The Department of Faith was hailed as a triumph, a return to tradition, a spiritual reckoning that would restore America to its rightful place in history. The Chairman stood before his adoring crowds and told them what they had been longing to hear: that faith had been lost, that sin had infected the country like a disease, that for too long, godless liberals, atheists, and outsiders had torn at the moral fabric of the nation. It was time to heal. It was time to bring America back to God.
Cora had watched the announcement on television, Alex sitting beside her in silence. It had been inevitable, this merger of church and state. She had seen it forming for years, lurking at the edges of policy, whispered about in conservative circles, in megachurches, in the private meetings of politicians who hid their ambitions behind rhetoric about family values. But now, it was real. Now, it had a name, a leader, and most terrifying of all, it had power.
The woman placed at its helm was the worst of the worst. A twice-divorced megachurch preacher from Oklahoma, a woman whose empire had been built on false promises and deceit. Cora recognized her instantly—the slicked-back platinum hair, the thousand-dollar suits, the gleaming white teeth that never quite reached her eyes. She was a master of the grift, a preacher who had long since abandoned the tenets of Christ in favor of prosperity gospel, twisting scripture into an instrument of personal wealth. Her churches were stadiums, her congregations cash machines, her sermons theatrical performances that promised divine rewards for those who gave, and gave, and gave.
She had been scandal-ridden for decades—multiple husbands, allegations of fraud, quiet financial settlements—but none of it mattered now. She had been chosen by the Chairman himself, elevated to a position where she could dictate morality to the masses, where her twisted interpretations of faith would be etched into law. Cora’s stomach twisted as she listened to the speech.
“Faith is the foundation of our nation. For too long, we have allowed secular forces to weaken us, to divide us, to strip away the values that made America great. That ends today.”
The crowd roared.
“From this day forward, we will ensure that our laws reflect the will of God. We will restore the moral compass of this country. We will empower our churches, our faith leaders, our communities to bring this nation back to righteousness.”
Cora wanted to scream. This wasn’t about righteousness. It wasn’t about morality. It was about control.
The Department of Faith worked fast. Overnight, policies began to shift. The first targets were obvious—LGBTQ people, feminists, atheists. The ones who had always been demonized, the ones who had always been used as the scapegoats for a crumbling society.
Same-sex marriages were annulled. The courts ruled that they had been unconstitutional from the start, that marriage was a religious institution and had no place outside the church. The newly appointed judges, hand-picked by the Department of Faith, made their rulings swiftly and without debate. The decision was made; the law was final.
Divorce laws were rewritten. Marriage was a sacred bond, a covenant with God, and not something to be discarded because of human weakness. It became nearly impossible to leave a marriage, no matter the circumstances. Women who tried to escape abusive husbands were told to pray harder. Their suffering was framed as a test of faith.
Atheists were blacklisted. Government jobs, corporate positions, even some private businesses began requiring proof of faith for employment. Cora saw it herself—job listings that included “Christian preferred,” then later, “Christian required.” It was subtle at first, but soon it was law.
Muslims were pushed into the shadows. Their mosques were “inspected” for anti-American sentiment. Many were shut down. Islamic schools and community centers were defunded, surveilled, or outright criminalized. Non-Christian religions were labeled as foreign, dangerous, un-American.
And yet, the Jewish community remained untouched. The Chairman had decided they were different. They had power. They had money. They had influence. The Christian Nationalists grumbled behind closed doors, but they did not challenge it. They knew better. The Department of Faith declared them brothers in faith, their Old Testament roots close enough to be accepted into the fold. Their wealth and status protected them.
Cora and Alex had always been skeptics, raised in Christian-light households where holidays were celebrated, but church was optional. They had questioned everything, found no answers in faith that satisfied them.
“You just have to have faith,” was the response to every question they had ever asked about God.
But faith had never been enough for them.
Now, faith was mandatory.
Then the laws changed fast. Attendance at church became expected. No one forced you, but your absence was noted. It appeared on your Unity Score, the quiet, shadowy metric that determined how smoothly your life would run. People who refused to attend services lost jobs, lost housing, lost access to healthcare.
Cora saw the fear grow in Alex’s eyes. He had been right about everything. It wasn’t just a political movement—it was a religious takeover.
Alex had always been direct about it. Long before the Department of Faith took power, long before the Chairman’s reign, he had warned of what was coming. He would sit at the kitchen table, reading the news, his voice sharp with frustration.
“The separation of church and state is the bedrock of a free society,” he would say. “Without it, we stop being a democracy. We become a theocracy.”
Cora had heard it so many times she could almost predict his exact words. He wasn’t just opposed to religion creeping into government; he was furious about it. To him, faith was a personal matter, something sacred only in the sense that it was a private choice. The moment it became law, it became a weapon.
“Our differences make us stronger,” he had argued time and time again. “Look at history. Look at science. Some of the greatest intellectual advancements, some of the most important breakthroughs in human civilization happened because of diversity—because different people, different faiths, different perspectives came together and challenged each other.”
He would point out that America’s strength had always come from its ability to adapt, its ability to pull together people from different walks of life and let them build something better. But that wasn’t what the Department of Faith wanted. They didn’t want different ideas. They didn’t want progress.
They wanted obedience.
Cora remembered the first time she heard Alex say it plainly.
“This isn’t about faith,” he had said, shaking his head. “It’s about control. It’s always about control. These people don’t care about salvation. They care about power.”
That was the part that had driven him mad—the hypocrisy of it all. The same people who had spent years preaching about freedom, small government, individual rights were now demanding that every aspect of life be dictated by religious law. They wanted a nation built in their image, and they were willing to burn everything else to get it.
“This will set us back generations,” he had whispered one night, his voice hollow. “Our science, our technology, our education—it’s all going to suffer. How do you innovate when you can’t question? How do you progress when everything has to fit into a rigid doctrine?”
One night, as they lay in bed, the room dark except for the glow of their muted television, he spoke the words she had been dreading.
“I don’t think we can stay here much longer.”
She didn’t answer.
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