From Pulpit to Power. The Rise of a Kentucky Culture Warrior: Part I. Inside the Dangerous Rise of Josh Calloway

From Pulpit to Power

The Rise of a Kentucky Culture Warrior

Rep. Josh Calloway isn’t just another small-town lawmaker. He’s the spearpoint of a growing movement to fuse Christian fundamentalism with state power, and Frankfort is his pulpit.

If you’ve never heard of Rep. Josh Calloway, that’s by design. He doesn’t showboat like some of his far-right colleagues. He doesn’t need to. While others chase cable news hits, Calloway quietly builds a theocratic infrastructure, one bill, one board appointment, one fire-and-brimstone soundbite at a time.

Calloway’s rise from pulpit to power reflects a broader strategy playing out across red states: reshape public life to reflect a narrow, often authoritarian brand of Christianity. The stakes for Kentucky? Public schools, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom, and the very idea of secular government.

Who Is Josh Calloway?

To understand Rep. Josh Calloway, you have to understand his mission: this is a man who didn’t run for office to govern. He ran to minister.

Calloway represents Kentucky’s 10th House District, which includes Breckinridge and parts of Meade and Hardin counties. First elected in 2020, he quickly carved out a reputation as one of the legislature’s most ideologically rigid and religiously driven members. But his political story didn’t begin in a campaign office. It began in a church livestream.

Before entering politics, Calloway was the Executive Director of Hope for Recovery, a Christian-based drug and alcohol recovery center. But even more central to his identity was his involvement in Hope Through Truth Ministries, a now-defunct website and outreach effort that mixed addiction counseling with apocalyptic right-wing theology.

Archived versions of the ministry’s page reveal a worldview defined by spiritual warfare, where LGBTQ+ rights, public schools, and even mainstream Christianity are portrayed as tools of Satan. Homosexuality, he preached, was a “demonic deception.” Public education, a “godless indoctrination system.” The ministry trafficked in end-times language and openly advocated for the fusion of church and state.

Much of that content has disappeared since Calloway entered public office, but none of his beliefs have. In fact, he’s only gained confidence and legitimacy with a seat in Frankfort and the support of Christian nationalist groups eager to see Kentucky’s laws rewritten in the image of Leviticus.

Since taking office, he has leveraged his background not as a disqualifier, but as a credential, presenting himself as someone sent by God to “restore truth” to Kentucky politics. His approach is clear: legislate as ministry, and disagreement as heresy.

He's soft-spoken in interviews, careful not to shout like a firebrand. But beneath the smooth delivery is a deeply authoritarian worldview: the belief that state power should serve biblical law, and that anyone outside that framework, LGBTQ Kentuckians, secular educators, reproductive rights advocates, is not just wrong, but dangerous.

This is not politics for Calloway. It's a spiritual war. And his district, and the state, are his mission field.

Attacking LGBTQ+ Kentuckians, One Soundbite at a Time

If there’s a single throughline in Josh Calloway’s political career, it’s this: his obsession with controlling, erasing, and legislating against LGBTQ+ lives.

From the moment he arrived in Frankfort, Calloway has made it clear that queer Kentuckians are not part of his vision for the state. His rhetoric is framed as “protecting children” or “restoring morality,” but beneath the euphemisms is a deeply authoritarian campaign to suppress identity, erase visibility, and criminalize support.

In 2023, Calloway co-sponsored Senate Bill 150, Kentucky’s sweeping anti-trans legislation that banned gender-affirming care for minors, restricted discussions of gender and sexuality in schools, and forced teachers to misgender trans students. He defended the bill not with data or the testimony of medical professionals, but with the language of spiritual panic. In his view, trans youth aren’t vulnerable kids deserving compassion, they’re casualties of a cultural war being waged by “woke ideology.”

His hostility toward LGBTQ+ Kentuckians isn’t policy-neutral, it’s theological. In his earlier “Hope Through Truth” ministry work, Calloway described homosexuality as a “spiritual perversion” and “evidence of a fallen world.” His writings equated being gay or trans with being in rebellion against God; not merely sinful, but demonic. And although those ministry pages have since vanished, the agenda remains.

Let’s be clear: this is not about disagreement. It’s about power and punishment.

Calloway has repeatedly supported legislation that would strip trans kids of healthcare, ban drag performances, and allow parents to sue school districts that support LGBTQ+ students. In doing so, he’s aligned himself with national hate groups, Christian nationalist organizations, and the furthest fringe of the anti-LGBTQ+ movement, all under the guise of “family values.”

What makes Calloway’s position especially dangerous is how normalized it's become in Frankfort. He doesn't scream. He doesn't rant. He smiles, quotes scripture, and insists he’s just standing up for “the truth.” But the impact of his policies is not theoretical. LGBTQ+ youth in Kentucky face some of the highest rates of suicide ideation in the country. Every anti-trans bill is a loaded gun aimed at already vulnerable kids.

Josh Calloway isn’t just a lawmaker with conservative views, he’s a legislator actively working to erase queer Kentuckians from public life. And he’s doing it with biblical conviction, political cover, and no regard for the damage left behind.

The Culture War Curriculum

Rep. Josh Calloway isn’t in Frankfort to govern, he’s there to fight a holy war.

In nearly every speech, post, or vote, Calloway reveals himself not as a public servant but as a culture war combatant, obsessed with policing morality, weaponizing religion, and punishing anyone who doesn't conform to a narrow, theocratic vision of Kentucky.

Whether it’s banning books, silencing teachers, targeting LGBTQ+ youth, or opposing reproductive rights, his legislative strategy follows a clear pattern: create fear, cast blame, and legislate repression. He presents every disagreement not as a debate between citizens in a democracy, but as an existential clash between good and evil, “God's will” and “woke ideology.”

He doesn’t hide it. In his own words, Calloway claims he’s fighting a “spiritual battle” in Frankfort. That’s not a metaphor, it’s his mission. His worldview is steeped in Christian nationalism, where political opponents aren’t just wrong, they’re wicked. And compromise? That’s considered surrender.

This approach is dangerous, not just because of what it promotes, but because of what it erases. It replaces pluralism with absolutism. It reduces nuanced issues to moral binaries. And it casts Kentucky’s diverse citizens; teachers, LGBTQ+ youth, single mothers, immigrants as threats rather than constituents.

One example: Calloway’s full-throated support for censoring public education. He’s pushed for legislation banning “divisive concepts,” demanding that schools whitewash history and ignore the realities of racism, sexism, and inequality. In his rhetoric, the goal is to “protect children.” But the result is clear: a sanitized, state-approved curriculum that tells kids what to think, not how to think.

This is not governance. It’s indoctrination. And it's no accident.

Calloway’s base isn’t clamoring for infrastructure or economic reform, they’re fed a steady diet of culture war grievances and moral panics. Drag queens, CRT, trans kids, abortion access. These are the villains of his carefully constructed narrative. And in return, he offers not solutions, but scapegoats.

Josh Calloway’s politics are not conservative, they’re reactionary. His mission isn’t to preserve Kentucky’s values, it’s to reshape them into a rigid, authoritarian moral order that punishes difference and elevates only those who look, think, and pray like him.

The Broader Movement Behind Him

Josh Calloway didn’t rise in a vacuum. He’s not some lone zealot shouting into the void, he’s a foot soldier in a much larger, coordinated movement. And understanding him means understanding the web of groups, ideologies, and money that prop him up.

At the heart of it is Project Blitz, a national strategy by Christian nationalist organizations to embed their agenda into state legislatures. Its goals? Undermine LGBTQ+ rights, chip away at public education, restrict reproductive freedom, and slowly blur the line between church and state. In Calloway, they’ve found a willing ally.

Groups like The Family Foundation, Liberty Counsel, and Kentucky United, organizations that style themselves as defenders of “family values”, play a central role in grooming and backing candidates like Calloway. These groups provide pre-written legislation, talking points, and campaign support, all in service of transforming Kentucky into a theocratic testing ground.

This is not grassroots. This is astro-turfed authoritarianism, funded by national think tanks and legal firms with deep pockets and even deeper agendas. Their strategy is simple: take extremist ideas, give them a folksy Kentucky accent, and push them through under the guise of “protecting kids” or “preserving traditions.”

Calloway’s rhetoric echoes the national playbook almost word for word, demonizing drag shows as child abuse, framing inclusive education as “indoctrination,” and painting bodily autonomy as a moral crisis. These aren't original thoughts, they’re the byproduct of a pipeline that runs from right-wing mega-donors to the legislative floor of the Kentucky General Assembly.

And it’s not just ideology, it’s infrastructure. School boards, city councils, and state agencies are being flooded with ultra-conservative candidates and policy demands. Calloway is one part of a broader assault on the machinery of democracy. One designed not to represent a majority, but to seize and wield power through fear and outrage.

In this system, extremism isn’t a bug, it’s the point. Every outrageous bill, every incendiary tweet, every moral panic over nonexistent threats is part of the strategy: keep people angry, divided, and distracted while fundamental rights are eroded in real time.

Josh Calloway may be a familiar face in Kentucky politics, but the movement he represents is bigger, bolder, and far more dangerous than one man alone.

What Comes Next

If Calloway stays on his current path and if his base continues to grow, expect more legislation wrapped in scripture, more state-funded faith programs, and more marginalization of anyone who doesn’t fit his dogma.

This isn’t politics-as-usual. It’s politics as divine mission. And it’s going to require more than quiet opposition to stop it.

Next in the Series: “Public Dollars, Private Faith: How Calloway’s Education Agenda Turns Classrooms into Churches”