Ryan Walters’ Own Religious Sect Tries to Explain Him…

Ryan’s campaign to use the Bible as a tool to obtain media and political capital is going well!

Since he announced his not-very-well-received plan to indoctrinate children by forcing them to learn about the Bible’s debatable impact on our nation’s history, he’s accomplished his primary goal of improving his standing in right-wing media and political circles.

He’s even getting some attention from his hometown version of Christianity!

Yesterday, the Christian Chronicle – the official news service of the Church of Christ – produced a lengthy profile about Ryan.

Although a tad muted, it’s surprisingly fair. Through interviews with Ryan, his critics, and his supporters, it documents the troll’s rise from churchy holy roller to hip and cool history teacher to the right-wing grandstanding self-serving pariah he is today.

There are a lot of words and phrases you can use to describe Ryan Walters – and I guess “Culture Warrior,” “MAGA champion,” and “Church of Christ” member are all fair – but why didn’t they also go with Public School Saboteur, Psycho Right-Wing Christian Nationalist, or my personal favorite, McAlester Chode Boy?

The story actually does a pretty good job reviewing Ryan’s origin story and how he became the Christian Nationalist nutjob he is today.

It starts by looking back at how Ryan – at an earlier and impressionable age – was groomed and indoctrinated by his right-wing grandfather.

Baptized at an early age at the Main and Oklahoma Church of Christ in his hometown of McAlester, Walters traces his love for the Bible and history to his late grandfather Franklin “Dee” Delano Ball.

Ball, a U.S. Navy veteran, served in Korea and Vietnam. After retiring from the military, he opened a barbecue restaurant with his brothers and raised cattle outside of McAlester, which is known as the home of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and the nearby McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. An elder of the North Town Church of Christ in McAlester, Ball died in 2020 at age 86.

“I’d go out there and help my grandfather with the cattle, and we’d be hours and hours on the tractor,” said Walters, who grew up to become an award-winning high school history teacher before his political career. “We’d talk about the Bible. We’d talk about history. He was kind of the history guru who really got me going down that route.

“And frankly,” added the grandson, who was a finalist for 2016 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, “my grandfather was the one where we really started having these conversations about what happened when they took the Bible out of school… And so that was a big part of my growing up.”

That makes sense.

If I had to spend a good part of my impressionable youth riding around on a tractor with my cranky grandfather who – for some reason – used me as a captive and agreeable apparatus to complain about how bad things got when “ThEm LiBs ToOk ThE BiBle OuT oF SkOoLs,” there’s a good chance I’d also have severe mental health issues and later in life try to put the Bible back in public schools in a subconscious effort to win his approval.

Well, either that or simply drop out of school, make poor decisions, and then live a life of borderline poverty like most other rural Oklahoma kids who are trapped in similar circumstances.

Ryan’s grandpa wasn’t the only one indoctrinating him with fringe right-wing views and Christian nationalist beliefs. His parents did the same:

Asked if the roots of his faith were planted early, Walters replied, “Yes, sir. My mom and dad are very devout. My mother was very, very engaged with us kids growing up. There was a lot of reading the Bible. … We spent a lot of time together as a family, a lot of time in church.”

Like his parents, Randy and Debbie, Walters attended Harding University in Searcy, Ark., which is associated with Churches of Christ. Today, Randy serves as the minister and Debbie as the elementary education director at the North Town church.

That’s interesting. I wonder which parts of the Bible they spent the most time reading? Something tells me it wasn’t the verses that warn of false prophets who use the Bible as a weapon to fight culture wars and garner media attention.

For the most part, Ryan’s story isn’t all that unique.

There are hundreds of thousands of Oklahoma kids who are sadly born and raised in similar circumstances, but not all of them become active in politics and hell-bent on destroying public education.

For that, some sort of catalyst is needed, like being marked and groomed by a wealthy white politician who can use you as a tool and weapon in their own personal campaign to dually privatize and evangelicalize public education.

Walters’ rise to statewide educational leadership came after he met future Gov. Kevin Stitt, a fellow Republican, at a tennis tournament where Stitt’s daughter competed in 2018.

“We kind of struck up a friendship, and his passion for education was apparent from the very beginning,” Stitt said in a video produced by Harding when Walters won the alumni award.

In 2020, Stitt appointed Walters to his cabinet as secretary of education. Two years later, Walters campaigned for the state schools superintendent post and won the general election by 15 percentage points.

Does anyone have a time machine? If so, can you go back to like 2012 and encourage Stitt’s daughter to play golf or field hockey?

Wait. I take back the field hockey part. I think that’s how we ended up with Carly Atchison.

Here’s the video that the Christian Chronicle took the Stitt quote from. It was from when Ryan was inducted into the Harding Christian Academy Alumni Hall of Fame:

First of all, as a member of the Oklahoma City Community College Alumni Hall of Fame, I’d like to congratulate Ryan on his achievement. I’m not going to lie – it’s nice to know there are alumni hall of fames that are even less prestigious than the one I made!

Second, I wonder why Stitt left out the part about Ryan being identified early by former Janet Barresi, Jennifer Monies, and his Young Presidents buddy Trent Smith, who then installed Ryan as the unqualified head of a State Chamber-backed non-profit, where Ryan in turn helped homeschool parents grift funds intended to help Oklahoma public schools???

As I mentioned earlier, the Christian Chronicle spoke to Ryan’s critics and opponents.

Mark McBride made a cameo, as did a former student who liked Ryan when he was masquerading as a cool and hip teacher but opposes him after he revealed he was nothing more than a right-wing culture war-fighting wolf in sheep's clothing:

Before entering the political arena, Walters taught Advanced Placement courses in world history, U.S. history, and U.S. government for eight years at his hometown McAlester High School.

“He was my favorite teacher, and I think that goes for quite a lot of us,” said Starla Edge, a 2020 graduate who describes herself as queer and served as president of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance her junior year.

Edge remembers Walters letting her and her girlfriend leave his homeroom class to go get coffee as long as Edge brought him back a cappuccino.

Yep, that’s right!

Ryan let students ditch class for unsupervised visits to, I assume, the Harbor Mountain Coffee Shop. Hmm. I wonder why?

“Mr. Walters. Can Veronica and I leave to get a coffee?”

“Sure thing! Will you grab me a cappuccino… and, uh, let me know if you see my wife’s car?”

For the most part, my only major complaint about the profile is it didn’t touch on the mismanaged shit show inside the Oklahoma Department of Education, Ryan’s other bizarre publicity stunts, or the influence that Matt Langston has had on Ryan’s political career.

The last one seems like a major oversight. Matt’s essentially the Serpent who slithers around calling all the shots in the Department of Education, so you’d think he’d get a little shout-out. Instead, we simply get a quote from McBride, I assume rhetorically questioning who’s pulling Ryan’s puppet strings:

McBride, a Southern Baptist who has done mission work around the world, said he found Walters “very well-spoken” when they first met during the superintendent’s teaching days.

But since his election, Walters has seemed to take extreme right-wing positions aimed at seeking higher office, McBride said.

“I don’t know who his handlers are … telling him to be this way,” the state representative said.

Anyway, whether you're Church of Christ, Southern Baptist, or a Non-Denominational Christian Nationalist, you can read the full profile over at the Christian Chronicle. In the meantime…

Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.