Ken Paxton Takes His Texas Size Brand of Hate and Christian Nationalism On the Road*
Aided and Abetted by Mormon General Authority Emeritus Tad R. Callister and Utah’s Own Disgraced A.G. Sean Reyes
My friend Mark sent me the above announcement of the Davis County, Utah Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner. Mark was not inviting me to the gala but was, instead, anticipating my reaction to the featured speakers for the event.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Elder Tad R. Callister. “What a strange and secret combination,” I thought, “an apparent Mormon general authority and an elected official with an extensive history of corruption, inhumanity, bigotry, lawlessness, infidelity, and election denialism, among other such distinctions.” At first, I could not comprehend how any rational person might think Ken Paxton represented Mormon or Utah values or that Mormon or Utah values remotely resembled those of Paxton. And wouldn’t Paxton risk getting arrested while crossing some state’s border if he left the State of Texas?
“Elder,” by the way, is a term of religious distinction, respect, and deference used for leadership in the Mormon church patriarchy. I immediately recognized the problem the announcement’s use of “Elder” could be for the Mormon church. Then its obviousness hit me: the purpose behind the county party’s use of “Elder” was religious affinity — to attract right-wing Mormon donors and attendees.
I was embarrassed by my initial reaction that Texas A.G. Paxton did not represent Mormon or Utah Values or Utah values didn’t significantly overlap his. I mean, how long have I been writing about the absurdity of the combinations of religious and political discourse in Utah and among evangelical MAGAs and Christian nationalists, all of which has little resemblance to Christianity? Of course the Texas Attorney General represents at least a majority of Utahns’ and Utah Mormons’ values. The circles in a Venn diagram would be concentric.
The county party updated its announcement. See below for a classic example of “one of these things is not like the other.” Someone must have raised a concern about tax-exempt status. Plus, the church tends to be more private with its direct political influence and involvement.
A Salt Lake Tribune report of last night’s event revealed that disgraced Utah A.G. Sean Reyes, as expected, introduced his “close ally,” and painted the legally troubled and ethically barren Paxton, who has yet to exhibit an instance of Christian humanity, as a martyr: “As he brought his Texas counterpart to the stage, Reyes, whose own office is under investigation from Utah’s legislative auditor over his ties to embattled anti-sex-trafficking advocate Tim Ballard, cast Paxton’s legal and ethical troubles as a badge of honor.”
But I continued to struggle to appreciate what possible overlap there was between emeritus Mormon general authority Elder Callister and manifestly corrupt and inhumane Texas A.G. Ken Paxton.
I think I found an answer.
I preface what follows with this: As a free-thinking non-believer, I firmly support the First Amendment, including the religion clauses.
Simply stated, people have the constitutional right to hold — and to not hold — religious beliefs and to engage — and to not engage — in religious practice, subject to the limitations of generally applicable laws, including laws designed to protect individual civil rights.
Simply stated, the government has the obligation to preserve and protect religion and non-religion and religious practice and non-religious practice by doing everything it can to stay out of religion and avoid endorsing any form of religion or practice, especially an overt or secret combination of religion and government. Any such combination would be hostile to the country’s founding principles, the text and meaning of the Constitution, and the freedom to exercise, or to not exercise, a chosen religion.
I respect the First Amendment religion clauses and the tensions they create. Those tensions require jurisprudential vigilance to avoid infringement of either or both. The current supermajority of the Supreme Court is, unfortunately, all too willing to cross lines which threaten free exercise by allowing taxpayer dollars to be used to support religion over non-religion and one religion over others. The supermajority is also willing to accommodate people’s use of so-called religious principles and “sincerely held religious beliefs” to violate generally applicable laws and as pretext to discriminate against people who differ from them or with whom they disagree.
Texas AG Ken Paxton
Ken Paxton’s extensive history of corruption, inhumanity, bigotry, lawlessness, and infidelity is no secret. He’s a right-wing conservative who embraces and exudes white Christian nationalist ideology even though I doubt he has read the Beatitudes. He of course opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, federal supremacy, federal regulations, all sorts of presidential orders, environmental cleanup efforts, climate change investigations of oil companies, labor rights, LGTBQ+ rights, gun safety legislation, redrawing gerrymandered districts, common sense voting rights, and what he characterized as “anti-Christian discrimination in Texas schools,” while objecting to Muslim students’ use of an empty school room for multiple activities.
His crass inhumanity and lawlessness were on full display in the case of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, who was about 20 weeks pregnant with a third that she and her husband desperately wanted. The fetus was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a severe genetic disorder, had a 95% chance of being stillborn, and if it survived would live a miserable few hours at most. Under the statistical probability the fetus would die in utero, Cox risked sepsis and other complications. Carrying this fetus to term threatened her future fertility because of increased risk of uterine rupture and hysterectomy after what would be her third C-section.
Cox and her husband obtained a court order to allow the abortion to proceed — specifically, enjoining Texas from enforcing its heartbeat abortion law against Cox. The law provided an exception in situations that pose “a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” “The Court finds that Ms. Cox’s life, health, and fertility are currently at serious risk,’ Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble wrote. ‘The longer Ms. Cox stays pregnant, the greater the risks to her life.”
Paxton refused to follow or recognize the court order. He threatened three hospitals where Cox’s doctors had admitting privileges with criminal prosecution and civil exposure. In Texas, Ken Paxton takes abortion law into his own hands. Cox and her husband left Texas for her life-preserving reproductive care and to assure she could bear children in the future, but risk lawsuits in Texas under that state’s vigilante “heartbeat” law.
Paxton is the perpetually indicted and, after yet another corruption scandal, impeached Texas attorney general. We know impeachment proceedings are largely political theatre that do little, if anything, to advance the public interest and have no bearing on whether the underlying conduct is criminal. In Paxton’s case, as in Trump’s, it probably is.
A complete list of the articles of impeachment against Paxton is in Notes below. At core, they detail Paxton accepting bribes, disregarding official duties, and misapplying public resources to help a friend and political donor. Paxton, allegedly, engaged “in a series of ‘intense and bizarre’ actions” to help a political donor and friend — Austin-based real estate developer Nate Paul. Paxton helped him obtain protected documents from state and federal investigations into Paul’s businesses. Paxton also, allegedly, directed his office to intervene in a lawsuit between Paul and a charity, and pushed through a legal opinion to help Paul avoid foreclosure on certain properties, among other official misdeeds.
In exchange for Paxton’s assistance, “Paul paid for all or part of a major renovation of a home Paxton owns in Austin. Paul also helped Paxton keep an extramarital affair quiet by employing the woman Paxton had been seeing, . . . [and] the attorney general may also have been motivated by a $25,000 contribution Paul made to Paxton’s campaign in 2018.”
Does anyone seriously question that if Paxton’s mistress became pregnant, he would provide her an all-expense paid trip including the cost of the reproductive care to a state where such healthcare, including abortions, remains legal?
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick — who wasn’t up for reelection until 2026 — received $3 million in campaign support from a pro-Paxton PAC campaigning against Paxton’s impeachment. Coincidentally, Patrick presided over the impeachment trial in which the senate acquitted Paxton.
Oh, and felony securities fraud charges against Paxton have been pending since 2015, shortly after he took office as Texas attorney general. Those charges arise from work in 2011 in which he allegedly solicited investors in a company without disclosing information the investors should have known before he separated them from their money. The articles of impeachment accused Paxton of “obstruction of justice by acting to delay the criminal cases with legal challenges and because a Paxton donor pursued legal action that limited pay to prosecutors in the case, causing further delays ‘to Paxton’s advantage.’”
Paxton came under intense scrutiny by the Texas Bar Association for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as the conduct underlying impeachment proceedings. After the 2020 election in which his candidate lost — and not by a close margin in the popular or the electoral vote — and scores of failed lawsuits in state and federal courts, Paxton, out of fealty to Trump and personal ambition, and in an egregious betrayal of public trust, the rule of law, and oaths of office, filed a complaint in the United States Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election.
The complaint advanced the Big Lie, made material misrepresentations of fact, withheld information from the Supreme Court, sought to mislead the high court, and otherwise lacked a factual or legal basis. Representing an act of sedition, the complaint was a blatant attempt to subvert constitutional and democratic principles on which democracy has survived in the United States since its founding; sow division among the citizens of the United States; undermine the credibility and reliability of United States institutions; create doubt about the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election; and foment the rising undercurrent of civil unrest, violence, and domestic terror by a growing faction of voters whose preferred candidate lost by significant margins.
The Supreme Court summarily threw it out in a 9–0 decision. See Shame On Lawyers And Attorneys General The Likes of Sean Reyes, detailing the disgraced Utah Attorney General’s misconduct in supporting his close friend and ally’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“In May 2022, the Bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline sued Paxton . . . asking the court to find that Paxton had acted unethically in seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election and to impose a sanction ranging from a private reprimand to disbarment.” The week before Paxton’s impeachment trial started in the state Senate, fourteen lawyers filed a complaint with the State Bar, seeking to prevent Paxton from practicing law.
But . . .
Paxton believes the United States is a Christian nation, is a strong supporter of book bans, and wants a version of Christianity taught in schools — to the exclusion of other religions including Catholicism.
Emeritus Mormon General Authority Elder Tad Richards Callister
I have not stayed up on the who’s who of Mormon church leadership after leaving the church years ago. I had no idea who Elder Tad Richards Callister was. It turns out he is the grandson of former Mormon Apostle LeGrand Richards, practiced tax law in California, was a “general authority” for the Mormon church from 2008 to 2014, including as a member of the presidency of the “Seventy” — the second-tier leadership beneath the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — and was the general president of the Mormon church’s Sunday school from 2014 to 2019. Elder Callister has written several Christ-centered books, including The Infinite Atonement, The Blueprint of Christ’s Church, and A Case for the Book of Mormon in which he attempts to defend the literal history of the religious canon.
He has also written and spoken extensively on “God’s hand in the discovery, establishment, and preservation of America.” See Video Clip of Elder Callister discussing god’s hand in America.
In 2023, Elder Callister became committee chair of a conservative group Why I Love America, organized to “rekindle a spirit of patriotism and appreciation for God’s hand in the origin and destiny of our nation.” Why I Love America is an organization aimed at making its version of religion a central theme of political and public discourse, government, and law. Unfortunately, “[t]he educational materials about the Constitution offered on the Why I Love America website were created by people with no academic background or particular academic expertise in the nation’s founding document and appear to be influenced by fringe theories about the Constitution.” Ties to group pushing a Constitution celebration raise questions about LDS Church’s political neutrality.
By one account, “Why I Love America is actually the public face of a conservative nonprofit group called The Constitution Education Foundation based in right-wing Federalism principles.”
Similarities between Paxton and Callister began coming into focuse.
During last year’s legislative session, Utah lawmakers designated September as “American Founders and Constitution Month,” and a celebration was planned at the Capitol to kick off the inaugural month. Unfortunately, the event was “co-opted by a group affiliated with far-right and fringe political beliefs.” During the event, Elder Callister, the former Mormon general authority and a principal of the co-opting organization, said:
“We opened today’s program with a prayer. We pledge allegiance as one nation under God. We heard the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ which acknowledges God’s role in the creation of this nation. God’s fingerprints are everywhere.”
Elder Callister became a central figure in the book banning controversy in Utah in 2023 and is a strong proponent of keeping select religious texts in schools. In 2022, the Utah legislature passed a law “intended to remove ‘sensitive material’ from school libraries and classrooms.” Anyone, including hecklers, could target a school library book for review by a committee to assess whether it contained subjects that were “pornographic or indecent,” as defined by Utah law, or otherwise lacked “serious value,” meaning “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors, taking into consideration the ages of all minors who could be exposed to the material.”
As you might expect (and as was the intent), Utah’s “[s]chool librarians and teachers saw a huge spike in review requests after the law was passed, mainly for books that dealt with racial justice, gender ideology, and LGBTQ representation.” Utah School District Bans the Bible for “Vulgarity” and “Violence.”
“In a spectacular self-own for book-banning crusaders, one fed-up parent used [the] new Utah law to raise hell,” challenging the King James Bible as filled with the kinds of information the law was enacted to ban, “pornographic or indecent” material, as defined, and concluding that it contained nothing of “serious value” for school age children. Almighty Fail: Utah School District Bans the Bible. “The person referred to the Bible as ‘one of the most sex-ridden books around,’ and pointed out the text mentions incest, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, and rape. They included a list of examples. “You’ll no doubt find that the Bible . . . has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition. Get this PORN out of our schools!’” Utah School District Bans the Bible for “Vulgarity” and “Violence.”
Revealing his fundamental misunderstanding of First Amendment principles, Rep. Ken Ivory (R-West Jordan, Utah) wasn’t happy with this equal application of a law he’d sponsored. He characterized the assault on the Bible as a mockery and political stunt — classic viewpoint discrimination on his part, which the First Amendment prohibits in such contexts.
I suspect there were many parents and students — including members of targeted classes of minorities — who felt the legislation itself and the selection of books the hecklers and banners successfully targeted was both a political stunt and mockery of them, their status, their right and ability to be recognized, heard, seen, and understood, and their right and opportunity to open and expand their minds and those of others.
Elder Callister weighed in: “The whole purpose of the Bible is to help us become like Jesus Christ. Therefore, I hope it will be an integral part of our schools, which is not only to give information to our minds but character to our hearts, and the greatest character of all is Jesus Christ.” Clergy and GOP lawmakers rail against Bible being removed from Davis County schools.
The review committee removed the King James version of the Bible for elementary and junior high kids but left it on school library bookshelves for high schoolers. Lawmaker Reverses Himself that Bible Challenge was ‘Mockery’ and ‘Political Stunt’. Then the school district received a new complaint, targeting The Book of Mormon. The complainant sought a review of “the foundational text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” claiming it contained violence, which included battles, beheadings, and kidnappings, among other such stories. Book of Mormon now challenged in Utah school district that banned the Bible. To say it glorifies violence would be an understatement. Not wanting white children to feel bad about racism — a silly subject of today’s culture wars — might be another reason to pull The Book of Mormon from the shelves.
Conclusion
Political speech receives the highest protection under the First Amendment. I do not begrudge Paxton or Elder Callister their views regardless of the underlying motivations or how flagrantly they contradict the country’s and Utah’s founding documents. But they should peddle their dangerous nonsense elsewhere. Utah was allowed into the Union on condition that state government would not be controlled by religion. The Constitution of Utah priovides:
“Article I, Section 4. [Religious liberty.]
The rights of conscience shall never be infringed. The State shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office of public trust or for any vote at any election; nor shall any person be incompetent as a witness or juror on account of religious belief or the absence thereof. There shall be no union of Church and State, nor shall any church dominate the State or interfere with its functions. No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction, or for the support of any ecclesiastical establishment.”
Equating patriotism with a select form of Christian theocracy is an absurd and harmful conflation, threatening free religious exercise under the First Amendment and liberal democratic principles under the United States and Utah Constitutions.
Not knowing who he is, I was initially surprised Elder Callister would agree to share a daïs with Paxton. After digging into it, however, I can only assume the common thread between him and Paxton — Christian nationalism and right-wing extremism — tipped the scale.
Notes:
“An organization of people bound together by oaths to carry out the evil purposes of the group”:
· The father of lies stirreth up the children of men unto secret combinations, 2 Ne. 9:9.
· I must needs destroy the secret works of darkness, 2 Ne. 10:15.
· Judgments of God did come upon these workers of secret combinations, Alma 37:30.
· Gadianton did prove almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi, Hel. 2:4–13.
· Satan put it into the hearts of the people to form secret oaths and covenants, Hel. 6:21–31.
· The Lord worketh not in secret combinations, Ether 8:19.
· Nations that uphold secret combinations shall be destroyed, Ether 8:22–23.
· They did reject all the words of the prophets, because of their secret society, Ether 11:22.
· From the days of Cain, there was a secret combination, Moses 5:51.
Articles of Impeachment:
On May 25, 2023, the Republican-led House General Investigating Committee unanimously recommended that Paxton be impeached. The committee filed 20 articles of impeachment, with the committee’s investigation producing the following allegations:
1. Paxton ignored his official duty to protect charities when he directed his office to interfere in the Mitte Foundation charity’s lawsuit against Nate Paul, a political donor to Paxton.
2. Paxton abused his official power to issue written legal opinions when he directed his office to write an opinion to prevent Paul’s properties from being sold in foreclosure, and also had his office reverse their legal conclusions, in an attempt to benefit Paul. To cover up his direction, Paxton arranged for a Senate committee chairperson to seek the above opinion.
3. Paxton abused his official power by directing his office to violate the law regarding two public information requests, one of which concerned Department of Public Safety records for a criminal investigation of Paul.
4. Paxton abused his official power to improperly obtain private information in an attempt to release it for Paul’s benefit.
5. Paxton abused his official power by hiring a special prosecutor, Brandon Cammack, to investigate a “baseless complaint” made by Paul; Cammack would issue over 30 grand jury subpoenas to benefit Paul.
6. Paxton ignored his official duty by improperly firing whistleblowers in his office who had in “good faith” alleged to authorities that Paxton had broken the law; Paxton also privately and publicly tried to tarnish the whistleblowers’ reputations and harm their chances of future employment.
7. Paxton wrongly used public resources by having his office conduct a “sham investigation” into the whistleblowers’ allegations, and having his office create a report “containing false or misleading statements in Paxton’s defense”.
8. Paxton abused his official power in his attempt to settle the whistleblowers’ lawsuit, which “delayed the discovery of facts and testimony at trial, to Paxton’s advantage”, preventing voters from gaining knowledge regarding Paxton.
9. Paxton accepted a bribe by Paul’s employment of a woman “with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair”, and in return Paxton used his office to help Paul.
10. Paxton accepted a bribe by having Paul (a real estate developer) renovate Paxton’s home, and in return Paxton used his office to help Paul.
11. Paxton obstructed justice by delaying his trial for federal securities fraud after being indicted in 2015, preventing voters from gaining knowledge regarding Paxton.
12. Paxton obstructed justice by benefiting from a lawsuit filed by his political donor, Jeff Blackard, that caused problems in paying the prosecutors working on Paxton’s securities fraud case, delaying the trial and discovery of evidence, preventing voters from gaining knowledge regarding Paxton.
13. Paxton made false statements to the State Securities Board regarding his illegal failure to register with them.
14.Paxton did not accurately reveal his financial interests to the Texas Ethics Commission, violating law.
15. Paxton made or directed for multiple false or misleading statements to be published in his office’s report responding to the whistleblower allegations.
16.Paxton conspired or tried to conspire with other people for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment.
17. Paxton abused his official power by having his office act to benefit him or other people.
18. Paxton ignored his duty and violated the Texas Constitution, his oaths of office, statutes and public policy for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment.
19.Paxton was unfit for holding office for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment.
20. Paxton abused or neglected his official power to prevent lawful governance and obstruct justice, bringing his office into “scandal and disrepute” for the actions detailed in the articles of impeachment.
R.VanWagoner https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner publishes. https://richardvanwagoner.medium.com/subscribe
*My brother the very talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner. Rob’s second novel, a beautifully written suspense drama that takes place in Utah, Wyoming, and Norway, dropped on November 17, 2020. Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Bookstore and your favorite local bookshop, this novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. I have read the novel and listened to the audio version twice. It is a literary masterpiece. The Contortionists is not, however, for the faint of heart.