to climate hell with no sign of slowing down and that humanity needed to co—operate or perish. now on bbc news... america, faith on the frontline. this country belongs to god almighty! a powerful minority is on the rise with a particular vision of america. you cannot separate god from politics. you cannot take him out of our government. it is one of the oldest and most influential currents in us politics but in a country deeply divided, the christian right has found a new voice. we desire to live in a judaeo—christian nation with judaeo—christian values. it claims christianity is under attack and that god belongs in government. with pastors preaching its message in churches and its beliefs guiding ultraconservative candidates in the mid—term elections. i'm a christian, i say we should be the movement is 90 minutes christian nationalism and the far right is taking it to the extreme. we are the christian taliban. some warn this is fundamentally undemocratic. it was amplified by donald trump. we are going to protect christianity and i can say that, i don't have to be politically correct. powered by his election loss, it broke cover at the storming of the capital on january the 6th last year. you can't diminish what happened on january the 6th from what's happening in some centuries on sunday morning. their crusader starting from the ground up and education is the front line. our school board meetings are police officers at the meetings to escort people out if they get too out of control. to understand this moment in us politics you have to understand this movement. i met people across the country who feel they are battling for the soul of america. tarrant county, known for conservative churches, it is america's largest republican urban community and it helped elect donald trump. but in 2020, joe biden won here by a hair. this politically crucial corner of texas has become a testing ground for how conservatives can maintain their grip. it is 6:30 in the morning. like every parent, laney is rushing to get her children ready for the day. but in the past few months, she has spent more and more of her time focused on schooling, fighting back against what she believes is a growing conservative and christian influence in the classroom. when we first got here everything is mild, school board meetings were boring. then everything ramped up to this and this is where we are now. it is a fight. our school board meetings have police officers at the meetings to escort people out who get too out of control. school boards are ground zero of the culture wars taking place across the country. in tarrant county, they are churning with disputes over what children are taught about sexuality, gender identity, the history of racism and of what they should be allowed to read. there are only two genders and they shouldn't allowed to use fantasy pronouns. fight like hell! this is censorship, _ it is much more than politics. this is about lives. there is a higher rate for suicide. i not having support i from your home, your peers and your school means adverse mental health effects and eventually- suicide attempts. transforming low—profile elections into high—stakes political conflicts and central to that is christianity, but not through the pews. remember when america stood for things like honour, freedom, personal responsibility and faith? enter a texas cell phone company on a mission to protect conservative christian values. it spent nearly half $1 million supporting ii candidates in four districts. all of them won. 11 seats on school boards. it is part of a new effort by republicans to take over politics from the ground up. backed by political operatives like former trump adviser steve bannon. one of the keys is these school boards, they are the key that picks the lock. tell us about what you did in tarrant county. since then those school boards have begun to put new restrictions on books and gender identity issues. the owner of patriot mobile recruited long—time political operator to help mobilise the christian message. every mother of school age kids, it's really quite concerning. we have never in the city is that we were dealing with had christianity so attacked. attacked, what do you mean? look at some of the public comments in school boards, bill calling christianity a terrible racist bigoted thing. and the reason we started with school boards is because that is the level of government that is most impacting the future of our country. what we were seeing is the indoctrination instead of education. do you have a responsibility back into the schools in some way? no question. we need to have a little bit more faith in schools in the sense of, we have to remove what i feel is ungodly stuff out of the school. i'll put what he feels is godly into the school. 0r put what he feels is godly into the school. recently, texas pastor has said schools had to display posters of the national motto if they were donated. patriot mobile delivered hundreds. lainey and other parents saw an opportunity to take a stand. this man has two children in school, he asked students to design signs that would include them. these were the voices he felt were unhurt. arabic speakers, transgender, and gay kids. the school board initially rejected the signs, the issue has gone to court. schools shouldn't be a place where you have people competing about which is the best card. but that's where we are. it should never be that. keep your religions to yourself. your religious institutions, temples, houses. 0r accept all gods. 0r make it a place for everything, absolutely. the signs may have been a political stunt that they see something more sinister at work. we see the republican party who have decided one of their goals is to bring god into schools. that is the plan long term, to bring god also into the government. to me, it is anti—american, to try and bring christian ideology into our schools or our government. our country is based on allowing people to make that choice for themselves. i raised the sign controversy with patriot mobile. it has created a great uproar because folks hate the concept. my response is, it's the national motto, we are not doing anything... if you don't like it, take every go out of your pocket and threw it away because every ball and every coin. you don't think it was an issue of who is god do we trust? because the alternatives brought forward or an arabic and, you know... it was more political thanjust the word god. for all parents here, this boils down to the future of their children. and who gets to shape what that will become. the concerns i found in texas echo resoundingly through the conservative christian establishment. this fear of a cultural takeover by what they labelled the radical left. the southern baptist theological seminary in lewisville kentucky is one of the largest in the world. training leaders who are shaping the future of the evangelical church. have you and other christian leaders taken on a more overtly political role? inevitably, because christian preachers didn't have to preach about lgbtq issues in any sense as we do now because it does not issues of the country, nobody was talking about them. this shift has been a fundamental change for both the country and the church. for conservative christians there has been a dawning awareness of the fact that whereas the society basically agreed with us in almost every important issue, i mean, the overlap, if you take a venn diagram, was so overwhelming that outsiders would hold the united states a christian nation. something has clearly changed and conservative christians in this country are now in a paradox or a predicament, i think that's why you see such, you know, it would be called by those who don't look at the rise of the new christian right, or the awakening of the christian vote in the united states, well, there is a reason for that. the rise of the new christian right is called christian nationalism by some. a belief that america was founded as a christian nation and that the government should keep it that way. blurring the line between church and state. christian nationalism is a new term for a very old phenomenon. it privileges a religious identity with citizenship in its most virulent form it turns out also have an racial component to it. in the us that component has been round of european descent or whiteness, as it has developed in the country. when i talk about christian nationalism in the us, donald trump was seen as defending their cause when he entered the white house. we are going to protect christianity and i can say that i don't have to be politically correct. and it was the storming of the capitol that showed just how much religious and political identities had begun to emerge on the right. bonded by a believe the election had been stolen. jesus christ, we invoke your name! many reject the christian nationalist label as a leftist smear. but a few right—wing politicians are embracing its rhetoric. we have to be the party of nationalism and i'm a christian and i say we should be christian nationalists. the church is supposed to direct government not the opposite. the church is supposed to influence government. and we need to be so involved in what is going on in our government. 0nline, extremists have taken it even further. we are the christian taliban, this is the era of christian nationalism. what's different now is that the country is no longer a majority white christian. as recently as 2008 when barack 0bama was first running for president, the country was actually 54% white and christian so comfortably majority. that number today is 1m. i think that threat that white christians are no longer in control, demographically, culturally or politically, is why we are seeing it come to the fore in the current context. dominant voices in black church are also sounding the alarm about the racial implications of the movement and they warn that the spirit of the january the 6th attack was not contained in the capitol. you can't diminish what happened on january the 6th from what's happening in some sanctuaries on sunday morning. you can't separate this passion to overthrow the nation plasma capital with violence in january the 6th from the rhetoric that we hear on christian radio. you can't separate this desire to pull down elected officials and maybe even call for their murder, versus what we hear frankly from people all across the nation, even elected officials, who are praying for the death of the president. many pastors were at the capitol that day. i travelled to tennessee, deep in the bible belt, where one of them continues to preach. so the pastor has asked me to meet him here on this overpass to watch him waving flags. seems a bit of a patriotic stunt, i think he does it a lot. hello, pastor. how are you? i'm doing good, thank you, god bless you. and god bless america, and god bless donald trump. ken peters has denounced the violence of the capitol riot but still defines what he sees as a patriotic mission. we do feel like god has a special plan for this country and he still has a plan for this country. 0njanuary the 6th you thought that was under threat? absolutely. we felt like the enemy, meaning leftists, who don't like christians, had stolen our nation. peters' patriot church is one of a growing number of nondenominational starter congregations that say they want to take back the country for god. i was a little unsure of what to expect. as someone who grew up in the church, what i heard here was not the gospel and new. here was not the gospel i new. political activism is an act of worship. the lgbtq on the left are saying, you are church, separation of church and state, get in the stands, you can't play in the game. church, preachers, you stand up in the stands, separation of church... an aggressive response to a sense of being under siege stop missions will have to get feisty. we will have to get the fight a little bit. you can stick your head in the sand when it comes to politics. for him, that means a crusade against abortion. if god can overturn roe v wade, he can do anything. and ending same—sex marriage. yes, i want to exclude certain types of relationships, sexual relationships, from marriage, it is special to us. it is in the bible, it is something we really care about. you want a government that would impose that quickly i want a government that keeps marriage what it has always been. what he preaches from the pulpit is meant to be taken to the polls. we endorse monte fritz, we endorse him. and his message seems to be resonating. to me this isn't anything new, it isjust how i even grew up in a country. there is nothing wrong with that. and some try to shame us for loving our country, this is what god raised us to do. we wanted to find a place that wasn't afraid to take a stand, that wasn't afraid to speak out if there were issues that they thought needed to be spoken about. we are definitely a christian nation, we should be. - so to try to separate i politics from the church is asinine, it cannot be done. if you are doing it, you're - probably doing something wrong. i wanted to know if other churches in tennessee felt the same way, so i continued the journey to the city of franklin, south of nashville anna place that has become the new frontier for evangelical christianity. ijoined an early morning meeting of community activists who work with the homeless, led by pastor kevin riggs. he grew up as a conservative evangelical and had dreams of becoming a mega— church pastor. but a close reading of the bible convinced him god cared more about social justice. there is division within the church that i haven't seen. i have had friends who are pastors because they spoke out against the religious right or against president trump, and then they were asked to leave their church. what is the danger, do you think? you hear the term a lot in evangelical circles that we are fighting a cultural war. you could very easily replace the word culture with civil and that's kind of where we are, it's been a called civil war, it's been about ideology and fighting for these things but it could quickly become violent. it could become, you know, the right will have a tendency to take up arms to protect their rights. there are pastors who seem to court controversy, even thrive on it. greg locke burned catholic rosaries and harry potter books on halloween night, objects of sorcery and witchcraft, he called them. we don't have to be so careful with what they say... i met him in a studio near nashville where he films his webcast about faith and politics. social media, that's the biggest part, it's about 4.6 million people across all facebook and all the platforms, and at the end of the day we have millions of people that watch, and that brings a lot of people to the church. good evening! he made a name for himself as a trump pastor but he really took off by challenging the covid shutdown. and yes, he was also at the capitol right. you ain't seen in insurrection yet! he preaches politics to his following that can sound like extremist rants. you god—hating communist, you will find what insurrection is, we are not playing garbage, my bible says that the church of the living god! you also said in your church that democrats are demons, do you really believe that? absolutely. the democratic party is demonically energised, if you believe in butchering babies, you celebrate stolen elections and you don't want freedom and you're against the second amendment riven first, then leave. it is one thing to be tired of a party, another to say they are evil and demonic. but i don't mind saying that. could this not be a way of inciting to violence, those people who listen to you either in your church or online? they might take it a step further, if this is evil, go after it. people have been saying that for years, if you followjesus, that means you will nick a weapon and go to the church and run people down. you are calling fellow americans evil and putting it in the context of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. there is an apocalyptic battle. that is the kind of language that could be used to incite violence against such people. i'm not inciting violence, i am preaching _ i'm not inciting violence, i am preaching the bible. he is now preaching the bible with a growing emphasis on deliverance from demons. there is not the political rhetoric tonight. you can see that greg locke definitely knows how to draw a crowd. it is emotional, powerful, dramatic. he knows how to develop a following. after the service, people gathered at the front seeking prayer to be freed from their demons. this kind of mass deliverance service is tapping into an old tradition of pentecostal revival in the united states. it breaks through into new ways when people are hungry for the experience of a living and mighty god. for those here, the spirit of god was moving. but how is this mix of charismatic evangelism, right—wing politics and trumper�*s and playing out in the mid—term elections? i think we are seeing a test run of some of this rhetoric in the midterms and i think it is dipping their toe in the water to see how this plays in the campaign trail with a rev up to 202k. one of the best examples of a candidate backed by this new religious right is the republican contender for pennsylvania governor, doug mastriano. a former military man campaigning as a christian warrior, framing the selection is spiritual warfare. don't be bonded by those lies of the enemy. we stand at a crossroads right now in pennsylvania and this is our time, we are taking our country back and it starts right here. i went to pennsylvania to find out what voters were thinking, travelling deep into amish country. i had metjeff and janice at a campaign event, and their friends were visiting from out of state. i'm going to be voting conservative, not necessarily republican. i look at both sides. but most of what i hear from the democratic side is not something i align with. what about mastriano? i am well behind him. do you believe that mastriano has been called by god? yes, absolutely. what you think god has called them to do? to get involved politically. if you read the stories - in the bible, he uses people to move on to do things in god's will and god i is calling for many people to take back this world. . are they going to take back america now? he did appoint trump. but this is going to be long—term. it's going to take a while to get this country back the way it was. it took 30 or 40 years to turn it around. but i think it may take 20, 24. 22 will be a big... it will definitely set the pace on what's going to happen. but i think god is going to come down and he's going to make things change. and you have taken the country back, what will that look like? i think it's going to look good. you have got back in the government, you have god back in the schools, you have the ten commandments, think about living by the ten commandments. none of our kids even know them. after we spoke they headed to an event where the christian right is finding a new voice. where am i a christian nationalist at in this? i thank you! this is the reawakened tour, travelling roadshow attracting tens of thousands of people as it crisscrosses the nation. you cannot separate god from politics. you cannot take it out of our government. the attendees are anti—vaccination and anti—mask and they are invoking god to stop the steal. 0n the sidelines, hundreds of people queued to be baptised, by water and by the spirit. it feels like a church service. and it has felt like a church service several times today but then again, it felt too a political rally, so it is both. i have never really seen such a mixture of religion and politics. top billing was shared by a handful of trump loyalists. the general who served two presidents ten convicted of lying to the fbi. the political operative convicted of lying to congress. collecting money for his legal fees. and the man himself dialled in while his son was on stage. we are going to bring this country back because our country has never been in such bad shape. it is a carnival of chaos. those who are preaching fraud and conspiracy and christ, that's the power of the message. the mid—term election will be the first test of how this plays out at the polls. this new christian right is out of step with the direction of the country, fighting against changing moral values, framing that is a battle against evil. what it ends up doing is turning political opponents into enemies. and that is a kind of threat to the whole democratic project. i hope it ends up on us finding a way to have our own regions of the nation and living peacefully together. it is a minority but backed by powerful politics and if republicans win big could be an outsides influence, influence, pushing the party and the church further to the right. hello there. tricky weather conditions out there at the moment, but tuesday generally is an improving story. it's going to be a case of sunny spells and scattered showers for many, accompanied by some squally winds, though, still from time to time. so we've seen this mass of cloud spilling in off the atlantic, and the weather front is producing some rain, some of it really quite heavy. it's quite a narrow band of rain, and it is pushing through at quite a pace because it's driven along by gusts of winds in excess of 60—70mph. so by around 5—6am, the front will be sitting out in the north sea and leaves a trail of squally showers to follow behind. so there will also be a little more sunshine around for tuesday. some of those showers really quite heavy with hail, with some thunder mixed in there, as well. and they are going to push their way in from the west further inland. now, as we go through the afternoon, we're still going to see some gusty winds, widely 30—40mph, but we could still see gusts in excess of 50mph down in the southwest. it's going to be a relatively mild story, though, because the wind direction coming from the southwesterly, so temperatures above where they should be for the time of year. we're looking at highs of 11—15 celsius. now, the wind direction will change from a south—westerly to a bit more of a westerly as we go into wednesday. weather fronts waiting out in the wings, but that means a slightly fresher start to the day first thing on wednesday morning, single figures in one or two places. so not as mild as it has been of late. again, another day of sunny spells and blustery showers to look out for on wednesday. showers most frequent perhaps developing in the far northwest as we go through the afternoon. so there should continue to be some spells of sunshine, because we've got that westerly flow, temperatures may be down a notch for some areas, generally between 10—15 celsius. now, as we move into thursday and towards the end of the week, we've got an area of high pressure that's going to build and centre itself across europe, and that will keep these weather fronts out in the far northwest. it still continues to drive in this southwesterly flow, this milder air across the country, so temperatures will continue to be above the average for the time of year. and that high pressure should keep things a little bit quieter and drier. welcome to bbc news, i'm mark lobel. our top stories. 0n the eve of the us mid—term elections, democrats and republicans make their closing arguments to american voters. president biden has been addressing the crowds in maryland, while donald trump is in ohio. parted by war — we speak to the bride of one ukrainian man still being held prisoner by russia. a stark warning at the opening of the un's climate summit — humanity must co—operate or perish. the clock is ticking. we are in the fight of our lives — and we are losing. and why europe's energy crisis is forcing some communities to rethink how they will celebrate christmas.