Russell Vought Founds Center for Renewing America, Christian Nationalist Policy Shop for Trump Return

Russell Vought founded the Center for Renewing America (CRA) in January 2021, initially called the Center for American Restoration, creating a Christian nationalist policy organization to prepare for Trump’s return to power and advance a theocratic agenda. Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist, stated his “core political ideology as Christian nationalism” and declared the organization’s mission is to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” CRA positioned itself “firmly in the vanguard of the Christian nationalist movement, fiercely dedicated to shoring up a militant right-wing culture-war agenda and based on the lie that the United States was founded as an exclusionary, Christian nation.” Vought renamed the organization with inspiration from the New Testament’s Letter to the Romans, emphasizing its theological foundation. In his writings and speeches, Vought has stated Muslims “do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ” and “stand condemned,” described Trump as “God’s gift” to America, and claimed Trump was elected to restore the nation’s Christian calling “as a nation under God.” Vought explicitly advocates for “a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society”—effectively seeking to impose Christian theological principles on secular governance. CRA became the institutional home for developing Project 2025 alongside the Heritage Foundation, with Vought authoring the OMB chapter detailing how to centralize executive power and dismantle the administrative state. The organization provided infrastructure for Christian nationalists to coordinate takeover of federal agencies, train loyalists, and develop authoritarian governance frameworks rooted in religious ideology rather than constitutional principles.