Oklahoma primary runoff answered a question about anti-Christian nationalism

(RNS) — On Tuesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond lost the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary to Trump-endorsed former state Senator and Budget Secretary Mike Mazzei by half a percentage point. For supporters of church-state separation, this is bad news.

Here’s why.

In the early 2020s, Oklahoma’s most prominent Christian nationalist was Ryan Walters, who served as Oklahoma’s appointed secretary of education from 2020 to 2023 and its elected superintendent of public instruction from 2023 to 2025. Walters’ most notable legacy as a public official was a mandate that required all of the state’s public schools to teach the Bible in grades five through 12.

To facilitate this, he undertook to purchase 55,000 copies of the King James Version of the Bible, one for each public-school classroom. He also issued an order to integrate the Bible and character education into elementary-level social studies curriculum and solicited bids for instructional materials to that end. After the 2024 election, he sent public school administrators an email requiring them to show students a video of a new Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism, in which he prayed for President-elect…