“Faith, family, and freedom” are the values real estate CEO Josh Abbotoy hopes to champion in planned housing communities deep in the hills of Appalachia.
But beneath the innocuous slogan, locals worry that a darker movement is brewing in their backyard.
That's because some of his earliest customers are a pair of outspoken Christian nationalists who are setting a controversial tone that is already making headlines.
Also concerning for critics: this community is not the only one of its kind.
The Christian Nationalists Next Door
Abbotoy’s vision is a series of developments, spread across Tennessee and Kentucky, that focus on an “affinity-based community” for those “fed up with crime, corruption and wokeness in [their] big, blue city.”
The marketing pitch by his company, RidgeRunner, to buy land here highlights a return to traditional Bible Belt values, complete with the promise of neighbors guaranteed to share your beliefs.
But what are those beliefs, exactly?
It turns out that two of Abbotoy’s first buyers are podcasters C. Jay Engel and Andrew Isker, self-described Christian Nationalists with a national platform.
These aren’t two guys who just happened to buy from RidgeRunner out of the blue. Isker was reportedly recruited by Abbotoy to buy land in Jackson County, Tennessee, as an early adopter.
Not only that, but the pair host their Christian Nationalist podcast out of RidgeRunner’s office. From that space, they espouse radical views on race, religion, the LGBTQ+ community, and even voting rights for women. A common refrain on their podcast is “repeal the 20th century.”
Isker, a pastor originally from Minnesota, says he’d like “to dissolve Congress and the judiciary and vest all power into a sovereign ruler named Donald J. Trump.”
He’s expressed support for mass deportations of legal immigrants, and has questioned whether the civil rights movement was beneficial. He also promotes outlandish conspiracies; Just a few months ago he stated he refused to go through an airport scanner, which he called a “gay beam,” out of fear it might change his sexuality.
Engel, a Californian who runs a manufacturing company, holds similarly extreme positions across the board. Engel is a proponent of household suffrage, the idea that households should share one vote – which would almost always be dictated by the man of the house. “Women were happier and lived more fulfilling lives before they got the vote,” he stated.
Related: Should Women Vote? One Influential Pastor Says No
Locals Push Back
So, how do the neighbors feel?
Some locals aren’t happy at all, and they worry their radical new neighbors are just the beginning. The fear is that the new developments, with their heavy focus on recruiting likeminded individuals to buy land, could turn their quaint rural community into a hotbed of white Christian nationalism.
“Scary” is how one resident, Nan Coons, described that possibility.
Linda McNew, a self-described “full-force conservative Christian woman,” finds Isker and Engel’s views alarming. “They’re antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-Native American. They don’t want anything except what they think. It’s about moving here and finding power. They’ve got big bucks behind them.”
Some are fighting back. Diana Mandli, a prominent business owner in the community, made it clear that Isker and Engel aren’t welcome in her establishments.
"If you are a person or group who promotes the inferiority or oppression of others, please eat somewhere else,” read a chalkboard outside of a business she owns. “All are welcome!” reads one of the town’s few billboards.
On the other side of the billboard is a RidgeRunner advertisement.
Is This The New Norm?
What has civil rights advocates really concerned? This is not the first Christian Nationalist community to sprout up in recent years.
You might recall reading about the ‘whites-only’ community that recently emerged in Arkansas. That group’s founders are explicitly promoting a white, straight, Christian ethnostate, their discrimination seemingly made legal thanks to a creative legal structure which critics say takes advantage of a glaring loophole.
And while RidgeRunner claims they don’t vet buyers’ political views, Abbotoy’s marketing tells a more targeted story, heavily appealing to conservative Christians seeking a very specific way of life.
Could communities like these become increasingly common? Abbotoy sure hopes so. He’s already working on exporting his model to rural communities across the country, explaining that “the whole point is to plant a flag and say ‘this small town is where our people are gathering.’”
Those developments will promote “the Christian way of life,” he says, and "demonstrate the superiority of that way of life.”
Whether this represents a fringe experiment or an emerging trend remains an open question – one that small towns across America may soon be forced to confront.
What is your reaction?
11 comments
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James Riggle-Johnson
So, what happens if a non-Christian, non-white, or non-straight family tries to buy a home in one of these communities? We already have rules about who you can and can’t exclude when selling property, even if your personal beliefs run in a very different direction. But it’s hard to imagine anyone outside that cookie-cutter template wanting to live there at all.
The real issue isn’t whether Christian nationalists want to live next to each other — clearly, they do. The problem is what happens to the neighboring communities. When a community is built around the idea that certain people don’t belong, that mindset doesn’t stay neatly behind the property line. It shows up in school boards, local politics, zoning fights, and social pressure on anyone who doesn’t fit the mold.
And yes, the public faces of this movement don’t help. Between panic over “gay scanners” and nostalgia for a past where women had fewer rights, the whole thing might be funny if they weren’t so serious. And they’re teaching these ideas to their children — not just passing on religious beliefs but distorting their worldview. Shouldn’t children learn what the world is really like?
Trying to remake America into a Christian nationalist state won’t unite the country. It will fracture it further. Whatever the personal faith of the founders, they were clear on one thing: the government doesn’t get a religion, and religion doesn’t get a government. That separation wasn’t a mistake — it was the guardrail.
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Colleen McAllister
I find it frightening. These people are as far from Christian as anyone can be.
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Lynnea Urania Kaylor
What's called "Christian Nationalism" won't be the new normal, but in many areas of the United States, a new normal of conflict may well indeed erupt, and that violently. This has been decades in the making. I remember my days in a staunchly anti-intellectual Bible College watching Dr. Francis Shaeffer's "How Should We Then Live" that was part of a national crusade. Its most pointed message was to seek control of the courts to stop abortion and other social phenomena that Shaeffer regarded as subversive to a theocratic "absolute". That crusade coalesced into the Moral Majority while Shaeffer wrote his "Christian Manifesto" that declared that it's the duty of all Christians to defy the government to stop abortion. Meanwhile, proponents of the Prosperity Doctrine proliferated in Christian media. After the election of Reagan to the presidency, what I saw more than anything else was that mad dash to make money, get into office from local levels on up, and enforce what they regarded as "Christian" and "family" values as much as practicable. As Evangelicals grew richer and richer, they also did what many other religious movements did: Rajneeshis, Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, and others including some Mahayana Buddhists: buy up lands, show favoritism to their co-religionists, and gain greater control. In time, efforts mushroom. Here's the rub, though. If religionists make supreme a political figure and care nothing about whatever harm they do to others, playing the oppressor role and pretending to be victims instead, then efforts to counter them flirt with a real danger of violence. I fear that the views expressed in the video about the people in Jackson County may end up on that path with true neighborliness falling by the wayside while all dealings end up with partisan strings attached.
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Reverend Paula Copp
I can’t stand the current American regime, and I have nothing but contempt for anyone who supports him. That being said, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that “Christian” Nationalism themed communities are springing up in Appalachia and the Bible Belt. Those are some of the least educated people in the country, and therefore possibly more easily manipulated. It’s part of the chaos trying to find order. The social constructs which built this country are being torn asunder, and the easiest way to find stability is to find religion. Why not have a community of like minded people? Yeah, a community of cookie cutter people who have cookie cutter beliefs… what could possibly go wrong?🙄
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Parson Golden
Christian nationalism is dangerous, it merges religious identity with political power, turning faith into a tool of control. When leaders claim divine backing, disagreement becomes heresy, accountability erodes, and pluralistic democracy is weakened. History shows that invoking any god to justify state power excuses discrimination, repression, and abuse rather than encouraging moral behavior.
More importantly, Christian nationalism contradicts the teachings of Jesus. Jesus rejected earthly power, taught humility and service, cared for the poor and marginalized, and preached love of enemies not domination or forced belief.
By prioritizing power, exclusion, and coercion, Christian nationalism replaces Jesus’ ethic of love and conscience with a politics of fear and control, distorting both Christianity and democracy.
Even setting theology aside, Christian nationalism degrades civic life for everyone. It replaces shared democratic values with religious tests of loyalty, turning citizenship into a measure of belief rather than equal participation.
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Najah P Tamargo
Najah Tamargo-USA
Sounds like straight up racism!!! Aren't we ALL God's children??? And they look down on the first inhabitants of this country, who have lived thru genocide?? I will stay in my "woke" community, thank you!!!
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Rev. Miche'al Yosef Dixon
This is the first I've heard of "National Christian Communities" and going only on what is written here. A community with Christian values is the whole point of the Apostles' teachings and pulling together right in the books of Acts. Paul himself was barred from the main group because he wasn't up to their standards, the Apostles held his past against him. They repeat saying race and politics exclude people. Which is ironic as Jesus Christ being a non-white anti-political person would be Excluded from His own community.
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Reverend Paula Copp
Don’t forget that Jesus was the most “woke” of all. He was a socialist…
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Sir Lionheart
Try telling that to Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Schiff, Pocahontas, Pelosi, and Chuckie et al. 🤭
I wonder what Jesus’ pronouns were? 🤔
🦁❤️
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Lynnea Urania Kaylor
Not only that, but seeing in Acts 4:32 that early believers held all things in common, it's even the epitome of Religious Communism. Not Marxist or Stalinist as such, but Communist in their own way. Among many who grew up surrounded by anti-Soviet rhetoric, it's anathema to even speak of it. But it's true.
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I'm sadly not surprised to hear about these communities popping up in America today but it's certainly horrifying. It would be very funny for someone to buy a bunch, if not the majority, of the properties in the neighborhood, only to then sell or rent them to people of color. We all need to condemn these communities and make it clear that they are not welcome in a fair and just society.