Deep in the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon is, possibly, the world’s largest known living organism by biomass.* Estimates suggest that this “humongous fungus” may weigh as much as 35,000 tons, but nearly all of that bulk hides underground.
The parasitic fungus (Armillaria ostoyae) advances across the Oregon forest by sending rootlike shoots out through the soil (rhizomorphs), then creeping up into trees, attacking them and stealing their nutrients. Mushrooms, like those we might grab at the grocery store, sprout above ground all over the 2,384 acres occupied by the fungus. The casual hiker would never know that the clump of mushrooms at the trailhead was connected by an underground network to the sprouting ’shrooms invading the tree a mile down the path. But they are. They’re the same organism preying on the forest above.
The Shadow Network that we’ve been warning about for years is a lot like this predatory fungus. It operates in much the same way. It attacks LGBTQ+ rights. And abortion rights. And environmental protections. And democracy. It grows in the dark and pops up over here as the Religious Right. Or the Moral Majority. Or Project 2025. But if you dig deeper, you realize this is the same network of Christian Nationalism slowly spreading its tendrils into every facet of American life.
Let’s look at one example. The Shadow Network is Project 2025. The Venn diagram of the groups behind the one and those in the other is a circle. It’s the same shadowy, underground network of parasitic tendrils popping up everywhere. Groups like:
- The Alliance Defending Freedom, an aggressively anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion legal group behind the Supreme Court cases that overturned Roe v. Wade and gave Colorado businesses a right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers. ADF’s goal, now scrubbed from its website, is “to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries.”
- The Family Research Council, another anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion organization whose mission is “to serve in the kingdom of God by championing faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview.”
- First Liberty Institute, the legal group that peddled a “deceitful narrative” to the Supreme Court on behalf of a public school football coach who wanted to pray with students and has been involved in other church-state cases, but also worked to undermine any attempt to reform the Supreme Court.
- The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson and led by Jay Sekulow, is known for its anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ stances, and has been flagged by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for its anti-Muslim propaganda.
These are just a few of the Christian Nationalist groups in the center of that Venn diagram. The overlap in personnel is even more staggering and includes some self-professed Christian Nationalists. For instance, Russ Vought is a driving force behind Project 2025 and has described himself as a Christian Nationalist. He runs the Center for Renewing America, a relatively new member of the Shadow Network that sprouted up in 2021 to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” (A consensus, we hasten to add, which has never existed.) Vought considers “Christian Nationalism” a top issue and was recently caught in undercover footage saying that he was going to “rehabilitate Christian Nationalism.”
They’re not simply content with taking down public schools or the separation of church and state. They’re backing the much larger mission that touches every aspect of American life. For instance, Vought’s Center for Renewing America’s mission is to make us one nation under his god, but the group’s work extends beyond law and policy and includes things like “Big Tech,” the federal budget, “Election Integrity,” foreign policy, “Medical Tyranny,” “Secure Borders,” and “Woke and Weaponized.”
The metaphor of the massive fungus reminds us of just what Americans United is up against. This is also why your contributions and other forms of support, such as sharing our information, attending AU events and speaking out in your own communities, are so valuable to the work we do.
*There is some dispute as to whether a quaking aspen tree in Utah is the largest biomass. Perhaps it is. But let’s be honest, a fungus is a more appropriate analogy for the Shadow Network.