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The big takeover
By Todd Morehead
Christian secessionist group hopes to seize control of South Carolina State House
By Todd Morehead
A group called Christian Exodus has a vision for the state of South Carolina. To catch a glimpse of that vision, you must let your imagination take you to the year 2025.
Having moved thousands of conservative Christians from all over the nation to strategic S.C. counties, they inserted officials into local elected positions, installed sheriffs, swept various county councils and used that momentum to take key S.C. House and Senate seats. Spreading from county to county, hyper political conservatives migrating by the thousands to this new Eden, they eventually took the State House. A joint House resolution, fist introduced in 2006, is now passed to erect memorial statues to aborted fetuses on the State House grounds, homosexuality is a punishable crime, misdemeanor charges are often filed against teens caught with illegal copies of Hustler magazine and Charles Darwin’s name is no longer uttered in S.C. public schools. Most gun laws were repealed. Since the U.S. government refused to enact these laws on a federal level, South Carolina seceded from the Union in 2024 and adopted its own internal currency system. Though the state seceded by a peaceful vote, the U.S. army’s 10th Mountain Division has taken up key positions outside Greenville and Navy aircraft carriers are anchored off the coasts of Charleston and Myrtle Beach. War is imminent.
Christian Exodus, as the name implies, is a national organization currently based in California that has plans to gather together thousands of conservative Christians from across the country and move them to South Carolina to sway the popular vote. And though the scenario above sounds like something ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel, the early stage of the Christian Exodus mass migration to South Carolina has already begun.
The first phase of the group’s action plan sets a goal of 100 new activists in their “Phase One” county by the 2008 primary election. They plan to work several local campaigns in 2008 and win a majority of that county council by 2009. In a recent newsletter, Christian Exodus claims to have 1,400 members with close to 200 activists already on the ground in South Carolina. By some reports, the group is focusing on six strategic counties: Anderson, Greenville, Spartanburg and Pickens counties in the Upstate; Lexington County in the Midlands; and Dorchester County in the Lowcountry.
“The time has come for Christian Constitutionalists to protect our liberties in a State like South Carolina by interposing the State’s sovereign authority retained under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” the group states. “If we really mean to return to the Christian principles of constitutional American government, we must start at the local level and accelerate the process through mass migration.”
At least one county council member in Anderson County, Ron Wilson, currently has ties to the group.
The new face of Christian conservatism
Corey Burnell is a 31-year-old Valley Springs, California financial advisor who, some may say, leads a double life. While most young California businessmen hit the golf links for the weekend, Burnell, founder of Christian Exodus, finds himself jetting around the country to chair various secessionist seminars or to field questions from the national press corps. At first glance, he and his wife, Nicole, seem like they would be more comfortable shopping for stemware at Pier 1 than spearheading a Paleoconservative Christian secessionist movement. They are the quintessential “couple next door,” college educated, articulate and genuinely likable people; and that likeability factor worries opponents of the group all the more.
Burnell, who holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas, employs no televangelist schtick. He doesn’t sport the slick suits or thousand-dollar watches often worn by the major players in Christian politics and seems to be far more at home debating political theory on a Fox News feed than raging from behind a pulpit.
Though he doesn’t exude an air of cult leader weirdness or indulge in rants about the Armageddon, Burnell finds the cult stigma hard to shake. He insists that Christian Exodus is not a cult. The members are not moving to compounds and can settle wherever they want in the state, he says. Burnell just suggests counties where they can have the most political influence. He also claims that a broad range of Christian denominations are involved in the group– like Mormons and Catholics.
Disillusioned with a Republican Party that he feels welshed on promises to its conservative Christian base, Burnell found that his beliefs were more closely aligned to the ultra conservative Constitution Party which focuses more on localized government. He believes that “elites” have taken the Republican Party and co-opted it.
“It’s not a party of free enterprise,” he says, “it’s a party of subsidies, a party of Socialism.”
In 2003, Burnell founded Christian Exodus with a corporate finance CPA from East Texas named Jimmie Taylor, who now serves as the organization’s treasurer. The pair decided on South Carolina as the site for their conservative utopia for a number of reasons, not least of which is the state’s conservative Christian electorate and lack of “dominant liberal urban centers.” In addition, those urban centers are large enough to provide sufficient employment for Christian Exodus settlers when they begin to arrive en masse. As local politicos know, the small size of the state coupled with its centralized capitol make statewide political coordination more efficient as well.
Practicalities like cost of living and employment opportunity for settlers were also considered. To ease the settlers transition, Christian Exodus recruits employers to hire their members as they immigrate. For the past four years the organization has slowly been gaining momentum and has picked up enough steam that Burnell plans to move his family to Anderson County, South Carolina in July.
Parting the Red sea: when conservative Republicanism isn’t enough
The issues at the forefront of the Christian Exodus movement center on the usual fundamentalist Christian fare though they are packaged in a John Birch Society-style secessionist package. The group would ban abortion, divorce, pornography and property taxes. They would institute prayer in school, ignore the science of evolution in the classroom and would ban homosexuality altogether.
“We’re all sinners and all sinners would be welcome in South Carolina, however this doesn’t lead to the conclusion that sin must be legal,” Burnell told City Paper. “So, the issue at hand is whether homosexual acts would be lawful in South Carolina, and I point out that they are already illegal in South Carolina.”
Burnell believes that the S.C. law against “Buggery” (SC ST SEC 16-15-120), which was overruled by the Lawrence v. Texas U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003, should be upheld. “Candidates elected by our efforts will continue to enforce Section 16-15-120 just as it had been for decades, and will disregard Lawrence v. Texas because it plainly violates the 10th Amendment,” he said.
Another of their concerns is that U.S. citizens are denied the right to bear arms “sufficient for the restraint of tyranny.” In this day of highly advanced, mechanized warfare City Paper asked Burnell what type of arms he would consider sufficient, should the U.S. government respond with force against a peaceful secession.
“‘Sufficient to restrain tyranny’ does not require cutting edge battlefield technology when an entire people is rising up in defense of itself. I think a consensus exists among American conservatives that fully automatic weapons are sufficient for a fairly unified people to defend themselves against despotism,” Burnell said.
In general, Christian Exodus claims to follow a Christian Paleoconservative party line. Paleoconservatives push for a literal “original intent” reading of the Constitution and are reticent to stray from that interpretation. The concept of minimal bureaucracy is a key element in their philosophy. Most believe that immigration serves to dilute American culture and they disagree with affirmative action and welfare. They believe that the country should stay out of the United Nations and withdraw from foreign policy and foreign wars. Some Paleoconservatives support animal welfare and environmental protection.
Many Christian Exodus members have also aligned themselves with the ultra conservative Constitution Party, which, according to some polls, ranks third nationally among all U.S. political parties in registered voters.
On the whole, though, Burnell says Christian Exodus is nonpartisan.
“We consist of Christian constitutionalists from many political parties including the GOP, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and many other fledgling parties,” he told City Paper. “We frequently reference the Constitution Party because its official platform is the closest to our political beliefs and therefore its members are almost assuredly of like mind with our members.”
As of January 2007, the Constitution Party is on the ballot in South Carolina and is actively running campaigns. Constitution Party candidate Robert “Butch” Taylor recently lost a bid for a Greenville County Council seat, losing by around 300 votes to Bob Jones University administrator Sid Cates.
“I personally contributed financially to Butch Taylor’s campaign,” Burnell said. “And, I’d bet others in our project have given to numerous political campaigns. Many of our members volunteered in Mr. Taylor’s campaign as well.”
The political climate in the Upstate does indeed seem primed for a group like Christian Exodus. And as Burnell once succinctly put it: “The majority will vote and the majority will rule. Those in disagreement can relocate or change their ideas to fit with the majority.”
Pharoah, let my people go (vote)
The six counties that Christian Exodus plans to colonize first were chosen for a variety of reasons. The “moral nature” of the county electorate was certainly important, but more crucial was the willingness of that electorate to regularly head out to the polls. As such, the counties chosen tend to have strong and consistent conservative turnout in both general and primary elections.
“That number of activist émigrés, when combined with the present Christian electorate, will enable constitutionalists to win the city council, the county council, elected law enforcement positions, and elected judgeships,” the group states. “We will then be able to protect our God-given and constitutionally protected rights within our local community.”
Of all the counties considered, Anderson County in the Upstate fit every criteria and the group’s activity in that county hints that Anderson will serve as the epicenter from which the movement will spread, though Burnell was reticent to confirm or deny which county will serve as the group’s political launch pad.
“We’ve had 15 households, totaling more than 60 men, women and children, move to various parts of S.C. thus far,” Burnell told City Paper. “Of those, four households have moved to the Lexington/Columbia area and five households to the Anderson County area.”
The group is also planning to launch a low power FM radio station in Anderson County to blanket it with their message day and night and rouse the citizens with “a call to battle.” The station was originally planned to go live in April, but a snag with the first radio tower’s location delayed the station’s launch. “We’ll now complete it during my next trip there in early June,” Burnell says.
With or without the presence of Christian Exodus on the airwaves, the Upstate is already an ultra conservative stronghold. Late in 2006, Christian Exodus stated their “primary focus will be for victory in the 2008 election for county council in Anderson County.”
One Anderson public official already has ties to Christian Exodus. In a 2006 newsletter, the group praised Anderson County Council member Ron Wilson as “a true patriot, dedicated to Christian liberty and constitutionally limited government” and stated “…we can certainly count him as having one of our own on the Anderson County Council.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Wilson on their “Radical Right: 40 to Watch” list. Wilson, who formerly served on the S.C. board of education, was criticized on political blogs for allegedly selling anti-Semitic literature through his Web based collectibles store, Atlantic Bullion and Coin. Wilson denies that he is a racist and the book is currently not for sale on the site. Wilson’s tenure as the national commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans was also shrouded in controversy as many affiliated with the group claimed that his political leanings were turning a heritage group into a secessionist movement.
According the S.C. Senate Ethics Committee, Sen. Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson) received $1,000 toward his campaign from Wilson’s Atlantic Bouillon and Coin. Bryant supported the controversial bill that would require women to view ultrasound images of a fetus prior to having an abortion. Bryant also supported a bill that would provide that a pharmacist “may refuse to fill prescriptions for a drug, class of drugs or device on ethical, moral, or religious grounds.”
Congressman Brian White (R-Anderson) supported a joint resolution (H 3273) to “erect a monument on the State House grounds as a memorial to South Carolina children whose lives ended before their birth.”
Representative White also supports the “Right to Life Act of South Carolina” which gives legal rights to the unborn and establishes that the right to due process and the right to equal protection “vest at fertilization.”
Secessionists in Christian Clothing
Burnell believes that Washington does not listen to Christians and that the only way “to replace the government in Washington, D.C. is by leaving it [and] declaring independence from it.” He regularly uses passages from the Bible to back his philosophy on secession, such as Romans 13, which urges Christians not to be subservient to those in power when they disobey Biblical law.
Burnell has been grilled in the press for declaring that Christian Exodus also chose South Carolina because it has mountains and harbors. When put in the context of secession, many in the media have wondered if Burnell considered these geographic traits because of their military significance. Burnell claims instead that the states geography was considered for tourism and industry.
“These considerations had everything to do with pragmatic economic and quality of life issues, and nothing to do with military considerations,” he told City Paper. “It’s completely absurd to suggest that a small nation of 4.2 million people would attempt to militarily acquire independence from 49 other States in the Union.”
“Secession itself is a peaceful vote,” he says. “Violence only occurs when another people decides to invade and oppress those who’ve peacefully gone to the polls in an act of democracy. Therefore, if a State votes to leave the Union and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed as the Declaration of Independence espouses, then it is unacceptable for another people to invade that State and set aside the vote of its people at bayonet point.”
Burnell also cites the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783, which identifies South Carolina as a “free sovereign and independent state” and he believes that no legal document can be produced to demonstrate federal laws to the contrary. To his way of thinking, the U.S. Constitution is merely a “delegation of these [South Carolina] sovereign powers,” and nowhere is such delegation “represented as absolutely permanent.” In another words, South Carolina may dismiss the country of her duties at any time.
So far it is unclear what effect Christian Exodus will have on statewide politics. But if all goes as planned for the group, South Carolina will begin to dismiss the U.S. federal government by 2016. And then a different type of exodus could begin: of those who have a view that is counter to the Christian Right—many who have family dating back hundreds of years in this state—as they pack their things and move away.
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