Christians are losing their grip on the GOP as neo-pagan ideas gain influence
by Emma Freire
Illustration by Krieg Barrie
During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a political philosophy called “fusionism” dominated the Republican Party. In broad strokes, fusionism consisted of an interventionist foreign policy, free market economics, and Christian social morality—with an emphasis on being pro-life and opposed to gay marriage. President Donald Trump killed fusionism when he adopted a noninterventionist foreign policy and imposed tariffs on the entire world. But what of the Republican Party’s morality?
Many of Trump’s votes in 2024 came from a group sometimes called “Barstool conservatives,” basically nonchurchgoers without much of a political creed beyond their hatred of wokeness. But non-Christian thinkers are also reaching the party’s more high-brow audience.
“They provide an alternative intellectual, moral superstructure for the right,” said Aaron Renn, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Reformer. “It’s a rival set of ideas that are non-Christian. These groups, although they’re small, provide an alternative ideology that people can very easily understand and adopt.”
The extent of this influence can be hard to discern. Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) calls secular and neo-pagan influences indirect, seen mostly through MAGA influencers on social media. “The problem is that many conservative Christians, who see ‘the left’ as the only threat to Christianity, open themselves to malevolent influences on the right,” Tooley says. “They falsely assume that any force on the right must be a friend to Christianity. They also forget that sin is universal and not confined to the political left.”
… Here are four of the non-Christian philosophies creating ripples in conservative circles.
… Barstool Conservatives
… Curtis Yarvin
… Bronze Age Pervert
An extremely flattering illustration
… Steve Sailer
Tucker Carlson is no stranger to controversial interviews. But in June 2024, he invited a guest on his show that even he acknowledged came with baggage: Steve Sailer.
“So I gotta say, it’s a little weird to be sitting across from you in my barn,” Carlson says. The room doesn’t match most people’s idea of a barn. The two men sit underneath a chandelier made of antlers, surrounded by dark-wood bookcases, a grandfather clock, and an American flag. The occasion for the interview is Sailer’s new anthology, Noticing. But it is so much more.
The “weird” element Carlson refers to is not his barn but the fact that Sailer, who writes for far-right websites and has an eponymous Substack, has appeared in public. In an email, Sailer tells me he used to be seen as “this Lord Voldemort of the intellectual world, frequently referenced but never named.”
“I went over 10 years without being allowed to give a talk in public,” he says. “I’d get signed up to give a presentation in a hotel meeting room, but then the Southern Poverty Law Center or some other hammer of Cancel Culture would intimidate the hotel into cancelling the contract.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has called him a “proponent of scientific racism” and a “white supremacist.”
Sailer popularized the term “human biodiversity,” the idea that the human race is best understood through the lens of evolution. He claims he’s basically a sports fan, noting that some races tend to do better in certain sports and playing positions. “I just employ the kind of thinking that’s not terribly controversial in the sports world to more politicized questions about society, such as education or crime.” He has written about racial differences and test scores. He’s also reported that FBI data shows that 60% of known homicide offenders are African American.
Renn explains, “The animating feature of human biodiversity is: evolution works on humans, and therefore human groups, essentially races, genetically vary and all of these differences of outcomes in our world are as a result of genetic variations between groups.”
Despite its connection to evolution, Sailer says he doesn’t see human biodiversity as incompatible with religious faith. “You can also discuss the microevolution of biodiversity among humans intelligently without believing that our species came about solely through macroevolution without any guidance by a higher power.”
Matthew Walther disagrees. “The idea that a human being made lovingly in God’s own image, endowed with a rational soul, can be reduced to or can be considered synonymous with one measure of his or her intellectual capacity, is so profoundly and obviously anti-Christian.”
While Yarvin, BAP, and Sailer emphasize different things, Walther thinks they are closely intertwined. “You could say that the human biodiversity thing is the hardware, and the BAP thing and the Yarvin thing are the software.” Walther believes the notion that some races are more intelligent or more capable is implicit in Yarvin and BAP’s work. Human biodiversity states this notion explicitly, albeit in a style that purports to be neutral and scientific.
BAP denies being influenced by the modern group of writers who use the label human biodiversity. “My own views on the importance of nature and biology in human social and political life are influenced by Plato and Aristotle.”
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Sailer got 4.3 million views on X. But beyond metrics like these, it’s difficult—if not impossible—to measure how many people these non-Christian philosophies reach, much less how many people believe them. Still, the ideas filter into the public consciousness through podcasts, memes, X posts, and Substacks—and often they’re only referenced in indirect ways.
Below the paywall is the full email interview with Ms. Freire’s questions in italics and my answers in regular type:
Paywall here.
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