Evangelical church leaders are endorsing anti-LGBTQ+ candidates in California’s suburbs.
This story is published in partnership with the Queer News Network, a collaboration among 11 LGBTQ+ newsrooms to cover down ballot elections across 10 states. Read more about us here.
This story was published with Q Voice News.
During an Oct. 16 sermon, far-right evangelical church leader Jack Hibbs told his Calvary Chapel Chino Hills congregation to show up at a Chino Valley Unified School board meeting the following night. He promised it would be a “freak show” full of “reprobates” and “degenerates.”
Chino Valley Unified in San Bernardino County, whose four board member majority were endorsed by Hibbs, was the first school district in California to institute a “parental notification” policy, which would have required teachers to inform parents if a student changed their pronouns or asked to use a bathroom that did not align with the sex on their birth certificate.
Board president Sonja Shaw, a member of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills who has praised Hibbs at school board meetings, introduced the policy, and several other school districts followed suit after Chino Valley Unified.
In August 2023, the California attorney general sued the Chino Valley Unified school district, and won a temporary restraining order in September 2023 from a San Bernardino Superior Court judge. Then last month, the same judge ordered a permanent injunction on that policy, calling it “discriminatory” and harmful to students. Gov. Gavin Newsom then signed a bill that outlawed what critics called “forced outing” policies.
That didn’t deter Hibbs or the Chino Valley Unified school board. At its Oct. 17 meeting, members passed another controversial policy; this one was titled “No Deception.”
It was an attempt to work around Newsom’s signature by using vague language that omitted students’ gender or sexuality. Teachers had to be “at all times truthful and honest and not misrepresent, either directly or by omission” when communicating with parents, according to the policy.
That night, Hibbs’ followers packed the school board meeting.
Many of the speakers referenced their Christian faith and described LGBTQ+ students as “sinners” and the teachers who supported them as “groomers,” with one woman proclaiming that “we’ve got demons in our schools.”
A number of students pushed back against the proposed policy, begging the school board to focus on actual issues — like their broken air-conditioning and spotty WiFi — instead of culture war politics.
“It feels like the people who are supposed to support our education system are failing us,” one student said.
Despite pushback from students, teachers, parents and community members, the Chino Valley Board of Education voted 4-1 to pass the policy.
Shaw did not respond to emails seeking comment on this story.
A Growing Trend in Suburbia
What happened in Chino Valley Unified is just one example of how Christian nationalists, like Hibbs, encourage their followers to target school boards and support far-right candidates and policies across the U.S.
Jorge Reyes Salinas, spokesperson for the civil rights organization Equality California, said that conservatives see these local school boards as their opportunity to “increase leverage and representation in government because they know they can't do that statewide.”
That’s especially true in California, where Democrats hold both houses in the state legislature.
The tactics have been particularly successful in Southern California counties like San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside and Imperial — “purple” regions that mostly have an even split between Democrats and Republicans, but also have pockets of deep red.
Church leaders like Hibbs are able to “capitalize on the fact that people don't really pay attention to what's going on city council and school boards,” in these outskirt areas, said Kristi Hirst, a former Chino educator and co-founder of Our Schools USA, an organization fighting back against this evangelical agenda.
Hibbs did not respond to emails for comment on this story.
Other churches in the Southern California region that also try to influence school board elections include Kevin O’Connor’s Ark Church in Redlands and 412 Church in Temecula. Tim Thompson runs both 412 and the Inland Empire Family PAC, which endorses far-right extremist candidates like Candy Olson. According to the organization Safe Redland Schools, Olson has attacked critical race theory and spread conspiracy theories about queer people.
Far right “candidates are coming in with the church’s support and have pushed for policies, once in these (school) leadership roles, to ban Pride flags, limit discussions about gender identity and require the ‘forced outing’ policies that we've been seeing flare up across the state,” Salinas said.
Targeting school elections to pass anti-LGBTQ+ policies that claim to be for the protection of children has been part of the religious right’s political playbook for decades.
The Los Angeles Times published a 1993 article titled “School boards become the religious right’s new pulpit.” That story featured an interview with preacher Robert Simonds, who advised Christian politicians how to run for local office.
“Once you have a majority on a school board, you control the money, you control the books,” he said.
In the past few years, Hirst said these pastors initially rallied their base around opposing mask mandates and vaccinations during COVID-19. When those issues died down, the pastors pivoted to demonizing transgender youth.
“This idea of gender ideology being a ‘problem’ is not an organic complaint,” Hirst said. “Somebody at the top decided we're going to tell you that you should be afraid of this, and then the messaging went down.”
How Churches Pull the Strings
Hibbs has openly endorsed political candidates for years.
Sometimes it’s through his own personal social media posts, like a voter guide he recently posted on Instagram to his more than 395,000 followers. Other times, it’s through organizations like Real Impact and Comeback California, a touring political rally he organizes to encourage churches to get involved in elections.
In February, Hibbs was accused of breaking the law by endorsing from the pulpit.
“Some churches, like Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, have chosen to make a mockery of their 501(c)(3) status by reaping all of the benefits of tax exemption while knowingly violating the statute by openly endorsing political candidates running for public office,” Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote in a letter to the IRS.
According to the IRS website, the law prohibits churches from “participating in, or intervening in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."
But that hasn’t stopped pastors like Hibbs from endorsing candidates during every general election. His actions have had a sizable impact on local school policies and education.
For example, Hibbs has endorsed all four members of the Chino Valley Unified board members who voted in favor of the “No Deception” policy. He has repeatedly endorsed longtime board member James Na, telling his followers on Facebook that “God will hold us accountable for our vote.”
In 2010, Na successfully spearheaded a campaign to get Chino Valley to teach the Bible as a history course for seniors.
Hibbs also endorsed Andrew Cruz, who has said that same-sex marriage is wrong. In 2018, Cruz likened school boards that follow non-discrimination policies to being like Hitler’s followers.
“It wasn’t Hitler that was bad,” Cruz said. “It was the people who followed the laws and the agenda.”
In 2022, Hibbs also encouraged his followers to vote for Jonathan Monroe and current board president Shaw. Shaw has spoken on stage during the Comeback California tour and appeared on the campaign trail alongside Donald Trump.
“For years, our school board has been dominated by Calvary Chapel evangelicals,” wrote one user on the Chino Hills Reddit page. “I'm eager to get Na and Cruz off the board, but I'd hate to see them replaced with more of the same.”
Hibbs also supports John Cervantes, a newcomer running for the board who opposes same-sex marriage and transgender athletes playing on teams that align with their gender.
His other endorsements include Joseph Komrosky for Temecula’s school board, even though he’d already been recalled by voters in June.
Beyond endorsing candidates, Hibbs has even taken credit for popularizing the “parental notification” movement. Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli first introduced the idea in 2023, but the legislation died without a hearing.
In an interview with right-wing media, Hibbs boasted that he then brought that bill’s language to the Chino Valley Unified school board.
Essayli “came back thinking he was defeated,” Hibbs said. “What we did is that we read his bill and we took the verbiage from that bill and then introduced it to our unified school district school board and they voted and adopted the verbiage.”
Hibbs added that their plan is to make sure this went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they’re hoping that the conservative judges will make this anti-trans policy the law of the land.
In the end, LGBTQ+ youth are the most harmed, advocates said.
Hirst and Salinas argued that parents are unknowingly organizing against trans students under the belief they are protecting children, and urged adults to question where the rhetoric is coming from.
“It's been happening across the country,” Salinas said. “It's the same tactics, using fear-mongering, using the unknown, using a disguise of children being in danger as a tool.”