Fort Worth rep’s pivot to faith panel allies him with Jan. 6 speaker | Opinion

Rep. Nate Schatzline says he’s leaving elected office. Knowing the outgoing representative for Texas House District 93 — which covers North Fort Worth — well enough to have a strong opinion of him in any direction assumes you either pay close attention to legislative politics or his church’s sermons. Each of which is, in its own way, unwise for your health.

While you should be informed about how Schatzline uses his podium in Austin and pulpit in Fort Worth to force us to live like we go to his church, I am sorry if I’ve stripped you of your blissful ignorance. But for Fort Worthians who either enjoy (or at least respect) the right to abortive healthcare, LGBTQ+ expression or easy access to buying books, Schatzline’s departure from the state House may feel like an early Christmas present.

Same for those who want freedom from easily preventable disease. Schatzline honored Mercy Culture Preparatory, a school operated by the church he pastors, for having the lowest measles vaccination rate of any school in Tarrant County, framing its flirtation with exposing children to an easily preventable disease as a triumph for “medical freedom.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if Schatzline’s upcoming job vacancy ensured liberty and justice for us all?

Instead, Schatzline’s next gig is a promotion of personal status and political power.

Schatzline says he is joining the National Faith Advisory Board, a coalition of faith leaders — mostly Christian pastors — allied by their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, politics they call “family values” and “religious freedom,” unwavering support for Israel and their close relationship to the Trump administration. Schatzline said in an announcement that his job will more or less involve equipping pastors to fight for the company line. As Schatzline transitions into his new role, the Fort Worth lawmaker with a near-nonexistent record of writing Austin bills that actually become Texas law will be a half-degree removed from the American president’s ear.

The NFAB is led by its founder, Pastor Paula White-Cain, a televangelist and Trump appointee to the White House Faith Office. Understanding White-Cain’s ministerial lean and influential profile is crucial to understanding why Schatzline would find common cause.

White spent most of the 21st century dodging financial impropriety scandals — one of them vast enough to draw a Republican-led Senate inquiry — on her way to attaining crossover celebrity. Back in the aughts, White guest appeared as a “life coach” on Tyra Banks’ talk show, counseled superstar athletes Deion Sanders and Darryl Strawberry, and even ministered to Michael Jackson at his Neverland estate while the King of Pop faced a new wave of child sexual abuse allegations. She even became a spiritual confidant for that guy from “The Apprentice.”

Religion scholar Matthew D. Taylor positions White’s evolving legacy beyond that of an Oprah-like influencer for churchgoers, A-Listers, and aspirational scammers. In Taylor’s book “The Violent Take It By Force,” which examines the growing influence of Christian nationalism, he calls White “the fulcrum” of the fast-growing New Apostolic Reformation, “an epochal shift in American religious politics.”

Pentecostal in origin, the New Apostolic Reformation emphasizes the responsibility of Christians, led by modern leaders and “prophets” believed to have direct, personal access to God’s will and to reign over government and culture in devotion to Christ. The struggle for societal rule is framed as a spiritual war — metaphysical battles between those they see as the people of God and the demonic forces who oppose their values — with material consequences for who should hold power.

You can see shades of that thinking in how the leaders of Mercy Culture, Schatzline’s church, articulate its relationship to Fort Worth. In 2021, The Washington Post reported from a Mercy Culture service in which lead Pastor Landon Schott posted a map of Fort Worth divided into four quadrants, each led by the “high-ranking demonic forces.” Choose your fighter: Greed corroding the west, Competition dominating the east, Rebellion ruling the north, and Lust perverting the south.

Oakhurst’s foul spirit of rebellion continued having its way. Church leadership spent years describing arguments from their neighbors and city officials regarding municipal zoning law as “insane demonic resistance,” then threatened to sue City Council members if they voted against a church project. When you believe, as Pastor Heather Schott told the city’s zoning commission, that God told her to construct exactly 100 residences for sex trafficking survivors on her church property, questioning any detail of a divine directive can easily be dismissed as a Satanic attack.

White employs the same good-versus-evil binaries when exalting President Donald Trump beyond that of a mere ally to her cause and as a God-ordained conduit for His divine will. Any opposition to Trump can be filed away as proof of nothing more than the devil staying busy.

One day after the 2020 election, White, who Trump appointed as a special adviser to the Faith and Opportunity Initiative during his first term, pushed the completely false conspiracy that the election was being stolen from the president’s grasp, urging Christians to “pray that the enemies to [sic] God are quieted and their plans are overturned.” In nightly prayer meetings that followed, White declared that God would, through the power of the crowd’s prayers, “keep the feet of POTUS in his purpose [and] in his position” and defeat the “demonic agenda that has been released over this election.”

Months later, Schatzline’s new boss shared a podium with Trump right before the president ushered her heavenly battle to his earthly realm.

When Trump urged thousands supporters at his “Save America” rally to “fight like Hell” and march to the Capitol — and hundreds of them did exactly that — White delivered a ceremonial prayer asking God for “an assurance of a fair and just election” while also wishing that “every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace, against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus.”

You likely remember that insurrection attempt by its more informal name, “Stop the Steal,” or maybe just the date: Jan. 6, 2021. Or the congressional investigation that identified the numerous ways Trump merited criminal charges for instigating a riot that violently backed his illegal efforts to overturn the election results. White was right there, declaring God’s blessing over the president’s flagrant fabrications. If Pastor Paula were a Texas public school student, she could have glanced at her classroom wall and learned which of the Ten Commandments she had desecrated. (At least No. 9, possibly No. 3.)

For Schatzline, the partnership is already bearing fruit. White was announced as a keynote speaker for his political action committee’s fundraiser in Fort Worth. (At $75 per person, Pastor Nate’s black-tie gala is way cheaper than Pastor Paula’s $1,000 Easter blessing.) And in time, he’ll get a chance at the real prize, something bigger than sermonic trolling or writing bills that don’t get passed.

Influence. God help us all.