The Bulwark Podcast - Rob Reiner and Dan Partland: God & Country

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Christian nationalism is not only a threat to democracy, but also to Christianity itself. Prominent evangelicals, like David French and Russell Moore, break it all down in a new documentary, "God & Country." Charlie Sykes is also in the film. Reiner and Partland take it to 11 with Tim Miller today. show notes: https://godandcountrythemovie.com/ Billy Crystal and Bill Kristol ad 

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Friday Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's the Friday show because we have a weekend edition. The South Carolina primary is tomorrow and we've got a really special show coming your way, So check back tomorrow for that.

I am delighted and honored to be here today with Rob Reiner. He directed, I don't know, you might have heard of When Harry Met Sally, Princess Bride, or This is Spinal Tap. You might have seen a show called All in the Family. He was Meathead. And now he is the co-producer of a documentary, God and Country, alongside Dan Partland, who's also with us, director of God and Country. He also directed the film, Unfit, The Psychology of Donald Trump.

Gentlemen, welcome. Dan, how did you survive getting inside the psychology of Donald Trump? I'm still getting over it. It's part of my ongoing mission to heal. I made this film instead. That's good. We've got a sponsor, Better Help, that you might want to look into. I got to tell you, the one thing when I was watching the documentary that

struck me at the beginning, and I'm sure I must have noticed it when it was happening live, but there was so much happening on January 6th. And in the context of this film about Christian nationalism, the flags, the Jesus saves, the Jesus is king flags. It really just hit me about how intertwined the issues were of the insurrection and Christian nationalism. And so I was hoping you might start by talking about that a little bit. Maybe Dan, you can kick us off. Sure. Well, you know, it's definitely goes all the way back to the genesis of the project, which is that Rob had first contacted me about doing a film about Christian nationalism just right before the holiday break in December of 2020. And he passed

me a book. I read it, Power Worshippers by Catherine Stewart. I read it over the break, and we had plans to meet on, I believe, January 7th, a Zoom meeting. And so, on January 6th Zoom meeting. And so on January 6th, I was at my desk making notes about what a film about Christian nationalism would be about while I was watching the certification of the vote on the other screen. So to me, had I not just spent the holiday break kind of doing as deep a dive as I could and immersing myself in that space, I'm not sure I would have seen it either. But what was notable was watching the TV coverage was how many images, symbols, even chants and prayers and things were evident there, and how the commentary was not noticing it at all. Yeah, it's interesting too, Tim, because if you look at January 5th, there were a lot of rallies prior to the insurrection where Jesus and God and all of

that was evoked by many people. I mean, you know, we had Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all these people were ginning up all this, you know, we're sent here by God, it's God's mission and all that. And it's interesting that you point out that you didn't notice it because I think most people, unless they looked at it, they might not notice it. And if you remember when the January 6th committee did its report, there was no mention at all of Christian nationalism in their report. And I think that was a conscious decision that they made because it's delicate. You don't want to be trashing Christianity because it's a great religion that has done great for the world. And that was our goal in the film is not to bash

Christianity. And in fact, we don't. What we do is the exact opposite. We talk about Christian nationalism as not only a threat to democracy, but as a threat to Christianity itself. And all of these very respected, devout, conservative Christian leaders in the film talk specifically about that. So I think it's easy to have missed the fact that the insurrection was in a large part fueled by the fervor of Christian nationalism. Yeah, I'd like to hear you kind of explore that more, right? The difference between the kind of dangerous, unchristian Christian nationalism and sort of earnest belief.

There are a lot of friends of the Bullard pod of the show, including Charlie Sykes, by the way, and David French. But Russell Moore, who I just love and admire so deeply, has been on this pod a bunch. He had a line that I pulled out about, you know, there's this difference between having Christian social beliefs like being anti-abortion and this perverted form that is a valorization of power. That was one of his phrases. And I was just curious how you guys kind of walked that line of talking about the threat versus people who have deeply held religious views. We were schooled by some of these leaders. I mean, I was raised in a secular household and so was Dan. So this was eye-opening to us. We both approached this project as a political project, that there was this movement that

had started certainly back in the 50s. I became very much aware of it during the 70s and 80s when Norman Lear launched People for the American Way and this whole notion of trying to obliterate the separation of church and state. I was aware of it, but I didn't think of it as something that might be a danger to Christianity. This came to light when we interviewed, and Dan interviewed, all these great Christian leaders who pointed that out to us. They're the ones that took this documentary in a direction that we didn't think about. I don't

think we thought about, Dan, and when we started, we were thinking of it as a political thing. Yeah. I mean, look, this is the central thing that's really hard to get your head around is where does the pursuit of your own religious belief and trying to manifest those values in American culture and American law, where does that end? And, you know, as a democratic goal and crossover into an anti-democratic goal. And it sort of proceeds along two channels, really. The first is a democratic channel, which is like, yes, let's go out and try to rally people to our ideas. That's a good and valuable thing to do. It's the art of persuasion. It's what politics is all about. Even within that half, there is an important protection. I mean,

we do have the First Amendment in the United States, which means that even if you believe in something really central to your character, and you can motivate a big voting bloc to vote for it, it still can't write religion into American law, right? So there's the democratic part, which I think we want everybody to engage in. Bring your values to manifest in your politics, okay? But you have to actually make the sale to people. You can't have the reason for a law and policy be because my faith says so. You have to actually make the case by persuasion. Martin Luther King, we need to end segregation because it's against human dignity. We need to end segregation because in the interest of justice, not because it's when my faith says so. So that's a slippery

slope. But the thing to really look at are the anti-democratic means that this movement is using. And that's totally unacceptable. Obviously, it's everything, you know, everybody, gerrymandering has been around for a long time, both sides have done it. But gerrymandering, voter suppression, now we have, you know, actual violence in order to try to enact a political agenda. So that's the real danger of the movement. I think it's, you can see it really clearly when you look at how unpopular Christian nationalist beliefs are versus how effective they've been in actually getting them into law, of course, most notably with abortion policy at the moment. But there's a lot of examples of it where patently unpopular things are still able to be implemented in American law.

And you can cloak your beliefs in the idea that this is God's will, and this is what God tells us to do, and that will give you permission to resort to violence if you firmly believe that this is what God wants. And so that's where you cross the line. You know, persuasion is one thing, but you don't persuade people at the point of a gun or, you know, or through an insurrection. So that's where we have to draw the line. And, you know, Christian nationalists believe that there is no separation of church and state, and this is God's will, that America should be a white Christian nation that is ordained by God.

Well, you know, you may believe that. Fine, you can believe whatever you want, but you can't force other people to those beliefs, and particularly not to use violence as a way of, you know, convincing them. Yeah, I think about the violent side of it also as the negative argument that you're making. You're talking about how they make a positive argument for Christian nationalist government. But I think about how these leaders talk, these wannabe leaders, talk about America as it is. You guys cover the We Awaken tour that Mike Flynn and these guys are at. And if you watch these events, I went to one of them in South Carolina, and it is all about how the they are taking the country away from you. The country is going to hell.

They've stolen it. And this is where it ties into the democracy part. They've stolen the country away from you. The country's going to hell. They've stolen it. And this is where it ties into the democracy part. They've stolen the country for you. You guys are really the silent majority. And to me, the logical end of that is violence, right? If you really believe that the leader, the Joe Biden and the Democrats and the deep states stole the election from you and are ruining the country and are moving it away from God, well, then what choice would you have besides violence? That's right. And if you believe that God has ordained this and God is telling you that this is what you need to do, then, you know, all bets are off. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's interesting because I've heard that same argument, that same framing, I should say, that you're making there, used as a defense of the attack on the Capitol, is that, of course, I think it's a bad premise,

but of course, this is a democratic argument, that if you really believed that the election was stolen, wouldn't it be your responsibility as a citizen to, you know, to rise up and make sure that the proper results were certified. And I totally understand that thinking. I think the problem with it is framing it as democratic. I think that's just pushing the hypothetical too far. There was ample evidence shared with everybody. There were plenty of democratic processes, judicial processes to go through all of that. And at the end and say, this is still democratic, I think is absurd, because I think really what was happening, and the film just inherently points this out, is that it reached a point where it didn't really matter. I don't really think that people attacking the Capitol, they took it, I hate to say it, but on some level, they took it on faith that this was

the right thing to do. Not so much that Trump had actually won it, but that it kind of became irrelevant, the counting of votes. It became a kind of right and wrong from up on high that they saw a need to respond to. Yeah, I think that's right. And I obviously don't think that this was a credible reason to attack the Capitol. You know obviously don't think that this was a credible reason to attack the Capitol. You know, my point is that it's just kind of the logical conclusion

of the ethos. And that is inevitable. And I think that's what makes it so dangerous, frankly. Right. And the people that are peddling it are really playing with fire. Definitely.

And maybe they want to be playing with fire because they're arsonists. Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained.

If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. Here's a more recent, tangible example of what you're talking about. You guys in the film get into the theological approach, the seven mountain mandate, which calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values in all elements of American life. There one clip from it a short clip i just want to put in here whereas we the church are god's governing body on the earth whereas we have been given legal power from heaven and now exercise our authority yeah and the alabama supreme court ruling on ivF had a concurring opinion from Chief Justice Tom Parker, who's a proponent of the Seven Mountain Mandate. He wrote that human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God in a decision that has been in the news this week.

The Seven Mountain Mandate, your sense for how much it's penetrated and kind of your thoughts on that ruling this week? You know, it's something that's been out there for a long time and comfortably in the fringe. And I think people felt like they didn't need to really respond to it or give it air because it was so fringe, but it certainly has infiltrated the mainstream. You know, it's in some Mike Pence talking points, and it's in Mike Johnson talking points explicitly. They're definitely the inheritors of that kind of rhetoric. I mean, my thought about the Alabama case is like, you know, I've been out presenting the film a lot and audiences want to ask, the central question is just, how big a threat is it? And, you know, it's hard to contextualize

that. And all I can say to that is, I think we don't fully know how big a threat is it? And, you know, it's hard to contextualize that. And all I can say to that is, I think we don't fully know how big a threat it is, but let's look at some evidence. It's always good to look at the evidence, right? The evidence is we did just have, you know, in the previous election, a violent insurrection at the Capitol in an effort to stop the president from being seated. We do have Mike Johnson in the, you know, second in line to the presidency, a guy who is overtly grasped onto these things. I don't think that being anti-abortion doesn't make you a Christian nationalist, but we do have now young girls, rape victims, being forced by the state to carry babies to term. And now we have this question of the IVF, of maybe IVF should go away. So if you're starting to look at what evidence we have of this ideology, despite its unpopularity through a political

process, actually succeeding in accomplishing its goals, I think there is starting to be a lot of evidence of that. You also have out there, as plain as day, one of the candidates, Donald Trump, is running, embracing this Christian nationalism. It's part of his plan. He's putting in place people who are going to act on that, you know, with 2025. And that whole idea is to say, we're going to inculcate Christian nationalism into American politics. And so what does that mean? What does that mean? That means the end of this wonderful 249-year experiment that we've had. You're basically saying we're going to become a theocratic autocracy. We're going to just discard the Constitution. We're going to discard all ofocratic autocracy. We're going to just discard the Constitution.

We're going to discard all of these norms that we have because we believe God has told us this is the way America should govern. So like Dan says, we don't know where this leads. And we don't know if Donald Trump loses this election, what will happen as a result. Yeah, I mean, you guys kind of cover this, but it's the one area where I just want to push back a little bit. I think Trump is uniquely dangerous because he doesn't read as Christian nationalist. I totally accept your point that the policies that a lot of people around him are promising would certainly qualify, but he doesn't read as it.

He's not a Christian nationalist. He's a vessel for these people. And he's more than happy to take on their support if it means, number one, he can get elected. Number two, he can stay out of jail. He's not about any kind of ideology. Let's get that straight. I mean, Dan made the movie about the guy. He's a sociopath. Right. But he will embrace this. And they, as the Christian nationalist movement, will say, well, he's like Cyrus the King. You know, he's flawed, he's this, he's that, but he's our vessel, and he's more than happy to embrace it.

The vessel works because he's able to reach out to people that are really grossed out by Christian nationalism, really. And a lot of these Trump voters are not Christian. I look at Doug Mastriano, right, in Pennsylvania. He ran this kind of really authentic Christian nationalist campaign, and he gets annihilated, right? Because there's a big part of these voters who are cool with the nationalist part, by the way, and they're cool with the authoritarian part, but the Christian part weirds them out a little bit. And so I do wonder if that makes the threat a little less serious than more of the secular

nationalism. You would think it would, because when you boil it down, the vast majority of Christians are not Christian nationalists. Right. It is the biggest religion in this country. So maybe you have 20% of the country. 20% of the country is in favor of this kind of Christian nationalist, white Christian state that we should be in. That's enough to win an election.

It may not be enough for Doug Mastrotonio in Pennsylvania to win, but all you have to do is move a few votes in five or six states, and somebody who could lose an election by 10 million, last time he lost by seven, could wind up as president if you have a very well-organized, well-funded, and powerful machine that can gin up the votes and suppress other votes in those five or six states. I think it's a fair point, Tim, that there's probably some vulnerability in Trump's support, because sure, if he started losing the Christian nationalist vote, if that general, is that all sides have been able to swallow candidates they don't like because of their commitment to an overall larger agenda. So, I mean, I think the idea that people would leave Trump if he was the only Republican, these two groups aren't. But again, you go back to,

it's not a national election. Yeah, sure. Trump can't win a national election. There's no chance in the world he can win a national election, but he doesn't have to. If he can win in Arizona, we all know the states, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, then he wins. He won 2016 by 79,000 votes in three states. So that's all you need. And if you go into those states, which are all purple, they're all on the margin, and you can get your vote out and suppress the other guy, you can win. And we know leaders who win with 20% of the vote. We know that can happen. One other thing I was struck by, it's kind of obvious, right, the idea that Donald Trump is the worst possible representation of this view in his personal life. But I'm curious, you know,

one of the ministers you guys interviewed said that when he was a young evangelical minister, he would use Trump as a sermon illustration for everything a Christian should not be. And when you guys were doing these interviews, what were, you know, these pastors, these religious leaders who were willing to talk, what did they think just about how insane it was that they had lost their flock, you know, to somebody that was so manifestly unchristian? Well, look, I think particularly the Christian conservatives in the film, I mean, they have all of my admiration. It's very, very courageous for them to speak in the film, I mean, they have all my admiration. It's very, very courageous for them to speak up and to, you know, add their voice here. I do think that they mostly broke with the political agenda over Trump. So, I think that

that makes it complicated, right? For some of them, I think there are a lot of things on the political agenda that they still feel very, very, very comfortable with. But, you know, again, that's the larger question for me of what frustrates me about the way the electorate is acting right now is I think there just are tons and tons of people, millions and millions, tens of millions who are deeply uncomfortable with Trump, but somehow believe that even though they hate him, they think he's a danger to democracy, that it's important to stay in lockstep with the political agenda. I mean, that's my read of it. I don't know. Maybe they like him more than they say. Yeah. I want to take a little personal privilege and ask Rob a couple of non-Christian nationalism

questions, but is there anything else in these conversations that you didn't expect or that really struck you as notable or especially alarming? Well, like I said before, the thing that really struck me was to hear respected conservative Christian leaders like Russell Moore, like David French, like Phil Vischer, talk about how dangerous this was to Christianity and how far afield this Christian nationalist movement has separated themselves from the teachings of Jesus. I mean, I'm a secular person, but I've read a lot about Jesus. I went through a very tough time in my life, and I latched on to what he talked about, which is, love thy neighbor, do unto others. And this movement, it doesn't have any connection to that. It's the exact opposite of everything that Jesus taught. So that to me was surprising to see, you know,

Christian leaders talk about that very thing, that Christian nationalism is not about Christianity. It's a political movement. It's not a religious movement. Yeah. And I think the most kind of shocking thing, it's very simple, but hard to, you know, until you get your head around it, it's hard to make this whole movement make sense, but is the ways in which a lot of American Christians, just so much of the Christian story and the American myths have been so fused that Christians have begun to see America as playing a specific God-ordained role in human history. Once you start to view it that way, then, as Phil Vischer says in the film, then you've given your permission really to believe

that if democracy gets in the way, democracy has to go. And that's the chilling thing. And I think when you understand that, you start to see the reason this movement is just so ferocious, really. Yeah, and they have the art and the iconography to go with it. That was another striking thing from the, this, this. It's from the top down. This is a leadership movement. Many Christians have been sucked into this thinking that this is what Jesus wants. Who said that God said that America is ordained to be a Christian nation? Who said that? Jesus never even knew that there was going to be an America.

So you know what I'm saying? They get sucked in and they unwittingly get sucked in. And the people who want the power realize that they can move these people with podcasts, with, you know, on the air, you know, television shows, newspapers. They can move these people and they've done it. They've done a tremendous job of organizing these people. Rob, in another area where kind of art meets our dystopian political reality, we lost Norman Lear recently. I've been dying to ask you, like, when you have this character, Archie Bunker, you know, meets our dystopian political reality. We lost Norman Lear recently.

I've been dying to ask you, when you have this character, Archie Bunker, I remember watching it as a kid on reruns on Nick at Night. And he's so plainly in kind of this Trumpian manner, right? Just like a talk radio, inch deep kind of bigotry, like unthoughtful bigotry. But he has this lovable element for him. Now Trump doesn't,

doesn't have the lovable element to me, but I was wondering how you guys kind of thought about that, right? Like how the balance of this kind of character that had all these awful tweets, but was lovable with like the real life version of them, you know, actually being a lot darker, you know?

Well, they're dark certainly in their, in their, you know, actually being a lot darker, you know? Well, they're dark certainly in their, in their, you know, ideology and their thinking and the racism's clearly as dark, as ugly as it gets. But what normally I try to do is create a human being and human beings have all these sides to them. This guy loved his wife. He loved his kid. He had feelings for these people. Trump has no feelings for anybody. Yeah, right. Exactly. The character was way more human than the human in this instance. Yeah, no, he was a human being. And Norman loved the idea. I've said this before, but his favorite play was Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw. And if you

didn't know that Shaw was a liberal, you went to see that play. There were equal arguments for Dove and Hawk. And you left the play arguing which is right, the Dove side or the Hawk side. And that's what he wanted. He had Archie putting out his point of view. He had my character putting out his point of view. People argued about it. And then 40 million people with a shared experience every week would then argue with each other and discuss with each other what was shown on the show. And the issues that we talked about, they're still here. You know, the homophobia, the racism, the gun issue. I mean, they're all still with us. You're in New Orleans right now?

I am. Taping this is Spinal Tap 2? Yes. Everybody, when I told you you were coming on, everyone at the Bulwark, all the bros, they want to know, this is Spinal Tap 2. When do they get it? How excited are we?

Where are we taping in New Orleans? What can you tell us? Well, first of all, I hope their enthusiasm goes to 11. But we start shooting March 6th and will be finished sometime in April. And it'll either be by the end of this year or early part of next year that the film will be out. It's 40 years since we've done the first one, but I think we have a good idea. We'll see what happens. I hope to see you down there on this. Okay. So the Pod Bros asked Elizabeth Warren for her dream blunt rotation. She would not answer that recently.

And so that's why I want to close with you, Rob. I would like to know of all the people you've worked with, if you want to sit around, four people, you and three other people, and smoke a blunt, who's your rotation? You have a long career. Dan, you can answer this with Christian Nationalists. I want your dream blunt rotation with Christian Nationalists. Okay, I'll cue that up. I've had some people who would never smoke a blunt because I've smoked plenty, certainly in my lifetime. But Norman Lear was one, my dad, of course.

But, you know, I've been lucky to, you know, Albert Brooks is a close friend of mine and Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest who's in Spinal Tap. These are people that are very close to me. And I don't even have to smoke a blunt to be around them. I like hanging out with them. Just hanging out with them. Crystal and Crystal, I almost forgot. That should have been in your intro. You taped the Billy Crystal and Bill Crystal. That was your number one directorial career achievement, was it not? Great achievement on my part, putting the two Bill Crystals together. Dan, you get four scariest Christian nationalists. That's where you get to end us with.

He got blunt rotation. You get scariest Christian nationalists. I am dead set against naming names and giving more publicity to people who really don't deserve it. But I certainly would like to see a cage match between a lot of the talking heads in the film and any number of evangelical

and Christian nationalist preachers. It's tough. How are you cleansing from spending so much time, you know, with the Reawaken tour and in the dark corners of our society? Just a lot of showering, a lot of sage, you know, smudging. And, you know, I'm determined to develop a meditation practice. Okay, a little Palo Santo. He can install the sweat lodge in his house where he can go. And prayer, of course. And prayer, of course.

Not begrudging anybody prayer. Thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure for me, the documentary, which I enjoyed, God and Country in Theaters Now. And we'll be talking to you guys soon. Thanks for having us, Tim. The floor is filthy, the walls are thin The wind is howling in my face The rats are beating, I'm losing ground Can't see the jaw of the human race

Yeah I'm living in a hellhole Don't wanna stay in this hellhole Don't wanna die in this hellhole Girl, get me out of this hellhole The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and