The guests are a distinctive group: a collection of legislators and local government officials with one unifying purpose. Among them are an Arizona House member, a North Carolina state senator, a justice of the peace from Arkansas, and state treasurers from Oklahoma and Ohio.
Representing more than half the states in the nation, they have come to southern Virginia to craft policies to take back home: measures to ban abortion, restrict gender-affirming care and condemn gay marriage.
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers has been responsible for at least 15 pieces of model legislation introduced – and in some cases passed – by state legislatures across the country.
- Its website lists about 60 state chairs and national advisory board members, but the organization claims over 1,000 supporting members and elected officials from all 50 states.
...[ ] The NACL’s work is emblematic of an effective trend in Christian conservative politics after the Dobbs decision: coordinated state-level efforts to undo the conventional understanding of church and state.
A burgeoning powerhouse
Rapert also is a pastor and runs Holy Ghost Ministries in Conway, Arkansas.
He describes the NACL as a place for lawmakers to debate, construct and distribute model legislation from a “biblical worldview.”
“We believe that with all the troubles facing our country, with Democrats and leftists that are advocating cutting penises off of little boys and breasts off of little girls, we have reached a level of debauchery and immorality that is at biblical proportions,” Rapert said in an interview with News21.
Members of the group sign a pledge voicing their opposition to gay marriage, affirming belief in life at conception, and endorsing the idea that Christianity shaped America and made it what it is today.
The name of the group is very intentional, according to members. The acronym is the same as the chemical shorthand for salt, NaCl, a reference to a passage from the Bible encouraging Christians to be the salt and light of the world.
Although only four years old, the group is well-connected. Funders have given it several hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, and Rapert has attracted U.S. congressional representatives, prominent anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ lobbyists, and GOP officials to serve on his board of advisers and to speak at NACL meetings.
Influential Christian conservatives, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former U.S. Rep. Bob McEwen and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, serve on the board. The group also receives funding from such conservative legal powerhouses as the Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty Institute, the American Family Association and several other large religious conservative groups.
The organization’s members have introduced legislation at the forefront of politicized cultural issues in states across the country. Those policies are then often circulated as model bills to other members of the group. . .
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