On with Kara Swisher - God, Money and Trump with Tim Alberta

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Tim Alberta is a fantastic reporter whose profiles of 2024 hopeful Nikki Haley and former CNN boss Chris Licht proved illuminating and impactful (Licht lost his job days after). In his latest book, Alberta has profiled not a person but a movement: the evangelical church. It’s a community that rallied around Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and will likely do so in 2024. And it’s one Alberta knows well: his father was an evangelical pastor. Alberta’s new book, “The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism” takes him back to his hometown church to understand how the evangelical church has reshaped American politics. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Claude Sonnet can generate code, help with writing, and reason through hard problems better than any model before. You can discover how Clalawed can transform your business at anthropic.com slash clawed. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. And just in time for Christmas, Kara, we are going to church today. No, we're not.

Kind of. I haven't been in a church in a real way since I was confirmed at 13, and then I've not gone in as a religious person since. Well, we're going back virtually today with our guest, Tim Alberta. He's a fantastic journalist, a staff writer since. Well, we're going back virtually today with our guest, Tim Alberta. He's a fantastic journalist, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of a new book called The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,

American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. It's a heavily reported book, and it looks at the power of the evangelical church in our supposedly secular country. And Alberta's an insider here. Yes, yes. He himself grew up in an evangelical home. I think he still is.

And he talks about it. And so, you know, he's better known as a journalist, but he's been sort of looking at the changing nature of our politics a lot before this. He's probably best known this last year for this Chris Licht interview he did at CNN that lost Chris Lick his job. But in general, he's been focused on sort of the changing viewpoints across the country, especially around conservatives, especially around church-going people. Yes. And his father was an evangelical pastor in this bright red suburb of Detroit. His mother worked at that same church, which he revisits in his reporting in this book. What were your big takeaways? I thought it was, I think he's a wonderful writer.

And so I've read a lot of books of the evangelicals and, you know, they sort of read the same, but Tim is so good at storytelling and narrative and involves himself in it. It becomes a really interesting journey for him to get some revelations about why are the evangelicals doing what they're doing? And it's been, you know, since Jerry Falwell and the power of the church. Liberty University. Liberty and stuff like that. But more than that, there are tons of those people. It is kind of interesting how much power and religion have moved together in a way that

maybe it's always been there, but using the power of the pulpit in terms of politics. Yeah. Well, I mean, according to his book, it's been there for at least 50 years. Yeah. But this book, to me, it was revelatory because of his personal connection, and covers the rise of this political movement that has its, you know, roots all the way back to Reagan and beyond. Yeah, I remember it. I was a young person then, and to watch it happen was really something else. Not just him, there were so many evangelicals around Reagan, and that's where they really sort of just tap into this very

potent political power they had. And they themselves then decided they had some things they wanted after years of godless people getting what they want from gay rights to gay marriage and adoption to abortion and things like that. And he makes that distinction in the book of like the evangelicals who put God first and the evangelicals who put politics first. There's a divergence in them. And obviously, Trump, we all remember that picture of Trump in the Miami megachurch with people praying over him and hands on him. I love to do that. Do you think he's a pawn of the evangelical church?

No. The church is a pawn of Trump. Neither. It's a mutual, whatever they're doing. Symbiotic relationship. You know, I think he sees the power in it, and he's taking advantage of him, and they have their sort of hate the sin, love the sinner kind of thing. They think he's a—some of them have gotten to the point where they think he's a vessel, a broken vessel that his God has brought down. You hear a lot of that.

They're very—he's become a religious figure for them. a broken vessel that his God has brought down. You hear a lot of that. He's become a religious figure for them. However flawed he is, they make excuses for all his flaws, which are myriad. Yes. And obviously, the apogee now is with Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House. This is a very, very religious person. Not a little religious, very. It's fueled everything of his. You know, when he said, I get my rules from the

Bible, he gets his rules from the Bible. So, you know, now there are very powerful positions in our government and obviously a big ally to President Trump, former President Trump. Very much. And I think it was Tom Edsell in the Times called Mike Johnson, the embodiment of white Christian nationalismism in a Tailored Suit. Fine tailored suit. Yeah, he has nice suits. One of the things that's fascinating about this book is just the level of reporting that Tim Alberta has done, the absorption of his own personal story into it, which has him in confrontation with Rush Limbaugh.

And what his reporting, because he's a great political reporter, his reporting has led him to discover about this church he grew up in, in many ways. Yeah, it was great. It's a journey. It's his journey, but he tells a bigger story, and he's a wonderful reporter and a very beautiful writer. So it's a pleasure to read. Speaking of journeys, you're not going to let him get away without asking him about Chris Lick's journey. I'm not.

I shall not. How his own reporting, Tim Wilberta's reporting, was really the death knell of the former CNN boss and the former guest of all. It wasn't his reporting. It's everything that came out of Chris's mouth. I like Chris personally, but he said stupid things, and Tim wrote it down. He does these fantastic

profiles where people tell Tim everything. I can't believe the things they say. People say things to me like that too, but he's just sort of the old style magazine journalist who really just sits and sits and sits until the person hangs themselves beautifully. Sometimes it doesn't take that long. I mean, one of the most fascinating profiles he did was with Nikki Haley in 2021. You remember that? It was cover story for Politico. It starts with him recounting the phone call she makes to Trump after the election where she says, you're my president, but you're also my friend.

And then the kicker is that he asks her at the end, you know, is Donald Trump still your friend? And now this is days after January 6th. And she says, well, you know, friend is kind of, I'm paraphrasing, but she's like, friend's a loose term. Yeah, for politicians, everything's a loose term. Well, you'll have to ask him if Chris Lick would still consider Tim Alberta a friend. I shall. Let's take a quick break, and we'll be back with Tim Alberta. Fox Creative.

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And I have evangelicals in my family, so I spent a lot of time thinking about this. But let's start with you. This book starts with the dedication in loving memory of Pop, Reverend Richard J. Alberta, A Sinner Like His Sons. Talk about your dad and why you say he was a sinner like his sons. Thank you, first of all, for the kind words there about the book. It's a question I haven't gotten, and I'm glad you asked it. I think I wrote it that way because it was really, really hard, really challenging to write a book in which I feel like I was almost wrestling with the ghost of my father in some sense here. Because I love my dad and he was a great guy. He was a great dad.

He was a great husband. He was a great neighbor. But he had faults and he had flaws like we all do. And I think if there was one thing he taught me, it was not to try and emulate him, but to try and emulate Jesus. And that's what I've tried to do, however, That's what I've tried to do, however, imperfectly, and it's what I want my sons to do as well. And so it was just sort of my way, I think, of trying to acknowledge that my dad, who was a wonderful person, was a sinner, and he got things wrong. And by the way, I'm going to get a lot of things wrong too. get a lot of things wrong too. But that doesn't change who I am ultimately, who my, you know, what my identity is as a Christian, as a believer in Jesus, and that that's okay to fall short and to be imperfect in that way. Can you, I was going to ask this later, but I'll ask you this now, is talk about your religion, your faith. How do you think of it? You know, it's interesting. When you're a pastor's kid,

you feel like you're sort of riding the coattails of your parents and their religion. And that's, I think, for a lot of us, but at least just for speaking for me, that's a hard thing to sort of grow out of. I'm almost envious of people who come to faith much later in life. Like, my wife became a Christian in her 20s, and she envies me, I think, because I grew up in Sunday school and have been reading the Bible since I was like four. But like, I envy her in a lot of ways. Like, I don't even remember making the decision to be baptized. I was just baptized when I was like six, because that's what you did, right? I think for me, as I've grown older, and this was kind of part of the journey I wanted to take people on in the book, it was

becoming more and more enamored with and in love with this figure of Jesus, while simultaneously becoming more and more disillusioned with sort of institutional Christianity, and trying to understand or at least make sense of or reconcile those two things, which at surface level to some people may be irreconcilable, right? You know, Jesus refers to the church as his bride, like, you know, that we are supposed to love our spouses like he loves the church. And I do believe that it is paramount for believers to be together, to commune together, to worship together. But I also think it's, and this is a conviction that it took me a long time to really reach and become comfortable with,

I think it's really important for believers to hold the church accountable and to hold each other accountable in ways that— This is just the institution, which Jesus did. In which Jesus did, in which Paul did, in which Peter did, and, you know, like, there's—but that's an uncomfortable thing, Kara, for a lot of people and a lot of tribes, if you will, to sort of air the dirty laundry or to say the uncomfortable part out loud. That's hard. Struggle of the Catholic Church, to call on the Catholic Church with so much damage. This book came out, it was right after your dad died, and obviously had enormous influence on you. And what set you off, and I can see this is very dramatic actually, and you've talked about it quite a bit, is one of the elders of your father's church, someone you knew and admired,

wrote you a letter just hours after the funeral attacking you for your first book, American Carnage, about the rise of President Trump. Let's hear a clip from your audio book. He had composed this note on the occasion of my father's death to express just how disappointed he was in me. Let's hear a clip from your audiobook. treason against both God and country, and I should be ashamed of myself. However, he assured me, there was still hope. Jesus forgives, and so does he. If I could use my journalism skills to investigate the deep state, he wrote, uncovering the shadowy cabal that was sabotaging Trump's presidency, then I would be restored. He said he was praying for me. That was something. There's a lot to unpack. What was going through your mind at that moment? Well, you know, this was hours after I delivered the eulogy at my dad's

funeral. Classy, dude. Classy. Yeah, yeah. Well, and that eulogy even cara i had to rewrite the night before because um at my dad's viewing a bunch of people had basically gotten in my face and confronted me about trump and about politics and about my first book which because it had just come out it was in the news and rush limbaugh was like ripping me in his show. And so, and so like my dad's in a box and I've got all these people wanting to argue about politics. And I think it was just, I guess, what did I think? You know, there are these moments in your life where something that has been sort of an abstraction, something that you know is a problem,

but maybe you're ignoring it consciously or subconsciously, or you're just kind of setting it to the side and you don't want to confront it, you don't want to have to deal with it. But then it suddenly becomes very concrete and very urgent and almost threatening. And I guess that's how it felt, is because I'm thinking to myself, if I, as the son of this beloved pastor

of over 25 years in this church community that I've been a part of since I was in Pampers, and these people have known me my entire life, if this is how they're willing to treat me in this moment of great hurt and vulnerability and heartache, then how are they treating the rest of the world? Not well. Not well. I can answer that question for you, not well. I had a similar experience with an evangelical uncle who wrote me about being gay, and it was really quite something to get.

It was shocking, actually. Anyway, you wrote that evangelicals after the Trump presidency divided to two camps, one side faithful to the eternal covenant, the other side seduced by earthly idols of nation and influence and exaltation. This sounds like a preacher, son. But how do you feel now after four years of being essentially embedded with evangelicals? Because I do think they're painted like all groups, whether it's Hispanics or gay people, they're all the same, right? They do tend to do that. So how do you now split them or put them in groups? You know, I think we're talking about tens of millions of people, right?

Absolutely. So there's this vast spectrum. And yes, at the one end, there are some of these folks who are just shameless in their hypocrisy and who are craven and who are... Jerry Falwell Jr., we'll get to him next, but go ahead. Oh, yeah, we can name some names if you want to name some names. Craven is an excellent word, yeah, yeah. You know, but then I think at the other end of the spectrum, Kara, I've met so many people who are just like,

just exemplars of what one would hope a Christian would be and who are desperate to rid the church of this corruption and this ugliness. And so, you know, and then you've got so many people in the middle who are like, it's almost, there's this tension, right? There's a real, there's almost a, you know, to sound grandiose about it, but like a kind of a struggle for the soul of the church right now. And that is what I saw. Republican Party, it's the same thing. It is. It's almost eerily parallel to the Republican Party in a lot of ways. And I think part of that parallel is how what was once the fringe has sort of become the mainstream, both in the Republican Party and in the church. And the question is, okay, for those who were

the mainstream, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to push back and try to reclaim it, or are you just going to stay silent and go along? Yeah. So, let's talk of name names. The confluence of conservative politics and religion, this is not new. I remember early Jerry Falwell, the religious right during the Reagan administration, but really Republican politics that permeates the evangelical movement. Talk about versus Jerry Falwell, senior at Liberty University. I think he's really one of the wellstones of this whole thing. He is. I mean, he's sort of the godfather in a lot of ways. You know, like, it's funny, I've had a couple people ask me, well, like, how far back does this go? And I'll say, well, you know, it sort of goes back to the Garden of Eden, right?

Like, you know, bad decisions get made. But really, for our purposes here, I do think that it dates back to the mid-70s. And I think it dates back even before the moral majority. I think it dates back to Liberty University. Just for people who don't know, Falwell launched the moral majority in reaction to President Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Southern Baptist, self-described born-again Christian who is still building habitat for humanity homes at 95, who to me is the exemplar of a Christian. But go ahead. No, that's a great—in 15 seconds or less, that's about the best framing one could do. So, yes. So, Falwell launches the moral majority. But even before that, and this is why I chose to

start the Falwell section of the book with liberty. So Falwell had built this large Baptist church, right, in Lynchburg, Virginia. And he had tapped into the medium of television better than anybody had. He was a really brilliant salesman, businessman. And he was reaching, there was a point at which he was being telecast more than any other program in the United States, like across the country. So, he was really quite successful in getting his message out. But he felt like the church alone wasn't enough, that he needed sort of a cultural stronghold to fight back and kind of, you know, defeat the left and defeat the secularists, all of this. So, he takes this little school with like a couple of thousand kids, which had been founded in theory to give

a Christian education to college students. And they changed the name from Lynchburg Baptist College to Liberty University. And they changed the colors from gold and green to red, white, and blue. And they basically, like everybody now is obsessed with this term of Christian nationalism. And what does it mean? Well, really, like some of the early seeds of Christian nationalism are planted then and there in the 70s in rural Virginia as Jerry Falwell then merges his Baptist church with his Christian school and then builds the moral majority. And those three things sort of working in tandem,

Falwell builds out this massive machine, and they effectively weaponize Christianity, not as a means to heal the sick and to comfort the brokenhearted and to take the gospel of Jesus to all the nations, but to dominate American culture politically, culturally, legally. And they were extraordinarily successful in doing so, but it obviously came at a significant cost. Yeah, yeah. And it was about the culture wars, especially around big wage issues like abortion, homosexuality, religion in schools, which gave them a lot of power. You call it the evangelical industrial complex. Talk a little bit about this kingmaking and the focus on money, which was something that I think a lot of people within Inside Liberty were surprised by. Yeah, I think you can't discuss the whole Christian complex here, the modern evangelical movement, without thinking

about the financial incentives. A couple of people have been surprised recently when I've said, you know, all of this rhetoric around Armageddon for America and the, you know, barbarians are at the gates and the sky is falling and our country is at the brink of oblivion. I'll say, you know, the sky is falling and our country is at the brink of oblivion, I'll say, you know, they didn't believe it back then. At least today, because of the way that conservatives feel like the culture wars are lost, like at least some of them believe it now. And that explains some of the crazy urgency and the sort of manic clinging to Donald Trump as their strong man to fight in the arena for them. But back then in the 70s and in the 80s, it is clear, abundantly clear from the writings

that I've looked through and the interviews I've done with Falwell seniors, contemporaries, they didn't believe this, but they were so good at preying upon the fears and the grievances and the resentments of folks who really didn't know better. And what they were best at was taking money from these people. And they had this incredibly sophisticated, Falwell and his moral majority, incredibly

sophisticated fundraising apparatus where basically every week it was a new message of doomsday that, you know, we are nearing collapse. And, you know, if you care about preserving Judeo-Christian America, send us $5 today, right? And they created this machine. It was so effective. And that created then a model, a blueprint that many, many others then replicated. Yes, Ralph Reed, Focus on Family. But one of the people who I think is just seems like a clod that you write about a lot is Jerry Falwell Jr., the son of Jerry Falwell.

And I think Jerry Falwell could have run any corporation, just very talented at what he did, right? Even if you didn't like him. But one of the people you clearly see squarely in the seduced by earthly idols camp, there's a lot of hot takes and scoops from Falwell Jr. that are getting a lot of attention. He told the name Liberty had nothing to do with theology. It was just a marketing thing that his dad used to appeal to patriotism at the time, and that champions of Christ was just a tagline. Why in the world did he say that to you? I kept thinking drinking. Drinking is all I could think of. Go ahead. Yeah, no comment, but yes. Listen, I've spent a lot of time around

Liberty, even before I started writing this book, but definitely since in the last few years. I've gotten to know a lot of people there. There are some wonderful people associated with Liberty University. And for the former president and chancellor of the school to come out and say that Champions for Christ was just a tagline is, it's devastating both because it's so insulting, but it's also devastating is where I sort of end the book at Liberty University with this professor who's a legacy there. And this professor says to me, like, you know, the worst thing about Jerry Jr. building out this, like, culture war Republican empire thinking that he was fulfilling the vision of his father is that he was right. That was the vision of his father. That's right, that's right. And we have been unwilling to grapple with that. We at Liberty have been unwilling to grapple with that. And I think that's incredibly brave on his part to acknowledge that. He also said he should have fired everyone

in top leadership when he took over because his dad, quote, didn't have the money to hire people who were honest and competent. And then he railed against the new leadership brought in to replace him at Liberty after the scandal, including his own brother, saying the university was choosing piety over competence. Just, you know, this guy, well, at least he's telling the truth, I guess, in some way.

Because who needs piety at a Christian school? Yes, right. We wouldn't want that. No, but he also was a great, good businessman. He increased Liberty's assets by 900% in the decade to over $3 billion. According to your book, he grew the matriculated student base to over 100K, many in lucrative online learning space. They're very good at internet. They're religious, right? Liberty's sports teams went Division I. This is prosperity gospel kind of things,

which was part of their thing, the idea of prosperity, and if you give, you get, and if you're rich, God has blessed you. How do you assess his business acumen versus his personal behavior, which seemed a little sloppy? Well, and to isolate for a moment on that point you just made, Kara, because it's so important about the prosperity gospel and this idea for so many of these folks that, well, clearly, clearly we're doing things right because look at all the money coming in. God has blessed us here. And it's really, I think in the context of Jerry Jr., important to keep that in mind, that over all these years, as his behavior is getting worse and worse and worse, and he's sort of imploding, he's almost like begging for someone to take him down with the way that he's acting. Explain what he did, drinking and partying.

I mean, he's drinking, he's posting all kinds of crazy, provocative, unprofessional things. That tummy picture was something else, yeah. You know, he's got a video at one point of he's in the weight room at Liberty, the student weight room, and he's got these two pretty young girls standing on like a bench press bar, and he's got it resting on his pelvis, and he starts thrusting it sexually. And then he posts the video himself to Instagram, and people are like, what is going on with this guy? So you might wonder, well, how could he possibly have gotten away with all of this? So the answer is yes, in part, all of the financials that you were just stating. And he is a really, really smart businessman. But it's also this sense of,

well, and by the way, the same thing was true with his father. I've talked to all these people who worked in the moral majority back in the 80s who said the same thing, that they felt gross, they felt like they needed a shower after work, that this thing that they were doing, basically stealing money from like these retirees in the middle of the country, telling them that the secular leftists were coming for their children, that they felt so kind of gross about it. And yet, they kind of kept justifying to themselves, well, yeah, but look how well we're doing. Like, clearly God is invested in this effort. God has blessed this effort.

Right. And that psychology is really hard to unravel. Well, it actually makes sense when you lead it to Donald Trump, which is perfect. Because in this behavioral kind of thing, just whatever it takes, the successful boss and businessman, not particularly successful, a winner, and I put that in quotes, and therefore blessed. Of course, this is all, much of it is fake. Falwell Jr.'s was not as fake as Donald Trump's has been, but huge supporter and fan of Trump, Falwell Jr. He gave him an honorary doctorate in 2012, called him one of the greatest visionaries of our time, was an early endorser back when other evangelicals were not pleased with him because, you know, this guy is like an ad for sinner. Why do you think Falwell got on board so early?

It was very important to Trump, I think. Yeah, I think it was symbolically important to Trump, and I think it was symbolically important to Falwell Jr., too, because here was a guy who, when he took over for his dad, he, in his defense, he went around telling anybody who would listen, I'm not a pastor, I'm not a religious leader, I'm not a theologian, I'm a businessman, right? And that's, and so Falwell Jr., when I say in his defense, like, he did not go around acting holier than thou or pretending to be holier-than-thou or pretending to be holier-than-thou, he, I think more than almost anybody else at Liberty, really had this vision that Liberty was a Republican right-wing, culture-warring institution, like a stronghold to fight against the left. And so he viewed Trump

And so he viewed Trump in this kind of unique way where a lot of evangelicals, they do now, but back then, back in, you know, 2015, 2016, they just saw this lifelong Democrat, this pro-planned parenthood, you know, thrice married casino-owning charlatan who shared none of their values, so how could he possibly represent them? Whereas Falwell Jr. had sort of long ago made peace with the fact that Christianity, in some sense, was sort of a means to an end. And that if you could enlist the right allies, it didn't matter if they held your same values, that they could help you and that they could be of great service to you. And that's polarized. Trump and Maga Movement have polarized the church quite a bit,

much more so than I think people realize. And you say that Trump, quote, transformed evangelical from spiritual signifier into a political punchline. He was clearly an unlikely candidate for evangelical support, yet they idolize him. He has between 76 and 84% of the still of the white evangelical vote in 2020. It's still very high. What's your explanation of this? You went around, what is it? And this person who wrote you this letter in the middle of your father's funeral, and these people who attacked you. So, Kara, I will not get deeply theological here, but let me get a little bit theological. Okay. Please do. I will not get deeply theological here, but let me get a little bit theological.

Okay. Please do. So, the great warning throughout Scripture, there are a couple of them, and they tie together. One is against idolatry. Another is against fear. And in fact, the most frequently cited command throughout Scripture, Old Testament and New Testament is fear not, right? One of the reasons for that is that fear is just as powerful as faith. Fear and faith are really like arch enemies in a lot of ways. There's this famous scene, of course, where Peter sees Jesus walking on the water and says, if that's really you,

command me to come out to you. And Jesus says, come. And Peter starts walking on the water, and this is amazing, and everybody can't believe what they're seeing. But then this crazy storm, this tsunami happening on the waves, Peter looks around and sees it and becomes incredibly frightened. And he starts to sink underwater. And Jesus comes and grabs his hand and pulls him up and says, you of little faith, right? Why did you doubt? What we're dealing with here is an epidemic of fear in the evangelical movement. is an epidemic of fear in the evangelical movement. Fear that is rooted in the ephemeral stuff that we are told not to idolize. Our country, our community, our politics, even our family, our jobs, our financial security. That might sound a little crazy to people who aren't necessarily

versed in scripture, but there is an idea presented to us again and again and again that to really truly love Jesus and to follow him, you have to leave behind everything else. And that's just, that's bedrock doctrine to the Christian faith. And I think this idea of America being under attack, that we're losing our status. By the devil, which is the Democrats, right? That's what it's become. Yes, totally. It's spiritual warfare, right? That partisan politics have now become like a proxy for good versus evil.

And they're not hiding the ball on this anymore. It's not like they're just winking at you. No, no, no. They're saying it. They're saying it out loud now. But fear, of course, Fox News played a huge role here. Obviously, we've seen a revolving door of evangelists on Fox News. There's an overlap. Talk about the power of that, because it is preaching. They are preachers, even Rush Limbaugh is a preacher to me.

You know, the interesting thing is that, and I didn't live through this, but I've done a lot of research and talked to people who were around at the time. A lot of this sort of end times prophesying, conspiracy theory peddling stuff that evangelicals used to consume was from pastors and from televangelists, right? In the 70s in particular, who would, you know, these people would marinate for hours a day in the cassette tapes or in the talk radio stuff. And then there was almost this natural segue from that into the Rush Limbaugh era, the Fox News era. It's the same thing. When you talk to pastors now, particularly older pastors, guys maybe in their 60s or even 70s who have seen the whole arc of this, they will just sort of shrug and say, it's the exact same thing. 25 years ago, I used to struggle to get my flock's attention

away from all these charlatans on their TV and on their talk radio who were giving them this crazy end times prophecy stuff, trying to scare them for their money. And now I'm doing the exact same thing. It's just with Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, right? It's really no different. It's different in degree maybe, but not different in kind. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Indeed. If you need to hire, Thank you. that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash podcast.

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That was a Falwellism, as I recall. But it really turned, the culture war becomes much different. The enemies shifted from outside the church to people within your church who didn't think the way you did. It requires a certain level of get in line or get out. And you saw this in your father's former congregation and many others. Talk about this moment, the COVID moment. Yeah, that's exactly right, Kara. I'm glad you brought it up because I think, my hunch is that 50 years from now, 100 years from now, when historians and sociologists are sorting through this whole era trying to make sense of things in terms of the crack up of evangelicalism, it's going to be less about Trump, less about some of these other culture war things.

I think COVID-19 is actually going to be the lead of the story because what COVID did was it sort of represented in some sense the fulfillment of prophecy. I mentioned earlier how for decades people had been marinating in this message of, you know, Christianity is going to be persecuted in this country, that to defeat God, you must first defeat America because we are his chosen nation. And to cede any ground in this war to the secular leftists who want to destroy our way of life and eradicate God from public life, we have to stand our ground. So when Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer and others come along during COVID and say that you have to shut down your church for a couple of weeks or a couple of months or whatever it is, depending on the blue state, that became like an apocalyptic flashpoint inside a lot of these congregations where you had a lot

of people standing up and saying, we knew this day would come. Here it is. Pastor, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to stand firm in your faith and hold your ground for the gospel, or are you going to cower and give in to these evil progressives who want to shut us down? And now, mind you— Or take away our faith, etc. Well, and now, mind you, Kara, like, if you pulled up to church on a Sunday morning and the cops and the fire department were out front and said that there's a gas leak and that if you go inside, you're going to die, then would you think that that's the government,

like, coming for Christianity? Or would you think that that's sort of a common- measure that one might take to stay safe right yes but when you it's so hard in these moments to to assign kind of rational thinking to the idea of supernatural conflict of great spiritual warfare playing out and and that's what we saw during the COVID pandemic, and it fractured congregations in ways that we've never seen before. Yeah. Now, and it was a Trump message, too, that seemed to align. The pastors followed the law were labeled weak, and the evangelicals should distrust any believer who strayed from absolutist, including Vice President Pence, who is very religious, is extraordinary religious,

turning on him for the idea is we have to get rid of the weaker of our flock. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, and your point a minute ago about the threat once being external, but now being internal, I think is exactly right. I mean, I spent some time in the book following around Charlie Kirk and Eric Metaxas and Greg Locke and some of these characters. Well, and what's really interesting, Cara, is the following that they have built, it's entirely now around this idea, whereas 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, it was totally external, that the threat is these people on the outside who want to eliminate our way of life. that the threat is these people on the outside who want to eliminate our way of life. These guys have now built their own cottage industry based on trying to purge the woke, cowardly Christians from their midst. And by woke and cowardly, we basically mean people who won't, like, bow the knee to Donald Trump, right? Donald Trump, yeah. Yes. So, recently, some have pushed back. The

Bob Vander Plaats, I'm not a fan, but he's from the Family Leader Foundation in Iowa, endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2024, and Trump went ballistic on True Social, accusing Vander Plaats of being a scammer. Are you going to see evangelicals defecting from Trump idolatry? Because that's what it is. Or is Vander Plaats an outlier? Well, to be clear, Vander Plaats, who I've spent a lot of time with over the years, I don't know that he's exactly the exemplar of a clean break here. I think he's got his

own self-interest, and there's a longer-running feud here between these guys. To answer your question, I don't know that you're going to see any significant break among evangelicals away from Trump. And frankly, that ties into just some general pessimism about the short to intermediate term of all of this, which is to say that the one source of optimism I've had in all my reporting on this has been that there is a generational change, that when you spend time with younger Christians, like, including at a place like Liberty, like, I guarantee you, if you go spend a week at Liberty and talk to a thousand kids there, you'll be blown away. They're conservative. They're conservative in their theology, in their culture, in their politics. Like, they're just, like, in their

bones, like, they're, like, kind of kind of fundamentally right of center people, but they want nothing to do with Trumpism. They want nothing to do with theocracy. I mean, really, like this almost sounds trite to say, but maybe the baseline fracture here, the great division in the church is, do you view your faith through the prism of your politics, or do you view politics through the prism of your faith? And for young people, you know, I have been incredibly encouraged. It has really been a bright spot in a very, otherwise very dark journey to see just how committed to their faith a lot of these young people are and how then that dictates their approach to the culture around them. I just think that it's going to take a long time for them to sort of grow into these positions to

really try to right the ship. Yeah. According to a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute, one third of white evangelicals said they support political violence to save the country. How worried should we be about this? I think we should be, like, reasonably worried. I mean, now, let me just, you know, this is, Kara, you're talking to one of the few people who was, like, really bedwetting a couple of years ago in the run-up to January 6th. Like, I was writing and saying wherever I could, like, this is really, really bad. Like, this is going to lead to something very, very dangerous and violent. Yes, you did. You scared me many times, too.

Because, and trust me, I'm not the, I am not remotely the smartest person anywhere in any room. I just, like, I just spend enough time around these people to see that, like, some of them treat this stuff as gospel. They treat what Trump says as gospel and they are like Eric Metaxas when he goes on the radio with Trump a few weeks before January 6th and suggests martyrdom, like casually suggests martyrdom and says we should be willing to die in this fight to keep you in office. Like there are people who listen to that and who are like, okay, let's do it. Like, this is it. We've been waiting. Well, don't you think that's where it ends up since that's how the story goes, right?

Isn't that the story? Isn't that how—they have to get to the end of the story, right? It's a perverted—no, it's a perverted version of the story. One that is, again, processed through a sort of lazy, lowest common denominator American filter, where we think that we are, you know, like, listen, at the end of the day, if you think that God's plan for the ages depends on whether Donald Trump wins or loses an election, then your theology is so incredibly small and pathetic that we just shouldn't even indulge you. We shouldn't entertain anything you have to say on the subject. And yet there are tens of millions of people who do. And it's just,

that is why I'm worried. And that's why I think we, anyone in a pluralistic society who cares about sustaining a pluralistic society should be worried as well, because this does pose a serious threat. I want to know about the seven mountain dominionism. Can you explain that? Yeah, I mean, this is, so basically you've got all of these kind of subcultures within subcultures. The dominionists are basically best explained by people who believe that the core institutions of society, cultural, governmental, and otherwise, should be ruled by Christians, should be run by Christians, should be administered by Christians, that Christian doctrine and Christian dogma should direct the sort of governing of all of

these institutions of our society. Which, by the way, I would point out, Kara, like a few weeks ago when he was campaigning, Trump himself, like everybody, I don't want to like make people, you know, go like, I don't want to drive people to like alcoholism here with a podcast episode and scare everybody. But a couple of weeks ago when he was campaigning in New Hampshire, Trump said, basically floated this idea that he would impose a religious litmus test on migrants coming to this country. Yes, he did. And anybody who's not a Christian, you don't get to come in. And like, it was so, it was a news story for like three hours and then we forgot about

it. And it's one of these things where you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a second. Like we, like anybody who thinks that the separation of church and state and that the religious freedoms that are sort of essential and paramount to our liberal democracy, that those things are guaranteed to us, like you're not paying attention necessarily because Trump, it's not just him. It's the people who he will surround himself with in a second term. There are absolutely people who are Christian nationalists,

absolutely people who are theocrats, absolutely people who are sympathetic to the dominionists. Well, yeah, in some sense, that's true. They are the only people left. What is past Sidney Powell? There is someone more incompetent, like, right? Oh, way more, way. I mean, yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet.

That's correct. So let me, I wanna, yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet. That's correct. So, let me, I want to switch gears before we go, and then I have a final question about your book. But speaking of something that didn't turn out to be very Christian, your piece on CNN, CEO Chris, I'm teasing, Chris Licht, I thought it was terrific. We talk about evangelicals as kingmakers, but your piece was a king slayer, really. He left CNN five days after it was published. Did you expect that fallout? Yes and no. I mean, I expected that it was going to be pretty bad for him. And to be clear, Kara, like, I told him that it was going to be pretty bad for him. And to be clear, Kara, like I told him that it was going to be pretty bad for him. I mean, he, he knew the quotes. He, yeah, like I, I, you know, I don't like to surprise people when a story runs. I'm a big believer in like stab them in the chest instead of stabbing them in the back. And, you know, I, I went through all the quotes with him

and I even gave him opportunities the last couple of times we were together to say like, hey, like, I think the exact thing I asked him at one point was I said, you know, if you were me writing this story, like, is there any conceivable way that it could be a positive story? And he thought about it for like 45 seconds in silence. And then he said, absolutely. I said, well, if the answer is absolutely, why'd you have to think for 45 seconds? He said, oh, well, I just needed to think about it. So like he knew, I don't, but at the same time, like, did I think he was going to be fired? Did I think his whole comms team was going to get axed?

Not necessarily. And I feel terrible about that because these people have families and, and, um, CNN was his dream job, right? Like I don't, you know, and I don't think like, and Kara, I don't think Chris is at all like a bad faith actor. I don't think that he's, you know, there are legitimate bad faith actors in media, people who do great harm to the body politic. I don't think Chris is one of them at all. I think he just made a lot of bad choices and was in over his head. And so he lost his job and I feel, you know, I took no pleasure in that at all. But it was kind of predictable, I suppose, in retrospect. It was, you know, if I had to say when it came out, I was surprised he said so many things to you. And I said my observation of him was he talked too much, like he needed to stop talking and he couldn't help himself. Of course, he said that because that's who we, I mean, I can't tell you how many things he said to me that I was like, really, you shouldn't say that to an indiscreet reporter like myself.

But I was sort of amazed by it. Anyway, people like to talk. And you did, it was a really, I thought it was quite fair. And I don't think anyone didn't think it was fair. You also wrote a profile of Nikki Haley before she decided to run. I'm curious what you think of her. She just got the backing of the Koch, one Koch brother left. Any thoughts on where she is right now? Does she have any chance?

I don't know if she has a chance. I mean, the great dilemma with Nikki Haley has always been, like, who is Nikki Haley? She's an incredibly smart, capable person, and she has done some remarkable things in her life. But at every stage of her life, she's felt the need to sort of reinvent herself and constantly be something different to different people at different times for different purposes. So, for example, you know, she showed tremendous courage and real guts in taking down the Confederate flag after this heinous shooting in Charleston many years ago. And now she doesn't even say the word Confederate flag. She says divisive symbol, which is just, it's one of these things where I actually think, having spent a lot of time around her, that I think that deep down there's like this really formidable, courageous, admirable person,

but she's kind of like afraid of really letting that person come out because she thinks that that person can't win a Republican primary. And it's just kind of sad, I guess, because I think that she could potentially end the spell of Trumpism. I think she'd be incredibly strong against him

competing one-on-one if the field were to winnow. She's a really talented person, but she's always sort of been held back by this, I don't know, she's just sort of a prisoner of her own making, I suppose. Yeah, it's ambition. It's ambition and pleasing. She thinks this is the way to get to the top, which it isn't, actually. It's ambition and pleasing. She thinks this is the way to get to the top, which it isn't, actually. And the funny thing is, like, what if, like, does Trump dare to bring her on the ticket after everything she said about him to me? I mean, she said to me that we can't possibly ever let him, like, I can't, the quote is not quite verbatim, but she said, like, he led us astray and we followed and we shouldn't have, and we can't ever follow him again, right?

And he calls her birdbrain, which is really lovely. So, let's end talking about the response so far from the evangelical community to this book. Are you still waiting for the other shoe to drop? What is the response that you've gotten, given you were given someone, people were sort of assaulting you at your father's funeral? You know, so I gotta say, it's been both surprising and unsurprising. The unsurprising is that, yes, people from my own tribe, my own community, including people in the church that I grew up in, have sent me some awful, just, you know, have not been kind to me. And that's not surprising to me because of what I've experienced before and I've got some

pretty thick skin and so I'm just trying to ignore it. What has been surprising, genuinely surprising me, Kara, is in the last few days, like the last like 72 hours, I've probably received 250 or 300 emails and almost all of them have been from people, evangelicals in churches who have been thanking me and who have been expressing like this relief that somebody is giving voice to this and saying out loud what they've been keeping locked up for the last number of years and feeling like, okay, I thought I was the crazy one. I thought like, I thought maybe I was the one who was being unfaithful. Uh, and, and that has been really surprising and really encouraging, frankly, because I don't want to get, I don't want to like,

I don't want to run wild with this comparison because I think you'll know what I'm getting at here. But like in the aftermath of 9-11, remember there was all this talk about like, where are the moderate Muslims, right? I'm not saying that like Jerry Falwell Jr. is flying planes into the trade towers or anything like that, but I do think that there has to be a conversation about like, okay, so where are the serious, sane evangelicals who are going to stand up and speak out and reclaim the movement from these people who have hijacked it? And the fact that I've had this, I've just been inundated from all these people basically saying, you know, I'm really rethinking now my own role in my own church and whether I need to force

this sort of reckoning and be emboldened to have this conversation. So, how is, last question, how has this changed your relationship with your own religion? Do you still consider yourself an evangelical? So, I will say this, Kara, if somebody, like, labels me an evangelical, you know, I don't fight it because it's, it's, it's the tradition I came from. I don't use the word myself anymore because I'll tell you why. It's fraught.

And it's like, and here's the thing, you know, evangelical, what does it even mean, right? To, to the outside world, it means all the wrong things. And if my job as a Christian is to evangelize, like that's the verb, right? if my job as a Christian is to evangelize, like that's the verb, right? You know, forget about evangelical. We are supposed to evangelize. If my job is to tell people about Jesus and how he loves them and how he died for them and how God became fully man and fully God and was a sacrifice for the sins of man, I can't reach those people necessarily if they hear the word evangelical and run for the hills. So, my own faith has actually never been stronger, which is sort of shocking because I

came into this project very concerned that my faith might be badly damaged. And in fact, the opposite has happened. And I'm really grateful for that. And I'm walking more closely with Jesus than I ever have. And I think a part of that walk is realizing that some of these sort of superficial labels and tribes and identities, like evangelical, they just, they get in the way, and they ultimately do a disservice to the true beauty of Christ. Well, we will end on that. Tim Alberta, thank you so much. Cara, it's been a blast. Thanks for having me. Alberta, thank you so much.

Cara, it's been a blast. Thanks for having me. I like hearing Tim Alberta read scripture. Yeah, he's great. Walking more closely with Jesus than I ever have was actually a beautiful line. I have a lot of religious relatives. They always talk about walking with Jesus. He's so charming, that Tim Alberta.

No wonder everybody's spilling their secrets to him. He is. He's a really great reporter. He's a really thoughtful person. And he's just someone that's easy to talk to, and that's a really devastating group of characteristics for a reporter, especially when subjects are problematic. I have to say I teared up a bit during the interview when he talked. I can't imagine being at a funeral, a family member, and being attacked on the basis of politics by people who are listening to Rush Limbaugh? I guess. I think it happens at every family gathering now, everywhere it goes.

People are really upset about a lot of different issues in the world, and it's sort of become internalized to families, I think. And I think people just can't stop in a lot of ways. So it's not a surprise that it goes to church, because has become so politicized too. It's unfortunate the world in which, you know, you have these proselytizers with so much power, the hypocrisy of the Falwells, which he does such great reporting on in this book and gets those incendiary quotes about kind of religion as a means to the end. Money. Yeah, money. Everyone knew that about Jerry Falwell. Nobody didn't. I mean, there've been lots of movie depictions of him and just a terrifically venal person. But this idea of, you know, do you see religion through the

prism of your politics and even your economics in that case? Or do you see your politics through the prism of your religion? And there are all these people who fall prey. And it reminds me of, you remember that show, Tiger King? Oh, yeah, that guy. The people at the top are often cruel. And then there's these volunteers, these sheep, right, who are just people looking for something to believe in. I am not a particularly devout person. I'm not at all devout. So, I don't know. I think it's very comforting to a lot of people. And when it's purest form, it's quite lovely. Yeah. And important to have faith. And it usually becomes perverted because of the secular world intrudes on it. And it's, you know, whatever religion has, there's always the impact of money and power on the entire thing. And of course,

abuse is, every single religion has its instances of abuse. Yeah. I mean, I grew up Muslim and Islam certainly is no shortage of that. I mean, his 9-11 analogy was a little woe because, I mean, 9-11 analogy was a little woe because, I mean, he rightfully caveated it as Falwell as not bin Laden. But the search for the moderate, what he called the search for the moderates, right? And I say this as a moderate person who was raised Muslim, that there's clearly problems of extremism in the faith. And Eric Metaxas talking about martyrdom on the radio, or as David Brooks is pointing out in his reporting about violence in the religion, is something to fear. The other thing I'd add is as a moderate person in that

community, there's a fear of coming out after scary moments like the political environment we're in now after 9-11, because there's very little nuance and understanding, and people want to blush over all evangelicals as being devout Trumpies or all Muslims as being, you know, ex-terrorists. I thought that was an interesting call for moderation to stand out. But there is a pressure in these moments. There's a conflation in these moments of religious identity and political identity, which he is trying to draw a separation of. Yeah, I think he does it quite fairly. And I think that's why it's such a great book, is you see the different shades. It's like thinking all

Hispanics are the same or gay people or whatever. That happens, whether it's religion or identity. And it's not the case. And that's really hard for people because everyone has to pick just one side and it's highly reductive. He had a lot of hope and optimism for the next generation that they were going to see politics and their purpose in the world through the prism of their religious values and not be instrumentalists, effectively. I would agree. I have a lot of cousins, and I really like how they think about their faith. That's why you have so many children. No, no, I'm not at all.

You want to spread the optimism. No, but my religious family on the Swisher side, they are really wonderful people, and they're living their faith. And I have a lot of hope. Yeah. And their kids are also, same thing with their kids, really terrific kids, except for one or two. No, I'm kidding. Oh, God. Want to name them, Kara?

No, I don't. Just go for it. No, I'm kidding. Go for it. No, I'm kidding. Anyways, this is Just in Time for Christmas, a conversation about religion that is interesting, that is nuanced, and a really good book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. Yep. Tim Alberta. Special, special writer and reporter. Worth reading. Cara, want to read us out? Yep. Today's show was produced by Naeem Arraza, Christian Castro-Rossell, Kateri Yochum, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan.

Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, welcome to Michigan. If not, you're headed for Lynchburg. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more. and it takes forever to build a campaign?

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