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In April 2025, Heritage released a lengthy paper on the importance of the Phoenix Declaration, a plan to turn American public schools into taxpayer-funded dens of Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination.
It was authored by Ryan Anderson PhD, President of The Ethics and Public Policy Center (read more about this Christian Nationalist theocratic think tank HERE) and a teaching fellow in social thought at the University of Dallas. He is a former research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and has been cited by both Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas in recent Supreme Court opinions.
Before we get to Anderson’s passionate argument for the Phoenix Declaration, let’s read his opening statement:
Thank you to Jason and Heritage. I have great admiration for Heritage, for Jason, Lindsey Burke, and Kevin Roberts. I spent a wonderful decade as a research fellow at Heritage, writings books on marriage, marriage and religious liberty, religious liberty and discrimination, and transgender ideology. After moving to the Ethics and Public Policy Center as president, I wrote a book on abortion. So, I have no idea why they invited me to keynote a gathering on education. I’m not an education policy wonk, though my work on religious liberty, discrimination, and gender ideology have all been crosscutting in recent years with ed policy. Still, I’m not an ed policy specialist per se. And while I’ve taught at several colleges and serve on the board of a state college in Florida, I’m not really an education expert either. In fact, I’m not even a decent educator: My wife and I tried homeschooling, but our eldest was still illiterate. So last month he started at a classical Catholic school about a half hour from us, and three weeks later, he was reading. (SOURCE: The Heritage Foundation – not linking to them)
These are the kinds of men Christian Nationalists look to when formulating policies: Men who admit up front they don’t know what they’re talking about but get to pontificate about “The Truth” anyway because they’re White Christian Men.
In this space, I have spilled vats of digital ink on the concept of the Christian Nationalist definition of “The Truth.” Anderson rolls “The Truth” out immediately:
The Aim of Education: Human Flourishing
So, when thinking about education, I start by thinking about what it means to be educated.
And the Phoenix Declaration gets this entirely correct in framing education in terms of knowledge, and the transcendentals: the true, the good, and the beautiful. Knowledge of the truth, and the truth about what is good and beautiful. (SOURCE: The Heritage Foundation – not linking to them)
For Christian Nationalists THE TRUTH = THE BIBLE/GOD’S LAW
Knowledge of the truth means being taught the Christian Nationalist interpretation of the Bible.
The truth about what is good and beautiful applies the Christian Nationalist interpretation of the Bible to all aspects of life. Meaning it would condemn and eradicate anything their interpretation of the Bible deems bad and ugly. Like abortion. Like LGBTQIA+ human beings. Like transgender people. Like non-traditional gender roles. Like women seeking to be something other than a wife and mother. Like scientific advancements that make life easier or longer.
The basis of Anderson’s argument for the Phoenix Declaration is “our children need to be indoctrinated in the THE TRUTH, aka the Christian Nationalist interpretation of the Bible.”
In Anderson’s next passage, FORMATION is a stand-in for CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST RELIGIOUS INDOCTRINATION.
The Liberal Arts: Educating for Liberty
Education is about formation. Forming a certain type of person. We all need formation, as none of us is born ready for freedom. Traditionally, the Liberal arts were not the Left-wing arts. Liberal was from the Latin libertas, for liberty, freedom. These were the arts that would make us free. Free from slavery to our passions and desires. Free from blind acquiescence to the spirit of the age. Free from whatever the latest fad or ideology happens to be. And notice how it was people with a real liberal arts education who first saw through and resisted the trans and other woke ideologies that we were told were the Right Side of History.
So liberal arts are meant to educate us for liberty, because none of us are born ready for freedom. We all need formation.
To Christian Nationalists, true liberty only comes from a spiritual awakening, from accepting the prescribed Christian Nationalist path to the One True God. When Anderson writes about LIBERTY and FREEDOM, he is calling for Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination to be deployed in public schools in order to hasten a child’s acceptance of the One True God.
He gives this away in the following statements:
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Free from slavery to our passions and desires. (Christian Nationalists call this SIN or a SINFUL NATURE. In rejecting our sinful nature, we find true liberty and freedom.)
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Free from blind acquiescence to the spirit of the age. (For example, if children aren’t taught that being gay is wrong, they may blindly acquiesce to who they really are instead of resisting and rejecting it.)
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Free from whatever the latest fad or ideology happens to be. (To Christian Nationalists, being transgender or non-binary is a “fad” that younger people have embraced because they haven’t been taught The Truth.)
According to Anderson and his radicalized Christian Nationalist extremist brethren, WE ALL NEED FORMATION. He specifically states it twice in one paragraph and implies it twice more.
Formation = Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination in public schools
Formation = Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination in exchange for welfare assistance
Formation = Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination in exchange for avoiding jail time for sexual offenses
Formation = Christian Nationalist dogma applied to secular laws (abortion bans; contraception bans; bans on same-sex marriage; transgender bans; and similar)
Anderson is just getting warmed up in his (by his own admission) unqualified defense of the Phoenix Declaration. But it is important to break down the rest of his missive, because therein we will find talking points to defeat it.
Please join me tomorrow to continue our analysis of the Phoenix Declaration.
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