Divine Dominion, Deadly Rule: Why Missouri’s LGBTQ+ community can never be safe under far-right supremacy
“Show Me Hate” is a running series from columnist Michael McGrady Jr. exploring the widespread harm and vast cultural/political/personal pain stemming from leaders and ideologies—along with how to turn this toxic tide for the betterment of all.
Kansas City celebrated the 50th anniversary of KC PrideFest on the weekend of June 6 to 8. It was a celebration that I was lucky enough to join in on that Saturday, but from afar. My partner, her sister, and I parked in the University of Missouri-Kansas City parking garage over on Cherry Street in such a downpour of rain. It’s quite funny, though. The rain played a major role in the festivities, but it didn’t dampen the celebrations of pride and political resistance throughout existence. But little did I know that during my time waiting for the rain to subside, I would lose the starter in my car, which would require my 2005 Toyota Solara to be towed to a Midas on Troost Ave. for a quick, effective repair. While waiting for the car, I ate excellent Rotel cheese fries and a cheeseburger from a next-door diner.
All the while, my partner and her sister (her very first PrideFest) were having the time of their lives. I got back soon thereafter, grabbed the signature Pride-a-rita cocktail at the bar tent, and got my freak flag flying. On the two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Springfield later that night, I was able to go on and reflect on the day while both of my lovely passengers slept. By reflecting, my mind fell onto the current state of my investigation into Christian nationalism in this state. My mood shifted, and my thoughts turned to the serious nature of this immediate investigation and its broader implications. In the rearview mirror of the flashing cars behind me on the dark highway, Ash, my partner’s sister, was out, asleep, while still wearing the fox ears she bought in her effort to discover her identity in the furry community. The image of Ash dancing with her adopted community, happy-go-lucky, immediately clashed with the reality of our politics. It’s life or death, it feels like, and that’s where things got dark.
“Christian nationalism is a death cult,” reads an email I sent to my editor when I initially pitched the “Show Me Hate” series to The Pitch. In commission of the series so far, my assessment has certainly shifted away from that line of reasoning into a far more nuanced view. You see, I viewed policies and political perceptions against those of us in the LGBTQ+ community in Missouri as instigated by a class of individuals dominated by far-right extreme misogyny and straight white male grievance. While that is still true, the component missing was an analysis of the deeper explanation as to why figures in our state’s politics appear so hellbent on removing queerness from public life. This is highly complex.
Reframing the Narrative
One of the key criticisms of my series so far is my focus on white Christian nationalism. Some of my more opposing readers referred to me as addressing a “made-up” and “fictional” boogeyman. First of all, there is nothing made up or fictional about the concern of white Christian nationalism and its role in national and Missouri politics. For that reason, I proudly stand by my reporting in the first two entries of the investigation I’ve produced for The Pitch. But there is truth to some other criticism that much of the media focuses on Christian nationalism as a uniquely monochromatic belief rising to power under the current administration of President Donald J. Trump and this country’s shift to far-right politics.
As I noted in the previous entries, Christian nationalists vary in beliefs, race, ethnicity, age, and other attributes. No one definition of Christian nationalism governs reportage and academic work on the topic. And to say that Christian nationalism itself is the only major issue on these intersecting topics underscores the broader need to address religious extremism in the United States and the world as a whole discussion. This is additionally the position of many of the academic experts I spoke to in my reporting of this particular series. Dr. Matthew D. Taylor of the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, based in Baltimore, MD, explained to me that he regards much of what the news media reports as white Christian nationalism being a single monolith in public debate as inaccurate.
Taylor serves as the institute’s senior Christian scholar. He explained to me the differentiation between what many in his field of research refer to as Christian supremacy versus far more traditional notions of Christian nationalism, though both overlap. Christian supremacy is far more fraught than traditional nationalistic beliefs because it intends to instate a hard-right dominionist theology over this country. Dr. Taylor explains, “I think it is in some ways a species of a certain thesis of American culture that wants to say that the [key] problem right now is white Christians and how they’re the ones who are really driving this action and driving this political tendency toward a Christian nationalism alignment.”
“I just think that that actually is misleading to people,” Taylor asserts in our interview, alluding to the diversity of Christian supremacy movements.“I think it’s a much more diverse phenomenon and both on many different spectrums. And I think that’s a part of the story that often gets left out. People are left with this impression that MAGA is this all-white coalition—especially among the Christian segment of MAGA, which is the majority of MAGA, it is much more multi-ethnic than a lot of people think.”
And Taylor is correct. For example, Black men are more likely to support Trump than any of the likely general election voters hailing from minority communities. This is also the case for Latino and Hispanic voters, despite Trump’s White House is now clamping down on immigration to the United States. On top of that, these movements of Christian supremacists are not all uniquely led by men, but by women. Religious conservative women are common in Christian supremacist movements.
Meet the Christian Supremacists
Taylor discussed how he studies Independent Network Charismatic (INC) Christianity movements, including the subset of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) theology. Paula White, an outspoken and controversial independent charismatic pastor based out of Florida, leads the White House Faith Office. Her position and proximity to President Trump are noteworthy, considering White’s religious and political ideological alignment with the tenets of NAR theology, which espouses dominionism over secular society. INC Christians actively work toward a wholesale takeover of American society.
New Apostolic Reformatic adherents are considered INC Christians, Taylor explained, but not all Independent Charismatics identify with the NAR movements. NAR takes on the teachings of the Charismatic theologian C. Peter Wagner, who is regarded as a key figure in forming the modern NAR movement and the network of churches tied to it. In his 2008 book Dominion!: How Kingdom Action Can Change the World, Wagner called for a dominionist effort justified on overtly political theology that claims Christians are the only supreme beings in the world. He refers to the Seven Mountain Mandate doctrine as the guiding principles for creating what they view as a truly Christian society.
Seven Mountain Mandate calls for the believers of the doctrine to dominate seven aspects of society to fully control it: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. “They (NAR leaders) have a great deal of access to power, and they are pushing their agenda forward, and their political and theological vision for the world is purely driven by dominionist theology and this idea that Christians need to take total dominion over all aspects of American society,” Taylor says.
The access to power can be seen in the NAR and INC Christians adopting the extreme positions of the MAGA movement. The connection is there, Taylor reports. He was kind enough to offer The Pitch a look at his 2024 book, The Violent Take It By Force, where he offers readers an authoritative discussion on the role NAR and Independent Charismatic movements had in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building that resulted in at least five deaths during and after. While President Trump has used much of his 2024 campaign and first months in office to rewrite the events of that day, scores of pro-Trump far-right rioters invaded the U.S. Capitol intent on overturning the 2020 election result through intimidation, violence, and force. Present that day were the followers of Q-Anon, right-wing militias, and the so-called ‘theobros’ who came out for Trump.
“Since January 6, we’re seeing a lot more cross-pollination between the conventional militia world, the violent far right, and these independent charismatic networks,” concludes Taylor. That said, concepts and movements like “Q-Anon are getting threaded through all kinds of different movements, and Christian supremacy is getting threaded through, and especially this charismatic style of Christian supremacy is being threaded through all kinds of different far-right movements.”
Taylor says that a lot of the NAR and INC Christian networks and “ecosystems,” as he explains it, rely on rhetoric that insinuates demonic possession, the political left-wing being demonic, or how they view Satan is attacking tenets of traditionalist conservative Christian belief. He additionally notes, “A lot of what [Christian supremacists] characterize as demonic could be broadly what others would refer to as LGBTQ+ individuals and LGBTQ+ identities simply existing.”
‘Disarm and Disorient’
I was initially referred to Dr. Taylor and his work by a fellow scholar of Christian extremism named Drew Strait. Strait is an associate professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. I referenced Strait in my first entry of the series as I defined much of the baseline understanding of Christian nationalism. As I noted, Dr. Strait defines Christian nationalism as “a worldview where one’s theological imagination is co-opted by state power.”
In his 2024 book Strange Worship: Six Steps for Challenging Christian Nationalism, he characterized Christian nationalism as “strange worship, in both biblical and theological perspectives.” He was kind enough to speak to me. Dr. Strait explains, “What’s distinctive about Christian nationalism is that theological imagination becomes carefully bound up with [an individual’s] ethno-racial identity, and those are very inseparable spheres of existence for Christian nationalists. I think that as a New Testament scholar, and I come from the Anabaptist tradition, so there’s a heavy emphasis on nonviolence and peacemaking.” He explains that the Christian nation concept “is an oxymoron,” and how he sees the teachings of Jesus Christ as a means to “disarm and disorient” the Christian nationalists and supremacists who rely on outwardly violent theological conceptualization.
The nature of my inquiry to Strait was how he could account for the violent rhetoric of these far-right religious movements being amplified against otherwise law-abiding queer people. “We will continue to see Christian nationalism used to exploit the poor and the oppressed, the historically marginalized, including the LGBTQ+ community. I think we’ll see it used as a weapon in the far right’s arsenal for lording power over whoever that is. At the end of the day, that is what Christian nationalism is all about,” he says.
While Strait didn’t specifically focus on the issue of race and ethnicity among the adherents of Christian nationalism and supremacy, he does highlight how such an ideology allows people of certain pigmentation to excel in capturing control of society’s power centers. Those people are white, cisgender, straight men, like in the senior leadership of Missouri’s government.
“I think the immediate threat to the long-term protections of the LGBTQ community, whatever protections they have, I think all of that’s under threat,” he continues. Despite Matthew Taylor convincing me that Christian nationalism is essentially not a “death cult” in the sense that I initially pitched my editor for The Pitch, Dr. Strait affirms the concept after we spoke at length over the theory that it is nothing more than deadly for not only queer people in this discourse, but democracy in the U.S.
“Yeah, I affirm all of that,” he says. “That makes complete sense. It’s a death cult for democracy, and it’s a death cult for human flourishing. It’s a death cult for liberalism. That’s what it really is. The liberal order is dying under Christian nationalism. It can’t coexist. Democratic pluralism is dying.”
Divine Dominion, Deadly Rule
Considering what both Strait and Taylor shared, this takes us back to my initial views about Christian nationalism being a death cult that wants to eliminate queerness from public life in Missouri. As such, I can authoritatively say that death cult is the wrong classification at this juncture. Rather, what those who classify as Christian supremacists want is something so much darker to me: a “Godly dominion.” And, a dominionist movement and belief could still be considered harmful, if not deadly, in its nature.
This leads me to one of the most significant concerns I identified when working on this series: suicide rates among LGBTQ+ youth in this state and the current mental health crisis impacting queer groups. Even the Behavioral Health Epidemiology Workgroup at the Missouri Department of Mental Health issued a bulletin in 2018 stating that LGBTQ+ youth are far more likely to report anxiety, depression, and other mental health crises, including suicidal ideation and attempts, than youth who are straight.
What is crucial about these numbers is that it is one of the only advisories issued by the Department of Mental Health through this workgroup that accurately deals with LGBTQ+ representation in suicide rates among youth in Missouri. Though outdated data, being that it was released over five years ago, one of the only reputable publications on this subject matter to be released by the state government is this document. We can see similar reporting in state mental health data, but even then, it is limited.
As is the case for many deeply conservative states in the Midwest, any indication of effective data derives from non-governmental organizations and think tanks like the Trevor Project or the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law. I emailed the Trevor Project for a comment on recent data they reported on the overall mental health of LGBTQ+ youth in Missouri. Instead, I was sent the final report they published related to Missouri’s queer community. Based on a national survey conducted by the Trevor Project in 2024, 39% of all LGBTQ+ young people thought about committing suicide in the past year across the United States. Missouri is at that same level. 15% of LGBTQ+ young people living in Missouri also attempted suicide in the past year.
For gender non-conforming and transgender young people in the state, as is elsewhere in the country, these numbers are much higher—45% reported suicidal ideation, while 18% attempted to commit suicide. 69% of LGBTQ+ young people in Missouri report anxiety (74% for trans and gender non-conforming youth in the state), and 49% report depression (57% for trans and gender non-conforming youth). There is strong, mounting academic and practical evidence that indicates that the existing LGBTQ+ mental health crisis at the population level is directly tied to socio-political and environmental hostility.
Christian nationalists and supremacists latch onto the issue of trans youth in interscholastic and intercollegiate sports or the access to gender-affirming care. It is a clear byproduct of those deep dominionist viewpoints on human sexuality and bodily autonomy, like abortion access. These far-right movements consider these issues as singular in many ways and threaten what they see as the traditional sexual order mandated by their vision of God and Jesus. For adherents of the New Apostolic Reformation phenomenon, these issues are another front in their spiritual war to assert their variation of Christian dominion—to purge queer representation in spheres like family life or in culture corresponds to notions in the Seven Mountain Mandate elements of these gesticulations.
Unsettled Business or Supremacists Seeking More Power?
Spiritual justifications from these movements attempt to play up conspiracy theories and satanic panic when dealing with the topics of LGBTQ+ rights and overall bodily autonomy. There are many, many real-world examples here in Missouri that show clear efforts to attach issues like abortion rights and the right to access lifesaving healthcare as a singular issue.
The Missouri state legislature shoehorned House Joint Resolution (HJR) 73 through both chambers before the legislative session closed this year. HJR 73 is a dualistic attempt to overturn Amendment 3, which protected a woman’s right to abortion and reproductive care, and the constitutional amendment’s adoption by a majority of state voters during the 2024 general election. HJR 73 would make abortion in Missouri illegal again with rare exceptions while simultaneously prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors. The Missouri Constitution makes it unconstitutional for legislatively referred ballot measures to go beyond a single issue. This means that HJR 73, bearing two issues, could face decertification if Missouri’s court system saw a reason to do so.
Despite this technicality, there is clear evidence here to support claims that supremacists in Missouri’s highest halls of power perceive these issues as singular fronts against demonic corruption of women, youth, and the traditional family structure they claim is espoused in dominionist theological beliefs.
I do concede that this is a singular issue because I view any attempt to use the power of the government to infringe on people’s bodily autonomy, sexual liberty, and reproductive freedom as a slap in the face of the First Amendment. I do digress, though. HJR 73 is a perversive and depraved boilerplate that is likely, if passed during the 2026 election, to cause women, children, and LGBTQ+ individuals to see increased mortality rates. This might be a tad ‘doomsayer’ in nature, but there is undeniable evidence that eliminating access or severely restricting access to abortion care leads to increases in maternal and infant mortality rates.
Research indicates gender-affirming care for transgender people “was associated with lower odds of depression and suicidality.” On top of that, virtually all of the major medical and public health organizations in the United States and the world support both gender-affirming care for transgender and gender diverse people of all ages, and abortion access improves overall reproductive care access for women of all ages. These major medical organizations include the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, the American Psychological Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Public Health Association, and dozens of others. However, it is the fear of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-women lawmaking that drives people to be, as I described last column, displaced political refugees. And, there is even more data indicating that people are leaving states like Missouri in droves to find inclusive environments that are welcoming and proud.
An Exodus of Peaceful People
Abbie Goldberg tells me that Missouri isn’t even remotely an accepting place, considering the contexts. Dr. Goldberg is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Williams Institute—a public policy research think tank focused on sexual orientation and gender issues, which is housed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law. Goldberg additionally serves as a professor of psychology at Clark University, based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Goldberg co-authored two reports on gender-affirming care for the Williams Institute in April and May. The April 2025 report, which was co-authored with Elana Redfield, the institute’s federal policy director, is entitled “The Experiences of Gender-Affirming Care Providers in States Without Laws Restricting Access to Care.” Goldberg and Redfield found that in jurisdictions where critical gender-affirming care is heavily restricted, trans people and their families are far more likely to seek care out-of-state from providers in neighboring states. All the while, over half of the care providers surveyed by Goldberg and Redfield reported an increased demand for gender care.
The May 2025 report, co-authored by fellow distinguished visiting scholar Brad Sears, is entitled “The Impact of Anti-Transgender Policy and Public Opinion on Travel and Relocation.” Findings from the Goldberg and Sears report derive from another survey of 302 trans, non-binary, and non-conforming people. Citing survey data they collected, Goldberg and Sears found that almost half of the respondents to the survey, 48%, had already moved or were considering moving to a location in the United States they viewed as more trans-affirming. One in four had already moved to an inclusive jurisdiction. 65% of respondents said they were less likely to go to certain places they viewed as less affirming.
“Asked how much they wanted to move out of the United States, 45 percent said they very much (20 percent) or somewhat (25 percent) wanted to move out of the country,” the May report indicates. In a phone interview with Goldberg, Christian extremism and anti-LGBTQ+ policymaking go as far as to harm innocent individuals by forcing the traditional gender binary in an oppressive form. Goldberg says, “It is a reification and a reinforcement of gender binary, of a kind of idealized Christian, kind of nationalist vision for the ideal man or the ideal woman is, the ideal family. There is this inherent valuing of ‘who matters?’ Who is good and who doesn’t matter and who is bad?”
“All of these laws and policies and ideology not only affect the youth and adults directly, but it affects the people that they care about and those who care about them,” Goldberg adds. “It would affect the adults who are there taking care of them. It would affect the health care providers in their particular area, the teachers at their schools—people willing to stand up for and with them.” She explains more that such aggressive and harmful policymaking on gender-affirming care, specifically, carries with it a direct and indirect series of unfortunate consequences. HJR 73 would carry these direct and indirect consequences, attaching the gender-affirming care issue for trans youth and the abortion access issue.
Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director of PROMO Missouri, confirms this assessment in final words for this column. Erker-Lynch explains that PROMO is conducting deep canvassing in deeply conservative communities, including where I live in Springfield. Much of the deep canvassing action has been focused on explaining why HJR 73 and the intentions behind such a measure will harm the entire state, not just women seeking abortion care and people seeking gender- affirming care treatment.
They say, “Every single person in Missouri has had trouble accessing the healthcare that they need. It’s approachable, and then without fail, everyone says, ‘Yeah, you know my my cousin or my sibling or my neighbor’ or they say, ‘You know, I haven’t thought about this person in a long time.’”
Michael McGrady Jr., a contributing writer for The Pitch Kansas City, spent months learning how Christian nationalism in Missouri impacts state and national politics. McGrady conducted over 40 interviews with everyday people, political and psychological experts, and religious leaders, paired with deep research. His findings are in a multi-part series, expanded from an original three-part order because of popular demand, titled “‘Show Me’ Hate.” Part four of the series is coming out soon, where he discusses LGBTQ+ activists and the religious efforts to coordinate against Christian nationalism and supremacy.
