When former president Donald Trump called for a federal parental bill of rights in a 2023 campaign video, saying secular public school instruction had become a “new religion,” he was invoking arguments Farris first made 40 years ago.

That’s what Trump does: take ridiculous right-wing talking points and repackage them in an even dumber way so that the GOP base can really get their teeth into it.

The idea that not pushing a religion is itself a religion is profoundly stupid, but Christian Nationalists can’t imagine that not everyone thinks like they do so they slurp it up like gravy.