Christian Nationalism Rejects Solid Science
When Donald Trump campaigned in Iowa in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses in 2024, he never consulted with scientists or technical experts to help in crafting his policies. Instead, he assembled the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, a network of over three hundred people from across Iowa who claim to be the leaders of religious organizations.
In fact, members of Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition have attacked science, saying that science is “delusion” and “unscriptural”.
Members of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition have a special contempt for the scientific understanding of biological evolution through natural selection.
For more information about the following members of the Coalition, and the other preachers and posers who populate the network, read the new book Donald Trump’s Army Of God.
Joshua Davis is pastor of the Davenport Wesleyan Nazarene Church in Davenport, Iowa. That church is a member of the Interchurch Holiness Convention, which describes biological science as a “delusion” because the Christian Bible is “the only authoritative source of information concerning human origin.”
Cyril McKay, pastor of the Omega Church in Oskaloosa, Iowa is a board member of the Iowa Holiness Association, and like Joshua Davis, is a member of the Interchurch Holiness Convention. As a member of that organization, McKay asserts that scientific knowledge must be discarded when it conflicts with ancient Christian writings.
“We possess a Book, believed by us to be the revealed Word of God and therefore the only authoritative source of information concerning human origin,” the Iowa Holiness Association writes. The organization insists that evolutionary biology is delusional. The group teaches that if people discover any facts that disagree with the Christian Bible, they are duty bound to ignore those facts.
Adam Whitty is pastor of the Temple Baptist Church in Charles City, Iowa. He preaches that biological science is false, and that evolution through natural selection simply does not take place.
Mark DeFord is pastor of the Leon Bible Church in Leon, Iowa. The Leon Bible Church promotes the work of the Institute for Creation Research, which declares that “there is no such thing as a ‘prehistoric’ time period — all history has been recorded!”
Dan McCoy is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Urbandale in Urbandale, Iowa. He tells his followers that the Earth was created, exactly as we see it now, in just six days. These days, McCoy says, are not metaphors for long periods of time. He teaches his followers that the Earth was created by a great spirit in only six days.
Like Cyril McKay, Dan McCoy also teaches that the knowledge of science must be rejected whenever it conflicts with ancient Christian doctrines, because science is “unscriptural”.
These preachers represent the widespread consensus in Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition that biological evolution through natural selection is a fraud. They say that evolution is fake because it doesn’t agree with what their holy book tells them.
Christian Nationalists like these in the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition seem to think that science is just a matter of belief, nothing more than a rival to religion.
What does science itself have to say on the matter?
EVOLUTION
Evidence for biological evolution of species through natural selection comes from many sources, including:
- Fossils – huge numbers of meticulously documented physical remains of dead organisms that reflect coherent development over extremely long periods of time
- Comparative anatomy – similar body parts seen in many different animals but adapted to different uses, in patterns that suggest lineages of adaptation over long periods of time
- Molecular biology – the study of patterns in genetic diversity. These patterns support the relationships of descent between groups of organisms that have been established through fossils and comparative anatomy
o Scientists are now able to do genetic engineering by directly editing genetic sequences that are linked to observable traits, such as bioluminescence
- Geology – measuring the ages of rocks through:
o Relative dating, using methods such as the related positions of different layers of rocks
o Absolute dating, using techniques such as the measurement of ratios of different isotopes, measuring the amount of time it would take for these ratios to form given observed rates of radioactive decay
§ For very old rocks, Magnetostratigraphy measures the ancient polarity of the earth's magnetic field recorded in a stratigraphic succession
- Ecology – observations of co-evolved relationships between species, such as pollinating moths and tubular night-flowering plants
- Direct observation of evolution in animals, plants, and microbes that have short generations
o Pesticide resistance in insects
o Resistance to antibiotic medications in parasitic microbes
o In 2008, scientists reported on the physical changes in a population of lizards of the species Podarcis sicula after they moved them from their natural habitat to a neighboring island. In only 36 years, the lizards evolved “striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts” along with “dramatic changes in population density and social structure”. On their original island, the lizards were insect eaters, but on their new island home, the lizards evolved to eat more plants.
The sciences that made these discoveries possible are biology, geology, chemistry, and physics. These sciences have been constructed through centuries of cumulative observation and experimentation. What’s more, the construction of these sciences is not complete. It never will be complete.
Every day, scientists are taking measurements, testing their theories, and finding ways to improve them. They publish their findings in a way that’s transparent, showing not just what they discovered, but also sharing the methods and data that they used to achieve these discoveries.
These rigorous methods have made tremendous leaps in technology and engineering possible, and our society benefits from those.
When NASA sends people into space, it uses scientific research in chemistry and physics to do so.
When the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drugs Administration provide guidance to doctors in the treatment of disease, they aren’t just making things up. They use precise instruments and techniques to perform multiple rounds of clinical tests in order to provide the public with the safest and most effective medicines possible.
When the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service provides forecasts of dangerous storms such as tornadoes and hurricanes, they use equipment that has only been made possible through the work of generations of physicists and chemists, developing physical equipment and analytical techniques that get more reliable every year.
In comparison, the churches of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition have prayer. They have a book that’s thousands of years old and has never updated.
Yet, they demand that our government throw away centuries of scientific progress in favor of what their old book tells them.
The Christian Nationalist preachers of Donald Trump’s campaign say that science is a delusion, but scientists have evidence for what they say.
Christian Nationalists don’t have any evidence for what they say. They want us to simply accept it on faith.
In Americans’ personal lives, making decisions on the basis of faith affects just a few people. It’s people’s right to believe what they want to believe.
For our society as a whole, we need higher standards. In the work of the federal government, there’s too much at stake to play around with hocus pocus. It’s not good enough to have government agencies just making things up as they go along. We need policies that are based on facts, not fantasies, and we need politicians who know the difference.
Science delivers rigorous and reliable knowledge. Christian Nationalism can only rant and rave.
To learn more about the ranting and raving of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, check out the book Donald Trump’s Army of God, which documents the Christian Nationalist network that enabled Donald Trump to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.