Project Blitz

Project Blitz was a coordinated state legislative campaign whose existence was revealed in 2018 when its internal strategy documents were leaked to the public. The documents showed a playbook prepared by three organizations working together: the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (led by Lea Carawan and Rep. Randy Forbes), WallBuilders (David Barton), and the National Legal Foundation (a Christian legal organization). The playbook — formally titled 'The Blitz Playbook' — provided pre-written model legislation for state legislatures organized into three tiers of increasing political difficulty: Tier 1 (Ceremonial/symbolic): Bills requiring the display of 'In God We Trust' in public schools and government buildings; bills designating official state Bible verses; bills establishing 'Christian Heritage' weeks; proclamations recognizing the religious heritage of the United States. Tier 2 (Religious liberty in education): Bills allowing public school Bible literacy courses; bills protecting religious expression by students in public schools; bills allowing student-led prayer; bills requiring teaching 'the influence of the Bible' in public school curriculum. Tier 3 (Anti-LGBTQ religious exemptions): Bills allowing adoption agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples on religious grounds; bills allowing child welfare agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ families; bills protecting individuals and businesses who refuse services to LGBTQ people. The strategy memo explained the tiered approach explicitly: start with bills that seem anodyne or ceremonial, use their passage to normalize Christian nationalist framing of government, build public and legislative comfort with religious content in government, then advance the more explicitly discriminatory bills. David Barton's WallBuilders provided historical revisionism supporting the bills' constitutional framing. The Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation coordinated among state prayer caucuses — networks of legislators in state houses who had organized around Christian nationalist policy goals. By 2018, when the documents were leaked, more than 70 Project Blitz bills had been introduced across at least 20 states. Rolling Stone and The Guardian provided the primary investigative reporting. After the leak, the campaign was renamed 'Freedom for All' and 'Blitz' references were removed from public communications. The underlying strategy — coordinated pre-written Christian nationalist legislation distributed to state legislatures — continued. The connection to ADF: several Tier 3 religious liberty bills were modeled on legislation ADF had drafted and advocated. The RFRA expansion and adoption agency discrimination bills were part of ADF's broader post-Obergefell litigation strategy.

Documented themes

• Christian Nationalism
• Anti-LGBTQ
• Anti-Democratic
• Political Strategy

Connections from Project Blitz

• influenced → Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) (2016) — Project Blitz's Tier 3 bills — the most legally aggressive tier, targeting anti-LGBTQ religious exemptions in adoption, child welfare, and public accommodation — were modeled directly on legislation the Alliance Defending Freedom had drafted and advocated. ADF was the litigation arm of the post-Obergefell religious liberty strategy; Project Blitz was the legislative distribution mechanism. The two organizations operated in complementary roles: ADF produced the legal framework and litigated test cases; Project Blitz bundled that framework into pre-written state bills and distributed them to Christian nationalist state legislators through the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation's network. When states passed Project Blitz's Tier 3 bills, ADF was positioned to defend them in federal court.

Connections to Project Blitz

• WallBuilders influenced (2016) — David Barton's WallBuilders was one of the three organizations that developed the Project Blitz legislative playbook, alongside the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation and the National Legal Foundation. WallBuilders provided the historical revisionist framework — the claim that Christian displays and references in government are constitutional and historically grounded — that undergirded the Tier 1 and Tier 2 bills in the playbook.

Sources

• Inside the Christian Right's Coordinated Campaign to Take Over State Legislatures — Rolling Stone (2018)
• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 71–100
• Christian Nationalists Are Retooling Their Strategy After a Public Backlash — The Guardian (2019)