Secret boys club promoting Christian governance is a threat to freedom in Idaho | Opinion

A pair of reports last weekend from Talking Points Memo and The Guardian outlined the influence and membership of a previously secret group operating in Idaho — a Christian extremist group called the Society for American Civic Renewal, or SACR.

The invitation-only group, which excludes women, gay people and many others, aims “to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a ‘national divorce,’” TPM reported

As The Guardian previously reported, the group was founded by Charles Haywood, a far-right Indiana hair product magnate who envisions himself as a future “warlord” employing a group of “shooters” as part of his “armed patronage network.”

He’s a man so extreme that Rod Dreher, a far-right Christian political writer who moved to Hungary so he could live under the dictatorship of Viktor Orbán, described Haywood as a man pouring out vile from “deep in his Midwestern Führerbunker.”

Just a fraternal organization?

In an emailed statement, Coeur d’Alene SACR lodge president Skyler Kressin described the group as an answer to what he labeled the decline in male camaraderie and faltering social engagement.

“Our mission is to revive the spirit of civic engagement through close-knit groups of American Christian men, who share basic values and beliefs, and hold each other accountable to considering the common good at the local level in all that we do,” he wrote.

But TPM’s reporting, relying on a trove of internal emails it obtained, suggests something much, much darker.

“The trove reveals SACR’s core mission: to create a mini-state within a state, composed entirely of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian men. It’s explicitly patriarchal, demanding that group members assume a dominant role at home, and celebrates the use of force and existence of authority,” TPM reported.

Christian power

Kressin emphasized that Christian nationalism is not the official stance of SACR, adding that his views were summed up well in an essay by member Andrew Beck, who argued that the focus should instead to be Christianize the civilization.

Kressin said the group recruits those with influence, special skills and wealth because “we encourage a renewed localism focusing on entrepreneurship, family, local politics and building up local institutions.”

But that’s a distinction in search of a difference.

“Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm,” the group’s mission statement reads.

And for someone on the wrong end of that power, it may make little difference whether they are dealing with a Christian nationalist organization like the Idaho Family Policy Center or a Christian “civilizationist” group using powerful people to seek whatever private aims it has.

And it has members with influence. Others noted on SACR chapter founding papers include Post Falls City Councilman Randy Westlund and patent attorney Michael Colby, who serves on Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s advisory committee.

The email trove

The network of secret boys’ clubs came to light because of one Boise State professor’s likely misuse of public resources.

Boise State University Professor Scott Yenor, famous for his vile brand of misogyny, serves as a “an ideological and organizational leader” for the national movement and as the president of its Boise lodge, The Guardian reported. TPM’s story focused on a trove of emails in which Yenor discussed SACR with other members, including Kressin.

SACR’s emails weren’t leaked. They were obtained by TMP through a public records request because Yenor was using his official Boise State University email to correspond with other members. (Isn’t that always the way? You try to build a cabal, and some bumbler goes and makes the whole conspiracy a public record.)

So you, dear taxpayer, were paying for Yenor to organize this absurd attempt to change America, and not for the better.

Given the reportedly extensive trove of emails TPM received, it seems Yenor’s use may extend well beyond the “de minimis personal use on their personal time” of public technology resources allowed by BSU’s technology policy, something the university should investigate.

No Mormons allowed

Idahoans on the right who belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by far Idaho’s largest Christian denomination, should take special note that they are not included in this vision of some Christian civilization.

SACR does not affirm Christianity in general but “a particular Christianity.” Membership criteria include “submission to the authority of a particular Trinitarian Christian body,” according to a document posted by TPM investigative reporter Josh Kovensky.

Kressin confirmed that Mormons, Jews and Muslims, among others, aren’t allowed to become members.

“... (Our) sense was that we needed to draw the line for purposes of a truly common sense of deep belief and ethical commitments in our membership,” he said. “So, we do in fact exclude LDS among others, just as they and others have their own groups.”

So don’t expect an invite. When SACR members talk about a Christian nation or a Christian civilization, remember that you would be excluded from it. Whatever local governance and local institutions they’re building, they aren’t for you — much less for women, LGBTQ+ people, atheists and tens of thousands of other Idahoans.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson.