Christian Nationalism with a Badge: Guns, God, and Surveillance in Schools

Josh Calloway doesn’t just want to legislate his beliefs. He wants to embed them into the very foundations of Kentucky’s public education system. Through a calculated mix of religious fundamentalism, state-sponsored surveillance, and a fetish for authoritarian control, Calloway is helping to lead the charge in transforming schools from places of learning into instruments of ideological enforcement.

Faith-Based Counseling Without Accountability

It begins with the deceptively soft pitch of “pastoral counselors” in schools. On the surface, this might seem like a compassionate gesture toward addressing student trauma and mental health. But these counselors aren’t licensed professionals. They’re faith-based actors, selected not for their credentials in psychology or therapy, but for their alignment with a narrow, sectarian worldview. And under current proposals, they would be embedded directly into public institutions, paid with public funds, and granted access to vulnerable students, without the oversight or ethical framework that governs real mental health services.

This isn’t care. It’s religious infiltration disguised as support. It’s theocratic mission work smuggled into schools under the guise of guidance. These “counselors” are not accountable to boards of education or health departments. They’re accountable to church doctrine. In the long tradition of authoritarian movements, Calloway is attempting to redefine public care as private ministry.

But the project doesn’t stop there. Calloway has also co-sponsored and supported bills that would allow for the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in Kentucky. This is a direct violation of the separation of church and state, cloaked in the rhetoric of tradition and values. It's part of a coordinated effort by Christian nationalists to normalize the idea that civic morality is indistinguishable from biblical literalism.

The goal isn’t just symbolism. It’s dominance. These displays are a signal. A signal that Kentucky schools will no longer be pluralistic spaces for learning, but missionary outposts in a broader war for cultural control. They are meant to impose a singular moral framework and to send a message to students of different faiths, or no faith at all, that they are outsiders in their own schools.

And when you add guns into the mix, the picture becomes fully dystopian. Calloway has also pushed for legislation to arm school personnel, a policy that cloaks itself in the language of protection but does nothing to address the root causes of violence in schools. Instead, it transforms educators into enforcers and classrooms into potential battlegrounds. It encourages a culture of fear, where the solution to the crisis is escalation and the answer to insecurity is weaponization.

A Blueprint for Control, Not Care

What we’re seeing here isn’t just a collection of misguided policies or reactionary overreach. It’s a deliberate and coordinated political project: a blueprint for control masquerading as moral revival.

This blueprint relies on a three-part strategy: replace professional public services with ideologically-aligned religious actors, weaponize fear to justify surveillance and militarization, and reframe state authority as an extension of divine will. It’s a model that borrows heavily from authoritarian regimes throughout history, where control of the schools is the first step toward controlling the future.

By installing “pastoral counselors” in schools, they establish religious influence under the pretense of emotional support. Replacing trained mental health professionals with agents of ideology. By mandating religious iconography like the Ten Commandments in classrooms, they normalize theocratic symbolism and marginalize students who don’t conform. And by arming teachers and encouraging punitive discipline policies, they turn schools into carceral spaces. Places where compliance is enforced by fear and deviation is punished, not understood.

These aren’t disconnected policies. They are reinforcing mechanisms. Together, they transform public education from a space of curiosity, diversity, and community into a machine of ideological conformity. Schools become laboratories of submission. Sites where children are trained not to think freely, but to accept authority as absolute and godliness as governance.

Calloway’s model is one where dissent becomes disobedience, and disobedience becomes danger. And danger, conveniently, justifies more weapons, more surveillance, and more control. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle. One that leads not to flourishing students, but to an obedient populace groomed to accept injustice as tradition and authoritarianism as moral clarity.

This is the real danger: that through slow, quiet policy shifts and culture war distractions, the public forgets what schools are supposed to be, and accepts what Calloway and his allies want them to become.

The Bigger Picture: A National Movement

What’s happening in Kentucky isn’t an isolated incident. It’s a frontline skirmish in a much larger war to redefine the American public square. The effort to merge religious authority with state power, to turn education into indoctrination, and to frame control as care is playing out in statehouses across the country. Josh Calloway isn’t some rogue actor. He’s a foot soldier in a national movement with deep pockets, clear goals, and a growing foothold in public institutions.

At the center of this movement is Christian nationalism. Not as a personal belief system, but as a political weapon. It wraps itself in patriotism while eroding civil liberties. It speaks of freedom while demanding obedience. And in red states like Kentucky, it finds fertile ground to sow fear, division, and domination under the banner of “faith and family.”

Think tanks, policy networks, and political operatives have spent decades laying the groundwork: undermining public education, discrediting professional expertise, and painting secular governance as inherently hostile to “values.” The endgame is simple: dismantle public systems that serve everyone, and replace them with ideologically-controlled alternatives that serve the few.

Calloway’s push for unlicensed “pastoral counselors,” mandatory religious displays, and armed authority figures in schools isn’t just about schools. It’s a preview of a society run by ideological purity tests. Where dissent is seen as deviance. Where public funds are funneled into private ministries. Where church and state become indistinguishable arms of the same authoritarian machine.

This strategy thrives on confusion. On parents overwhelmed by underfunded schools, on communities reeling from violence, on citizens too tired or distracted to connect the dots. But we must connect them. Because behind every “parental rights” talking point is a carefully planned power grab. Behind every “school safety” bill is a blueprint for surveillance and submission.

The question is no longer whether this movement is coming. It’s already here. The question is whether we’ll recognize it for what it is, and whether we’ll have the courage and clarity to push back.

Because the fight for public education is no longer just about books and budgets. It’s about democracy itself.

What Kentucky’s Kids Actually Need

Let’s be clear: what Kentucky’s kids need isn’t armed teachers or unlicensed preachers. They need stability. They need safety. They need an education system that sees them as full human beings. Not as soldiers in some manufactured moral war.

They need trained mental health professionals who listen without judgment, who operate under science-backed practices and ethical standards. Not pastoral counselors who see trauma as sin and therapy as salvation. Kids in crisis don’t need conversion. They need care.

They need well-funded schools with modern textbooks, working HVAC systems, hot meals, and enough staff to ensure no student slips through the cracks. Instead of pouring resources into surveillance gadgets or displays of religious dogma, we should be investing in nurses, social workers, librarians, and extracurricular programs that spark imagination and build community.

They need spaces where they can learn to think critically, ask hard questions, and engage with the full spectrum of human ideas. Not classrooms where fear, shame, and doctrine limit what they’re allowed to know or who they’re allowed to be. Education should be a launching pad for curiosity and confidence, not an assembly line for ideological obedience.

And above all, they need schools that reflect and respect the diversity of Kentucky itself. That means honoring kids from every background. Religious or not, rich or poor, queer or straight, Black, Brown, or white. It means creating learning environments where every student feels they belong, not just those who match one narrow vision of “faith and family.”

What Josh Calloway and his allies offer isn’t protection. It’s control. It’s a smokescreen of “freedom” that hides a power grab. One that uses kids as props, teachers as enforcers, and religion as a political weapon. It is not about meeting children’s needs. It is about molding them into submission.

The real answer is simple, and it’s not controversial: give Kentucky’s kids the tools to thrive, the freedom to grow, and the safety to be themselves. Not fear. Not firepower. Not fundamentalism.