This year, Secular AZ celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. Fifteen years ago, a bunch of agnostics, atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and secularists in Arizona recognized what was happening in evangelical extremist circles throughout the United States, and formed the Secular Coalition for Arizona. Our founders realized that after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, white Christian nationalists did not raise the white flag. They regrouped, recruited, and rebranded.
People like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Paul Weyrich founded conservative organizations like Focus on the Family and The Heritage Foundation, all laser-focused on ushering in a Christo-fascist regime.
Growing up, I would sometimes catch these hate preachers on TV on a lazy Sunday, and I never really got it. I never understood how people could believe anything that came out of their mouths. Maybe it was my dad’s disdain for their endless pleas for money, or the way their tears and mannerisms just felt fake. Maybe it’s that I couldn’t see any discernable difference between the Sunday morning televangelists and the Saturday night ones.
