Beware the Idolatry of 'We The People'

The recent leak of thousands of messages from the Young Republican National Federation’s private group chat was an obvious distraction from the Democrats’ much more serious text problem with their Virginia attorney general candidate, Jay Jones.

But while Vice President J.D. Vance chalked up the YR’s texts to, basically, “boys will be boys,” the thread revealed more than crude jokes and offensive language. It exposed a deeper problem within America’s political right. The rising generation calling itself “the New Right” is drifting away from the moral and biblical roots of conservatism and toward something older—and darker: nationalism without God.

Traditional conservatism has always understood that legitimate authority comes from a higher moral law. Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and our own founders believed that liberty must be ordered by faith and moral truth. Neither the state nor the people were ever supreme; both stand accountable to divine authority.

The new populist right, however, increasingly roots its legitimacy in “the will of the people.” That sounds very American – constitutional, even – but in practice it becomes another form of secular humanism. Power and passion replace legitimate authority and restraint. Those who disagree are branded enemies (“traitors” and “disloyal”) rather than fellow citizens.

This is not conservatism – it’s populist nationalism, and it mirrors the movements that swept 19th-century Europe, where “the people” replaced God as the source of moral authority.

Collective Identity Masquerading as Morality

True morality, as Scripture teaches, is universal, objective, and derived from God. Right and wrong do not change with the passions or powers of a movement. Yet, much of today’s right-wing activism treats morality as a team sport – whatever helps “our side” must be good, and whatever opposes “our side” must be evil.

Even some forms of “Christian Nationalism” have begun to fall into this trap. They speak the language of faith but often define Christianity in cultural or political terms, not theological ones. The nation, rather than the church, becomes the center of moral life, and conquering the nation becomes the chief end instead of the gospel. It’s a collective identity masquerading as biblical morality. But the gospel is not a national identity; it’s a call to repentance and truth that judges every nation – including our own.

When political movements define good and evil by loyalty to the group, they exchange God-given morality for moral tribalism. That’s why the leaked Young Republican chat—filled with demeaning language and cruel mockery – was not just a lapse of decorum. It reflected a philosophy that confuses winning with righteousness.

Conservatism is rooted in the biblical worldview and reality, thus recognizing that man is fallen, government must restrain sin, and virtue must come from faith and family. When those truths are abandoned, politics itself becomes a religion—a crusade to win for “our people” rather than an objective defense of truth and justice.

The Bible repeatedly warns that the opposite of trust in God is not mere unbelief – it is idolatry. From the golden calf in Exodus to Israel’s demand for a king “like the other nations,” every time God’s people placed their confidence in human power, He called it idolatry. The prophets thundered that trusting “the arm of flesh” leads to destruction (Jeremiah 17:5). Scripture is replete with more than 400 references condemning idolatry and serving any substitute for God.

The temptation of idolatry

Today’s temptation is no different. When a movement derives its legitimacy from “We The People,” the nation (i.e. “America First”), or even a political savior rather than the Lord Himself, it repeats that same ancient sin in modern form.

We are watching that temptation for idolatry play out. The New Right speaks of “taking our country back,” but often with vain or no references to God, repentance, or virtue. In seeking to save civilization, it risks repeating the same secular error as the Left: replacing God with the will of man. The New Right must confess that no crowd, no party, no president, and no amount of “winning” can take the place of God.

The future of the Right depends on rediscovering what made conservatism worth conserving and advancing: faith in divine authority, the moral law, and the humility that flows from both. Without that foundation, we will not preserve liberty. We will only trade one godless ideology for another.

(Editor's Note: This article was posted first on the American Family News website HERE.)

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