to operate with much success.

Christine: So, those of us who are concerned citizens and are going, oh my god, what can we do?

Kevin Kumashiro: It’s easy for me to feel demoralized or overwhelmed when I look at how resourced and impactful Christian Nationalist activism has been recently. However, history makes clear that this ascension was not inevitable—it was the result of bridge-building and organizing, of strategizing and advocating collectively in legal and cultural spheres, and of movement building, particularly regarding the institution that aims to shape the minds of the next generation, namely, education. The future will similarly be shaped by social movements and educational systems—and that’s where we play a role today: learning from the past to engage in movement building for a more just world.

Christine: Okay, wow, there’s a lot of work to do. Thank you so much!