Ohio state Rep. Gary Click recalls the comfort he felt going to church as a child and when he declared his faith before a congregation at the age of 12.
“I went down and I just told the Lord, I said, if you want me to be a pastor, I’ll be a pastor,” Click recounted in an interview.
He did become a Baptist pastor — and later, a lawmaker. Click, 60, is a three-term Ohio legislator. God created three institutions, he says: the family, the home and the government.
“As good stewards, we should be involved in all of those, to one extent or the other,” Click says.
He’s the architect of the state’s ban on gender-affirming surgeries and hormone treatments for minors. He’s backed a range of bills, from less-controversial ones like requiring schools to allow excused absences for religious reasons to hotly debated ones, like restricting abortion and requiring K-12 schools to let students leave during the day for religious study.
But Click says he’s not legislating his own religion, because you don’t have to be a Christian to agree with what he introduces and advances.
A bill named for Charlie Kirk about teaching religion’s impact on America
“The Bible says ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Now, am I legislating the Bible if I support laws against murder? No, I’m not,” he says. “Says ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ If we have laws against theft, and actually, I have a burglary bill right now, am I legislating my religion?”
Since last year, Click’s been working on passing the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act. It has passed the state House and is in the Senate.
The bill says it would permit the teaching of the positive impact of “Judeo-Christian” values in U.S. history. It lists two dozen examples, from appeals to divine power in the Declaration of Independence and the religious backgrounds of the signers, to the impact of evangelical Billy Graham.
A couple of other states have similar bills, though they’re not named after the slain conservative activist and occasional confidante of President Trump. Click says he hopes his will be a model.
Click named the bill after Kirk, whose rhetoric offended some but resonated with others, because he sees a connection.
“One of the reasons that people hated Charlie, I think, is because he was advancing Christian principles. The Christian history of our nation. And people didn’t like that. They hated that,” he says. “They rejected that. And I think that’s what took his life. And so I think people need a better education.”
Opponents say the bill would invite a skewed version of history
Opponents of the bill say it’s unnecessary — or worse.
“I have never heard of a single teacher in Ohio that says they’re afraid to teach any of the content that’s in this bill,” says Ohio Council for the Social Studies President Sarah Kaka.
She worries anytime the legislature is dictating the direction of educational content, she says.
“It is such a skewed perspective on history, right?” she says. “It’s not balanced by any means, and our organization as a whole, we are very much proponents of historical inquiry, right? Teaching students not what to think, but how to think.”
Groups backing laws that center on conservative views of Christianity go back generations, including the Moral Majority of the 1980s, and have won court backing in recent years with the elimination of the federal right to abortion and the weakening of bans on school prayer.
Indiana University Indianapolis professor Andrew Whitehead is among those who describe the movement as Christian Nationalism.
“[It’s] the desire to fuse together a very particular expression of Christianity with American civic life, and then having the government at all levels, defend and preserve that connection and fusion,” Whitehead says. He adds that this specific view sees an America primarily for white Protestant men and leans toward authoritarianism.
Click rejects the term. “That is a dog whistle,” he says. “That’s a crisis language in order to scare people and take them back to this idea of you’re forcing your religion on us.”
Click is a member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which shares model legislation against abortion access and transgender rights. He says the group is interested in the Charlie Kirk bill. Their website also includes proposals to ban same-sex marriage and to tie currency to gold and silver.
In Ohio, legislation infused with religion has gained noticeable traction. The decades-old Center for Christian Virtue has notched “lots” of recent wins, President Aaron Baer says.
“It’s never us,” Baer says. “We don’t have any votes, right? It’s the lawmakers, but we worked with lawmakers on all of these issues.”
A few years ago, CCV bought a four-story building across the street from the Capitol.
Under Baer, CCV looks at legislation across the board, branching out from standard religious right issues — against abortion, obscenity, gambling — into lobbying on a range of legislation, from limiting diversity, equity and inclusion to lowering taxes.
An Ohio Democrat and Catholic worries about mixing Christianity and lawmaking
“Christians are called to care about every issue, right?” Baer says. “It’s not just like there’s the social issues and those are the issues God cares about.”
State Rep. Sean Brennan is a Democrat from northeast Ohio. He says he “struggles” with the balance as someone who considers himself a good Catholic.
Sarah Donaldson/Statehouse News Bureau
He’s opposes the stated mission of the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act, voting against it in the House, as well as other bills with roots in Christianity.
“Just look at the history of our nation,” Brennan says. “You didn’t hear George Washington invoking Jesus.”
And he sees proposals like that, at worst, as divisive.
“We don’t need to sow more seeds of division in our country,” Brennan says. “We’ve evolved, we’re more inclusive, and I think that makes our state and our nation stronger.”
Sarah Donaldson covers politics and government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau.
