Air Date 11/2/2024

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. The cult of Trump isn't really just about Trump. It's religion and patriarchy reacting to a moment of global economic and climactic instability. But those organizing the religious right aren't just reacting to their environment. They've also been planning for a very long time. 

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 55 minutes today includes The Majority Report, Ideas, Straight White American Jesus, Democracy Now!, and Unf***ing the Republic. Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections. Section A: The movement. Section B: Trump and election. Section C: Patriarchy and race. And Section D: American Christian.

Extremist White Christian Nationalists Prepping For War w Brad Onishi - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-16-24

BRAD ONISHI: If we turn to the 1960s, we see great change in the country. We see a civil rights movement. We see the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, [00:01:00] everything from Stonewall to the attempts to get the ERA passed. That's a moment when many conservative Christians in the country, especially many White conservative Christians in the country, don't see progress. They don't see the country living up to its promise to be a more perfect union. Instead, they see that as that's when we lost our country. That's when it was given to those who were left behind. That's when rights and representation were afforded to people who are not perhaps real Americans and should not be trusted with the country's destiny going forward.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And so where I didn't realize this, let's talk a little bit first about your personal journey, because it gets interwoven here with the rise of this movement. 

BRAD ONISHI: Sure. So I grew up in Southern California and I grew up in Orange County. And I know that for most [00:02:00] folks around the country, California, they picture California as a liberal bastion where we, the Democratic Party has a super majority and so on and so forth, right? We teach our kids Das Kapital in Kindergarten or something. The reality is it's a much more mixed political landscape and Orange County in particular in the mid 20th century became what the Harvard historian Lisa McGurk called the "epicenter of American conservatism". 

Orange County is a funny place. After World War II, it was the central nervous system for the American defense industry. So in the decades 60s, 70s, 80s, you have millions and millions and millions of Southerners and Midwesterners who migrate to places like Orange County. Now they don't see themselves as transplants trying to figure out how to fit into a new place. They're implants. They're going to bring their culture. Their life and their religious ethos with them and they're going to [00:03:00] do so unmoored from all of the histories and the sedimentation of where they came from. In Pittsburgh, you might have Jewish neighborhoods. You might have large and historic Black neighborhoods. Well, in Anaheim, California, in 1965, you don't have any of that. So you see this sort of distilled form of White Christian conservatism take root in Orange County, and that's what I was born into and grew up in the 1980s. That's where I converted to evangelical Christianity as a teenager. I was ushered into a whole religious political landscape that, to me, at the time, felt normal, but I realized later, was really a kind of a central node in the development of what we now call White Christian nationalism. And if you do the history, you see it. You see that this is the region that gave birth to Richard Nixon. My hometown, Richard Nixon's hometown. This is the place that championed Barry Goldwater more than any other in Southern California and in California in general. This is the place that was really Ronald Reagan's spiritual [00:04:00] home and named its airport after John Wayne. You start to look into it and you realize the deep roots of American conservatism and somehow they unexpectedly take you back to Southern California. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I mean, we've done a couple of actually interviews about the birth of conservatism or at least the movement conservatism coming out of California. I mean, it ties in also to the medical profession. There was a lot happening in car dealerships. I mean, there's a lot of different narratives there. What I'm fascinated, is the idea of this, the distillation of the, for lack of better, I keep calling it Christian nationalism, but was it Christian nationalism when it got there? Like, the idea that this is a completely blank canvas, California, very big country. A lot of people, the whole [00:05:00] story about California, but for much of at least the 20th century was, we're going out there and I'm starting my life anew in many respects for various reasons that we saw, the Great Depression, but also because it's just so far away, if far away from their relatives far away from the legal problems, it's a blank canvas out there. But [were] there Christian nationalist, like, desires before it got there, or did things coalesce there and become more concentrated and virulent? 

BRAD ONISHI: Yeah. I think the answer is "both and". And I think if we start with this idea that Christian nationalism in its essence is a fusion of the Christian and American identity, the idea that to be a Christian means to [00:06:00] be an American, and to be an American, a real American, one needs to be a Christian, right? Those are some, just a basic working idea of Christian nationalism, that Americanism and Christian identity go together. And that, if you separate them, you're left with something that, for folks who adhere to this ideology and worldview, feels incomplete. 

Now, folks who are migrating from Georgia, from Pennsylvania in the 50s and 60s, are they going there saying, You know what? I just wish I could be a virulent White Christian nationalist. It's time to get the family in the station wagon and head west. I don't think so. But my argument would be those places had long and deep histories, both religiously, ethnically, and politically, that were different from Southern California.

So again, if I'm in Pittsburgh, I'm surrounded by neighborhoods, Black neighborhoods, Jewish neighborhoods, Italian, Polish, I'm surrounded by Catholic folks and other folks, right? So this [00:07:00] means that there's a check on my ability politically and religiously to distill this pure White Christian nationalism into my community, there's just things getting in my way to do that. When you get to Southern California in the 1960s, 1970s, all of those things are not there. Those main streets, they're not there. You know what is there? Burgeoning mega churches, where folks are realizing, preachers are realizing, if I combine just vehement anti communism with all these people who have jobs at defense industry plants, Anti Communism, pro Capitalism, pro Individual, you know what that equals? The Gospel of Jesus Christ. If I put all that together, now all of a sudden I get a religious and political set of elements that fuse into something that is not only, uh, what I would call white Christian nationalist, But it's unchecked by all those, those foundational components on the main streets where the, [00:08:00] where these folks left.

And that's why I think you're able to see this distillation, this petri dish of, of a conservative movement based on the idea that Christianity and America go together, form in this region of the country. 

How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation - Ideas - Air Date 10-18-24

CLIP: My whole goal in life was to grow up, get married, And we didn't believe in things like birth control.

So, the expectation was that we'd have as many children as possible, and our parents would use us. to bring about this change in the country. It would make the country a Christian country. 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: It draws a direct link between evangelical, masculinity and masculine authority, patriarchy, and Christian nationalism.

Both of those center a particular understanding of power as power over others. Yeah, and In which then the ends always justifies the means and [00:09:00] we see the effects of that in the lives of women who live under the authority of these men and we see what happens when things go wrong. 

CLIP: So in 2018, I finally got the courage to decide to come forward and I looked up Andy Savage who was now one of the leading pastors at a mega church in Tennessee and I decided to write him an email.

And I signed off, hashtag me too. Two days later was a Sunday, and the head of the church announces to the congregation that Pastor Savage has something he needs to tell them. What happened next was so enraging. I wanted the world to see it. I regretfully had a sexual incident with a female high school senior in the church.

He tells the [00:10:00] world that it had occurred and that he was sorry. And

everybody stands, and they give him a standing ovation.

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: And what we see is Faith communities invariably, repeatedly rallying around the perpetrators, the abusers, protecting them, giving cover to the man of God, trying to, as they say, protect the witness of the church. And it's the victim who is maligned, who is blamed, who is silenced, and who is often pushed out of those communities.

And so For Our Daughters features the stories of several survivors who had this experience sometimes even decades ago, and came to see it in a new light, often when they had daughters of their own, I wanted to give them a powerful platform to speak their truth. And it [00:11:00] is true. Their stories are true.

They are legally vetted. They are speaking truth. And to, bring these stories to faith communities so that they can take a critical look at their own practices and also challenge them to look at the broader political scene of how this Ideology. is linked to Christian nationalism and how some of the very men depicted in this film are connected to networks that are working to essentially achieve a Christian nationalist takeover, which could in fact be upon us in this next election.

The, lines are direct. And so this is, an issue that affects us. Evangelical women inside churches, absolutely. But we're making the case that we need to listen to the warnings from some of these evangelical women who have seen the dark side of this ideology because it matters for all American women.[00:12:00] 

Now, when Jesus and John Wayne released, I, within about two, three days, started getting letters. I have gotten thousands of letters, most of which say some version of the same thing. This is the story of my life. But it's also somehow shocking. I never understood how all these pieces fit together. How can Readers both be so intimately familiar with the book, so much so that some actually send me pictures of their bookshelves that are aligned with all the things that I talk about, or they [00:13:00] tell me their life stories, and it could have just been a through line of Jesus and John Wayne.

And yet, it's shocking to see it all come together. How can this be? And I, came to realize just how much evangelicals had controlled their own narrative. They had told the stories about themselves in a particular way, including some details and omitting others. They have written their own histories so that facts can seem like attacks.

Especially when they were organized efforts to tell people that legitimate histories are attacks on their faith. For generations, we've been told the enemy is post modernism, the post truth world, we are the moral majority, all that stuff thrown out the window now, and instead it's whatever it takes.

I've even seen very recently some guy on Twitter, from the right came on [00:14:00] and said, I don't know, somebody was lying about me. It happens a lot. I've been misrepresented so many times. I just saw somebody post. somebody jumped in and said, you're lying. you, you, can't.

That's not what she said. Why do you do this? And the response, I appreciated the honesty there, was essentially, she's an enemy. We can say whatever we want about her and do whatever we want to her. And I thought, wow, that is starkly presented. It is chilling, but I think it encapsulates well kind of the spirit within this movement when pushed to extremes and the leaders of this movement are doing everything they can to push followers to those extremes and they use this language of threat to do so.

SEAN FOLEY - HOST, CBC NETWORK: Just thinking about you about you being you and reading something like that, you know, 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: yeah My internal response was very clarifying given the interactions. I've had [00:15:00] with people on on social media Not, not just random people, this was a random person, but more respectable folks, including some pretty powerful leaders inside evangelical organizations and institutions.

This kind of describes the way I am treated in some of those spaces, and it's, it's not just me, um, at, at all. Um, and, and it actually, I was showing it to a friend, uh, a couple of friends who were kind of scholars working in these areas. Areas, and it wasn't actually until one of them said to me, Kristen, this is really frightening.

This is actually a threat. And I, I hadn't, I just saw it as, of course, this makes so much sense of what I have been experiencing. And I didn't see it as the threat that it actually is or could entail. Uh, so I guess you work in these spaces long enough, you kind of get used to this. Um, I didn't feel personally threatened by that tweet.

I do feel personally, um, disquieted by this kind of rhetoric [00:16:00] and the dehumanizing rhetoric that I see in these spaces. I try to call it out whenever I see it, um, the, but it's always spiritualized. So you can call people demonic. You can call people a wolf. You know, the first time I was called a wolf, I thought, Oh, that's silly.

And then I realized, no, no, no, that actually has a deep meaning inside these spaces, a theological meaning, right? You are an enemy of the church, an enemy of Christ, but it also, in terms of authoritarian movements, it also dehumanizes others. And we see a lot of that kind of language used now towards immigrants.

right, to people on the margins and high levels of comfort in some of these conservative Christian spaces with extremely dehumanizing language, which, you know, to my mind goes against

MAGA's 'Young Male Voter' Plan Hits Bottom Of The Barrel - The Majority Report - Air Date 10-22-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: The Trump campaign set out to target male voters, young male voters, low propensity, young male voters. And [00:17:00] what young male voters want is stuff like that Owen Schroyer thing we played earlier, where you have young women saying, abortion is my top issue. In terms of the election, because that makes men feel like, Oh, these girls don't know what they're doing.

They're voting based upon an issue that's important to them and not me. They should be freaking out about the border like I am. Exactly. I don't know. I guess there is a cohort. I mean, wrestling fans, young people, but I don't know if wrestling fans even know who Hulk Hogan is anymore.

Maybe they do. But here is Jesse Watters. One of the, really creepy style men you'll recall the way that he basically start started his second marriage, right? 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh, I don't know, but entrapped his current wife into a marriage. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, he let the air out of her tires when she was going home. And then she needed a ride home, so he gave it to her. I guess this is from Fox. [00:18:00] Incidentally They also sell things like pepper spray and alarms if you come across this in a parking lot. Anyways here is Jesse Waters interviewing Hulk Hogan. 

HULK HOGAN: Speaking from, and you'll know exactly who they are. So when they say that Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan and stuff like that doesn't make Trump one with the people or a blue collar worker. If you listen to where people were speaking from and you put Buttigieg up there, Trump definitely wouldn't be a man of the people. That's how it really is, brother. But by the way, just to correct you, Jesse Waters, I know about waters and your world and all that stuff. Well, this is Trumpamania, and this is his country, brother. 

JESSEE WATTERS: All right, I'll give it to him. Just for this show. But not after that. I'm going to be taking it back. We saw you ripping your shirt off at the RNC. You know, there have been saying that men that lift weights are fascists. Can you just kind of remind Democrats?

Cause they didn't used to be like this. Can you remind Democrats [00:19:00] what American men are made of? 

HULK HOGAN: Well, brother, at the end of the day, no, this is a chain of command. Our Lord and savior the wife and the husband and the kids at the end of the day, The mother is to nourish, but the man is to protect, serve, and provide.

So at the end of the day, that's what this is all about. Is being a real man, being a real American and getting this country and making it how, not how it used to be, but how it should be, brother. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: When you, okay, brother

I mean, this may resonate with people, but some people, but you've heard me say over and over again, that all the trans stuff. That all the issues with like a high value men even like back to Gamergate, all of this stuff, hat, Hulk Hogan just told you there is a fundamental hierarchy that starts the series that starts at the [00:20:00] top of the hierarchy.

And it's not man over woman. It's God over man, and then it's man over woman, and then brother, and brother. But when we say that the issue of, the political issue of trans women and women's sports is not about women's sports. It is about freaks who, for whatever reason, Maintain a notion of the patriarchy.

And the patriarchy is simply a, essentially the human version of religious hierarchy. God, who also happens to be a man, of course, and then human, and by human we mean man, and then woman, who, of course, was derived from the man. And then children and whether it's trans issues or whether it's [00:21:00] like women caring about abortion rights.

That's why they're voting. Like they're putting themselves in their own their ability their reproductive rights above my sense of national chauvinism, all of this stuff emanates. From religious fundamentalism. And often it gets laundered through other things.

This is about ethics and gaming reporting, or this is about the integrity of women's sports, or, this is protect the children or whatever it is, what it is at its root is a freak out about gender and gender roles. And that comes from religious fundamentalism. Some instances, the people know that they're operating on it.

Some instances, they don't know.

If you walked around with a swastika, [00:22:00] you could have just seen the image and said, that's a cool image. I'm going to make a t shirt with that. And walk around with it and go you know what? I'm like I believe I should wear this thing without any knowledge of where this idea or what it represents comes from.

And that's what I'm talking about with this sort of like gender freak out. Now other people may have some other issues around gender that they're struggling with individually. And then this like wind of what society and traditional society and religious society like brushes up against their own insecurities and that becomes fuel for their gender war.

But understand that these constructs exist because of religious fundamentalism.

 

NAR Watch Ep. 7 JD Vance Joins Lance Wallnau in Spiritual Warfare - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 10-14-24

MATT TAYLOR: So if we go back into the history, um, in the fall of [00:23:00] 2015, Paul Y. Kane is gathering charismatic leaders at Trump tower to meet with Trump. These are the first religious leaders that meet with Donald Trump. The people who are at those meetings become the nucleus of Trump's evangelical advisors.

And this is part of this changeover that occurs that I'm observing in my book of how these previously fringe characters from the, these independent charismatic spaces move into the center. Of right wing politics because of their association and closeness to Trump. Wall now is in those meetings. In fact, he, he, he talks to Trump in these meetings personally.

And, and is, um, he's one of the first Christian leaders to endorse Donald Trump, and even when he is endorsing Donald Trump, he's, he's offering this prophecy, this prophecy about Cyrus that he he's cribbing it from Jeremiah Johnson. But he, he's, he's the one who really popularizes a lot of these ideas and gets the ball rolling on.

This whole Trump prophecy element to, um, the, the Christian campaigning for Donald Trump. But then, Wallnau is never put on the official board of [00:24:00] evangelical advisors. Many of his friends are, but he's not. And he's invited into the White House at different points during the Trump administration to advise the White House.

I'll be damned if I can find any photos of that. Where he's in the white house. And so he, he has brought in, he's clearly an interlocutor. He's clearly a voice that they value. And he is one of the most effective Christian propagandists for Donald Trump, just bar none. I mean, he's, he's the one who's using these seven mountains ideas.

I mean, one of my, I don't know if I've ever told this story on here. Uh, so after, um, the, the access Hollywood tape comes out in October of 2016, right? And it's this moment. For those who, who were, were politically paying attention to the times, this moment where everyone's like, okay, Trump's done, right? The evangelicals are just going to abandon him.

Even Mike Pence was on the fence about whether, whether he could even talk about defending Donald Trump on this question. And it's one of the [00:25:00] few times in Donald Trump's life, especially political life that he's actually apologized. But in the midst of that, Walnut had just issued, it just published this book, God's Chaos Candidate, predicting.

And prophesying that Donald Trump would win the election. And so he, he is really in a tough spot because he has just said Donald Trump is God's anointed candidate. And then it comes out the Trump is like from his own mouth, describing how he sexually abuses women. And so Lance is in, um, he's in Israel at the time and he goes on Facebook live and records like a 10 minute video.

And in this video, it's so fascinating because he, so again, he's using the old Testament, Hebrew Bible imagery. And he says, This is his, this is the core of his message. And he says, God could use the jawbone of an ass to slaughter a thousand Philistines, but God could never use a Jezebel. And so to unpack that he's, he's, he's, he's using these two, he's linking together these two old Testament stories.

So there's, there's the [00:26:00] Samson story where Samson, Takes the, the jawbone of a donkey and slaughters a thousand Philistines. And then Jezebel, the evil, wicked queen, the, the, the most pagan of all the queen, the female characters in the Hebrew Bible. And so what he's saying there is like, Donald Trump is the jawbone of the ass.

Donald Trump is a donkey's jawbone, but he's an instrument. He's a weapon. In the hand of God and but God could never work through a hillard clinton at jezebel And and this video gets more than 4 million views before the election And I would argue it's one of the major factors in bringing evangelicals back into the, back into the fold, keeping them on the Trump train, not letting them jump off saying, Hey, he's a bad dude.

We all acknowledge that, but he's an instrument in the hand of God. And so that, that is the role wall now has played for Trump. And yet he never is apart from those, those very, the very first meetings, you never see a picture of him. With Trump and you never see him in the white [00:27:00] house. And so I think that is kind of the pattern that we're seeing, even with this JD Vance thing, they want his audience.

They want his people, but they want to maintain a little barrier so that there's a little plausible deniability. 

BRAD ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: So there's, there's people listening who are thinking, you know, they're informed and they're thinking, okay, I know there's pictures of Sean Foyt in the white house, touching Donald Trump. Paula white for, for goodness sake was the spiritual advisor.

Uh, Donald Trump has done so many, uh, events with, uh, people in the, like, Evangelicals for Trump or the, you know, he had the, the whole, um, the, the Latinos, uh, for Trump and that was, that, that was kicked off at an N A R church. Here's my point. Donald Trump takes pictures with everybody. He had, the guy had dinner with Nick Fuentes.

I mean, you know, and Kanye West. So if I'm listening right now, can you help me understand why is Lance Wall now, like, beyond the pale? Like, you, he's not allowed to have a photo? And then, You know, much less, they basically like made sure [00:28:00] Lance was not touching the stage before like JD took one step onto the stage because they didn't want anyone to ever say they shared the stage.

Why is Lance beyond the pale compared to all these other people? 

MATT TAYLOR: Well, if you go back, the Nick Fuentes, Kanye West dinner, that was before Trump had entered the race. So this was, this is in that kind of interregnum where he had lost in 2020 before he had really fully kind of stepped into and launched his 2024 campaign.

So I think there was, there was an element of, of wanting to kind of, again, play this sort of game there. With Walnut, if you track Walnut. I just, I just have, I 

BRAD ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: just have to say this, like, so back in the days when he was not a candidate, when he was allowed to, I don't know, call Putin on his free time, have classified documents behind the toilet and have dinner with Nazis, I mean, he wasn't even in the race yet, Matt.

It's not a big deal. He was a private citizen. Who cares? I mean, gosh, 

MATT TAYLOR: Brad, aren't we all having dinner with Nick Fuentes on the [00:29:00] side? Come on. 

BRAD ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: You know, I'm not running for office. So hey, what's the big, I'm sorry. I just had to say that like, I I'm not doubting what you're saying, but it's ridiculous. So go ahead. 

MATT TAYLOR: Walnell of all of the Trump Christian propagandists is really willing to push the envelope. And, and again, it's not, it's not that he is persona non grata. It's not that he's a bridge too far. They want his audience. They bring him in, but it's about maintaining a little bit of plausible deniability there because I don't think they want to be on the hook for the things that he says, because while now is of all of these leaders that I have seen the most willing to demonize.

His political opponents, the most willing to, I mean, he, he has at least three or four times now gone after Kamala Harris said that she is an amalgam of the Jezebel spirit, that you can't listen to her because it's just demons speaking through her, that she used witchcraft to win the debate with Donald Trump.

[00:30:00] So he really leans in. And it attaches these narratives. To his political opponents and he's also very deep into these conspiracy theorizing. In fact, just the other night, he was tweeting, Hey, Marjorie, Marjorie Taylor Greene might be right because she's doing, she's, she's saying that they control the weather.

And hey, if this, this next hurricane, this hurricane Milton hits a bunch of red counties, then I'm going to suspect that she's right. Like, so he, he plays footsie with Alex Jones and he very much is actually modeling himself. Off of Steve Bannon and Alex Jones right now, if you, if you watch how he runs his kind of podcast and media empire, he he's merchandising the way that they merchandise, he pays homage to Steve Bannon frequently.

I mean, he's really kind of taking these models of other far right provocateurs and playing with them. I think a figure like Sean Foyt still plays as a worship leader. Even though I have done the deep dive on Sean Foyt, he is an extreme far right figure. Who has, has used his influence to, to very [00:31:00] nefarious and harmful ends.

But Wallnau is, is, is so public and has, has so many of these things attached to him. I think that the Trump campaign, they, they, they want to use him. And then they also want to keep just that sliver of daylight, just so that they don't feel like they ever have to answer for the things that he says, but he can keep saying them and they can keep promoting him.

Ziklag Exposed Secretive Christian Nationalist Network Tries to Purge Voters in Battleground States - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-30-24

ANDY KROLL: Ziklag is a secretive network of ultrawealthy Christians, conservative Christians, who have this two-part goal, two-part vision for this country. One is to get heavily involved in the 2024 elections, in the ways that you just described, mobilizing pastors, knocking people off the voting rolls, demonizing trans people to motivate conservative voters. But then, looking toward the 20- and 30-year horizon, Ziklag’s goal is nothing less than moving the country toward a state of Christian [00:32:00] nationalism, having biblical worldviews, quote-unquote, “biblical truth,” shaping, influencing every part of American culture, the seven mountains that you described. So, this really is, as one expert we quoted in the story told us, a vision for Christian supremacy.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: “Ziklag” mean?

ANDY KROLL: Ziklag, the name, refers to a biblical reference about David taking refuge during his struggle with King Saul. The analogy here, of course, is that the Christians in this group apparently feel that they are under siege and that this group is their refuge, but then the place from which they plan their campaign, their assault to take back American culture.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: In a Ziklag member briefing video that you obtained at ProPublica, one of Ziklag’s spiritual advisers, Lance Wallnau, a Christian evangelist and influencer, laid out a plan [00:33:00] to deliver swing states by using an anti-transgender message to motivate conservative voters who are exhausted with Trump.

MATT TAYLOR: If we can get the left to own their position on LGBTQ — the country has already drifted on the homosexual issue, but on transgenderism, there is a problem, and they know it. They’re going to want to talk about Trump, Trump, Trump, he’s indicted, the guy’s a criminal, this and that. They’re going to have riots on the street and all the kabuki theater. Meanwhile, if we talk about it’s not about Trump; it’s about the parents and their children, and the state is a threat. When you get Governor Newsom or Governor Whitmer or Polis, your top three potential candidates for the future presidency of the United States, other than Kamala, you got these — when they’re going to have to stand with their LGBTQ donors, and so, when they solidify that position, that’s where they’ve gone too far.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, that’s Lance Wallnau, a [00:34:00] Christian evangelist and influencer. Andy Kroll, if you can talk about him, what he’s saying, and who the other leaders of this are?

ANDY KROLL: Lance Wallnau is maybe one of the most important Christian evangelist figures that maybe your audience hasn’t heard of. He was one of the earliest Christian right leaders to endorse Donald Trump. We’re talking way back in 2015 here. He popularized this notion that Donald Trump was a modern-day Cyrus, a sort of flawed but virtuous leader who would deliver a victory for Christians. And that Cyrus idea really caught on, was a big reason that evangelicals turned out to such a big degree for Trump in ’16, again in ’20. Wallnau remains this bridge between the Christian right, Christian nationalism and Trump world.

Wallnau is one of a number of really influential and well-known people that are part of Ziklag. Some [00:35:00] members that your audience might have heard of, the Green family, they’re the family behind Hobby Lobby. Obviously, they’ve had a pretty big impact in trying to strike down parts of the Obamacare law back in the Obama presidency. The Uihlein family have donated to this effort. They are, of course, the billionaire office supply family out of the Midwest, major, major political donors to Republicans and to Donald Trump. And then, another family is the Waller family, influential in Ziklag. They are the owners of the Jockey apparel company, which probably a lot of people have heard of even if they haven’t heard of this family. So you have a number of really wealthy, really influential conservative Christian families in this group. They have the means to invest not just in political work, but also in this larger cultural transformation plan that Ziklag has really put its — really organized itself around.

 

Spirit & Power Episode 4 Take Back that Which Was Stolen from Us The Charismatic Rituals of the Religious Right - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 10-17-24

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: Lance Wallnau gave a very interesting talk about time and different phases of [00:36:00] life. And I think there were like six phases of life that he went through, but he said that nations also have these phases. And so, he drew like a stair step on his whiteboard. Because we always use the whiteboard.

DR. LEAH PAYNE: Here's where another historic Pentecostal practice comes into play, prophecy. Pentecostals have long made prophecies about current events and political leaders and tied their leadership to the apocalypse. For example, there were prophecies about the Kaiser during World War I or FDR during World War II. But I will say the way that some prophecies tie Trump's presidency to the end of time is quite distinct.

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: He drew these stairs and the first one was leader slash Cyrus. So if you look, his argument is, if you look at biblical timelines and prophecy, that it requires a King [00:37:00] Cyrus, something, someone like a King Cyrus. 

DR. LEAH PAYNE: King Cyrus of Persia, celebrated for freeing the Israelites from Babylonian captivity and allowing them to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, was a pagan ruler, but he's still called God's anointed in the book of Isaiah and According to charismatic interpretations, he's used by God for divine purposes.

And in these circles, Donald Trump is often compared to King Cyrus. Many view him as an unlikely vessel chosen by God to advance Christian causes. And, They draw parallels to Cyrus's role in Israel's restoration as Cyrus restored ancient Israel. So Trump could restore and is restoring 21st century Israel, which according to their theology would bring the second coming.

So the end of time and the [00:38:00] return of Christ is tied to Trump. 

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: To set this domino effect into place that will then bring about. The kingdom of God. The first one was Cyrus. The second one was the house, which was the rebuilding of the temple. 

CLIP: Open the eyes, the awakening, we pray for the awakening revival.

We need a revival. All the preachers said we need a revival. And most Christians go, we need a revival. And we think somehow God's going to pour out like a Zeus and the nations going to go all speak in tongues. We're all going to become righteous. First, God gets to give you a ruler. You've got to pray for the right ruler.

Then you got to be in the right project, which is the Ecclesia, which is his house. Then the awakening comes to those that are in the building project. God's got them in. I honestly think those are the politically engaged and keep themselves from a spirit of strife right now are probably more in the [00:39:00] revival than they know.

Years from now, we're going to look back and say, when was the period of the great awakening? We're going to date historians will date it and they'll put you in that period of great awakening. Pictures like this crowd will be in the little textbooks in the future, saying these were the early signs that when the Trump era came, then there was a galvanizing of Christian concern and a lot of praying and a lot of gathering, a lot of indigenous grassroots people, a lot of people like are in this room right now, hearing the call of God to go into government, to go into schools, to go into media, to begin to do what, what, what, what, what, what the awakened church did next, which was they had to see for Cyrus house of God, awakening.

Yeah. They began to occupy the territory around their local church. 

DR. LEAH PAYNE: Kerry notes that this vision is ultimately about the charismatic vision of the end of time. 

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: That's the ultimate goal. It's not the immediate. This election doesn't just have these. immediate consequences for the next four years. We're [00:40:00] talking about the restoring of the temple.

It's massive. It's a major spiritual win if this can happen in his eyes. That's what's motivating and what's encouraging to people because you can have a place in this history that gives it that historical significance as a Christian, as a faith filled person. 

DR. LEAH PAYNE: This is an important point to drive home because Pentecostal and charismatic Trump enthusiasts might be quite patriotic, but that doesn't mean that they are ultimately interested in American democracy. The nation of nations in the charismatic mind is the end times nation of Israel and the United States has ultimately utilitarian value. Is the U. S. important? Yes, but not necessarily as a model of democracy. 

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: Whenever the lens does get turned back onto the U. S., um, the [00:41:00] words and the narrative surrounding that is typically something to do with government overreach.

And so democracy is not, not on their agenda. Uh, Rick Green gave a long talk about biblical citizenship and what. The constitution allows and what it doesn't, and that there's been government overreach going on for quite some time that we need to get rid of the department of education. 

CLIP: So we are so blessed in America. We know America's great. We know she's crumbling, so we've got to turn her around. So if we want that life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, we build it on truth and we had it for a while. The reason we're losing it is because we're not doing that next sentence consent of the governed. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

You give or refuse consent by being involved. When you sit on the sideline, government assumes you've consented and starts taking over more and more of our lives, telling us how [00:42:00] to raise our families, how to, how to take care of our property, how to run our businesses, all of those things. And that's essentially where we are.

And it's not just It's not just the DEI and CRT and ESG, and it's not just the federal government. Our local governments are squeezing the life out of the free enterprise system. They're squeezing the life out of property rights. They're micromanaging what you do with your property. 

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: We need to get rid of the CDC because all of these were just oversteps that they're not supposed to be government functions.

And they said outright that government is supposed to protect you, not provide for you. There was a lot put into this kind of reap and sow narrative of it and framed it as, you know, the nation. So, I mean, essentially they used a lot of words, but the gist was give us your money or you're losing your nation.

CLIP: What am I saying to you? I'm saying simply this in a few weeks, we are getting ready. I believe to cut the head of a [00:43:00] lot of giants and things that have been attacking our children have been attacking our country. This is what Flashpoint's been about. It's why I've given four years of my life as a busy senior pastor of a, of a 1, 500 member church and growing and a worldwide ministry.

And yet I do this because I recognize that I'm giving my time as an offering for God, but because I also believe I put my money behind it. Because I recognize the power of an offering to not only deliver me, but to position my country for victory. How many of you would like a part of that? 

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: That's really, that's really what it amounted to. And they called it this prophetic gifting. 

CLIP: So I want to bring you to what I believe is a prophetic act. And here's what it is. How many of you are believing for victory in a few weeks? How many of you are believing and those of you that are watching for defeat against the giants? [00:44:00] Of all the things that we've been facing in the harsh season we've been in.

Alright, I believe a prophetic act then has to proceed our victory. And I want to show you out of the Bible some prophetic acts. I want to show you at least two that have to do with an offering that brought a deliverance to a nation. 

Unfcking Flashback The American Propaganda Machine. - UNFTR - Air Date 10-12-24

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: To get the point across, let's talk about one of the heavyweight champs of public policy. The Heritage Foundation. Sounds homespun and charming, doesn't it? The Heritage Foundation, and its sister lobbying arm Heritage Action for America, openly develop public policy for so called conservative issues and lobby conservative lawmakers to adopt them.

The main foundation receives funding from a labyrinth of conservative donors, several billionaires, other foundations, foreign entities, the oil and gas, defense, tobacco, and technology industries, among others. and other undisclosed donors. Here's a fun one. Did you know that they [00:45:00] were the chief architects of what became known as Obamacare?

Yep. They lobbied for universal privately insured healthcare with an individual mandate. Why? Because they wanted people to pay for insurance and to stop undocumented immigrants and poor people from using the emergency room as a primary care doctor. You didn't think Mitt Romney came up with that all by himself, did you?

Then the second it was adopted by a Democratic president, meaning a black guy, it became the third rail and Heritage promptly reversed course. Beyond this seismic flip flop, the Heritage Foundation greatest hits include Fighting Against Taxes on Cigarette Companies, Blasting immigration reform measures, railing against climate change legislation, and advocating for covert military funding and operations in foreign nations to overthrow governments.

Just a few among other pet projects they have. 

CLIP: Well, isn't that special? [00:46:00] 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: One of the most effective ground strategies these organizations have is the creation of what's called model legislation. In other words, they write the legislation they want to see, leave the sponsors blank, and circulate them throughout the states hoping their measures will be turned into law.

Let's put some real numbers to this to demonstrate just how little influence voters have on what their legislators actually do and propose. In 2019, the Center for Public Integrity published a report generated by USA Today and the Arizona Republic which found at least 10, 000 bills. Almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in just the past eight years.

And more than 2, 000 of those bills were signed into law. To help us through a few passages in the report, here's my friend. We'll call him Bobby. Bobby from Brooklyn, to give us some highlights. 

CLIP: Model bills passed into law have made it harder for injured consumers to sue corporations. They've called for [00:47:00] taxes on sugar laden drinks.

They've limited access to abortion and restricted the rights of protesters. Fuckin bunch of dicks. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Uh, Bobby, please, just keep reading. 

CLIP: Models are drafted with deceptive titles and descriptions to disguise their true intent. The Asbestos Transparency Act didn't help people exposed to asbestos. It was written by corporations who wanted to make it harder for victims to recoup money.

The HOPE Act, introduced in nine states, was written by a conservative group to make it more difficult for people to get food stamps. You fucking kidding me. That shit wouldn't fly where I'm from 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: again, if, if you don't mind. 

CLIP: All right, all right, all right. Where was I? Cities and counties have raised their minimum wage, banned plastic bags and destroyed seize guns.

Only to have industry groups that oppose such measures make them illegal. With model bills passed in state legislatures. Y'all fucked up. Bullshit. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Fuck this bullshit. Indeed, Bobby. So who exactly is writing these model bills? Sorry, Democrats [00:48:00] outgunned again. Turns out 83 percent of model legislation was written either by conservative advocacy groups or directly by corporations.

92 percent of the bills that actually became law were from those two groups, proving once again liberals suck at hand to hand combat and lack the kind of overwhelming coordination that corporations and conservative groups maintain. So where are we? Oh, right. Billionaire X has a problem. So he, I'm assuming his preferred pronoun is he, uses a network of shell corporations to provide funding to think tanks that generate research to support a thesis that would eliminate said problem.

The think tanks send research to lobbyists who push it off to legislators as proof that new laws need to be passed. Then they coordinate with billionaire X's corporation to write the legislation directly. Now the biggest missing ingredient here is public sentiment, buy in, manufacturing. [00:49:00] Someone needs to sell this bullshit to the American people so the lawmaker can hold up some new bill with some fucking patriotic title and claim that he or she is defending the best interests of the American people.

Enter the mouthpiece, or the shill. The reason I call the Heritage Foundation the heavyweight champ among the thousands of think tanks, lobbyists, and corporations directly peddling influence Isn't because they're the biggest. Now, it's a hundred million dollar plus organization with ties to several other closely related groups and lobbyists that all told pour billions of dollars into our elections.

But they're still not the biggest. They're the best because they're by far the most Now, to really sell your snake oil, you need some clever spokespeople and mouthpieces. 

These are folks who identify with the people and can twist that thing [00:50:00] that's good for you around in your brain until it no longer makes any sense coming back out of your mouth.

Take, for example, this sincere and charming fella convincing Americans that Medicare, yeah, Medicare, is nothing more than socialized 

RONALD REAGAN CLIP: medicine that will rob you of your freedoms. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.

Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: In case you couldn't place the voice, that's none other than the Gipper himself, Ronald Reagan, shilling for the AMA in a prepared script designed to attack Medicare. That's when there were five TV stations and AM radio only.

Today, the information channels are limitless. And no one has fused policy and punditry better than the Heritage Foundation. Where others [00:51:00] rely on making their own videos they post to YouTube and speaking on panels at conferences, Heritage has a revolving door booking engine that gets their research fellows on podcasts Evening news shows and mentioned in op eds.

BEN SHAPIRO CLIP: Welcome back. This is the Ben Shapiro show. Joining us on the line is John Malcolm, vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government and director of the Mies Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at Heritage Foundation. 

CLIP: ...the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General. Blue cities burning. I want to get a, a big picture historical overview with our friend, Jared Stepman. He's from the Heritage Foundation. 

NEWSCLIP: John Malcolm, vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation. 

The Heritage Foundation. I have it here in front of me. 

The Heritage foundation. 

The Heritage Foundation. There have been 1,285 proven cases of voter fraud... 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Voter fraud, immigration, Black Lives Matter, Obamacare, Union, Second Amendment, you name it. They've got an expert locked, loaded, and ready to spray verbal bullets through the screen and into your ear balls. Heritage Foundation research and mouthpieces [00:52:00] regularly make their way through high profile shows like Hannity and popular podcasts like Ben Shapiro.

CLIP: Twelve thousand lobbyists, eighteen hundred think tanks, two party system, and one ass fuck nation. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Clean air and water? 

CLIP: It's my right to pollute if it makes me money.

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Access to affordable health care. 

CLIP: Get a job with benefits you welfare queen. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Pre-existing condition. 

CLIP: Your diabetes is not my fuckin' problem 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Ranked 15th in standard of living despite being the wealthiest nation.

CLIP: Move to Sweden you fucking Commie. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Raise the minimum wage.

CLIP: You're a job killer. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: Background checks on weapon purchases. 

CLIP: This isn't North Korea. 

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - HOST, UNFTR: If you can make a common sense argument based on the concept of general welfare, there's a corporation funded policy group armed and ready with a white paper, a spokesperson, a sponsor for pre written laws, and a talk show host with prepared bullet points [00:53:00] all ready to tell you why it's a communist plot to take your guns away, kill your grandparents, and turn us into Denmark.

Note from the Editor on susceptibility to manipulation

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with the majority of report, laying out some of the history of the Christian conservative movement. Ideas looked specifically at Christian patriarchy. The majority report discussed the politics of Republicans targeting young men. Straight white American Jesus explained the spiritual warfare going on. Democracy now explain the movement of extremely wealthy Christians looking to make a political impact Straight white American Jesus laid out. 

Why some tie Trump to the second coming of Christ. And unending the Republic dove into the power and influence of the heritage foundation. And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive section, but first reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics often trying to make each other laugh in the process. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new [00:54:00] members only podcast feed the chill, receive sign up to support the [email protected] slash support. 

There's a link in the show notes. Through our Patrion page or from right inside the apple podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but depending on the app you use to listen, you may be able to use the time codes in the show notes to jump around the show, Similar to chapter markers. So check that out. If regular membership isn't in the cards for you. Shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership. Because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. Now, before we continue onto the deeper dives, half of the show, a quick thought about religion and for context, I used to be. More on the angry side of the spectrum. Talking about religion and it's, you know, deleterious effects on society writ large. But over the years, you know, If you'd asked me 15 years ago, I would've been much more angry than I am now. 

Over the years, I've I've chilled and sort of come to understand it [00:55:00] as part of the human condition. Not just like, well, it's a natural thing that happens. People are going to believe in stuff that isn't true. But the reason that they're. Drawn to believe in things that aren't true. Has to do with all of us trying to get through life, you know, life's hard and we need something to grab onto every once in a while. 

And when things get harder That phenomenon ramps up even more. I think the real tragedy of it is not just, you know, believing in as the show's describing today, you know, political fantasies of things that aren't true, or depending on your perspective of. Religion in general, you may consider the religious tenants to be untrue as well. 

But like the real tragedy is how leaning too hard into faith. Leaves one. So wide open to manipulation. And that. Is a pattern that repeats itself. Throughout history, right? Which brings [00:56:00] us to this little segment from an article. Uh, describing not history, but right now this is from slate. Why we still can't grasp the actual problem of president Donald Trump. And it says, quote, For Republicans and Fox news truth no longer has anything to do with facts or even reality. 

Truth has returned to its pre enlightenment meaning Or as Miriam Webster puts it, it's archaic. Meaning fidelity, constancy. To be true in the medieval Trumpy and world is to be loyal and steadfast. It's no longer about reason or even belief. 

It's about faith. Freud had a word for this kind of primitive faith. He called it illusion people crave a godlike father figure for I'd explained, especially when they feel threatened with the eruptions of two dangers. The crushing Lee superior force of nature. And the shortcomings of society, which have made themselves painfully felt. In the [00:57:00] 21st century facing severe social inequities, just when nature seems most out of control, america is in exactly that vulnerable state. 

And so it shouldn't actually surprise us That nearly half the country's voters have rallied around a sociopathic strong man who promises protection. In return for absolute fealty in quote. 

And I think that says almost all that needs to be said on this topic. But with that in mind, I just want to tie a bow on it by sort of putting this entire topic of discussion into the category. I come back to over and over again. often borrowing a phrase from Michael Brooks. Go hard on systems, but easy on people. And this is what has allowed me to chill over the last decade or two. Understanding that the vast majority of the rank and file and the religious right. 

And Trump faithfuls are not manipulative mastermind, seeking [00:58:00] power. 

They're just regular people trying to make the most sense of a chaotic world as best they can.

Those aren't the people who deserve our anger. And that's the vast majority of them. Frustration. Sure. Maybe, But aim higher with your anger and always understand the systemic forces involved. 

SECTION A - THE MOVEMENT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up section a. The movement followed by section B Trump and the election section C patriarchy and race And section D American Christian.

How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Part 2 - Ideas - Air Date 10-18-24

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: A while back, I spoke to a large group of evangelical pastors. Now, having written the book Jesus and John Wayne, I never take for granted when I get to speak in front of evangelical pastors. It was not a given. And when I spoke to them, I started off by affirming just how hard it is to be a pastor right now.

Any pastors in the room? [00:59:00] It's pretty rough. Many pastors are at a loss. They like to think of themselves as leaders, but what they've discovered in the last few years, The cruel realization that they exert very little leadership over their flocks. 2016 was a humbling time for a lot of evangelical pastors.

Now, pastors often like to blame the secular media. In the United States, we're talking Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and discipling the flock, right? These guys get their parishioners far more hours of the week than they do on a Sunday morning. And they are absolutely right. But it's not just out there. It's also inside popular Christian culture, Christian radio, Christian publishing, organizations that platform preachers and sell products.

A lot of things are marketed and [01:00:00] sold and a lot of money changes hands under the guise of ministry. Now pastors aren't just up against an invisible hand of the market. If you push back against the status quo, which in white evangelicalism means against conservative politics and against an alignment with the Republican party, and there is a long history here, you are going up against extremely well funded and well organized political networks.

Good hearted evangelical pastors may think that the answers to our toughest questions are to be found in opening the scriptures. and reading theology, seeking truth in community and in light of tradition. But that is not how this game is being played. When I spoke to that lecture hall filled with evangelical pastors, I told them, if you are feeling [01:01:00] like you are up against a lot right now, you are.

And also, you did this to yourselves. And then I explained how, over the past century, White evangelicals had shaped their movement through exclusion and coercion, such that by 2016 the voices that they needed to listen to were nowhere to be found. 

SEAN FOLEY - HOST, CBC NETWORK: I was struck by a moment in Waterloo, and by the final paragraph of your Acknowledgements section.

You talked about people telling you that your book might have gotten into the hands of certain people if, you know, it could be a little nicer. You know, which, which is a funny thing to say about a, a very well researched history book. That's been clearly a very carefully written, uh, and in the acknowledgements you write that I'm quoting you now, but the, the analysis and conclusions found in these pages do not necessarily represent the views of many who contributed to this project, uh, including [01:02:00] friends, family, and my place of employment.

And I guess the question that comes to mind for me is what is it like to write a carefully researched history and to have to countenance. An idea of being nicer or to deal with people whose views don't align with what you understand as history. 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: Yeah. That pressure to be nice. Um, so you're allowed to critique a little bit here or there, as long as you keep it on the edges and as long as you kind of center the good guys, the heroes, uh, and, and you give Christians the starring role, then you're okay.

Um, this is not a book where. I did that. I was trying to get the story right. But here's the thing. The vast majority of books about evangelicals are written by evangelicals. And their primary goal is to make evangelicalism look good because [01:03:00] they want to recruit. They call it evangelize. And so every work is a work of apologetics.

a work of evangelism at its heart, whether it's history, whether it's a devotional, whether it's, you know, child rearing guide, all of the above. And that's just, that's not my training. That's, that's not what I do. And it never occurred to me to do so. I was trying to get the story and then let the chips fall where they may.

I didn't want to make them look worse than they are. I didn't want to make them look better than they are. But let's just look at it, sit with it. and understand it. And that's really the goal. 

SEAN FOLEY - HOST, CBC NETWORK: When you began writing this book, were you aware that you were embarking on such a sweeping history of power in, in modern, in the modern American?

Like, I felt like so many times I was reading this book, I started out reading, I'm like, okay, I'm reading a book about a very specific, community topic, but it just [01:04:00] kept zapping through into the main, this big narrative. 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: Yes. That is such an astute comment because here's a little backstory that most people aren't aware of.

Um, we had a lot of interest from a lot of different publishers and I loved all the editors I talked with except this one. And I liked him as a person just fine, but I didn't feel like we shared the same vision for the project because he told me, um, you know what you have here, Kristen. This is a new history of American Christianity.

And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm doing something much, much smaller. I'm pulling the thread of evangelical masculinity and militarism. I'm not trying to rewrite the history of American evangelicalism or of American Christianity. I'm doing something far more modest. He's like, no, you're not. Yes, I am.

And so I decided, um, not to go with him. And I landed with a fabulous publisher. No regrets there. However, let me say about two or three months after that conversation, after we had signed with a different publisher and I [01:05:00] was writing, I don't know where I was, chapter three or four at that point, and I was overwhelmed and I was like, how do I make all these pieces fit together?

And exactly what you saw, it just like kept getting bigger and it kept touching more things. And all of a sudden his words came back to me. Kristen, you're writing a new history of American Christianity, and I thought, I'm writing a new history of American Christianity, or American Evangelicalism, certainly.

You find one thread, and you start pulling it through, and you start just doing the research, doing the research, and I started to see, wow, these Evangelicals, I'm just trying to understand what they're saying about masculinity, and then it's about gender, and it's about authority, and it's about power, and it, and at a certain point, I thought, Wow.

I mean, if I didn't know any better, this sounds almost authoritarian. And then this is just, and I was initially focused on foreign policy as it intersected with this militancy. And then I thought, oh, this is very much a story of domestic politics. And it just grew. And by the time I finished it, I felt like, I think I can explain it [01:06:00] all.

So it definitely didn't start that way, but it ended that way because of where my research brought me. 

Exurbia Democracys Newest Battleground w David Masciotra - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-13-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I can picture, honestly, the town, these developments that you're talking about, you know, I had family living in a kind of town like that in Pennsylvania, right, where it used to be middle class, began to decline, but there's all these developments and kind of cul de sac areas where all the houses are newly constructed, and it fits the mold that you say, where it's upper, or it's middle class people moving in, And then eventually, I would say, there's this, there are some upper middle class people who are small business owners, which I'm curious about if that was a part of your analysis.

There was, in the wake of January 6th, there were a lot of people saying, well, these are just the working class people. It's the cry of the working class attacking the Capitol. And then weeks, in the weeks following, there was some analysis done where it goes, a lot of these folks flew in. [01:07:00] And a lot of these folks own a pool cleaning business in Missouri.

Or they, uh, have uh, Uh, some sort of, you know, small financial business in, uh, Indiana. And I think that that fits quite neatly with your analysis of some of these Trump voters. 

DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yeah, that's a crucial point. Uh, David Brooks and his brethren gave us this asinine definition of the working class, that it's just someone without a college degree.

So if you're going to think and act according to those terms, an elementary school teacher. Making 30 grand a year is not working class, but a small business owner or a tradesman making 80 to 90 grand a year is working class. That makes no sense, but it tends to be that latter category. So as you're saying, I'm a small business owners, but also people who do relatively well in the trades who populate these exurban towns and consistently support [01:08:00] Trump and consistently support people like Jim Jordan.

And Matt Gates and some of the research into January 6th is really fascinating. So for example, the number one common characteristic of people who stormed the Capitol, uh, is residency in an exurban County. Uh, where the non white population is growing and also where the black white poverty gap is shrinking.

Uh, and people who've looked at these, uh, you know, these, these wannabe aspiring fascists, uh, have concluded That it's primarily culture and identity and resentment and hatred surrounding those issues, not economics, because they're not working class by any sensible definition of the term. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So, um, where are these people working?

Like if you're out [01:09:00] in that sort of like, you know, netherworld, like, like, where are they? If I was to look at a A typical, you know, five or three typical X urban folks like, are they. Are they working remotely? Are they going in? Are they work for insurance company? Like, who is it that they, they work? What kind of jobs these people have?

How often are they going into the city or do they just work in suburbia or are there, are there, are they working in exurbia? 

DAVID MASCIOTRA: So they tend to work in suburbia. So you'll have people living maybe say 60 miles, 70 miles out of Chicago. working in suburban towns that are 15 or 20 miles out of Chicago. I, and as I was saying, they tend to be in the trades.

Many of them own their own construction firms or, uh, own their own electrician company, uh, a plumbing company. So they're, they're people [01:10:00] of that nature, you know, Petty bourgeoisie, uh, who are going into the suburbs where they previously escaped. Usually they used to live in these suburbs. That's where they built their business.

That's where they began to earn their living. Then they fled to exurbia, but most of their customer base and clientele still is in suburbia Interesting 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: and um, let's talk about the uh, the megachurches because you also uh, write that this is Um, maybe not coincidentally Um, where we find the vast, overwhelming majority of megachurches in the country are in these type of like, uh, geographical areas.

DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yeah, that's very interesting because it began as a practical matter. If you're going to build a church the size of a basketball arena, it's probably difficult and costly to do so. Well, not probably, it is difficult and costly to do so in an urban [01:11:00] area or in a densely populated suburb. So it was exurbia that had the open space and also the cheaply available land and the low, uh, property taxes, although that's a different matter because we're talking about religion.

Uh, So, the megachurches sprang up, and then they act as a magnet. for people who attend these megachurches, because many of them tend to be quite devout, and they want to move closer to their source of community, the institution that they attend, and from which they gain some sense of belonging and purpose.

Uh, so then they move closer to Xerbia, and in many of these Xerban towns, They don't have much local government. I mean, they do in nominal terms. Uh, they don't have many third places in the classic sociological sense. It's a lot of corporate chains. Uh, but what they do have are megachurches. So the [01:12:00] megachurch becomes, uh, the daycare, the source of political news and perspective.

Uh, the source of social and recreational life. And, I mean, I don't have to tell your audience why that's a big problem, because many of these megachurches, uh, at best, they preach the prosperity gospel, uh, which is destructive and insane. Uh, but at worst, they become citadels. of Christian theocratic nationalism.

Right-Winger DESPERATE For Christian Minority Voters - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-19-24

BRAD ONISHI: Well, I, I, I think there's a sense there of sometimes less is more, sometimes less. Name recognition is more, I mean, I think we're seeing this with Trump in Project 2025. Right, you're seeing more and more Americans understand what Project 2025 is, so he comes out with this incoherent rant about how he has no idea what it is and he, he doesn't believe any of it.

Well, if you don't know what it is, how do you know you don't believe it? He's just basically trying to, to do, you know, damage control. It's the same with Opus Dei. If we recede into the background, right, slowly, drip by drip, what we see over the course of the aughts in the Obama years [01:13:00] is So much funding, so much network building, right?

So much political influence coming into, uh, into cultivation. By the time we get to the Trump years, it's the Federalist Society who picks us three judges, right? By the time we get to 2022, 23, 24, we have people like the Southern Baptist convention and a Supreme court justice in Alabama condemning IVF. I mean, that is.

An overwhelming victory for the likes not only of Opus Dei, but anyone in that traditional Catholic universe. They feel enormous victory and I, I dare say enormous momentum right now. Leonard Leo's at a place where he's like, I got the court. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: He's got a billion people forgotten this, but he was given a billion with a B dollars to basically go be a, an authoritarian entrepreneur, wherever you can push this, this, uh, agenda, do it.

BRAD ONISHI: We've already got the court, in his mind, that's what he's thinking, and so let's go get the [01:14:00] state legislatures and let's go get Congress, I mean, and make Congress even worse than it is now. I mean Well, that, that, that 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: controversy, just to add to it, from, with the kicker from, uh, the Kansas City Chiefs, uh, Harrison Butker, that he was speaking at a college where, uh, Leonard Leo has connections and has donated, as well as Josh Hawley, uh, having connections to that, too.

BRAD ONISHI: Leo was the, was the commencement speaker the year before. 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep. 

BRAD ONISHI: Right? So here we have Harrison Butker, 28 year old kicker, and the year before it was Leonard Leo. And so I think that, I mean, it just follows along everything you're saying. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah. Uh, it's terrifying. Um, and 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Good thing the Democrats are in a great position to beat this back right now.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This is your cue, Brad, to say something like, Oh, but here's the good story. 

BRAD ONISHI: Well, I mean, look, I mean, I, I think, I think for me, uh, here's a couple of things we could take away, uh, perhaps is, uh, we got news of [01:15:00] stunning left center victories in France over the last couple of days. Uh, labor is in, is in power in the UK, uh, and the Tories are gone after 14 years.

Uh, whether we look to places like Mexico or the pushback on Modi, Modi in India. There are people across the world saying no to fascism. And I think for me, the hope lies in a message that says. Uh, look, I, Biden, uh, Harris, uh, whomever, we have a chance to say no to fascism. We have a no to say, we have a chance to say no to totalitarianism, and there are people across the world who have already signaled that they, uh, understand the threat and they're doing the same.

So, um, yeah, I'm not, I'm not going to prognosticate and, and I'm never going to take the foot off the gas of trying to reveal to people just what a dire situation we face right now because we do. But there's always hope and hope springs from, from organizing and togetherness. And, uh, if people are willing to like rub shoulders with other human beings, you often feel a sense of momentum and a sense of, of, uh, of hope grow.

And so that's my [01:16:00] encouragement. Go do one thing you don't usually do. And, uh, don't sit on the sidelines as we kind of descend into what could be a, a, a summer of despair.

SECTION B - TRUMP AND ELECTION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B trump and the election.

Christian Nationalist State Official Delivers TERRIFYING Proclamation - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-7-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: One of the things that I think we can look forward to in a, uh, Trump, uh, administration, uh, would be the furtherance of theocracy. Why? Because the Republican Party is, um, very, very dependent on so called evangelical, uh, Christians and Christian nationalists for its votes. And many of its elected officials are also Christian Nationalist.

Here is Ryan Walters of Oklahoma. He is the Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, and this is him just about, I don't know, almost a week ago, announcing at a news conference that [01:17:00] Bibles will be required and Bible instruction will be required in schools. 

CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST: We're gonna make an important announcement today regarding the Bible and the 10 Commandments.

My staff has been looking at Oklahoma statute. We've been looking at Oklahoma academic standards, and it's crystal clear to us that in the Oklahoma academic standards under Title 70 multiple occasions, the Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country to have a complete understanding of Western civilization.

to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system. And it's frankly, we're talking about the Bible, one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country. We also find major points in history that refer to the Bible that reference the Bible. We see multiple figures, [01:18:00] whether we're talking about the Federalist Papers, constitutional, conventional arguments, and Martin Luther King Jr.,

who use it as a tremendous impetus for the civil rights movement, and tie many of those arguments back to the Bible. It is essential that our kids have an understanding of the Bible and its historical context. So we will be issuing a memo today that every school district will adhere to. Which is that every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma in accordance with our academic standards and state law.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: All right. So you see the, um, uh, the, the sort of like, um, What is that game where you, where you shuffle the three card Monte essentially here that's going on here. Um, it may be the case that the Bible [01:19:00] has inspired different historical figures. And so the way that you, the way that you would, um, Discuss the Bible is in the same way that you would discuss any, um, other, uh, document that might've inspired people.

You'd bring it in the course of studying that person or a particular event. There's no, um, mandatory, you know, we're not mandating, um, you're not even, he's not even mandating the, the federalist papers in, in, in the, uh, classroom. And do we even mandate that the constitution be printed, you know, uh, on the walls of these classrooms?

Probably unlikely. Well, 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, if we're talking just historical documents, we should be, uh, printing out the Communist Manifesto and putting it all over the classrooms. I mean, come on, it's a historical document. A lot 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: of people say that Martin Luther King was also a Marxist. Right. We should, uh, are we going to mandate Marx in every classroom?

Yeah. And at the very least, [01:20:00] not only is that maybe a good idea, but the fact is there's no prohibition under the constitution to, um, uh, imposing marks, uh, on students in a classroom. There is a prohibition for our government to in any way, recognize an official religion or to promote religion. And forcing people to read the Bible, and again, first of all, there's multiple versions of the Ten Commandments, depending on what religion you are a part of.

There's multiple versions of what constitutes the Bible. Um, depending on what religion you are. Here's that same guy, Ryan Walters, uh, on America's Voice, explaining why he needs to put the Bible In, uh, in these classrooms. [01:21:00] 

CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST: But the reality is, as you see, the Chinese Communist Party, they're buying up land in America, they're weaponizing, um, and trying to influence anything in America they can.

And they are absolutely targeting our schools and our education centers. We saw this with the Confucius institutes, which by the way, remember. President Trump clamped down on him. Joe Biden let them back in by loosening those restrictions. And you're seeing in real time here in these last eight years, Trump presidency puts America first, puts communist China last, and the Joe Biden presidency says, well, we're going to put communist China first.

And we'll put the American interest last. So, it is so essentially a President Trump back in the White House. It's not the reality. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, I mean that, that was one of the, that was one of the mistakes I would say that Biden has made. You should not announce that Chinese Communist, uh, Communist China is first and America is last.

Why did Ron Klain 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: advise him to do that? It's 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: such a dumb thing to 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: do. Other historical documents I think should maybe be entered into the record is, uh, Thomas Jefferson talking to William Short about a [01:22:00] syllabus, uh, about Jesus, and he says, uh, Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Jesus by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence, and others, again, of so much ignorance and so much absurdity.

Absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I therefore separate the gold from the dross. Uh, yeah. So, I mean, Our, our, the Founding Fathers were deists. Um, almost all of them. Then, they would think this guy's a freak.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Also, uh, Oklahoma is, uh, 49th in education, uh, according to the, uh, Tulsa World, uh, local, local paper there. And, uh, Notice how he uses, uh, how the, it's foundational for, um, didn't he, did he say Western Civilization? He said that right in that first clip, if I'm not mistaken. Um, and so, yeah, I, I believe that was at least in the tweet itself.

Um, That is also often what you hear in the defense of Israel by [01:23:00] Zionists. And western civilization is often a substitute for, like, white supremacy. What'd you say? White supremacy. White supremacy. Or, uh, yeah, like colonial empire or power to wipe out the experiences of people who, uh, are either formerly colonized people, people who have a different religion, religious and ethnic minorities in this country.

So just notice that dog whistle. Um, because the reality is that Western civilization was built on chattel slavery, colonialism, and millions and millions of people dying. to create these systems and that's the real history that should be taught. What he's trying to teach is religious propaganda. 

Ziklag Exposed Secretive Christian Nationalist Network Tries to Purge Voters in Battleground States Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-30-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: talk about more in depth these three programs, Checkmate, Steeplechase and Watchtower.

ANDY KROLL: Yeah. You see an almost sort of wraparound, 360-degree approach to influencing the [01:24:00] 2024 election in these three groups. So, with Steeplechase, you have mobilizing conservative pastors out in America, out in the field, to mobilize their congregations to get them out to vote. And, you know, there’s some concern that maybe there’s fatigue about Donald Trump in 2024, that maybe conservative Christians won’t turn out in the numbers they did in 2016. That’s what this program is there for, getting the church as involved as possible.

You have this anti-trans operation. As Lance Wallnau says in that video that you just played, they believe that going after trans people, demonizing transgender Americans, transgender healthcare, can, quote-unquote, “deliver” swing states. That’s what Lance Wallnau himself said.

But then, this final one, I think, is, honestly, perhaps the most interesting, this Operation Checkmate, putting money into mobilizing conservative voters in key counties — not just states, but the counties — so Maricopa County in Arizona, Fulton County in Georgia, the other battleground counties in the [01:25:00] country, and then trying to put money into knocking more than a million voters off the voting rolls in these states. And you see this in a couple of ways. But what’s so interesting is how the Christian right, Christian nationalism is fusing here with the election integrity or, really, the election denial movement that grew out of the 2020 election. We didn’t have a lot of evidence of that before this reporting on Ziklag. But you see this bridge, again, between the Christian right and the election deniers in a really big way going into this election.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And how effective can they be in knocking voters off the rolls?

ANDY KROLL: A little bit of money goes a long way when you are trying to get people knocked off the eligibility list for voters. That’s what the experts, the political consultants, the folks that know these worlds, told us in the reporting for this story. You know, Ziklag is putting, say, $800,000 or $1 [01:26:00] million into something called EagleAI, an artificial intelligence software that makes it easier to challenge the eligibility of voters en masse. So, you’re not doing it one by one; you’re doing it by the hundreds, by the thousands. You don’t need tens of millions of dollars, the experts told us, to be able to make those challenges and to sort of turbocharge the effort to make voters ineligible. You only need a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe a million dollars. That’s what this group, Ziklag, appears to be doing. So, it could have an effect. And we’re talking about margins again in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, margins that are a few thousand, a few tens of thousands of voters.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And, Andy, how does the election officials in every state, especially in the battleground states, their cooperation with these efforts, how might that turn out in the coming [01:27:00] election?

ANDY KROLL: Well, you have two different camps here. You have the election officials in these states and in these counties who are just trying to run a free and fair election. What we’ve heard from those officials is that these efforts, like EagleAI or the work of the group True the Vote, another, quote-unquote, “election integrity” group — these mass challenges to the voter rolls make an already difficult job, an already stressful job, a time-consuming job, even more difficult. It’s putting just more stress on the work of these local election officials, the ones who are trying to do a good job.

And then you have the officials who have sort of bought into the election integrity claims, who have bought into Donald Trump’s election denial for 2020 or 2022 even. And for them, they are, in some places, encouraging these mass challenges. And so you might see confusion. You might see chaos. You might see voters unaware that they’ve been removed from the rolls in [01:28:00] these kinds of places. So, it’s just creating either more stress on good officials, or it’s creating more chaos with officials who buy into these baseless claims about election fraud.

NAR Watch Ep. 7 JD Vance Joins Lance Wallnau in Spiritual Warfare Part 2 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 10-14-24

BRAD ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I'm wondering how, uh, J. D. was at the Courage Tour, because my, you know, my take for months on this show has been J. D. Vance is a Catholic convert, and, and I'm happy for you to correct me if I'm wrong here, Matt, in your own mind, but to me he strikes as the kind of Catholic convert who is a very much a bro Very much into like the guy that would like say, hey, should we get cigars tonight and some whiskey and just like talk over Aquinas?

What do you think, bro? On a leather couch. Yeah, there's probably a leather couch So my point is he's always talking about how the ways Catholicism is intellectual. Catholicism has meat. He grew up around Folks in Appalachia who were Christian, but there was no head to it. It was all [01:29:00] just heart and and speaking in tongues and all kinds of stuff.

I'm wondering if he if he in your mind was comfortable. Was he? Trying to get outta there. Did he seem like, I don't really wanna be here, but the boss sent me what? You know, I'm just wondering how Vance played to this quintessential charismatic audience who's not even really like old school evangelical.

This is, this is like, as you've outlined in, in so many places in, in your work as a whole, this is a different kind of religious right. How is JD at the Courage Tour? 

MATT TAYLOR: He didn't do great. So I, I mean, all right, next question. What are the things that I'm watching for? Because it very much will be a harbinger for what will come is to find who can inherit the mantle of Trump's connection to these folks, who, what political figure [01:30:00] can take on all of the, the, the, when, when Trump.

What, whether by the hand of God, the hand of man, or he just decays into senility, who will step forward? Who will kind of take on the role that he's been playing? And you could see, even in the orchestration of this event, that Vance was trying to play a role. To that, that to cater to that audience, to speak to the new, new religious, right, this more charismatic, more populist religious, right.

Um, and, but he, he just, he came off as pretty flat footed in this event. Um, and you can tell, cause I mean, the video is online if you wanted to watch it, but occasionally they'll pan to the audience and when, when, when Lance Walno is speaking or when Mario Murillo, the, his, his kind of co host of the, the courage tours being, or really any.

of the charismatic Pentecostal folks who are speaking, you can see the audience just reacting the way the charismatic [01:31:00] audiences do when there's a good preacher. There's the amens, there's a shouting, there's the clapping. Sometimes people will, will kind of echo back what the person's saying. It was very mild with Vance.

And, and, and it, and you could tell at points that he was, he never, I don't think he mentioned being Catholic in the entire 45 minutes that he was speaking. So you just speak about Christian, but then he would use phrases that if you know what you're talking about, sound very Catholic. So at one point, he even invoked quote unquote Christian social teaching, which if, if, if many Protestants and you could very much tell from this audience had no idea what he was talking about, because the phrase is not Christian social teaching is Catholic social teaching.

And this is, this is one of the traditions within the Roman Catholic Church in the way that it thinks about politics, the way that it thinks about social issues. And yet here, Vance is trying to kind of pull these phrases and, Oh, and I've even [01:32:00] volunteered the John three 16 was his favorite first. So he was clearly trying to win these folks over, but honestly, um, he sounded even less effective than Mike Pence seemed with these folks.

Like at least, at least Pence could, could do the evangelical ease. Vance really kind of fell flat with that audience. And, and it almost was like, um, that, that there was more energy. When this pastor, his last name is Howard, was, was introducing himself. There was more like feedback from the audience, more excitement than the entire time that Vance was on stage.

Cause Vance just doesn't know how to speak to these folks. What is still shocking in some ways is that, that, that Trump can't. Because Trump comes from even a weirder world in terms of distance from this stuff than Vance does. I mean, Vance grew up around Pentecostal, charismatic, and evangelical folks.

But, but he, he, Trump has Charisma in, in [01:33:00] all the senses of that word, Vance does not, and, um, and he does not, he isn't able to kind of grab a hold of audiences the way that, especially Christian audiences, the way that Trump does. And part of it might be intellectualism. At his heart, I think, I think Vance views himself not as a populist, but as an intellectual and, and I think he tries to straddle those two ideas, but he much more comes off as the intellectual and that's just, it's not going to win him over with Walnau's audience

SECTION C - PATRIARCHY AND RACE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next Section C: patriarchy and race.

How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Part 3 - Ideas - Air Date 10-18-24

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: My book's subtitle is admittedly a bit provocative. But I wasn't aware of just how provocative it was. I thought the problem might be with the whole corrupted of faith thing, or even the fractured a nation part. But no, it was just one word. White. White. It was triggering to some. And I've been accused more than once of being racist.

simply for including white in my [01:34:00] subtitle. It was not meant to be pejorative, merely descriptive. Precise. This points us to a foundational question. What is evangelicalism? Who are evangelicals? Now, if we insist on a pure theological definition, it can be really difficult to see what whiteness has to do with anything.

But if we think of evangelicalism as a historical and cultural movement, whiteness becomes visible. If you know where to look, did you know that when the fundamentals were published, this is a series of pamphlets, booklets in the 1910s, right? That gave fundamentalism its name. These books were sent out only to white pastors and not to any black pastors, even though the majority of black pastors in the United States aligned with these doctrinal stances?

Did you know that when the National Association of [01:35:00] Evangelicals was formed, black denominations were excluded from the association? Did you know that when racial justice surfaced in its early years, And in conversations among the founders of Christianity today, it was deemed too divisive to engage directly.

Now, those with openly racist and segregationist views, they were kept inside the fold. Black pastors were kept at arm's length. Historian Jesse Curtis has shown us how the myth of colorblind Christians came to dominate white evangelical understandings of race and foster in them a benevolent understanding of themselves.

A belief in their own righteousness and innocence. And people of color who bolstered this myth were welcomed and platformed. And those who challenged it were ushered out the door. Now we've noted the marginalization and erasure with [01:36:00] respect to black evangelicals, but we also see that around the issue of gender.

There is a long history of evangelical feminism going back more than a century before Betty Friedan discovered that problem that has no name. And I know because I wrote a book on it. Christian women, evangelical women, white evangelical women were among the leading proponents of women's suffrage and women's rights more broadly in the late 19th century.

And they pointed out the dangers of the sexual double standard, of an overemphasis on gender. on female purity, which they called out as unbiblical. They offered sophisticated theological critiques of Christian patriarchy, and they were thoroughly evangelical. But they have been forgotten, or rather, they have been disappeared, because there is agency here.

Now, the result of this erasure means that patriarchy remains normative. [01:37:00] biblical, and traditional, instead of contested as it was historically and theologically. So you see how this works. If we erase this history, it's much easier to erase feminist evangelicals today. They cannot be true evangelicals. For many Evangelicals, Evangelical equals true Christian, you see where this goes.

The history of American Evangelicalism as one of gatekeeping is in many ways the story that I tell in Jesus and John Wayne.

Right-Winger DESPERATE For Christian Minority Voters - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-19-24

BRAD ONISHI: I think the, the answer though, to your central question, Sam is really this, how do you convince The black church, the Latino church to vote for Donald Trump, given his stance on, uh, the border, on immigration, on race in general, the, the Central Park five, whatever may be.

And I think the answer is let's look to people who we see in front of us, Byron Donalds, Herschel Walker, uh, you know, folks like this. The key here is to emphasize what do you want for your country? Do you want a [01:38:00] country built with strong men, strong families based on a husband and a wife, men and women, no pronouns.

No non binary, whatever that means. Do you want to have groomers and perverts in your schools or do you just want to have a candidate who will support, uh, what is the right kind of sex, the right kind of marriage, the right kind of love. Do you want that kind of country over there with the rainbow flag and the gender spectrum?

Or do you want strong men leading you into an uncertain future where we are, uh, at threat and every turn? That's the cell. The cell is lean on the patriarchy, lean on the gender structure, lean on, uh, the sense of, uh, the otherness that you talked about earlier, who is other than me. Well, the people who are, who are lesbian, gay, non binary, the people who are trans, they're more other than you than, than the, the, than the folks who are telling you that Joe Biden is better for the person of color.

Be more afraid of them, be more angry at them. [01:39:00] And that works in many of these churches. It works in many of these spaces. And so that's the sell. And that's, that's the play. That's why they call 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: her the DEI. That's why the post I think called her the DEI, um, uh, Barbie or, they just, they 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: couldn't print the N word.

So. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, but that, but the, but the point is, is that by, by saying the D E I Barbie, instead of the N word, they can then sort of appeal to, uh, uh, people of color and say like, she still represents alien ness, even though in some areas, I mean, and that, that's the, that's the point is that they've been able to sort of like convert slightly the terminology so that it can apply, it can be, it's sort of like a, together on this and that we are all purpose, racist other eyes Asian that can can work meet the the the sort of the big it where they are in some way.

Well let me I want to also final question [01:40:00] because of this I think is plays a very big part what we're seeing with the Supreme Court. Is opus de. Um, the, um, um, my understanding is, is that, uh, Scalia and Alito, at least, uh, are opus de that, uh, Leonard Leo, um, who is the, um, Who has orchestrated essentially the Supreme Court, uh, via the Federalist Society for a couple of decades, also Opus Dei.

Um, I know that Kudlow, I think, is also, uh, who was, uh, Trump's chief advisor. How does Opus Dei play with this Christian nationalism? Are they just cousins, essentially? 

BRAD ONISHI: No, they're I think, I think one of the things that I've tried to get across over the last few months Is that radical tradition, traditional Catholicism, right?

This, this very [01:41:00] overwhelmingly conservative strain of Catholicism, of which Opus Dei is a major part in that ecosystem, is at the center of what we now understand the Christian nationalist movement in this country and everything that's happening at the Supreme Court, as well as Project 2025. So let me lay it out.

The Heritage Foundation is behind Project 2025. Who starts the Heritage Foundation? Paul Weyrich. Paul Weyrich was a radical traditionalist Catholic. After Vatican II, he started going to a church that, uh, where the, the, the mass was in Greek because he couldn't stand the vernacular. He broke with his own church because he thought they were too liberal.

If you look at the life of Paul Weyrich, he is a strict male supremacist. He's a Christian supremacist, and he is somebody who believes that a dominant patriarch should be the head of the house, the church. and the government. Who is now in charge of the Heritage Foundation? Kevin Roberts, also a traditional Catholic.

Okay. So there's a long lineage of the Heritage [01:42:00] Foundation having this vision of Christian supremacism. They believe Christ is king, not in religious pluralism. They believe that Christian, their Christian value should be infused throughout the government without any question. They believe that male leadership Is the way to go, period.

So it's no, uh, uh, accident to me that Kevin Roberts gets on, uh, gets out there in public the other day after the immunity ruling and says, you know, if the left will allow it, we'll have a bloodless revolution. That's a traditional Catholic leading in the lineage of Paul Weirich, who is, uh, articulating that they are so excited for a unified executive.

In the vision of Project 2025, where a male patriarch will have almost complete control of the executive branch and perhaps the entire government, it's also why we're seeing SCOTUS. So one of the arguments I made in Politico a couple months ago is that the IVF rulings represent the Catholicization of American sexual ethics.[01:43:00] 

Evangelicals in the 60s were not against abortion. Evangelicals up until recently were not against IVF. But IVF and abortion have been Catholic, traditionalist Catholic. issues for a long, long time. So when you see the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on IVF, or you see the Southern Baptist convention, uh, condemn IVF, they're doing so at the, at the, the influence of those traditionalist Catholics, you're mentioning the folks who are, uh, not only affiliated with Opus Dei, but who are running the Federalist Society and in many ways are driving the conversation about gender and sex within those, uh, with those communities.

So if there has ever been a moment. Of overwhelmingly conservative Catholic, uh, forces dominating our politics. It is now whether you look at the Supreme Court or Project 2025. Project 2025 in its essence is a rad trad fever dream. 

How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Part 4 - Ideas - Air Date 10-18-24

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: So if you go back deeper [01:44:00] into evangelical history and into Christian history, you can certainly find expressions of patriarchy, but you can also find expressions of egalitarianism. In the 19th century, you had a lot of evangelical women who were also prominent women's rights activists.

You had evangelical women who were preaching. And in the early 20th century, that starts to change. And it doesn't change entirely, but increasingly you see that kind of fundamentalists define biblical fidelity in terms of excluding women from positions of religious authority from preaching, but it's never complete, so much so that it's It's not until the 1970s that the Southern Baptist Convention feels a need in the late 70s actually to start cracking down on all these female pastors inside the SBC.

This was not all members of the SBC by any means, but it was a powerful faction. And so they end up squeezing out not just [01:45:00] the women who are preaching, but any quote unquote moderates who supported women preaching. And this is known as the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC or conservative takeover, or as conservatives like to call it, the conservative resurgence of the SBC, right?

You know, pick your terminology there. And so, What we see happening then is this is linked with the idea of inerrancy, the way to approach scriptures, the only way to approach scriptures. And this also comes out in the late 70s, and it really takes hold during the 1980s. Now inerrancy means taking every word of the, the scripture as the literal truth, except it doesn't.

It means that when applied to select passages. 

CLIP: It's a question of authority. I think that's what makes everybody nervous, but the Apostle Paul makes that argument. I forbid a woman to have authority over a man. That's not some [01:46:00] theologian sitting out on a horse staring at a sunset coming up with this.

That's the Holy Spirit. Speaking to the church through the Apostle Paul. 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: So, women should be silent. Women should submit to husbands. Oh, absolutely. And we're going to interpret it in very rigid ways as we apply it to our current situation. You know, the story of the rich man being told to sell off his possessions.

No, no, that gets explained away. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies as yourself. Turn the other cheek. Welcome the stranger. There's a lot of pretty direct commands. Those don't get the literal treatment there. Wait, let's look at the context. Let's look at the biblical languages here. Oh, no, no, no.

You got that wrong. You don't understand. Biblical literalism and inerrancy is used to enforce this new orthodoxy, where you are outside of the Christian fold if you do not support patriarchal authority. Then they kind of rebrand it as [01:47:00] complementarianism. Then we have the growth of really influential organizations like the Gospel Coalition.

The Gospel Coalition was never a gospel coalition. It did not invite everybody in. who believed the gospel message. It was a complementarian club. You were only allowed in those spaces if you were a complementarian, and you were only allowed a position of power, certainly, if you were a complementarian man, 

SEAN FOLEY - HOST, CBC NETWORK: right?

And to be clear, complementarianism is this idea that men and women are created in a very specific way. They complement each other in a very specific way. Yeah. 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: So gender difference. Is key there, right? They compli, men and women are different. But what that means then is, you know, men like sports, women like watching on the sidelines.

Men are gifted with leadership. Women shouldn't lead. You have, you know, people like John Piper who are parsing this out. 

CLIP: Paul says in Ephesians five now as the church submits to Christ, [01:48:00] so also wives should submit in everything. to their husbands. Men take their cues from Christ as the head, and women take their cues from the church called to admire and stand in allegiance to Christ.

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: Could a woman be a police officer? Ooh, that's problematic. Could a woman give a man directions? Well, let's look, you know, ah, that's a little sketchy, too, right? Let's, you know, so, so complementarianism, um, you know, presents itself as gender difference, um, and that we complement each other, but obscure the fact that this is also a hierarchical relationship.

And then they extend it out to women's role in all of society and extrapolate from that, you know, this whole set of rules of what is and is not permissible. And complementarianism, right, has, has had an incredibly strong hold across evangelical, um, churches, organizations, and institutions. [01:49:00] 

SEAN FOLEY - HOST, CBC NETWORK: Yes. And, and I think the thing that struck me also about the book was the depth of that order of things, how it permeates women's lives in their very homes, families, relationships, identities.

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: So much so, um, and the degree to which or the ways in which it does that will, um, vary depending on where you're situated within the evangelical community. So in the more conservative. Extremes than the homeschool networks, for example, or an independent fun, a fundamental Baptist spaces. Those influenced by the teachings of Bill Gohar, for example.

CLIP: I love that definition of witnessing is taking your spiritual finger and rubbing it along the edge of a person's soul feeling for the cracks. Are there things you wish never happened? Is there guilt there? And it isn't long before they say yes. 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: You're going to get some pretty extreme versions [01:50:00] of, um, this sort of thing.

Um, even to the point of having been, uh, uh, kind of stay at home daughter movement where a woman, uh, a girl is under her dad's authority until she marries. And if the right guy doesn't come along that the dad approves of, she stays at home, does not go to college and is under the direct authority and control of her dad.

Um, even if she's in her twenties or, you know, um, so those are more extreme versions. Um, but then in more moderate or mainstream spaces, you'll still have a lot of echoes of this. And so a woman's primary role is as a wife and a mom. Women who have careers can tell stories about how they're, you know, well, well, who's watching your kids?

Well, you know, what is your, uh, what does your husband do? And you know, this kind of sense of judgment, um, the idea that, uh, a man has to have leadership. 

CLIP: So what Eve does. She seeks control. If Adam is not going to lead, I will. 

SEAN FOLEY - HOST, CBC NETWORK: Mark Driscoll, founder of Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, and co founder of the now defunct Mars Hill Church.

CLIP: She has the argument [01:51:00] with Satan. She gets confused. She sins. She gives something to her husband. He participates. She's the leader. He's the follower. And the truth is, men, hear me in this, if you don't lead your family, Satan will. 

KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: This hierarchy of authority and submission applies to the bedroom as well.

The idea that God filled men with testosterone to make them good leaders, to make them aggressive, right? You need that for leadership, they say. And, um, but then you don't have the same kind of self restraint. That's not how God made men. So it's up to women to step in. God made women to, to kind of be the moral figures.

So it's very, very important that women not tempt men who are not their husbands. It's very important because boys will be boys here and women who are married have to do everything they possibly can to meet their husband's sexual needs, whatever they may be. What that means then in the case, for example, of sexual assault.

There is quite literally always a woman to blame. Even a young girl [01:52:00] can be blamed if her dad abuses her because she somehow seduced him. A wife can be blamed in that situation, even if she knew nothing because she clearly wasn't meeting her husband's sexual needs, right? This rhetoric is abhorrent. And yet it is not uncommon inside these spaces, it's kind of the logical conclusion of these teachings that are in fact quite mainstream.

There is a deep theology here, a deep set of cultural practices, and a strong sense of community within these spaces, so it's very hard to break out and it's very hard to critique from the inside.

SECTION D - AMERICAN CHRISTIAN

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section D American Grissom. 

Spirit & Power Episode 4 Take Back that Which Was Stolen from Us The Charismatic Rituals of the Religious Right Part 2 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 10-17-24

DR. LEAH PAYNE: Today on Spirit and Power, take back that which was stolen, the charismatic rituals of the religious right. My guest and I take you on an audio tour of Flashpoint Live New Orleans, a live taping of a show from televangelist Kenneth Copeland's Victory Channel. Flashpoint is one of many conservative Pentecostal [01:53:00] and charismatic rallies and marches taking place leading up to the 2024 election, like Clay Clark's reawakened tour.

Jenny Donnelly's A Million Women, and Sean Foyt's Kingdom to the Capitol. At all of these meetings, charismatic and Pentecostal Trumpers animate conservative talking points with exuberance. My guest today shares her insights. From attending Flashpoint Live New Orleans. 

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: My name is Carrie Gaspard Hogwood. I am a doctoral fellow in sociology at Tulane University, and I study charismatic religions and that intersection with the political arena.

DR. LEAH PAYNE: Swag subscribers will recognize Carrie's voice because she also does research for spirit and power and frequently provides bonus content. Carrie, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about Attending Flashpoint. 

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: It was held at Covenant Church, which is Jesse Duplantis Jesse 

DR. LEAH PAYNE: Duplantis is a charismatic [01:54:00] televangelist known for his prosperity gospel teachings, lavish lifestyle, and his enthusiastic support for Donald Trump.

KARRIE GASPARD-HOGEWOOD: The parking lot when I got there was pretty full. They opened the doors at six, the event started at seven. And so for Flashpoint Live, for this particular event, the first day was actually the evening. It was Flashpoint Live that started at seven and I don't think we left until around nine. And then the next day it was Flashpoint.

Talks with two movie screenings and a Flashpoint live again. I did register and you get badges and a gift bag full of lots of goodies. There was a magnet with the watchman's decree. 

DR. LEAH PAYNE: The Watchman Decree on the Victory Channel website says, as a patriot of faith, I attest my allegiance first and foremost to the kingdom of God and the great commission.

Secondly, I agree to be a watchman over our nation concerning its people and their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, [01:55:00] then it goes on. Whereas we, the church are God's governing body on earth, whereas we have been given legal power from heaven and now exercise our authority, whereas we are God's ambassadors and spokespeople over the earth, whereas through the power of God, we are the world influencers.

Whereas because of our covenant with God, we are equipped and delegated by him to destroy every attempted advance of the enemy. And it goes on from there. Okay. It includes a declaration that America's executive branch of government will honor God and defend the constitution. It stands against wokeness, the occult and every evil attempt against our nation, which is a fascinating.

Trio there. And it also includes the seven mountains mandate. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a subscriber, I'm sure I hardly need to describe the seven mountains mandate, but just in case you're new [01:56:00] for charismatics, particularly those associated with the new apostolic Reformation, the seven mountains of influence that Christians are supposed to exercise God's kingdom over include media.

And Charismatics and Pentecostals already know how to do that quite well. Business, finance. Family, education, politics, arts and entertainment, and religion. So it's a very holistic vision to conquer for Christ. A watchman in the Bible is someone who guards and protects military groups, towns, cities, et cetera, from enemy incursion.

And so the people who take this watchman declaration seriously, they're not just what you see at. an average flashpoint gathering. They're not just predominantly white charismatics of a certain age. No, they are people of biblical significance. According to this decree, they are watch people. Watch [01:57:00] people don't just live in the mundane realities of this world.

They're also engaged in a thrilling spiritual. They aren't just citizens, they're watchmen and the work of the American government isn't democracy per se, it's warding off political enemies. And if you think about combining that language with the language of voting interference and guarding polling and polls, you can see that that's a very different language.

Extremist White Christian Nationalists Prepping For War w Brad Onishi Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-16-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And I'm fascinated by the usage of religious Like, iconography and justifications and grafting that onto political realities, whether it be Southern California is Eden, or whether it be Donald Trump is, uh, sacrificing himself for our sins, and, you know, he's an imperfect vessel for our political goals.

That is so infa I mean, if you could just explain that, um, as someone who grew up [01:58:00] secular. The usage of that, those religious modes of thinking and applying it to politics. 

BRAD ONISHI: You know, we really see this at January 6th, you know, a lot of, uh, so many of my colleagues, uh, religion scholars have, have done great work in addition to what we've done on our show to point out the deep and wide religious symbology at January 6th, Christian flags, appeal to heaven flags, you know, proud boys wearing patches with the Psalms quoted on them, uh, icons of Mary, statues of Jesus, prayer circles.

Why? And I think the response with January 6th, and I think in general to your question, Emma, is that there's a sense when you invite people into a story that has a sense of transcendence, a cosmic significance, you're able to mobilize them in a way that, uh, perhaps you couldn't, uh, you know, without it, uh, as Sam said, on the left, there's often this pluralistic and diverse coalition that, that is, has a hard time agreeing.

Well, if you invite people into a cosmic story that says we have to act now. [01:59:00] That, that Donald Trump is not just a candidate who, who maybe, like, likes some of the policies you like, but he's been chosen by God to save this country from a woke globalist apocalypse? You're, you're able to usher some folks into a movement and usher them in with urgency?

have without those, you know, those religious or or pious symbols. And so I think they have a really important function in these movements past and present. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the the Democrats are trying to do a similar thing in terms of saying that he's an existential threat. It's a lot harder to do because we do not have a framework for any of it.

And we don't have those. Um, you know, we don't have that natural cohesiveness. Um, and that we don't have the sort of like a accoutrements, I guess, to maintain that. Is it when these directives come down, like how much of it is, [02:00:00] who's the policeman? Like is it God? And I know, I know it's like even just, I know the act of, of, of sort of pulling these strains apart are.

Is is conceptually not how it works. It's really just a way for us to understand but how much of it is like God or is it you know that the vehicle for God is my pastor. Or is it the community when I go to, you know, to dinner, uh, or I go to friend's house, like how, who's, where is, where are the different forces of maintaining discipline?

BRAD ONISHI: I think that one of the things that's, that's helpful is to think about something like Christian nationalism as an identity and as living out a story. That if we, if we do what my first year students [02:01:00] do all the time and say, Hey, religion's about belief, right? We're just going to learn about what Hindus believe and what Buddhists believe.

Uh, we, we kind of get off track because what it's really about is an identity that gives people a character to play. There's some data out there that shows us that there's many people who haven't been to church in a long time who will tell you in a survey that they think the country, the federal government should declare this a Christian nation, that they believe our laws should be based on the Bible.

And yet you say, that's great, Jeff. When's the last time you went to church? And they say, I can't remember, maybe 2020, right? And so what that tells me is this is about an identity and a story to play. Well, then the question I think you're asking, Sam, is, well, how do I plug into that story, right? How do I plug in and play a part?

And what we're finding increasingly is, yes, it's pastors and churches. They're important. But those pastors and churches are just part of a kind of, uh, a network of voices. Uh, and those voices are, you know, across the media landscape. They're across the political landscape. So one of those is going to be Trump and his MAGA [02:02:00] lieutenants.

Others are going to be the Charlie Kirk's and the Ben Shapiro's and the others in the right wing media. And so by the time somebody enters church on a Sunday. There's a really good chance they've had eight or ten podcasts, YouTube channels, uh, uh, you know, other outlets, uh, Fox News and Newsmax that have informed their understanding, not only of politics, but of religion.

And so if their pastor doesn't confirm that, what we're finding is they often are just going to find a new pastor. So if you're a pastor in this day and age, even if you're not a hardcore MAGA person, you really have to make a choice. Do I get on board? save my job, probably get a couple hundred more people in the door on a Sunday, or do I disagree, take a stand and probably find myself without a job or a career and just kind of have to start over even though I'm 48 and I've never done anything else.

So I guess my point here is, I think we need to see the cultivation of this discipline and, and this worldview as multifaceted, but it's all, it's all sort of disciplined by [02:03:00] Are you on board with it is understood as a broad conservative conservatism outlined by Trump and, uh, the, the, the elites at hand and, and those come down to family, they come down to gender, they come down to immigration, they come down to sex, and, uh, those have been raised to the level of doctrine, 

NAR Watch Ep. 7 JD Vance Joins Lance Wallnau in Spiritual Warfare Part 3 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 10-14-24

MATT TAYLOR: Yeah. One of the things that, that, um, this also calls to mind for me, cause I've been, I've been doing quite a bit of, of comparisons and trying to look at, you As you have these more authoritarian style movements emerging within democracies, what, what is the path that they, they, they forge?

How, how did, how did they get to power? And then who do they go after as they start to come to power? And, and one of the things that's very striking in that, in that, Um, research, if you, if you dig into it is when, when these authoritarian groups emerge, especially when they're very ideological, um, on one side of the political spectrum, they, they don't, they, they [02:04:00] actually really like having foils who are opposite them on the political spectrum.

So like, like while now the attempt to link me to the far left or pretend that I'm, I'm somehow being funded by far left causes really fits his narrative that, that, Oh, he is, he's crusading, I mean, Wallnau, who was there on January 6th, who I argue in my book, was, was one of the most influential, um, Christian leaders mobilizing Christians for January 6th, was supposed to speak at a rally on January 6th.

But, but, Wall Now, uh, has maintained that it was Antifa and the FBI that caused January 6th. And so, but, the, the, so, that attempt to label centrists and moderates as the far left is actually part of the strategy for authoritarian movements. Because, the, the, when, when you have the far, uh, real far left actors, they can kind of play off of that.

But people who are, I'm pretty darn centrist in my politics. I mean, I am registered independent as, as an evangelical. I voted for George [02:05:00] W. Bush twice after I left evangelicals, I voted for Barack Obama twice. So it's like the, I, I really do have him kind of right around that median voter profile, um, as close as maybe you can find in, in, in real life.

And, but he wants me to. He wants to push me off to the left because it is much easier to caricature. Whereas if I'm coming in and actually voicing my, it's using my voice as a Christian to challenge his theology. And, and you see this, this dynamic playing out with David French or Christian Cobb as you may, right.

People who have chosen. To inhabit more centrist identities and positions in this argument. I think actually come in for greater castigation often because they are more inconvenient foils. They're, they're critics that that wall now and his, his ilk don't want because they, they really want to be able to.

Portray themselves as, as being mainstream [02:06:00] and try to cast any critic as extreme. 

BRAD ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it also is just a window into the thinking that we've talked on the show about a lot, which is Unless you're with him, you're against him. And to be against him means to be a left wing nut.

There, there are no moderates. There are no Christians who don't agree. There's just Christians, and then left wing nuts. And so, I think that's right. Let's move, let's move into something that I think got a lot of press, and I'll admit I saw so many headlines, I saw so many tweets, I saw so many Instagram posts.

I saw very little meat on the bone in terms of analysis, and that is Pennsylvania, Lance Wallnau, is joined by J. D. Vance at the Courage Tour stop. Would you help us understand first, what happened that day? You know, in terms of content, we can analyze what it means here in a minute, but what actually took place with J.

D. Vance? Stopping by to hang out with Lance Wallnau at the Courage Tour. 

MATT TAYLOR: So the Courage Tour is, um, [02:07:00] it's, it's a voter, a very highly targeted voter mobilization, um, operating as an adjunct to the Trump campaign, um, sponsored by Turning Point USA and the America First Policy Institute, run by Lance Wallnau, um, and, but it masquerades as a revival tour.

And I, I've been trying to call attention to this for quite a while, and there's a bunch of other researchers in the space who are also very, very concerned about the Courage Tour, um, because it, it, it's, it's a more NAR version of Reawaken America in many ways. So premised on, 2020 election denialism premised on kind of this very far right vision of america, but then Just injected straight into the heart of our swing states and and this voter mobilization effort and One of the things we've also been really calling attention to is this effort that they have and we've talked about this on on the podcast before to to enlist Conspiracy theory believing [02:08:00] 2020 election denying Christians to be election workers in the swing states, people are actually counting the votes and and and then kind of trying to orchestrate and set pieces on the board to uphold claims of election fraud if Trump has declared the loser.

So it's a very concerning manifestation of this hand in glove dynamic between the charismatic Christian far right and the Trump campaign. 

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991. Or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Ideas, The Majority Report, Democracy Now!, and Straight White American Jesus. Further details are in the show notes. 

Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work [02:09:00] helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or a purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes. 

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So coming to from far outside, the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the best of left podcast coming to twice weekly. Thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from best of left.com.