“No Separation Between Church and State”: Inside a Texas Church’s Training Academy for Christians Running for Office

Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline’s energy was palpable as he gazed out from the video on the computer screen, grinning ear to ear, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up. 

The Republican legislator from Fort Worth had a message to share with people watching the prerecorded video: As a Christian, you have an essential role in politics and local government. 

“There is no greater calling than being civically engaged and bringing the values that Scripture teaches us into every realm of the earth,” Schatzline said.

The legislator was teaching a section of Campaign University, a series of online lessons he and others associated with Fort Worth-based megachurch Mercy Culture created to raise up so-called “spirit-led candidates.” 

The course, created in 2021, is an extension of Mercy Culture’s increasingly overt political activities that have included candidate endorsements. The church’s political nonprofit, For Liberty & Justice, houses Campaign University. 

Campaign University builds on Mercy Culture’s growing political reach as Schatzline, a pastor at the church, joins President Donald Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board and as the course now is offered at other congregations across the country. 

The lessons emphasize that would-be candidates don’t need to be experts in government or the Constitution to seek public office or a place in local government. They also train potential candidates to “stand for spiritual righteousness” and teach them how to build a platform and navigate the campaign trail while maintaining a strong family and church life.

At the core of Campaign University is the idea that there is no separation between what happens within the church and what happens in the government. Students are taught to interpret the First Amendment’s establishment clause on the separation of church and state as a protection against government involvement in religion, rather than vice versa.

Previously, churches risked losing their tax-exempt status by discussing or engaging in politics. Then this summer, the Internal Revenue Service decided to allow religious leaders to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, a decision Schatzline took as a green light for him and other pastors to ramp up political activity. 

Programs such as Campaign University serve as the “next stage” of this religion-driven political movement, said Eric McDaniel, a government professor who researches the intersection of race, religion and politics at the University of Texas at Austin. Past movements encouraged churchgoers to become activists, he said, but Campaign University stands out for training Christian conservatives to seek public office. 

“One of the things about this movement that’s really important is that they started winning local elections, then started winning state and then now they’re winning at the national level,” McDaniel said. “And that’s how you’re able to build a movement and maintain a movement — you start locally.” 

In an attempt to better understand Mercy Culture’s approach to recruiting candidates, two journalists from the Fort Worth Report purchased and completed the more than five-hour Campaign University course and listened to hours of the For Liberty & Justice podcast. What became clear in the course is For Liberty & Justice’s mission to push Christian conservative values beyond church doors and into the public sphere. 

The nonprofit states on its website that it vets and supports “candidates who are willing to do whatever it takes to protect our God-given liberties and take a stand for Biblical Justice!” Its leaders have said they stand against LGBTQ rights and abortion access, and they have pushed for the ban of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in government and public education. 

For $100, Campaign University provides its students the knowledge, practical skills and spiritual guidance “to make an impact for the kingdom in government” — not “just in a way that’s passionate but in a way that’s calculated,” Schatzline says within the first five minutes of the course. 

The Fort Worth Report identified at least 10 people — through social media posts, press releases and podcasts — who completed Campaign University. They included Texas GOP Chairman Abraham George; an unsuccessful candidate who ran for a Dallas City Council seat this year; Tarrant County Republican precinct chairs; campaign managers; and a number of people who work for or previously worked for Mercy Culture or For Liberty & Justice. 

None returned the Fort Worth Report’s requests for comment.

Schatzline twice agreed to an interview but never responded to efforts to set a date and did not return phone calls and emails seeking comment. He and other Mercy Culture pastors created Campaign University after working on Texas political campaigns, including the legislator’s, through For Liberty & Justice. Schatzline previously told the Fort Worth Report that he’s working to take the nonprofit to the national level. 

It’s not unusual for churches or spiritual leaders to encourage political activity from congregants, said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and lead organizer of the national nonprofit’s Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign. 

“What does seem unusual — and perhaps unique — is an actual candidate training academy that’s run out of the church,” Tyler said. “Often, particularly if we’re talking about partisan campaigns for public office, that’s a place that churches and other houses of worship have largely steered clear of partisan politics.”

Schatzline has said he won’t seek reelection to his seat representing north Fort Worth and its surrounding suburbs but plans to continue as a pastor with Mercy Culture and to lead For Liberty & Justice. 

The national faith board that Schatzline has been tapped to join declares its mission is to be “a strong, unified, uncompromising voice” on issues such as religious freedom, marriage, reproductive and parental rights, and gender-affirming care.  

“It’s never been more apparent that the church has to rise up and be a bold voice in American government today,” Schatzline said in an Oct. 27 video he uploaded to social media announcing his new position. 

That sentiment is recognizable in Campaign University. 

At the start of the course, Schatzline tells Christians to ask themselves three questions the typical candidate might not consider but that he stresses are key to success if one is called to serve. 

Did the call to government come from the Holy Spirit? Will your loved ones pray with you about it? Even if you don’t win, are you still giving God glory? 

Don’t run if you “can’t hear the Holy Spirit” because other voices on the campaign trail may “shift your perspective,” Schatzline said. 

A Divine Calling 

Campaign University and other Mercy Culture political activities deliver on a commitment that Steve Penate told the Report he and fellow church pastor Landon Schott made to each other years ago: build a church that would “turn the city upside down” and be a leader in local politics. 

Schott and his wife, Heather Schott, senior pastor of Mercy Culture, did not return emails seeking comment for this story.

Over its six years, the church has become a center of conservative religious politics in the region and increasingly across the state. This year, members gathered for prayer at the Texas Capitol, blessing its walls on the first day of the 2025 legislative session. 

Last year, pastors urged Fort Worth City Council members — using threats of litigation — to approve the church’s new shelter for victims of human trafficking, despite opposition from residents of the adjacent neighborhood. Council members in favor of the move said at the time that politics did not affect their decision. 

Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, a Republican, did not return a request for comment on Mercy Culture’s impact on the city through political efforts such as Campaign University.

The skills taught in Campaign University build off lessons learned from Penate’s failed campaign for Fort Worth mayor in 2021, when he lost to Parker, the pastor told the Fort Worth Report.

Penate said “tons” of people have completed Campaign University since its creation. Neither he, Schatzline nor Campaign University’s other instructors provided lists of graduates. About 50 people were pictured in the Campaign University’s first graduating class, according to a 2022 Instagram post by For Liberty & Justice. 

Mercy Culture’s expansion has included additional church campuses in Fort Worth, Dallas, Waco and Austin, and it plans to open a San Antonio campus next year. Penate said For Liberty & Justice aims to partner with churches across the country as it seeks to elevate Campaign University to a national level. Although he didn’t provide specifics, Penate said the goal is to create lessons for local churches to politically mobilize congregants, similarly to how Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA mobilizes students on college campuses. 

He said the church is already spreading awareness about Campaign University by opening For Liberty & Justice chapters in other states. 

As of late October, two For Liberty & Justice chapters outside of Texas offer Campaign University, Penate said. They are Florida’s nondenominational Revive Church and Hawaii’s Pentecostal megachurch King’s Maui, according to Schatzline’s social media posts. Representatives from the churches did not return requests for comment. 

The nonprofit plans to open its next chapter in Arizona at the start of 2026, Penate said. After that, he expects For Liberty & Justice to grow exponentially thanks to Schatzline’s visibility on Trump’s faith advisory board. 

“Next year is going to be explosive,” Penate said. 

Religion has long had a historic role in major American political movements, McDaniel, the government professor, said.

Leaders such as Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Televangelist Jerry Falwell founded the political organization called the Moral Majority in 1979 and mobilized a generation of Christian conservative voters. 

“This idea that God has called you to do this is a very empowering message. It gives you a clear source of identity and direction,” McDaniel said.

Many of Campaign University’s teachings address basic civics that might be useful to anyone running for office. Its lessons and 92-page course materials offer hands-on assignments for participants to start engaging with local government, such as reading the U.S. Constitution, identifying the elected officials who represent them at different levels of government and creating lists of potential campaign donors.

Campaign University’s goal is to bring Jesus into “every sphere of influence and every mountain,” Joshua Moore, another course instructor, says in the course’s second lesson. “That’s what we’re called to do as political activists.” Moore, who serves as Schatzline’s district director in the Texas House, is a former Republican New Hampshire state lawmaker. He did not return phone calls and emails seeking comment for this story.

In Campaign University, instructors often emphasize what they describe as a divine calling for Christians to serve in local government.  

“A grandma can pray at home on her knees, but who’s in Austin on the inside, that has a voice, that has a vote?” Penate told the Report. “It starts in prayer, but you gotta get on the inside.”

Schatzline embodies this ethos in many ways, and he’s become a well-known face in far-right Christian conservative politics in Texas. 

During this year’s legislative sessions, he authored 75 state bills on a range of issues, such as limiting DEI initiatives in local government, banning drag show performances in front of children and further penalizing the possession or promotion of child pornography. He failed to get many of his bills passed this year, except for one aimed at criminalizing the promotion or possession of child-like sex dolls. 

“We’re going to give this space back to the Holy Spirit,” Schatzline said at the Capitol during the Mercy Culture-led worship session earlier this year. “We give you this room. … The 89th legislative session is yours, Lord. The members of this body are yours, Lord. This building belongs to you, Jesus.”

Landon Schott, the Mercy Culture co-founder, also participated in the January event at the Capitol, as did George, the state Republican Party chair, who has taken the Campaign University course. 

“There is no separation between church and state,” George said at the event, according to published reports. 

Campaign University lessons highlight what its instructors argue were the Founding Fathers’ “deep religious beliefs” as evidence that “God was not separate from the public square; nor was that the intent of the founders.” 

The Founding Fathers “insisted upon a country that welcomed the role of religion in society, viewing it as a public good,” said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for the First Liberty Institute, a Plano-based legal group known for representing clients in high-profile religious freedom cases, including a Plano student who was banned from distributing candy cane pens with a religious message on them at a school party and an Oregon woman who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple due to her religious beliefs. 

“Abandoning our societal cynicism toward religion would strengthen our commitment to liberty. It would do much to strengthen our country to regain the vision of our founders that celebrated the role of religion in our lives, public and private,” Dys said in an email to the Report. 

But under the establishment clause, government entities shouldn’t impose religious laws or policies, said Tyler, the Christians Against Christian Nationalism organizer. Laws should “serve and support a pluralistic society,” she said. 

“If our goal in engaging in partisan politics is to impose our own interpretation of the Bible, our own religious views on other people, that will lead to harm for people in our communities that are not of the same religious views,” Tyler said. 

County at a Crossroads

For Liberty & Justice’s efforts to mobilize Christian conservatives through Campaign University come at a pivotal moment in Tarrant County, where Fort Worth is located, as Republicans seek to maintain control of the nation’s largest urban red county, which has shown occasional signs of turning purple. Tarrant voters supported Joe Biden’s presidential bid in 2020 and twice voted in favor of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s Democratic opponents, in 2018 and 2024. 

“Every single seat matters, and now is the time to rise up. Now is the time to run. Now is the time to get godly men and women in office,” Schatzline told dozens of attendees at a Sept. 9 For Liberty & Justice event at Mercy Culture aimed at encouraging political action. 

The Republican-majority Tarrant County Commissioners Court, the county’s governing body, led by County Judge Tim O’Hare, steamrolled through a redistricting process this summer to gain a stronger majority as detractors alleged racially motivated gerrymandering. In late October, a federal appeals court upheld a judge’s decision not to block the new map. 

O’Hare did not respond to a request for comment.

After state lawmakers adopted a new congressional map to create additional GOP seats at Trump’s request this summer, the political makeup of Tarrant County’s congressional delegation is poised to shift from five Republicans and two Democrats to four Republicans and one Democrat. 

For Liberty & Justice continues to develop its pipeline of candidates for local and state offices. The group circulates a friends and family list of candidates that it says share the same values. One candidate who repeatedly made the list was conservative Fort Worth City Council member Alan Blaylock, who announced his bid for Schatzline’s seat Oct. 27 after the lawmaker said he wouldn’t seek reelection. 

Others named on the list included city council and school board candidates across the county. Several told the Report they weren’t required to complete Campaign University to be included on the list and that they hadn’t taken the course.

For Liberty & Justice is prepared to ensure strong Republican results as Tarrant voters gear up for next year’s elections, plus a runoff election to fill a Texas Senate seat vacated by now-Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock.

It makes sense that Tarrant County, which political experts describe as a bellwether in national politics, may be a driver in national conversations around how religion and politics intersect, said McDaniel, the UT professor. 

His message echoed the sentiments expressed by For Liberty & Justice leaders and attendees during a recent night of action at Mercy Culture Church. 

Throughout the night, volunteers who completed Campaign University emphasized how the lessons can not only activate people to run for office but also enable them to lead small groups of fellow Christian conservatives in political action, such as advocating for policy issues at city council or school board meetings. 

Event organizers encouraged attendees to get civically engaged that night by joining small political action groups in neighborhoods scattered across Tarrant County, with specific interests such as “biblical citizenship” or “prayer and intercession.”  

To end the night, one Campaign University graduate led the crowd in prayer. “We need you, Lord, desperately to be able to accomplish what you are calling us to do for this nation, for our city, for our county, for our state.”