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HOW A MILITANT ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVIST IS INFLUENCING REPUBLICAN
POLITICS  
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Phoebe Petrovic
July 10, 2024
ProPublica
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_ The Wisconsin pastor was once a political pariah. But now his book
is being quoted by politicians and former Trump officials. One
activist is using it to disrupt elections. _

Pastor Matthew Trewhella speaks to an audience in Iowa about his
book, which encourages government officials to defy any law, policy or
court opinion they deem “unjust or immoral” under the “law of
God.”, Credit:James Year, special to ProPublica

 

Wisconsin Pastor Matthew Trewhella has an affable routine when he’s
trying to persuade government officials to abolish abortion, ignore
gun laws and question election results.

The 63-year-old opens his talks with a photo of “Trewhella
nation”: his wife of over 40 years, their 11 home-schooled children
and dozens of grandchildren. He cracks jokes. He quotes history and
scripture. He floats secession as a regretful possibility. With
half-rim glasses and collared shirts, Trewhella looks and sounds more
like a professor than a provocateur.

But when addressing his congregation at an Embassy Suites in suburban
Milwaukee, he sneers and shouts, deriding his enemies as wicked dogs,
whores and tyrants.

“When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in
government, when you see men behaving like effeminate little
squirrels, judgment is in the land,” Trewhella said during a 2020
sermon.

Last year, he said homosexuality should be treated as a crime, noting
that the Bible called for the death penalty for “the filth of
sodomy.”

For much of his public life, Trewhella has made a career of denouncing
the law while railing against abortion and gun restrictions. Twenty
years ago, that made him a political pariah. His reputation for
blockading abortion clinics, calling for churches to form militias and
defending the murder of abortion providers was so extreme that two
state chapters of Right to Life, the anti-abortion group, condemned
him.

But today, the world has changed. He has been invited to speak by
local Republican parties and other groups across the country. He gave
a prayer breakfast sermon to one of the nation’s preeminent law
enforcement associations. And a prolific booster of election
conspiracy theories has used his work as the basis for a campaign to
disrupt elections.

Trewhella’s ability to tailor his message for different audiences
has helped. He’s gracious to the women who introduce him at
political events but tells his congregation that the idea of women in
government is “sickening” and “perverse.”

In the cast of characters who might influence the upcoming election,
he’s not rallying crowds like Steve Bannon, the former Donald Trump
strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative student
group Turning Point USA. Trewhella is more behind the scenes,
providing a religious justification for some far-right policies and
causes. With the political establishment shifting, he exemplifies how
in this splintered landscape, even the most fringe figures can become
influencers.

Trewhella gained his newfound acceptance with a self-published 2013
book, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which relies on a
theory developed by 16th-century Calvinists seeking holy justification
for fighting political oppression amid the religious wars of the
Protestant Reformation. Trewhella has applied it to today’s
political battles, writing that government officials have a divine
“right and duty” to defy any laws, policies or court opinions that
violate “the law of God.”

To him, that means outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, or even
violently resisting the government if necessary, noting in his book
that there are times when men “must redden their swords.”

In recent years, Trewhella’s teachings have popped up in
legislatures and local boards as the Christian right has increasingly
influenced Republican politics. A Missouri state representative
applied the doctrine when he proposed banning abortion in 2020, when
Roe vs. Wade was still in effect. Commissioners in western North
Carolina invoked it when they declared their county a “gun
sanctuary” to protest state laws.

Former President Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael
Flynn, has praised Trewhella’s book several times, extolling it as a
“masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist
tyranny.” And a member of Trump’s 2020 campaign legal team, Jenna
Ellis, cited Trewhella’s work as a solution to government overreach
in her 2015 book advocating for a biblical interpretation of the
Constitution.

Trewhella’s acceptance into more mainstream circles has surprised
extremism researchers who have tracked him for decades. It’s
important to pay attention to a man “creating the ideological
rationalizations for these ideas,” said Devin Burghart, president of
the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a nonprofit
that tracks the far right.

“I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous
theocrat who would fundamentally alter the United States in
irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of
color and the LGBTQ community,” Burghart said.

In Wisconsin, Trewhella has forged a close relationship with the
Republican Party of Waukesha County, the stronghold for state GOP
power. His book is the only one the group promotes on its website.
Twice in the past two-and-a-half years, the party has invited him to
speak at events, including one where he addressed local candidates. A
young leader in Trewhella’s church gave the opening prayer at a
county GOP dinner, and the party paid that member to do political
canvassing just a month after he was charged in state court
for calling in a bomb scare against an LGBTQ+ event
[[link removed]].
The member is awaiting a plea hearing in August and said his lawyer
advised him not to comment.

During a speech to the Waukesha GOP last year, Trewhella focused on
how local officials were best positioned to safeguard Americans’
most cherished freedoms.

“You may have to do things in the future you’re not authorized to
do,” Trewhella told them. “The country is breaking apart. Counties
are becoming important in the process. Counties may secede from one
state and join an adjoining state as things break apart. Several
adjoining counties may end up leaving a state and forming their own
state. Remember, this happened during the Civil War.”

The Waukesha GOP chair declined to comment through executive director
Kathy Pape, who wrote in response to repeated interview requests,
“We are done with this.”

Approached near a suburban strip mall at one of his regular
anti-abortion street protests in May, Trewhella smiled when asked by a
reporter about his reputational rehabilitation. Dozens of his
followers spread out at an intersection beneath a punishing sun,
handing out pamphlets and displaying 5-foot signs of aborted fetuses.

Trewhella, center, distributes signs for an anti-abortion street
demonstration in Wisconsin in April. Credit:Sara Stathas, special to
ProPublica

“Most people will always only care about three things in life: me,
myself and I,” he said. “It’s only because of their mundane,
self-absorbed lives that they would think someone like me is an
extremist. That’s my answer.” He chuckled and returned to his
flock.

Trewhella’s Transformation

Trewhella tells his own life story in biblical terms: a fallen man
finds redemption. Trewhella said he wrote it all down in a 23-page
conversion testimony
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his 5-year-old son asked him, “Dad, when are you going to write a
book where you can tell us how you went from being a bad guy to a good
guy?”

Growing up in a Catholic family, Trewhella wrote, he was forced to
attend “nearly unbearable” Sunday Masses. He described his mother
as a “classic merciful mom” and his father as “short on words
and quick on corporal punishment.” When Trewhella was 11, his
parents divorced, which he called an “ugly thing” that “removes
all innocence.”

As a bad guy, Trewhella wrote, he joined a Detroit gang and “dealt
drugs, stole cars, firebombed houses, robbed businesses, burglarized
homes, fought other gangs, and fenced stolen items to the Mafia.”

Then, he said, he landed in an evangelical rehab program at 17 and had
an epiphany during church.

“Understand, I had told the shrink at the psyche ward just three
days earlier that I would burn down more houses when I got out of
jail,” Trewhella wrote. “But sitting there — I saw my sin for
how truly reprehensible it was. I was in the presence of a holy
God.”

As a good guy, Trewhella got married, graduated from a Pentecostal
college and, in 1989, founded Mercy Seat Christian Church in the
Milwaukee area.

He also became one of the nation’s most militant anti-abortion
activists. He joined the so-called rescue movement, in which activists
blockaded clinics. In 1990, he founded his own organization,
Missionaries to the Preborn, whose members chained themselves to cars
parked in front of clinic entrances.

First image: In a still from a video posted on YouTube by an
anti-abortion activist, Trewhella is seen handcuffed at Milwaukee’s
2003 Summerfest after police said his group was loitering. Second
image: Trewhella’s long history of provocative actions have been a
source of media attention for many years. A photograph of Trewhella at
an anti-abortion demonstration in Rapid City, South Dakota, in
2006. Credit:First image: YouTube screenshot by ProPublica. Original
video posted by Dan Holman. Second image: Rapid City Journal via
newspapers.com. Original photo by Bill Harlan/Rapid City Journal.

Trewhella racked up arrests and jail time for misdemeanor convictions,
though other charges were dropped. By 2007, the group took credit for
permanently closing down six of eight Milwaukee clinics.

Trewhella has professed nonviolence. But after an activist killed an
abortion provider in 1993, he signed a document describing the murder
of these doctors as “justifiable.”
[[link removed]] Around
the same time, Planned Parenthood recorded Trewhella urging churches
to form militias
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telling parents to teach their children to assemble weapons
blindfolded: “This Christmas, I want you to do the most loving
thing. I want you to buy your children an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of
ammunition.”

A man who reportedly used Trewhella’s group’s address on his
driver’s license
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and killed a physician who performed abortions
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1998. The group fundraised for the families of people imprisoned for
anti-abortion violence
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according to a 2001 book. And Trewhella wrote that in 2003 that he
visited a man awaiting execution for murdering an abortion provider,
saying that “when abortion is outlawed,” future generations would
view the man “as the sanest and bravest man of our age.”

It all made Trewhella persona non grata. Republican politicians
disregarded him. Wisconsin Right to Life said Trewhella’s group had
scant support from “the mainline right-to-life people.” Vermont
Right to Life called his group’s statements “disturbing.” And by
the time Trewhella’s group announced a tour through Montana in 2001,
the state’s Right to Life organization warned its supporters to
steer clear.

“They’re really out there,” Steven Ertelt, head of the Montana
group, said at the time. “They know we won’t give them the time of
day.”

After Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica’s initial interview with
Trewhella, the pastor did not return more than a dozen calls, emails
and text messages seeking a follow-up interview. The news
organizations tried to speak with Trewhella at another protest and at
his church service, but he was not there. He did not respond to
emailed questions and refused receipt of a certified letter containing
them.

Through his anti-abortion militancy, Trewhella came across an idea
that would give him a religious foundation for his crusade: the
doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

For years, the theory had circulated among Christian
Reconstructionists
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who believe that all of society — including government, education
and culture — should follow their strict reading of Old Testament
law. Its adherents included some of the most violent members of the
rescue movement
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Trewhella recalled in an interview first encountering the lesser
magistrates doctrine during a talk by a minister in 1990. It drew from
the Bible to claim that those vested with political power could
actively resist tyranny on behalf of the people — including, in
extreme cases, with lethal violence.

“Immediately that made sense to me because I was very involved on
behalf of the preborn,” he said. Then, at a 2007 prayer meeting, the
spirit moved Trewhella to do more. “I just felt from the Lord,” he
said, “that I should write a book on the doctrine of the lesser
magistrates, make a website for it, teach it to the government
officials and the people of America.”

The obsession led him to a 1550 German Lutheran text called the
Magdeburg Confession, which he claims is the doctrine’s first
formalization. Trewhella commissioned an English translation,
releasing it in 2012.

The next year, he self-published his book, in which he beseeched
readers to deploy the doctrine against “abhorrent” issues such as
same-sex marriage and abortion. The back cover called it “a hopeful
blueprint for freedom.”

Following Trewhella’s presentation in Iowa, people line up to
purchase copies of his book “The Doctrine of the Lesser
Magistrates” and other merchandise from his wife, Clara Trewhella,
second image, left. Credit:James Year, special to ProPublica

Trewhella’s Embrace

After his book came out in 2013, Trewhella hustled. He used his blog
and talks to spread the doctrine across the religious right. He seized
on controversy and the attention it brought.

Often, he veiled the more extreme elements of his philosophy in
American patriotism, asserting that the doctrine influenced framers
like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In interviews with half a
dozen academics, including conservative, Christian professors of
government and religion, all but one disputed Trewhella’s claim. Two
leading scholars on the revolutionary period and constitutional law
said they had never even heard of the doctrine. All of them considered
its application in modern-day America inappropriate and dangerous. But
to those of a certain political or religious persuasion, Trewhella has
proved convincing.

The book helped Trewhella attract the ear of high-level officials.

In 2015, in a remarkable turnabout, Republican lawmakers welcomed
Trewhella to the Montana Capitol for a sermon in which he discussed
the doctrine
[[link removed]].

Following a 2015 sermon, Trewhella speaks with Republican state Sen.
Jennifer Fielder in the rotunda of the Montana
Capitol. Credit:Terence Corrigan/Independent Record

“The federal government has already attacked and abridged liberty;
they are now in the process of plundering the American people,” he
said. “The phalanx of laws created by the state to invade our
domestic affairs, disarm the people, seize our property and harass our
persons all point to the growing tyranny in America.”

Trewhella’s message resonated in the rotunda and in the nation’s
politics, coming in the period between the Tea Party’s rise and
Trump’s election.

That speech, Trewhella later said, helped put his book “on the
map.”

In 2017, Kentucky’s then-Gov. Matt Bevin met with Trewhella and
Operation Save America, an abortion abolition group now run by
Trewhella’s son-in-law.

“We were able to pray for him and challenge him with the Doctrine of
the Lesser Magistrate and the abolition of abortion,” a group blog
post said. “He told Pastor Matt Trewhella and the rest of us that he
read the book and has passed it to others.” Bevin did not respond to
repeated requests for comment.

In 2019, Missouri state Rep. Mike Moon, now a state senator, helped
run a conference on the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, where
Trewhella spoke. A few months later, Moon introduced a bill to
completely outlaw abortion in the state, leading Trewhella to claim
credit on social media. Moon and his office did not return repeated
requests for comment.

Trewhella’s ideas also gained favor among gun rights activists, as a
wave of counties declared themselves “Second Amendment
sanctuaries,” some of which state that local law enforcement will
not act on any gun laws they deem unconstitutional. The hard-line Gun
Owners of America has consistently cited Trewhella and his book in its
support of such resolutions. At least 10 resolutions across the
country specifically refer to lesser magistrates. One of the earliest,
issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has
described reading Trewhella’s book as a “turning point” in his
leadership.

Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica identified numerous examples of Second
Amendment sanctuary resolutions that include almost identical language
and refer to “lesser magistrates.” The first of these three
appeared in Cherokee County, North Carolina, where the author said he
incorporated language from Trewhella’s book. Credit:Obtained by
Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica. Highlighted by ProPublica.

“It gave me the foundation I needed as a county commissioner to be
the big brother to protect my constituents,” Dr. Dan Eichenbaum, a
Republican in Cherokee County, North Carolina, said on his podcast. In
an interview, Eichenbaum said his Second Amendment resolution inspired
several other jurisdictions to take action. He said he was not aware
of the details of Trewhella’s anti-abortion activism, including that
Trewhella had defended the murder of abortion providers. “I can’t
make excuses for that,” he said.

Like many leaders on the right, Trewhella suddenly found a much larger
audience when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. As some people
questioned public health measures like masks and vaccines, they began
looking for ways to resist government officials they saw as trampling
their rights.

They found answers in Trewhella, who pumped out short-form videos and
spoke on conservative podcasts and other platforms.

“In light of the tyrannical acts by the state regarding COVID-19, we
are rebooting our efforts,” he posted on social media in April 2020.

The doctrine appeared in local meetings in Indiana and Tennessee as
officials challenged public health measures. Andy Ogles, then-mayor of
Maury County, Tennessee, south of Nashville, invoked the doctrine when
he took steps to allow unvaccinated health care workers to keep their
jobs. Ogles is now a Republican member of Congress. His office did not
respond to requests for comment.

Frustrated by pandemic measures like restaurant closures and masking
in schools, Republican activists in Ottawa County, Michigan
[[link removed]],
west of Grand Rapids, invited Trewhella to speak several times. In
2022, one group that invited him, Ottawa Impact, helped flip the
county board of commissioners to Christian control.

Since then, the board has tried to fire its health administrator
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Ottawa a “constitutional county.
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The largely symbolic resolution states the board will not enforce any
measure that it believes infringes on constitutional rights.

Trewhella called Ottawa “a blueprint for counties across America
[[link removed]].”

Two Ottawa Impact founders denied that Trewhella influenced their
work. But that sort of denial is common: When asked about their
relationship with Trewhella or his ideas, people often distance
themselves or are reluctant to give him credit.

Last spring, conservative activist David Clements made the 44th stop
on his “Greater Magistrates Tour” in northwestern Wisconsin. The
tour, which took its name from Trewhella's book (revising it to
promote the voters as “greater” magistrates), blended Christianity
and conspiracy theory to encourage disrupting future elections.

As about 200 people listened on, Clements ran through the familiar
debunked claims about the “rigged” system, urging attendees to
demand their local officials withhold certification of voting machines
and results. Using Trewhella’s playbook, Clements said, they might
save their country county by county.

Referring to certain voting machine vendors, Clements told the crowd,
Jesus Christ had been resurrected to “restore you to a place where
there are no tears, there is no suffering, there are no Dominion or
ES&S machines.”

Throughout his tour, Clements had the company of some of the
nation’s most prominent election denialists, including Bannon and
Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow. Joe Oltmann, an activist
who concocted the baseless claim
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a Dominion Voting Systems employee had rigged the election, appeared
several times. Oltmann has hosted Trewhella on his podcast and told
his Telegram channel that Trewhella’s book is “required reading
for all freedom minded Americans.”

Clements said he would only do an interview if Wisconsin Watch and
ProPublica allowed him to record a video and broadcast it in its
entirety. Oltmann had similar terms. The news organizations did not
agree, and neither Clements nor Oltmann answered written questions.

Trewhella’s name has previously come up in attempts to challenge the
2020 election. Pennsylvania state Sen. Cris Dush, a Republican who led
a legislative investigation into election results, called upon the
doctrine of the lesser magistrates when he “urged people to take
action against the certification of presidential electors,” the
Pennsylvania attorney general said in a court filing
[[link removed]].

Republican state Sen. Cris Dush of Pennsylvania referenced the
doctrine of the lesser magistrates when challenging the 2020 election
results, Pennsylvania’s attorney general said in a state court
filing. Credit:Obtained by Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica.
Highlighted by ProPublica.

In an interview, Dush said the doctrine resonated with his military
training, which permitted him to disobey an unlawful order.

Extremism researchers and pro-democracy groups say Trewhella’s
influence on attempts to disrupt elections is particularly concerning
because he claims some of his most vocal supporters have been
sheriffs.

Sheriffs wield significant law enforcement power in much of America.
Some have claimed they have the power to seize voting machines should
they believe there’s fraud. A faction known as “constitutional
sheriffs [[link removed]]” claim that
within their jurisdictions, they have the sole authority to interpret
the constitutionality of state and federal laws. Leaders of the
movement have promoted election conspiracies and urged sheriffs to
investigate possible fraud
[[link removed]].
They have also celebrated Trewhella, name-dropping him at conferences
and giving his book to attendees.

Trewhella also spoke last year at a prayer breakfast at a conference
held by the National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents
thousands of law enforcement officers across the country. Trewhella
said he spoke at their invitation.

The organization did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But
former Daviess County, Kentucky, Sheriff Keith Cain, a past board
member who coordinated the prayer breakfast, said by email that
Trewhella had asked to give the sermon after registering a booth. Cain
said he requested Trewhella stick to spiritual matters.

Trewhella did not abide.

He told a group of about 40 — each with a complimentary copy of his
book placed in front of them — that sheriffs are “ministers of God
first” and must defy laws, policies or court opinions deemed
“unjust or immoral” under the law of God.

“America is languishing under the blithe compliance of the lesser
magistrates,” he told them. “The filth of Sodom is paraded down
the streets.”

Now, with a presidential contest looming, what worries Frederick
Clarkson, an extremism researcher who has tracked Trewhella for
decades, is not the pastor’s influence on who wins, but the impact
he’ll continue to have on state and local politics.

“There’s a tectonic shift that’s gone on in American public life
and politics,” he said. “All of those county commissioners and
mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting
people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing
footsie with Matt Trewhella.”

_Co-published with Wisconsin Watch [[link removed]]_

* Anti-abortion movement
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* Matthew Trewhella
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* Right Wing influence
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