As the advocacy director for Mainstream Coalition, I had a front row seat to the harm caused to vulnerable Kansans by our elected officials this year. I sat beside deeply religious and secular Kansans as we advocated passionately for our government to respect our rights, protect our children, and care for our neighbors.

I shared their grief as we lost. Repeatedly.

More than 30 years ago, Kansas faith leaders created Mainstream Coalition to protect religious freedom and guard against the spread of religious extremism into our local, state, and federal politics. We need this mission today more than ever as the Trump administration enacts Project 2025, the Christian nationalist handbook to dismantle democracy. Every day we wake to new efforts to eliminate institutions, research and people who don’t align with their goals.

This is the Christian nationalist playbook: Impose a theocratic government and privilege “patriots” pledging allegiance to a so-called Christian nation.

But if we’re only watching for threats from D.C., then we’re blind to the attack on our rights happening in Topeka through the decimation of church-state separation. For years we’ve fought against efforts to advance a dangerous political bastardization of Christianity through state policy. That fight got a lot harder this year.

When our elected officials spend hours fighting for legislation aimed to erase transgender identities , prioritize tax relief for fetuses over working Kansans, divert millions of public dollars to private schools and Crisis Pregnancy Centers , or force a last-minute religious exemption for childhood vaccinations, they’re not doing the work of protecting the rights or pocketbooks of everyday Kansans. They are abusing their power as elected officials to force their narrow religious beliefs onto all Kansans.

This year the supermajority of the Kansas Legislature had some major “wins.”

It began with Senate Bill 63 , the gender-affirming care ban. Make no mistake, this bill exists to force a narrow religious definition of “ God-given biological sex ” onto all Kansans. Every Republican legislator (with the exception of Emporia Rep. Mark Schreiber) supported this bill, despite the hundreds of Kansas teachers, faith leaders, parents, transgender youths, and medical providers who warned that this would put children’s lives and mental health at risk. SB 63 was the first piece of legislation sent to the governor’s desk, passed on just the 14th day of session.

Despite what legislators may have said last year while asking for your vote, their top priority wasn’t to improve the economy or reduce your taxes. No, the first thing they did in Topeka was try to erase transgender Kansans because they are a so-called “attack on the creativity of God.”

This year the supermajority (or maybe we should just acknowledge the real power under the dome — Kansans for Life, Kansas Family Voice, and the Kansas Catholic Conference) also celebrated the passage of several anti-abortion bills. Fortunately, education advocates were able to hold back expanded voucher programs that would send public dollars to unregulated private, often religious schools with a track record of using textbooks that teach that the Loch Ness Monster is proof of creationism or that slavery was Black immigration.

One bill illustrates the real power of Christian nationalists in Topeka. House Bill 2311 puts some of our most vulnerable youths, queer children in our foster care system, in harm’s way by prioritizing religious beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity over the well being of children. Extreme religious families are now legally permitted to foster or adopt a queer child and subject them to “conversion therapy,” an unethical, unproven practice that targets queer children and seeks to change their sexual and gender identities.

Legislators called this a religious freedom bill but at first failed to produce any examples of a religious household being denied a foster placement, the very problem they said so desperately needed protection in Kansas. They managed to find one unverified claim of religious discrimination before the bill was passed. This one example was touted as evidence that religious households are under attack by the state, and again ran roughshod over the dozens of opponents who said this bill would endanger children.

This is their secret weapon: Christian nationalists are skillful at escaping accountability through manipulative messaging. If a teacher is told to use a student’s chosen pronouns, then their freedom of speech is violated. If a household is denied a foster care placement because they want to “pray the gay away,” then their religious freedom is violated. If a legislator is told that they are threatening the lives of transgender youths by denying gender-affirming care, then their motives are being unjustly impugned.

They argue that they are the victims, not the innocent Kansans whose human rights and dignity they are dismantling.

Any attempt to hold Christian nationalists and their adherents accountable for their harmful actions is twisted to be a threat against not just them, but against their chosen faith and church. This was perfectly illustrated this year when the Satanic Grotto announced its plan for a “black mass” at the Statehouse. The group’s stated purpose to host a civil disobedience event to “reflect our own pain and anger of us being subjected to religion that we never gave consent to,” was immediately overshadowed by loud legislators who felt their religion was threatened by this public theater.

As the modern day religious show-down devolved into physical altercations and arrests, videos captured the loud prayers of Rep. Angela Stiens, Sen. Mike Thompson, and gubernatorial candidate Charlotte O’Hara, who were permitted to publicly display their religious beliefs inside the Statehouse without threat.

Sen. Rick Kloos summarized my dread regarding this year’s legislative session best when he preached from the Senate floor: “The day Jesus rose from the dead, we won, and we continue to win. I say it again, we already won.”

Who is the “we” that Kloos referenced? Not me. Nor is it the majority of Kansans, Christians or secular, who want our government to respect the pluralistic beliefs and constitutional rights of all Kansans. Those of us not privileged in this Christian nationalist world order are doomed to be the losers until we start holding them accountable and call out their actions for the un-Christian, theocratic agenda that begins at the federal level and trickles down to Kansas through our elected officials.