Texas pastor Joel Webbon is a radical Christian nationalist who believes that the American people are too degenerate, stupid, and cowardly to abide by the Constitution and must therefore be governed by a Christian dictator. This dictator, Webbon believes, must “rule with an iron fist” and force everyone to, at the very least, “pretend to be Christian.” Under his preferred form of Christian nationalist theocracy, Webbon wants to see the Apostles’ Creed added to the Constitution; abortion, pornography, no-fault divorce, in vitro fertilization, and birth control outlawed; women banned from voting; non-Christians kept out of his neighborhood; and non-Christians reduced to second-class citizenship.
During the most recent episode of his “Theology Applied” program, Webbon revealed that in his ideal Christian America, not only would those who practice religious other than Christianity be treated as second-class citizens, but so would all non-Protestant Christians, especially Catholics.
“At the civil level, it needs to be a pan-Protestant project,” Webbon said, reiterating his desire to see the Constitution amended to include the Apostle’s Creed and the Ten Commandments turned into law. Beyond that, Webbon declared that the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation—core theological principles of Protestant faiths—must be made official government policy.
“That’s what gets you not just a pan-Christian but a pan-Protestant project that’s distinctly Protestant,” Webbon said. “[It] says to the Catholic, ‘Hey, you’re welcome to be a part of this, but this is Protestant and and we’re not going to abandon the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So, this is what we’re doing. You’re welcome to participate, but we’re going in this direction and you can be on in the car, but you don’t get to drive. The Protestants are driving.'”
In 2023, Webbon was among the contributors to a document called “The Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel.” Drafted by Christian nationalists like Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, former Trump administration official William Wolfe, and others, the document declared that the United States must formally “acknowledge the Lordship of Christ” in all its laws, “abolish abortion,” outlaw marriage equality, and “recapture our national sovereignty from godless, global entities who present a grave threat to civilization.”
In addition to serving as pastor at Covenant Bible Church in Texas, Webbon is also the founder of Right Response Ministries, through which he organizes events like next year’s “Christ Is King: How To Defeat Trashworld” conference that is scheduled to feature a variety of far-right Christian nationalist activists like Deevers, Steve Deace, Stephen Wolfe, Auron MacIntyre, Andrew Isker, and others.
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