In early February, clips began circulating from Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission hearing, where the former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller challenged Jewish activists Yitzhak Frankel and Shabbos Kestenbaum about the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Notably, Prejean Boller framed her opposition to political Zionism in terms of her Catholicism: “I’m a Catholic and Catholics do not embrace Zionism,” she said. She raised the charge of deicide, reading the New Testament verse about the Jews killing Jesus and questioning a panelist about whether he would have tech platforms censor the Bible on account of antisemitism claims. And she challenged the theology undergirding evangelical support for Zionism, dispensationalism, which understands Jews as God’s chosen people that help fulfill the end times prophecy by settling in the land of Israel.
A number of prominent “America First” isolationists are Catholic, including Pat Buchanan, one of the fathers of America First paleoconservatism who famously opposed the Iraq War. Vice President J.D. Vance, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, far-right strategist Steve Bannon, and columnist Sohrab Ahmari are all America Firsters skeptical of foreign intervention. Catholicism also appears dominant among a cohort of extremist Groyper-style figures infusing their anti-Israel worldview with classically antisemitic language and ideas, including streamers Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, the Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, and now Prejean Boller, who has aligned herself with Owens in particular.
On this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with Matthew Cressler, author of the forthcoming Catholics and the Making of MAGA: How an Immigrant Church Became America’s Law and Order Faith, and Julie Schumacher Cohen, co-author with Jordan Denari Duffner of the forthcoming Palestine, Israel, and Catholic Social Teaching: A Guide. They discuss how we should understand this apparent connection between skepticism about American intervention abroad and Catholicism. Cressler and Schumacher Cohen explain what Catholic theology has to say about Judaism, Zionism, and the modern political state of Israel. They explore how some figures on the right are hearkening back to the earlier days of the Church—before the Second Vatican Council’s modernizing changes, which included a condemnation of antisemitism—and they dissect the antisemitic and fascist threads in the Catholic tradition that are being surfaced in Fuentes’s and Owens’s rhetoric.
Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”
Media Mentioned and Further Reading
Fifth Religious Liberty Commission Hearings, Parts 1 and 2
“Nostra Aetate” from the Second Vatican Council
Matthew Cressler discussing MAGA Catholics on the Reign of Error podcast
“No Catholic Brand of Christian Zionism, or Tolerance for Antisemitism,” Julie Schumacher Cohen and Jordan Denari Duffner, Contending Modernities
“Catholic Guilt and Gaza,” Julie Schumacher Cohen, Commonweal Magazine
“I am a Catholic. And a Zionist.,” R.R. Reno, The Washington Post
“Maga Catholics are on a collision course with Leo XIV. They have good reason to fear him,” Julian Coman, The Guardian
“Portrait of a Campus in Crisis,” Will Alden, Jewish Currents
“‘Christ is king’ becomes a loaded phrase in US political debates, especially on the right,” Peter Smith, Associated Pres
Kevin Roberts’s first statement on Nick Fuentes’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show
Tucker Carlson interviews US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee
“The Dangerous Exceptionalism of Christian Zionism,” Halah Ahmad and Mimi Kirk, Al-Shabaka
Transcript forthcoming.