When Christian nationalists come to town

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0:39I got a deer this morning when I was the first, like, guy in the whole county to take a deer to the processor. Opening day of rifle season. It's hunting season in Tennessee. But my brother's still in a stand about 10 minutes from here. Trying to get one. I'm with Josh Abattoi, a conservative real estate developer, head of a company called Ridge Runner, that's been buying up land in rural Appalachia in the United States. We can rest for a minute. It's a bit of a hike. There you go. Oh, wow. So we've just hiked up a hill. I'm looking out at an incredible view. There's kind of pasture land, there's woodland.

1:22It's autumn, so the leaves have fallen off the trees, but so many trees. You own this land. What are you doing here? I'm building a neighbourhood. We are centering it around a working farm. So as you look down these hills and to the fields, a customer might very well buy and build roughly where we're standing right now. We are building a community that is going to appeal to people who prioritise faith, family and freedom. And we're just outside the small town of Gainsborough, which is in northern Tennessee. Why did you pick here, this region, for your development? Look around. The scene is storybook.

2:06Gainsborough is small, with a population of little over 900 at the last census. And it's country, around 90 minutes east of Nashville, among the wooded hills of Middle Tennessee. It rarely made the news until last year. But the people here are getting some new neighbours. and Gainsborough is unexpectedly in the spotlight. Christian nationalists are moving in. Ultra-conservative, mostly millennial men whose controversial worldview is gaining increasing influence on the American right. This little town has become a symbol for the big new battles shaping American politics as Democrats and Republicans turn their focus to rural voters and right-wingers feud over the future of the MAGA movement.

2:56Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Ellie House, on assignment in Tennessee in the United States.

3:09The Ridge Runner office is a squat building in downtown Gainsborough. It's still a work in progress, but the important things have already been set up. Patriotic flags hang out front, and there's a rack of dumbbells in the lobby. Yeah, for sure. You've got the map over there of what's going on. Yeah, that's our biggest farm, and every parcel with a white fun tack on it is under contract now. Here, Josh Abattoi tells me more about what he's doing. Rural America has been growing very quickly, And it's generally growing from people who live in California and other states. It relates to the big sort that's only accelerated.

3:52The big sort is this idea that people are moving. Americans are sorting themselves geographically. By politics. Yes. Yeah. So people are moving from red states to blue states and blue states to red states based on their politics. Yeah. Yeah. So rural America has been getting more conservative over the last 10 years, but especially the last five years. And now there's a new phase. Not only are some Americans moving to states they feel are more aligned with their politics, people like Josh are developing entire neighborhoods framed around shared worldviews. People want to live in communities where they feel like they share important values with their neighbors in a way that raises social trust and cohesion.

4:35In our case, we say, I know these sound like basic, you know, Republican Party slogans, faith, family and freedom. Family. Many of the people moving here talk about traditional family structures and the importance of having land to pass down through future generations. Freedom sort of speaks for itself. When you're out in the country like this, the government is sort of necessarily smaller in a lot of ways. We do have a lot of people moving here from California or New York State. A big motivator for a lot of these people is a feeling that they're leaving conditions where they've been under a lot more government scrutiny.

5:12And then the other value was faith. Faith, yes. So they like the fact that it's the Bible Belt and that there's a church on every corner. We make spaces in our neighborhoods for churches. By faith, is that explicitly Christian, say a Muslim person who was kind of conservative and into the other values of freedom and family who wanted to come and, you know, set up a mosque or worship Allah? Would that kind of fit into the affinities that you're setting out? So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I would say that we've had a wide variety of customers who are Christian or some who are not Christian. We've only sold to churches so far.

5:53But the appeal, like broadly speaking, of being in a conservative community, it's pretty broadly appealing. Josh says that anyone can buy land here. Housing discrimination is against the law. But the people buying plots of land in his new neighbourhood are likely to self-select. It'll be customers drawn to such Christian conservative values and politics. Ridge Runner promotes its projects a lot on social media, finding an audience among right-wing circles on X and on the conservative podcast circuit. A lot of it is enabled by the internet, right? So if people within various social media circles move out, they'll encourage others.

6:35It's fascinating. It's like a bunch of guys or girls meet on X and then actually can build a physical community where they live. Yeah. That's kind of crazy to me. It's well, no, it's it's I mean, in some senses, it's like it's the most natural thing in the world in a lot of ways. So a conservative real estate developer is buying land in small town Tennessee, in a conservative county where 80 % voted for President Trump in the past election. So what's the big deal? Why has this become a national and now international story?

7:15Christian nationalist. Christian nationalist. Christian nationalist. Christian nationalism. Christian nationalist. The controversy here is over some of Josh Abattoi's customers, who call themselves Christian nationalists. But what actually is Christian nationalism? Of everyone I asked, James Lindsay gave the best definition. I started watching the kind of rising Christian nationalist phenomenon in 2021. Lindsay is an influential American conservative commentator based in Tennessee. He made his name campaigning against liberal progressive values, so-called wokeness. Some people have even called him far right.

7:51He's also studied Christian nationalism, but he's no fan of its more extreme flavors. There's a spectrum of definitions. So we can imagine like a very gentle definition on one side and a very hard definition on the other. The very hard definition might be that there should be a highest political office called the Christian prince that has absolute authority, that can punish atheism, non-belief, alternative religious belief, heretics, blasphemers, idolaters, everything else. The Christian Prince is an idea floated by a prominent Christian nationalist in a recent book. It will supposedly be a great man who rules over the people, leading them to godliness.

8:33You have a slightly less hard view, which is that God's law applies to all Christian people. And if this is a Christian nation, it should apply, therefore, to all Americans. So God's law, as they interpret it from the Bible, regardless of whether you have belief or not, should apply to you and you should have to uphold it. James Lindsay says there are softer forms of this ideology as well, such as the idea that American law should be based on the Bible. Then you can have actually an even softer definition should be that Christian morals, ethics and values should inform or dictate American law on Christian terms.

9:08that can slide to something softer to say not on Christian terms, but as like a background source material. Because the term is so ambiguous, and because many of its proponents treat their ideas as thought exercises, it's often difficult to pin down exactly what they believe. Some of them say this is by design. It's a strategic ambiguity that James Lindsay says benefits Christian nationalists, making their ideas seem more palatable. The second you pin them down and say you believe this, most of them will say, no, no, no, no, I just want a culturally Christian situation. I just want it to be what the founders had.

9:42Just to recognize that when America was founded, it was founded under a Christian ethic by a predominantly Christian set of people and in a predominantly Christian culture and want to retain that. So they're very slippery on where they fall. We should note that the atheist James Lindsay does have an ongoing personal feud with some of the Christian nationalists, trolling each other online, including some of the people who've bought land near Gainsborough. But back in the offline world, some locals also weren't happy when self-identified Christian nationalists moved to town.

10:20I'm sat in a circle in an Airbnb just a couple of doors down from Josh's office with a self-styled resistance group. They've been organising against Ridge Runner for over a year. We were expecting a couple of people, but word spread and seven have shown up. I'm Diana Mandley. We first bought a place here in 2005, opened businesses up in 2012, and been here since 2005, I guess. Diana Mandley is one of the town matriarchs. She opened up a pub on the main street when it was full of boarded up shops and investment was scarce. She's petite, with dark grey hair pulled back into a ponytail. And these guys had been coming into our restaurant for months.

11:04They would bring people in with them. They would have business lunches. Always male. Always guys. Yeah, always. But we didn't think anything of it because people did that kind of thing all the time at our place. And so we were very welcoming to them. We had no idea. And then... Tonight, News Channel 5 Investigates special report reveals the Christian nationalists who want to turn a small Middle Tennessee community into their base of operations. The locals first heard about the Ridge Runner project about a year ago, when a local Nashville TV station made it headline news. The investigation focused on two prominent customers who've already moved to town.

11:44Andrew Isker, a pastor from Minnesota, and CJ Engel from California. The reporter compared them to neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups that have recently been active in Tennessee. What happened next is that, like the skeptics that we all are these days, we wanted to make sure it was as bad as it sounded. Iska and Engel host what they've described as the number one Christian nationalist podcast in the world. It's called Contramundum, which is Latin for against the world. So we started listening to the podcast and reading the social media posts and found that it was even worse. Authoritarianism isn't this scary boogeyman that we should be fearful of, but might be the path forward.

12:31There's an imperative for like-minded Christians to gather and fight with us. We need Christian nationalism in one state. Nowadays, the pair look very professional, in a Swish podcast studio with brown leather armchairs, a potted plant and a poster of Richard Nixon in the background. But back then, they were remote, sat in separate states, opining down a video call. The locals decided they needed to take action. So what we did, we got a big chalkboard. I wrote on it. if you are a person or group who promotes the oppression of others, please eat somewhere else. You won't like it here. We welcome everybody.

13:09And then the other board, I took a second one, and the other one said this establishment is owned by a woman who graduated summa cum laude and is of Jamaican and Romany heritage because these guys had been very clear they didn't like educated women and they didn't like non-Europeans. they never crossed foot over my business establishment threshold again, not once. And that said it all. Before too long, more members of the resistance found themselves face-to-face with the Ridge Runner men at another local food joint. We did a sit-in at Dairy Queen. We found out that the group was meeting with people there, and we planned a very peaceful protest.

13:52Nan Coons is a passionate woman and Gainsborough native. Her family has been in this small town since, as far as she can tell, the time of the U.S. Revolutionary War in the late 1700s. She was shocked when she spoke to her new neighbours directly. I myself spoke to C.J. Engel. Like, this is a conversation he and I had. This is not something I overheard. He explained to me that what they're promoting is what he called family voting. it was their plan to essentially only allow one vote per family and of course the husband in that family would be the one voting and that the wife would no longer have any kind of voting responsibility it would just be the husband in my opinion they're coming after me right they're coming after my right to vote just on that they're not in power they don't have the power to take away your right to vote.

14:44They're two guys with a podcast. Now they don't. But if they take the presidency, if they get elected, it's a snowball, right? And so if we don't stop them here, the next person goes along and says, oh, well, they don't have the power to do it, let them go. You know, then they take the town, then they take the state, then they take the national, and on and on it goes. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive.

15:20But even though I've got questions, join me, Merrin's Upset Web, every week for my show, Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists and experts about how markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. I'm Ellie House, on assignment in small town Tennessee. This concern about the Christian nationalist podcast bros angling for real political power isn't theoretical.

15:56I watched a podcast about they were going to make their big move. And they said they were moving to Gainesboro, a small town in Middle Tennessee. Nancy Pruitt is another member of this informal resistance. She's sitting across from me in the circle on a kitchen chair pulled into the lounge. They said one of the reasons they chose Gainesboro is because they could win the city over. The evangelical pastor, Andrew Isker, co-wrote a book titled Christian Nationalism, a biblical guide for taking dominion and discipling nations. If you could build places where you can take political power, which might mean you're sitting on the county commissioners or even having the ear of the county commissioners and sheriff.

16:44Being able to do those things is extremely, extremely valuable. These fellows declared to their online audience that they were planting a flag and building a town and going to wield political power. That's Mark Dudney, a local historian who has been vocal in his opposition to the town's newcomers. He's quite reserved but firm when he speaks. Instead of somebody doing whatever they're doing privately, it became a matter of public concern for all of us. Iska and Engel have insisted that they have no plans to take over Gainsborough's local government. But there were other things that these residents objected to as well.

17:21And they've made that pretty clear on the podcast that they consider any other race or ethnic group inferior to white people. One of the podcasters, CJ Engel, has helped popularise a new term, heritage American, which refers to people with roots in the United States going back generations to at least the early 20th century. He defined the phrase in an ex post. Heritage America is centred around the experiences and norms of Anglo Protestants. He says it's not exclusively white, but it does have strong ethnic correlations. This idea informs his views on immigration. He has called for both illegal and legal immigrants to be deported.

18:04Peoples like Indians or Southeast Asians or Ecuadorians or immigrated Africans are the least capable of fitting in and should be sent home immediately. Statements like these alarmed the Gainsborough locals. I am one who dedicated an hour of my life for several months every morning watching their podcast. They are against gays and blacks and women and anyone that is a different skin color than they are. They deny that they're white supremacists. They deny that they're racists. They say this is all a smear by liberals. They tell you they're not racist, but then they say racist things on their podcast.

18:45They tell their podcast listeners that they're committed and serious. They tell us they're just posting this stuff for clickbait. You know, you can't ever get a straight answer. Josh Abattoi was willing to sit down and speak with me, but CJ Engel and Andrew Isker were not. They didn't reply to our requests for an interview or respond to any of the allegations in this programme. In the spring of 2025, the Gainsborough opposition campaign kicked up a gear with a billboard and yard signs placed around town reading, Hate has no home in Gainsborough. They are a statement that this community does not embrace hateful ideology.

19:26I believe that they have been attempting to brand our town and our county as a headquarters for their ideology of Christian nationalism. A national organisation also got involved in this fight. States at the core, established last year to tackle authoritarianism in small communities, provided the Gainsborough residents with information and advice, though the local resistance group maintains that it isn't an organised effort. States at the core declined to speak on the record. We need to separate Ridge Runner, which is the company that's buying the land, and some of its customers, which include Iska and Engel.

20:05You could just say these are conservative guys, conservative business people, wanting to make money. Mr. Abitoy says that he is a outspoken conservative. Mr. Abitoy also says that he does not identify as a Christian nationalist. Well, I don't identify as a middle-aged bald man, but all evidence suggests that that's what I am. Where do they do their podcasts from? Who owns that building? Abitoy. So you all see Andrew Esker and C.J. Engel as one and the same with Ridge Runner and Abitoy and that of others. Yes, all the same. I put this to Josh Abattoi, back in his Gainsborough offices, just a few doors away.

20:46CJ's a customer. Andrew is, the church that he pastors is buying land from us in the Brewington Farm. Am I right in thinking they have a podcast studio in this building here? It's moving, but yes. Yeah, so they've rented a studio space in here. Yeah. Josh Abitoy has appeared on Iska and Engel's podcast several times. They've described him as their friend, and he defends them against the critiques of the local reporter who first shone a spotlight on Gainsborough. They're talking about big ideas and books, and he's trying to make it sound like their practical political programme is to do this as much as possible in a local community.

21:28It's sort of absurd, fear-mongering. How absurd is it when Andrew Iska wrote a book where he laid out a lot of this stuff? on their podcast, there's multiple times where they've talked about repealing the 20th century. Is that absurd fear mongering to take things that they've said many times and present them? So rolling back the 20th century, a lot of conservatives would say, yeah, we took a lot of wrong turns in the 20th century. To take a statement like that, and then try to say, well, this is really about like getting back to fascism or something is very gross. I mean, because what it's doing is it's taking honest, real hard questions about did we take some wrong turns in the 20th century and it's trying to import the rightful, moral indignation people feel about some of the greatest villains in the 20th century.

22:17We chat a little bit more about his business partners, a venture capital fund called New Founding. We want to invest in companies that are likely to become very big. And about the role of the church in American politics. Christianity was like, you know, extremely like culturally important to the nation at our founding, like our, you know, sort of. And as we're talking in the Ridge Runner offices, one of those customers who has attracted so much controversy opens the door. Andrew Isker comes in, a broad man with close cropped hair and a thick moustache. So there's some, you know, there's some variety there.

22:52So we make eye contact. Hello. Yeah. So. He looks surprised to see me. We pause the interview for a moment, but Iska rushes into another room without saying a word. We don't see him again. The next day is a Sunday morning, and in Bible Belt, Tennessee, that means just one thing. Church. His name is wonderful. His name is wonderful. I'm in an old building with grand white pillars out front, The crisp autumn sun filters through the simple stained glass windows in greens, browns and purples. It's the local Methodist church. Today's congregation has around 20 people. We are not an unknowable. We live in God's world.

23:44We believe in God. Andrew Isker, in his book, argues that all Christians should be Christian nationalists because of a line in the Bible that calls for followers of Jesus to disciple all nations. After the service, I ask a group of churchgoers what they make of this term. I don't generally even know what Christian nationalism is. When you pop out the word Christian nationalist, I very seriously doubt a lot of people in this county pick up on that because they don't know. There are signs that have gone up recently saying hate has no home here. Was that surprising for you? It was very upsetting to me because I never knowed of hate being here.

24:27I've lived here all my life, and to hear the word hate, that is a very harsh word to me. We're good, God-fearing, God-loving people that work and care passionately about our neighbors and our families. I just don't think it represents who Gainesboro is. I think they're looking at the hate sign wrong. It was directed toward the new people that were bringing in the hate. Does it feel like they've brought hate in or does it feel like this has been overblown? I don't see the hate. I know I went over here to the building that they have there and I walked in, somebody shook my hand. I think it was an overreaction.

25:14Yeah, it's hard to say. What is this? There is this miasma that hangs over us here, just not knowing what this is all about. Since when? Ever since they started buying stuff all around town. Just some of the off-the-wall comments. For some reason, they seem to want controversy. I think people were just afraid that they were going to come in here and divide us. Does it feel like that's happened? No. I don't think it will divide the community, but we don't know. They really won't tell us or tell the county what really their purpose is.

25:57We're in a moment where, it seems, everyone is turning to rural America. Developers looking to make money, families, often conservatives, tired of the city life and seeking a new home, and people involved in national politics. What's happening here in small-town Tennessee is really a proxy for two big fights playing out on the national stage. The first, a split between different factions of the American right. We can see a divide emerging between MAGA politicians and commentators who endorse or embrace this new Christian nationalist ideology and those who see it as a step too far, something un-American and authoritarian.