On the Sunday before the Fourth of July, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, stood on a church pulpit and called for the extrajudicial killing of people he considered to be enemies of Christian America. Republicans’ continued support for and promotion of Robinson’s candidacy show how the GOP and the religious right have mainstreamed calls for violence in the name of Christian nationalism.
The address — first reported by The New Republic’s Greg Sargent — was part of “God and Country Sunday” at Lake Church in White Lake, North Carolina. “We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent,” Robinson declared, adding that “some folks need killing. … It’s a matter of necessity!” He compared these supposed enemies on the American left to Nazis in World War II: “We didn’t argue and capitulate and talk about, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t fight the Nazis that hard.’ No, they’re bad. Kill them.” And the state’s would-be governor had no qualms about marshaling state power: “Time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them handle it. Or those boys in blue and have them go handle it.”
Robinson’s supporters on the Christian right treat his vicious, bigoted attacks as evidence of his heroic stands against ‘woke’ enemies of Christian America.
The exact identity of the “folks” who deserved death was unclear. There are “wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping,” Robinson said. But he clearly had in mind a far broader spectrum of leftist foes, warning about those “making 1776 a distant memory” and those advancing “the tenets of socialism and communism.”
Cameron McGill, the church’s pastor, defended Robinson. “Without a doubt, those he deemed worthy of death [were] those seeking to kill us,” McGill told The New Republic, claiming that Robinson “certainly did not imply the taking of any innocent lives.” The pastor, in other words, gave Robinson his permission to deem some fellow citizens “worthy of death” based only on conspiratorial lies that such people want to kill Christians.
Robinson, an unabashed Christian nationalist, has a long history of extremist and bigoted positions, promoting conspiracy theories, and making racist, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic attacks on fellow Americans. He launched his political career by attacking gun control and ridiculing survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He has expressed support for the 1970 National Guard shooting of anti-Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University, denied the Holocaust and called for trans women to be arrested for using women’s restrooms.
Robinson’s supporters on the Christian right treat his vicious, bigoted attacks as evidence of his heroic stands against “woke” enemies of Christian America. The church introduced Robinson, who was fresh off an appearance at the Road to Majority conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C., with a clip of his appearance at this high-profile event for Republican heavyweights, including former President Donald Trump. In the segment, Robinson attacked the media as anti-American, saying, “I don’t care about your plans and your schemes to bring this nation down, with your Democratic friends. Why? Because Jesus Christ is still on the throne!”
In a friendly interview between McGill and Robinson before the candidate gave his speech, the pair reiterated Christian nationalist dogma that the founders intended America to be a Christian nation, and that the separation of church and state was intended to protect the church from government interference, but not to stop the church from influencing government. “You cannot tell me we can separate our government from the laws of God, from the Bible,” said Robinson. “Our Constitution is based on the word of God, I don’t care what anybody says.” At one point in the interview, McGill told Robinson that he has an “anointing.” With that endorsement, Robinson took to the pulpit for his speech. This is far from the first time Robinson has used the violent language of warfare to pit MAGA Republicans like himself against others. This is far from the first time Robinson has used the violent language of warfare to pit MAGA Republicans like himself against others. In 2021, he said in a speech that he was born “to be one of God’s freedom fighters” in order to “literally make war on the devil.” He warned he wanted to make “the literal foundations of hell tremble, and I want this nation to join with me in doing it.” That same year, Robinson said in another speech that Christians and conservatives must “get as bold and unafraid and warlike in spreading the truth in this nation as these people have been in spreading the lies that are currently destroying it.” But in those instances, Robinson stopped short of endorsing murder. Explicitly advocating for supposed “enemies” of Christian America to be killed — on a church pulpit, no less — is a clear and dangerous escalation of Christian nationalist support for “spiritual warfare” against “demonic” enemies. Many promoters of “spiritual warfare” have long insisted, citing Ephesians 6:12, that they are not talking about actual war with “flesh and blood,” but rather a battle against “principalities and powers” that takes place solely in the realm of spirituality and prayer. Yet Robinson’s newly explicit calls for killing perceived enemies show just how seamlessly Christian nationalist extremists can glide into promoting real violence. Trump wanted to shoot racial justice protesters in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. Robinson, who could be North Carolina’s next governor, wants to get “the guys in green” or the “boys in blue” to “handle” unspecified “wicked people.” It’s all part of the MAGA quest to upend democracy and replace it with far-right authoritarianism. Robinson is merely taking the lead on turning this project into a twisted Sunday school lesson for Christian nationalists.
Sarah Posner
Sarah Posner is the author of "Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind." 
