MARIETTA, Ohio — Most Sunday afternoons, Glenn Newman hosts church in his living room. It’s much cozier than a typical religious space, with stuffed leather recliners and gas logs glowing in the fireplace. More a grandparent’s den than a sanctuary.
A half-dozen attendees watch a sermon from a California pastor and follow along with a study guide. Afterward, they make small talk between bites of homemade nachos and chocolate cake prepared by Newman’s next-door neighbors.
Quietly, over the past 15 years, these small group Bible-study-style gatherings have been the foundation for a movement that appears to punch above its weight in terms of political influence.
It started in 2009 when Newman invited his neighbors over for dinner. Like him, they were angered by the Great Recession of 2008 and the ensuing $800 billion American Recovery and Rescue Act.
“I realized that my grandchildren would never enjoy the lifestyle I’ve had,” Newman said.
This was the Tea Party era of U.S. politics, when a populist social movement — animated by a backlash to the George W. Bush administration’s bailout of banks deemed “too big to fail,” along with the election and policies of Barack Obama — was catapulted into the national spotlight.
Small groups like Newman’s popped up all over the country, amplified and supported by a pre-existing political advocacy infrastructure powered by Big Oil.
In southeast Ohio, Newman’s early gatherings evolved into the Marietta 9-12 group, which aligned with the Tea Party and prominent Fox News personality Glenn Beck. Throughout the 2010s, the 9-12 group hosted a range of events, including candidate forums and presentations from organizations like Turning Point USA.
Newman and the 9-12 group also unequivocally supported President Donald Trump. Several members attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. — a galvanizing moment for Newman.
“We had a bunch of people there,” Newman said (he rejects the term “insurrection”). 100 Days and the Independent confirmed that multiple people affiliated with his group attended the rally at the U.S. Capitol, although they did not enter the Capitol building.
“After January 6, I told my wife, ‘We can’t continue this meet, greet, eat, retreat, so we are going to become a citizens action coalition,’” he said.
For Newman, it was time for a renewed push for lasting political change in the country. The Mid-Ohio Valley Citizens Action Coalition, or MOVCAC, launched in June 2021 and has grown to include chapters across West Virginia and in Meigs and Washington counties in southeast Ohio.
MOVCAC’s influence on local and state politics reflects the nation’s current moment: a time when right-wing politics has fused with a version of Christianity that calls for a strict interpretation of Old Testament biblical law.
MOVCAC holds its public meetings every other Monday in the sanctuary of Freedom Gate Church in Marietta, Ohio. While some attendees are also regulars at Newman’s home church, the crowd has grown beyond the confines of his living room, with dozens of people regularly attending MOVCAC’s meetings.
At the public meetings, members welcome newcomers with open arms; they laugh and cry together, and catch up on life’s goings-on. Discussions range from local school board races to presidential politics, alternative medicine, community news and homemade pickles.
They also pray together — for each other and for the nation’s spiritual redemption.
Newman runs the meetings from behind a lectern at the front of the church’s sanctuary. Freedom Gate Senior Pastor Rodney Lord is often there too, offering opening prayers and running the soundboard.
While Lord claims no “official role” in MOVCAC, he says that most members “are very encouraged that I’m a pastor who will show up to a meeting like this, or even speak out on an issue, that kind of thing.”
Lord and Newman, who have known each other for years, both say their conservative political activism is informed by their Christianity. This has manifested itself in legislative pushes, like collaborating with other faith leaders and anti-abortion groups to lobby Ohio lawmakers to eventually pass the Heartbeat Bill in 2019. It was one of the strictest abortion laws in the country before being declared unconstitutional in 2024.
That bill, Newman said, “reflects my commitment to protecting life.”
For Lord, the bill reflects dominion theology, a system of religious belief that seeks a society whose laws are based on an extremely conservative interpretation of Christianity. Lord is a “church ambassador” for Center for Christian Virtue, an Ohio-based lobbying group, which has pushed anti-LGBTQ policy in that state.
Mainline Christian leaders criticized Gov. Mike DeWine’s office for including CCV in discussions with the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2015-16 designation of CCV as a hate group for their extreme anti-LGBTQ agenda.
“The message of his (Christ’s) kingdom throughout the New Testament was, it would influence every mountain of culture, every sphere,” said Lord.
There are seven major spheres — or “mountains” — of influence, he added, including government, family, arts and entertainment, media, education, and business. It’s a belief system, he said, that hearkens back to when the church was the “predominant influence on culture” in the U.S.
Dominionism advocates for a society transformed by a far-right version of Christianity.
And religion scholars have said that taken to its extreme, dominion theology erases the boundary between church and state.
The goal is the complete transformation of the country by taking control of its political and cultural institutions, according to Fred Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a Boston-based think tank.
That transformation, across the “Seven Mountains” of society, is a guiding principle of the New Apostolic Reformation, one of the fastest-growing religio-political movements in the U.S. and abroad.
“The NAR celebrates Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be a Christian nation,” said Clarkson.
And just as MOVCAC has expanded its influence in Ohio and West Virginia, NAR has gained powerful allies. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump tapped longtime adviser Paula White-Cain, an NAR apostle, to lead the new White House Faith Office.
Extremism experts also worry that some of the Trump administration’s early moves — including the formation of the White House Faith Office — reflect the goals of Project 2025, a 900-page blueprint for radical government change published by the Heritage Foundation in 2023. That document outlines hard-right policies, described by critics as “very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism.”
For Freedom Gate pastor Rodney Lord, these religion-infused hard-right political successes are 15 years in the making.
“You’re seeing the zenith of Make America Great Again,” he said. “It kind of flows out of that same heart as the Tea Party, basically saying, ‘We want change.’”
Most of MOVCAC’s positions reflect a mix of libertarian politics and hardline conservative Christian values: small government, lower taxes, opposition to abortion and the civil rights of transgender people. The group supports the diversion of public funds to private schools through “school choice” programs and the elimination of vaccine requirements for school-age children.
Conspiracy theories about immigrants were also a frequent topic of conversation at the group’s meetings this past presidential election cycle, including false accusations that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.
Pepperdine University professor Christina Littlefield said the current anti-immigrant rhetoric popular with the Christian right is an outgrowth from the Tea Party movement, when “we saw the quiet part said out loud, the racism and anti-immigrant language as a reaction to the country’s first Black president.”
Littlefield says these positions are also a fusion of small government libertarian ideas with the culture war positions of the Christian right. The Tea Party, she said, is a recent historical example.
“The Tea Party takes on the Christian right’s restriction of liberties, particularly when it comes to issues like abortion rights, but also now LGBTQ rights,” she said.
Another element of populist movements like the Tea Party and its evolution to the MAGA movement is probing the culture to see what sticks. “They are always asking, ‘What’s going to get the most public outrage to get them to vote for us?’” said Littlefield. That’s what happened with the right’s focus on transgender issues, she said.
Within MOVCAC, however, members appear to deviate from right-wing positions in some areas.
For example, the group opposes some natural gas fracking practices, including the use of injection wells to store waste underground. Newman said that he has spoken to left-leaning environmental groups and said that they share common concerns.
“I want my grandchildren to have clean water,” he said.
William Callison, a researcher at Harvard University focused on climate change politics and far-right political movements, said that in the “post-COVID era,” leftwing movements are increasingly “being grafted onto far-right projects.” Callison said that is an “increasingly common and quite effective” tactic for bringing political communities together.
Traditional left politics showing up in right-wing spaces include vaccine conspiracies, an emphasis on health and wellness, and environmentalism, as reflected by the ascendence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. within the Trump administration, Callison said. (MOVCAC has shared RFK Jr. videos on their website.)
True to its name, MOVCAC members have engaged in “citizens action,” including political activism and outreach. And they are in it for the long haul.
One example is the group’s fight against public libraries with collections that include LGBTQ-themed books.
In 2022, MOVCAC members lobbied the Parkersburg City Council to censure the Parkersburg & Wood County Public Library over the placement of the book “Gender Queer” in a Banned Books Week display.
The following year, MOVCAC members got West Virginia lawmakers to introduce a bill that would have kept books deemed “obscene material” from being in or near state public schools. A similar bill got some traction in 2024. The measure would have made public library and public school employees vulnerable to prosecution for displaying “obscene materials” where minors could easily view them; several MOVCAC members supported it at a public hearing, but the bill ultimately failed in the state senate.
While these efforts were unsuccessful, this year’s political landscape is different. West Virginia House members have already introduced an identical library bill. And Gov. Patrick Morrisey has signaled support for another MOVCAC policy push: religious and moral exemptions for childhood vaccinations in schools.
For pastor Rodney Lord, this political momentum is happening in God’s time. “We see the Kingdom of God increasing,” he said. “Does that take 25 generations or 100 years, we don’t know.”
Working to usher in that kingdom requires a generational mindset. “We’re hard at work pouring ourselves into the things that matter. Government matters,” he said.
“I want to change this nation because I see where it’s going, and I don’t like it.”
Disclosure: Laura Harbert Allen serves on the board of the Southeast Ohio Independent News, which operates the Athens County Independent.
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This reporting is a collaboration with 100 Days in Appalachia and was made possible by grant funding from the Poynter Institute and Joyce Foundation.
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ATHENS, Ohio — Housing was a major topic at a Monday night’s Athens City Council meeting, with discussion of a new affordable housing project; news that a planned project is on hold; and a pitch from a local real estate developer to build more affordable housing.
At a combined regular and committee meeting, the council heard first reading of an ordinance that would authorize an agreement with Community Building Partners, LLC, to develop and build 14 single-family homes in the city.
The project is underwritten by a $2 million grant the city received in November 2024 from the state’s Welcome Home Ohio program. Community Building Partners will receive a developer fee of $10,000 per unit, according to the agreement.
The project description attached to the grant award calls for construction of eight three-bedroom homes on the site of the former West Elementary on Central Avenue by Nov. 1, 2026. A future second phase would see construction of an additional six units on Grosvenor Street and Hudson Avenue.
However, council member Alan Swank, 4th Ward said that those sites weren’t set in stone.
“The state got a little ahead of the ball game and identified the spots they wanted,” Swank said. “I’m not sure if they drove down here or talked to anybody, but that’s fine — we’re not bound to what they suggested.”
Athens City Service-Safety Director Andy Stone did not immediately respond to request for comment regarding the accuracy of Swank’s statement.
Each unit would cost approximately $250,000 to build and would sell for $130,000 to $150,000, Swank said. The proceeds of the sales would fund further construction, he added.
According to the multi-property listing service realtor.com, the median home sale price in the city of Athens was $287,500 in December 2024.
Under the program terms, each home would have a deed restriction barring sale to anyone who earns more than 80% of the county’s annual median income as determined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“These have to be homes that are going to be homes for many, many, many years — not turned into rentals in the next three, five, 10 or even 15 years,” Swank said.
However, the Welcome Home Ohio guidelines say that the homeowner can rent out the property after five years.
The ordinance will have its second reading at the council’s next regular meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 21.
Meanwhile, a proposed housing project near Monticello Village apartments on Hooper Street has stalled.
Hill Tide Partners of South Carolina had asked the city to rezone the area from R-1, single family residential, to R-3, multi-family residential for the project.. During the meeting of the Planning and Development Committee Monday, Swank said Hill Tide had withdrawn its request pending upcoming changes to Ohio’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program.
The project involves construction of 50 to 80 apartments on 18 acres at 111 Hooper Street.
Hill Tide Partners may bring its proposal back sometime between February and April, Swank said.
Use of LIHTCs also was the subject of a presentation by David Funk of Capstone Property Management.
LIHTC projects offer developers a dollar-for-dollar reduction in federal taxes for building affordable housing projects. Developers front the costs of construction in exchange for tax credits of 4% or 9% of the project cost. In addition, the developer earns project fees and reaps the profits from leasing or selling the housing units.
And projects in Athens County are especially attractive to developers using LIHTC, Funk said, because the state and federal governments offer additional incentives to encourage projects in Appalachia.
“There’s a reason why all of these developers are chasing these projects in Athens County — they’re lucrative,” Funk said.
A LIHTC project underway in The Plains, Funk noted, will earn Woda Construction of Columbus nearly $6.6 million in developer fees and construction profit — none of which will be spent in Athens County.
Big development firms like Woda, Hill Tide and Spire Development have an edge in obtaining tax credits from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, Funk said, because they have more experience in such projects.
“LIHTC is very much a closed house of developers,” he said. “It’s a pretty small group, and it’s not a club that wants to have other people come in and compete against them.”
In the past eight years, 12 LIHTC projects have created 595 housing units in Athens County — “probably the highest number of LIHTC projects per capita in the state of Ohio,” Funk said. But none of them had local participation, so the county has lost an estimated $282 million in local economic impact, he said.
“The affordable housing that’s being created is fantastic, but it’s tended to take jobs away from the local builders,” he said.
“But what if all this work had gone to them?” Funk asked. “We’d probably have a vibrant community of builders, a vibrant community of local suppliers.”
Funk suggested that the city create a public-private partnership to support local developers in pursuing LIHTC projects.
“If done right, there’s enough resources here, enough income coming off these projects, to create an endowment fund,” he said. “Imagine what one could do with $6 million off one single project, in terms of furthering other affordable housing initiatives in Athens County.”
There are no models for such an initiative, he said.
“This would be really creative, to put forth this kind of partnership,” he said.
Patterson said he and Service Safety Director Andy Stone had met previously with Funk and seen the same presentation.
“I think that this would be really interesting, to be able to pull together various entities that might be interested in trying to apply for LIHTC themselves,” he said.
The Athens County Foundation could bring stakeholders together, he added.
Solveig Spjeldnes, 1st Ward, chairs Affordable Housing Commission and said it could become involved in supporting such a partnership, including through identifying site locations. She suggested a land trust could potentially be used for projects, too.
Athens City Council’s next regular meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 21, in Athens City Hall, Council Chambers, third floor, 8 E. Washington St. Meetings are also available online. Regular sessions are on the first and third Mondays of the month; committee meetings are on the second and fourth Mondays.
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ATHENS, Ohio — Local school districts and colleges are scrambling to determine how they will implement recent state legislation that requires transgender people to use the bathroom of the sex they were assigned at birth.
In late November, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 104 into law. In addition to prescribing bathroom use for all persons using school restrooms, the statute also prohibits public and private educational institutions from constructing multi-person, multi-gender restrooms.
Ohio’s law brings the number of states with bathroom bills to an even dozen.
Legislation targeting transgender people has exploded across the country in the past 10 years, limiting access to public restrooms and healthcare and participation in sports, among other measures. In 2024 alone, Ohio legislators passed three anti-trans bills — out of 14 that were introduced.
Both of Athens County’s state legislators voted for SB 104; Sen. Brian Chavez (R-Marietta) sponsored the bill.
As Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville) is term-limited, Kevin Ritter of Marietta will replace him next year. In an email, Ritter said, “I appreciate Representative Edwards voting to ensure the privacy of Ohio’s students.”
The law takes effect on Feb. 24, 2025; 90 days after DeWine signed the bill on the day before Thanksgiving.
SB 104 puts school districts in a “tenuous” situation, Athens City School District Superintendent Tom Gibbs told the Independent.
“Currently, there is some disagreement between the Federal Department of Education and guidance we have been provided and what is included in this new statute,” Gibbs said in an email.
The district is consulting legal counsel about “to determine how best to move forward,” Gibbs wrote.
“District employees will be directed to continue to support and protect the rights of all students for the next 90 days while we await guidance from our legal counsel,” Gibbs said in an email.
Federal Hocking Local Schools Superintendent Jason Spencer declined to comment, saying that he had not yet discussed the bill with the Federal-Hocking Board of Education. Alexander, Nelsonville-York and Trimble local school district superintendents did not respond to requests for comments.
SB 104 presents Ohio educators with a Catch-22, Gibbs explained. Employees who don’t follow the new requirements can be reported for violating state law; if they do follow it, they risk violating federal anti-discrimination laws, including Title IX.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in “any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Title IX “applies to transgender students in public schools and universities,” Gibbs said, citing the U.S. Department of Justice. Athens City Schools’ Title IX coordinator is Director of Curriculum & Development Sommer McCorkle.
SB 104 does not contain any language about enforcement or penalties for violations of its restrictions. Similar bills in other states include fines and jail time as sanctions for violations, The Buckeye Flame reported.
Gibbs noted that the district has standing policies “that specifically call for protecting student rights based on gender identity.” But SB 104 will force the district to “change or modify multiple policies to be in line with the state statute,” he said.
“And, District employees will be faced with the daily task of ascertaining when to follow Federal Title IX Guidance and when to follow the State Statutes related to transgender students,” Gibbs said. “It is difficult to say on one hand that we do not discriminate based on gender identity and then on the other to limit student’s participation in athletics or even where they can use the bathroom.”
The implied changes from SB 104 are “especially frustrating because we’ve had these policies and procedures in place for years without any complaint and before this even became the Federal guidance on the matter,” Gibbs said in an email.
“The complete lack of any nod towards the ‘local control’ that state legislators frequently espouse in regards to schools and municipalities apparently goes out the window in relation to how we address and protect the rights of transgender students,” Gibbs stated.
Gibbs also pointed to ongoing Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case Doe v. Bethel, in which parents and students are suing Bethel Local School District for allowing a transgender child to use the restroom that matches her gender, the Ohio Capital Journal reported.
“I am hopeful that case will come to [a] conclusion soon, as it would provide some additional context to the legal landscape surrounding this issue,” Gibbs said in an email.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education declined to comment on SB 104, but did note that federal laws supersede state laws.
In an email, an Ohio University spokesperson said that OU “is aware that Senate Bill 104 has been formally signed into law, and we are currently reviewing the final version of the bill and its potential impact on established University processes and procedures.”
The spokesperson added, “OHIO has long been committed to fostering an inclusive, respectful environment for all students, staff and visitors, and we will continue to work to ensure that our public restroom signage and accommodations continue to meet the needs of our University community and remain compliant with all applicable state and federal laws.”
Casey Plett, an assistant professor of English and film at OU, said the university has not yet provided her with any guidance regarding the new law.
“Anecdotally, from what I can see … it is increasing stress levels,” Plett said of her students. “I would worry very much about students who might be in the closet, who … might keep their identities secret … or keep their gender secret because of this, which is just a shame, and something that most other students don’t have to do.”
For Plett, the “boogeyman” nature of anti-trans bathroom bills is not founded in reality.
“The opponents of trans youth, specifically, in public life — it’s always called an ‘experience of experimentation,’ and that is not true,” Plett said. “I think that it is bills like this that are the experimentation … It is making these kinds of draconian laws that — none of these laws existed four years ago. It is this kind of legislative activity that is the experiment, and I am very doubtful it was going to have good effects.”
Ohio University senior Rey De Spain, who is transgender, echoed Plett’s sentiments.
“I think it’s a massive overreach into the private lives of citizens and especially students,” they said.
De Spain said that in Athens, “I’ve never really encountered any problems using the public restrooms here.” However, since their freshman year, “I definitely think that transphobia has become a lot more visible.”
In De Spain’s experience, “People are a lot more comfortable being openly transphobic … A lot of people feel more comfortable than I would like, verbally harassing others on the streets, especially when they’re drunk … I expect a little bit of that, but I do feel like this campus has become a lot less friendly already in the past couple years, when I compare it to my freshman year. I felt like it was an extremely safe place, and I was never really hassled.”
Overall, though, De Spain said they feel “very fortunate that I live in an area where people mostly mind their own business.”
De Spain believes that bathrooms already operate on a “good faith” system in which legal documents aren’t required to attend to bodily functions.
“What all of us want in the bathroom is privacy, and a place to do our business and then wash our hands and leave,” De Spain said. “I think that a lot of the people pushing legislation like this don’t seem to understand how public restrooms function in the real world, and they think they’re protecting people, when really they’re putting people in danger.”
Hocking College Vice President of Student Affairs Hannah Guadda, who is the school’s Title IX coordinator, said in an email the institution “is currently reviewing the legislation to ensure compliance while maintaining our commitment to a safe, inclusive environment for all students. As we assess the bill’s impact, we remain dedicated to supporting our diverse student body.”
Resources: LGBTQ+ youths in crisis may contact the Trevor Project at 866-4-U-Trevor for assistance; adults in crisis, contact the National Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is also available; in case of emergency, always call 911.
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