A few days before the Fourth of July, Ron Peterson, the 38-year-old pastor of Longview United Pentecostal church, stood beneath a large white tent in a parking lot in Longview, Washington.

Surrounded by church members selling fireworks for a fundraiser, Peterson remembered watching area residents rally after an industrial accident at the local paper mill killed 11 people in May. “We can all come together,” he said. “There’s not going to be sections in heaven.”

At least two-thirds of his church members are Latino, Asian, Black or of multiracial backgrounds, according to Peterson. His congregation reflects a racial diversity that complicates the political image of evangelical Christians, who are largely (but not all) white, overwhelmingly backed Donald Trump in 2024 and tend to support his hardline immigration agenda.

But in this corner of southern Washington, even among churchgoers, there’s also a diversity of opinion about the role of religion in politics.

Peterson grew up poor in an Oregon household he describes as more New Age than Christian and works full time in sales while pastoring. He sees church as a place where people in his community – including families dealing with addiction or other crises – can come for support and succor.

He also holds views that place him squarely in the country’s culture wars. He believes that people like him – white Christian heterosexual men – have become targets.

“People need someone to blame,” he continued. “I think the ire is towards white Christian males. Now, they want to call them white Christian nationalists. But being white and Christian is actually, if you’re truly a Christian, a wonderful thing for society.”

He recounted being called into a meeting with human resources after singing a Christian hymn at work.

“I sang His Eye Is on the Sparrow. And because it said, ‘Jesus is my portion,’ I had to have a meeting with HR. Someone got offended,” he said. The Guardian could not independently verify his account.

He contrasted that experience with what he sees as greater tolerance for sexually explicit music. “So you can sing about sleeping with a bunch of women. [But] I can’t say Jesus?’

Peterson gives Trump high marks even as he criticizes the president’s lack of fiscal discipline. Peterson said, “From the standpoint of righteousness, he’s done more to help the country than any president, maybe ever.” But he argued the president was not a true fiscal conservative and that “from the standpoint of fiscal responsibility, I think he’s probably done worse than almost any president.”

For Peterson, Trump’s shortcomings appear to matter less than his willingness to advance causes important to the pastor’s faith. Asked about Trump’s felony conviction in the New York business-records case, the jury that found him liable for sexually abusing the writer E Jean Carroll, and his infidelity, Peterson brought it back to the supreme court – the justices Trump appointed, whose 2022 Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade. “Allowing the supreme court to hear Roe versus Wade again, I think that was very important,” he said, before acknowledging that his judgment ultimately “comes back down to my faith”.

‘Politically religious’

Religion has always been a factor in American life, and evangelicals have made the Christian right into a political powerhouse. Here in Longview, faith has featured in the neck-and-neck contest for Washington’s third congressional district. The Democratic incumbent, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, faces Republican John Braun in one of the nation’s most-watched House races. Both candidates have drawn on religion to connect with voters; Braun has defended expressions of religious and conservative speech on college campuses, and Gluesenkamp Perez, whose father served as an evangelical pastor, attends a Capitol Hill Bible study and has discussed sometimes feeling that her Christianity has embarrassed her Democratic party colleagues.

But a common faith does not mean common political stances. As Daniel HoSang, a Yale University professor who studies race and conservative political movements, put it, “For some, the idea of America as a Christian nation means protecting their freedom to practice their faith in a country they believe was founded on Christian values.”

For others, it means something more far-reaching – and potentially dangerous: a country where Christianity occupies a privileged position in government and public life, at the expense of people of other faiths. “If it’s a Christian country founded by Christians for Christians, that then authorizes discriminatory treatment against members of other religions,” he said.

In the nearby city of Battle Ground, I met 41-year-old dietitian Laura Oltmann at a new Italian pastry shop, where she expressed concern about religion’s growing influence in local politics and the treatment of immigrants under Trump’s administration.

The Ridgefield resident and registered independent grew up in a conservative Christian family where religion was often presented in strict terms of right and wrong. She studies the Bible, listens to morning devotionals on her way to work, and attends a small church near Battle Ground. The congregation, which she estimated has between 100 and 150 members, meets in a school, where worshippers unpack equipment each week before putting it away again. Oltmann said she felt called to mentor others and teach the Bible.

But she’s grown uncomfortable with what she views as the increasingly exclusionary bent of the Republican party and the idea that being Christian meant holding a particular set of political beliefs.

“I don’t really like that we’re conflating being Christian with being politically religious. Those are different things,” she said.

She also openly rejects the idea that the United States has a special claim to Christianity; in the Christian nationalism that Peterson referenced, proponents believe that the country was divinely chosen by God and founded to promote Christian values. “I don’t believe that America is, like, God’s kingdom on Earth,” she said.

That tension is particularly evident in her views on abortion. She does not believe it can be reduced to a simple political choice. She supported Gluesenkamp Perez in 2024 despite the congresswoman’s support for abortion rights.

“That’s definitely been a difficult conflict for me personally,” she said. “But I also feel that there’s just something about the power of choice and for a woman to be able to make that decision with her doctor.” Oltmann, who says it’s time for a female president, questioned the consistency of opposing abortion while resisting government programs that support children and families.

“You’re gonna be anti-abortion, but you’re not gonna support children’s programs, children’s nutrition, children’s schooling, the things that they need to function,” she said. “Are we taking a stand on these children’s lives, but not their growth and development? You know, that has to be both. As someone who follows Christ, how can I tell people that I don’t think they should feed kids, you know?”

Oltmann’s ballot-box decisions sometimes revolve around the compassionate politics she wants. “We need a leader who not only can lead and make decisions and communicate well, but can have empathy and see the problems,” she said. “Like, we don’t need a dictator.”

As a healthcare professional, Oltmann has been troubled by Trump’s immigration crackdown. “At one point, there was a concern that there was gonna be ... ICE coming into the hospital,” she said.

For her, the issue went beyond immigration policy. It was about how people should be treated, regardless of their status.

“I want people to be able to feel safe, to have access to healthcare. And to be able to thrive in their communities. And if you’re living in fear, how can you function?”

Oltmann ultimately voted for Gluesenkamp Perez because the congresswoman strikes her as “pretty middle of the road”, the same place she puts herself.

And “to be honest, the person she was running against [before] came across this very Christian nationalist, and that scares me more than probably anything”, she said.

That was Joe Kent, the Republican who lost to Gluesenkamp Perez twice and later served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. During the 2022 campaign, CNN and other outlets reported that Kent had ties to white nationalists, including an interview with a Nazi sympathizer. Kent has denied the characterization and has distanced himself from extremists. He could not be reached for comment.

However, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, Kent appeared on The Battle Ground Project, the Christian localism podcast co-hosted by the area pastor CR Wiley and an executive at the local electronic-equipment company, Maddox Industrial Transformer.

According to Frederick Clarkson, a research analyst who studies Christian nationalist movements for Political Research Associates, Christian localism emphasizes building influence within smaller communities, where religious groups may have greater opportunities to shape local institutions, businesses and government.

“It’s easier to get theocratic control, the fewer [the] people in the territory [that proponents] are trying to control,” he said.

An April investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting found that Camden Spiller, Maddox Industrial’s co-owner and chief executive, was connected to more than a dozen corporations that purchased over 30 properties in Battle Ground in six years.

Spiller has described his Christian faith as one motivation for investing in the community. In an opinion essay, he cited a passage from the biblical book of Jeremiah: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you.”

Some residents welcomed the investments as a revival of the city’s downtown. But others worry about religious influence on politics or the concentration of so many local businesses in the hands of a few. Spiller and his brother also own the city’s newspaper, among other interests.

Battle Ground’s mayor, Eric Overholser, also works at Spiller’s company. On 1 June this year, Overholser read two proclamations supporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and another recognizing the federal designation of antifa as a domestic terror organization. Two weeks later, Overholser signed a proclamation celebrating nuclear and traditional families, defining them as a husband, wife and children.

Spiller is also financing a new chapel for First Presbyterian church of Battle Ground, where he also serves on the board. The church’s pastor, Wiley, has longstanding ties to Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist who has built a network of churches, schools and other institutions around his religious vision based in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson has advocated banning abortion and incorporating Christian religious principles into American law. Wilson’s publishing house, Canon Press, has published several books by Wiley.

The Guardian contacted Spiller and Wiley with detailed questions about their possible involvement in Christian localism but received no response by publication time.

Clarkson warned that efforts to establish religious authority through local institutions could pose a longer-term threat to democratic governance, although he cautioned against overstating the movement’s influence. “It’s important to understand the severity of their ideas without exaggerating their immediate consequence,” he said.

The greater concern, Clarkson argued, was what could happen if one interpretation of Christianity gains the power to govern people who do not share its beliefs.

“To the extent that it grows in influence and becomes synonymous with Christianity, to whatever degree, that’s a threat to democracy in the United States,” he said.