By: Ryan Jayne, Senior Policy Counsel
Ryan Dudley, State Policy Manager
Oklahoma voters delivered a welcome rebuke to one of the country’s most extreme Christian nationalist politicians.
Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers, a pastor-turned-politician who built his political brand on imposing his religious beliefs through government power, was defeated in his Republican primary and failed to advance to a runoff. His loss represents more than the defeat of a single candidate; it shows that even in Oklahoma, there are limits to how far voters will go in following a politician who seeks to erase the constitutional separation between church and state and replace it with sectarian rule.
During his brief tenure in the Oklahoma Senate, Deevers became a national symbol of the Christian nationalist movement’s hopes and aspirations. He championed legislation to criminalize abortion with virtually no exceptions, pushed attacks on LGBTQ+ equality, sought to undermine marriage rights, promoted religious intrusion into public policy and constantly attempted to elevate his particular religious beliefs above the constitutional rights of all Oklahomans.
Deevers and his Christian nationalist allies frequently veiled these efforts in the language of “religious liberty.” But forcing one’s religious beliefs on their constituency is exactly the opposite of religious liberty and runs counter to everything this nation stands for. True religious freedom means that every American has the right to practice their faith or to practice no faith at all, without government coercion.
Even members of Deevers’s own caucus saw through his charade. “Dusty Deevers came to the state Capitol after winning a special election, and he came here to represent his church, and he did not represent his district, and he paid the price last night,” said Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton.
Christian nationalism still persists in SD 32
Unfortunately, Deevers’s defeat does not mean District 32 voters will get a champion of secular government. The two candidates who advanced to the August runoff offer more of the same theology-driven politics, just with less national notoriety.
Jean Hausheer, the first-place finisher, serves as medical director of the Pregnancy Resource Center of Southwest Oklahoma, a crisis pregnancy center. Crisis pregnancy centers have been widely criticized for discouraging abortion while providing misleading information and religiously motivated counseling. She is, by all accounts, every bit as committed to abortion bans as the man she helped defeat.
Curtis Erwin, who finished second, is himself a Baptist pastor whose campaign platform leads with “protecting pro-life views” and “defending religious liberty.” This is the same coded language Deevers used to justify imposing religious doctrine through law. While potentially less of a firebrand Christian nationalist than Deevers, Erwin still has all the makings of a theocratic legislator-in-the-making.
In other words, voters rejected Deevers’s style, not necessarily his theocratic substance. Whoever wins the runoff will likely continue voting to privilege religious doctrine over the rights of nonreligious and religious-minority Oklahomans alike. That is worth naming honestly: the primary was a rebuke of the most flamboyant Christian nationalism, not a conversion to secular governance.
Christian nationalism is un-American regardless of who is pushing it.
The Christian nationalist movement depends on the false premise that America was founded as a Christian nation and that the government should privilege Christianity above all other beliefs. The Constitution says otherwise. Our nation was founded on secular principles that protect individual conscience and prohibit religious tests, religious favoritism and religious control of government.
Deevers’s defeat is a reminder that voters are not obligated to accept politicians who treat public office as a vehicle for religious domination. Americans across the political spectrum understand that the government should solve real problems, not serve as a pulpit for culture-war crusades rooted in sectarian ideology.
While Christian nationalism remains a serious threat to democratic institutions and individual rights, this election demonstrates that its most extreme advocates are not invincible. When voters are given the opportunity, they can and do reject candidates who seek to replace constitutional government with religious authoritarianism. We hope voters hold the next senator from SD 32 equally accountable as they did Deevers.
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The FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations, and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues. The FFRF Action Fund is the advocacy arm of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a state/church watchdog and the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) with more than 41,000 members nationwide.
