The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Alberta: American Idolatry

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Is the Almighty, who made heaven and earth, also biting his nails over next year's election? Tim Alberta joins Charlie Sykes to discuss the evangelicals who worship America, a 500-year moment for Christianity, and the organized crime syndicate Jerry Falwell built. Christmas comes early on the weekend pod. show notes: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-kingdom-the-power-and-the-glory-tim-alberta?variant=41012408516642

This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to. At work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself, so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Whether you're navigating workplace stresses,

complex relationships, or family dynamics, therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit better very fortunate to be joined once again by our good friend Tim Alberta, staff writer at The Atlantic, previously chief political correspondent for Politico, author of the new book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. First of all, welcome Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

First of all, welcome back, Tim. Hey, Charlie. Thank you for having me, my friend. How are you? I'm good. You know, this book, you know, when you pick it up, you read about, you know, American evangelicals, I think the reaction of a lot of people might be, okay, you kind of know this story. You know, we have seen this before. This is a much more personal book than I was expecting. This is very, very raw. And I want to dive into this because it tells me a lot about you and you and I have had conversations over the years. And frankly, I had no idea.

I had no idea, you know, in some ways, how do I put this? Who you were and where you came from. And I think this tells the story. So you wrote, it was never my intention to speak about American evangelicalism. Having grown up steeped in Christianity's right-wing subculture, the son of a megachurch minister, a follower of Jesus, someone who self-identified as evangelical since childhood, I was a reliable defender of the faith. I rejected the caricatures of people like my parents. I took offense at efforts to mock and marginalize evangelicals. I tried to see the best of the church, even when the church was at its worst.

And then, as you described, the worst day in your life, July 29th, 2019. Tell me about it. Yeah, man, I was on the Christianian broadcasting network of all places on their set in washington dc i was promoting my first book american carnage about trump's takeover of the republican party and obviously i was pretty critical of trump in that book so i'm talking with the host on the set about evangelicalism and about the role that the church played in trump's election and to the point that the church played in Trump's election. And to the point that you just raised in the first part of what you were reading there, I was really reticent, Charlie. I didn't want to lean too far in. I didn't want to criticize

my fellow believers. So I really just kind of danced around the questions and I came off the set and I looked at my phone, which had been silenced. And I had all these missed calls and text messages. And you were wondering whether your father was going to see that interview. And you were interested to know what he would think about this question. Because of course, he came from this world and was obviously had a very sophisticated view. So that was one of your first thoughts. You get off the set and you're kind of thinking, okay, did my dad watch that? And what would he say about it? And really any time that I'd been on any sort of a platform, this one included,

Charlie, talking with you, whenever the conversation would turn to evangelicalism and the, you know, this uneasy alliance between what was an uneasy alliance, you know, in 2016 with a lot of white evangelicals and Trump, and even just a broader question of like the role of Republican politics kind of infiltrating the evangelical church. I would always be really cautious in part because of my dad who was a pastor and who, you know, I was incredibly close with and really looked up to. So I would always kind of watch my words. And I would always wonder, man, I wonder if he's going to hear this.

I wonder if somebody at his church is going to pass this clip along to him and if we're going to talk about it afterwards. So that was my first thought when I walked off the set of the Christian Podcasting Network that day. And then I looked down at my phone and I have all these missed calls and texts. And it turns out that my dad had a massive heart attack and was dead. And there was nothing the doctors could do for him. So that was pretty devastating, obviously. And it set in motion this sort of crazy sequence of events where I went home to Michigan, where my dad had pastored this pretty big church. It wasn't

always a big church. It was actually once a pretty small church, but it had grown into a very large church in the suburbs of Detroit where I grew up. And that church was my home. It was my community. I'd been a part of it my whole life. And at the funeral, because I'd been promoting this book recently, because I'd been in the crosshairs of right-wing media for my criticisms of Trump. I had people confronting me and wanting to argue about politics, you know, while dad's in a casket over here. And it got to the point where it wasn't just like some good natured ribbing or like a little bit of like, oh, you know, you, you guys in the media. No, like it was pretty, like there were a couple of like pretty cold, ugly confrontations that left me stunned. At your father's funeral. Well, at the wake, at the visitation. Well,

and you tell the story, which I've actually talked about on this podcast, of the note that somebody had left at the church that, you know, afterwards when you tell the story, you're back home, the church ladies are serving everybody, and you're having that kind of warm glow of saying, this is what the church is about. These loving people coming together. This is the community. And then somebody, one of the church ladies hands you a letter that someone had left for you at the church. What was the letter? Yeah. And Charlie, just to really set the scene, this is right after we've buried my dad. Right. So you're numbed. I mean, it's, it's hard. I think, oh, it's, yeah, it's the worst. Right. And, and the day before was all of this craziness at the visitation with these people getting in my

face. And so then the next day at the funeral, I give the eulogy and I kind of, I rebuked these people and sort of said like, what are we doing here? I try to be gentle about it, but I don't think it was probably very gentle. You took a shot at Limbaugh? Yeah, because a lot of them, you know, Rush had been ripping me on his show. And so a lot of them were like bringing, so I took Rush Limbaugh's name in vain in my eulogy. And I said like, really like Rush Limbaugh, like that's what you want to argue with me about at my dad's, you know. So then we bury him at the cemetery and we

come back home. And one of these church ladies hands me this note. And I thought, Charlie, I swear, I really did. I thought that it was just a condolence card, right? Because what else would you get when you just buried your dad? What else would you write? Yes. Uh, well, it turns out it was a note. It was more like a screed from a member of the congregation who was actually a longtime elder in the church, friend of the family, somebody I'd known since I was a little boy. And he just let me have it. He said I was a part of the deep state. Basically, he said I was a traitor, that I was betraying God's ordained leader of this

country, undermining Donald Trump, and that I should be ashamed of myself. He also told me that it was not too late to be forgiven, that if I used my journalism skills to investigate the deep state, that I would be forgiven. Now, this is somebody you've known for a long time. This is not just a random guy, right? Not a random guy. No, not a random guy. I mean, somebody who like, you know, would have been in the inner circle with my dad, like a longtime family friend. Okay. And so you read this note, you pass it to your wife. Yeah. Who's the calm, collected one in the family. And my wife reads it. And mind you, Charlie, she had urged me not to say anything in my eulogy about the unpleasantness of the day before. She had like you know didn't want me to make things worse so she reads the note and she just loses her mind and she like

flings the note in the air and just screams out what the hell is wrong with these people and that without being dramatic is the question right That is the question that I set out to answer here because it's like, because Charlie, here's the thing, right? If they're willing to treat me that way, I'm the son of their pastor. They've known me since I was like four. I've been there my whole life. They know who I am.

They don't know Trump. They don't know Rush. They don't know any of these people. They know me and they know what I believe, Right. If they're willing to treat me that way on the occasion of my dad's funeral, then how are they treating the rest of the world? How are they treating their neighbor? Right. Like, can you love your neighbor if you're treating your pastor's son like that when he's grieving his father's death? My hunch is probably not. And so, yeah, what the hell is wrong with these people was sort of a call to action for me, even though I didn't immediately realize it. Have you figured it out? Because I feel like we've been wrestling this for seven and eight years. I have had many podcast interviews, discussions with you, with David French, with Peter Wehner, with Russell

Moore, and we keep coming back to like, what had happened? How do you go from being a committed Christian and reading the gospel to what this cult has become? So Tim, what the hell is wrong with these people? Okay, Charlie, the simplest answer I can give from all the reporting, all the research, all the introspection, and this is personal, as you said earlier, I felt like I was wrestling with the ghost of my dad in writing this. And the best answer I can come up with is America. You know, I asked my dad's successor at one point, what's wrong with American evangelicals? And he said, America, they worship America. Too many of these people worship America.

And let's be specific about what that means, right? I am a patriotic guy. I've got friends and family in law enforcement, in the military. Like I love this country. I'm super grateful to have been born here. Like we're not, you know, we're not burning flags on the bulwark today. There is this idea that we are not just a nation that was born out of some Judeo-Christian principles and values. No, that we were conceived in covenant with God, that we are a nation that was explicitly formed to be a Christian nation, to be ruled by Christian maxims, that the framers

really did intend for us to have, if not a state religion, then at the very least, you know, with sort of a wink and nod, we're telling us that like, you can't have this country run by anybody except Christians. And that in many ways is the foundation of the problem, Charlie, because when you deal with these ascendant movements, whether it's sort of the Christian nationalist brigade, whether it's the David Barton fake history, restore America, whether it's Mike Flynn and his reawaken America tour, they're all basically oriented around the same idea, which is that this version of Christian America, which was never real, that it is under assault, that it is breathing its last and that we have to fight to restore it.

And we have to fight as though not just America hangs in the balance, but as though God himself is on the verge of defeat. That if America falls, then God is defeated, and that fighting for one is fighting for the other. I would have thought God was more powerful than that. I think in some sense what continues to surprise me is how small the God in that narrative is for people you would think would not be regarding him as quite that fragile and vulnerable. Amen, brother. I mean, Charlie, look, you believe that God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only son who conquered the grave, right?

He conquered death and he took upon himself on the cross, the brokenness of all mankind dating back to the garden of Eden. And he, the second and better Adam was able to restore humanity's relationship with God by dying on the cross. But that same God, he's biting his fingernails over the next election in America, right? Yeah. Nancy Pelosi is just a terrifying prospect to him. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to,

at work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself, so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Whether you're navigating workplace stresses, complex relationships, or family dynamics, therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed

therapist, and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, dot com. So where does Mike Johnson fit into all of this? The new speaker. So full disclosure, I think I've met Mike Johnson twice, and they were both, you know, both times were brief. I don't know the man. I do know what he has said publicly. And I know some of the people who he runs with. And I think that there's cause to be concerned, obviously, because whether he

truly believes it or whether he just likes to traffic in this sort of rhetoric for personal political professional gain and i truly don't know i know with most of these people who i've really spent time with whether they actually believe it or whether they're just selling something i don't know in his case but in either case his weaponization of scripture and saying basically well you want to know what i think about you know government you want to know what i think about politics you want to know what i think about government. You want to know what I think about politics. You want to know what I think about how to rule the country, how to govern the country. It's all right there in the Bible. Yeah.

And really? So what does the Bible say about the CR? What does the Bible say about the shutdown that we have to avoid? About the defense appropriation bill? I mean, it's just, it's a nonsensical answer. A little vague. And Charlie, I would just, I would emphasize that nowhere, nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus even flirting with the idea of his kingdom of heaven as a governing structure

of some kind. Like they wanted to make him king and he ran away from them. He never challenged the Romans. He said, render unto Caesar. This idea that the Bible is a governing handbook, it's just, it's nonsense. It's totally abiblical. In your book on the front piece, you actually have, you know, Luke 4, 5 to 8, where the devil tempts Jesus, you know, takes him up to the high mountain, shows him all the kingdoms of the world and says to him, all this power I will give thee and the glory of them, for this has been delivered unto me. If you will worship me, everything will be. So he's given that temptation, the temptation of Christ, which is all that power. And of course, we know the story in the end, he says, no, that's not, this isn't my kingdom. And it's like, do the dominationists and the nationalists,

what did they make of that passage? I mean, this is the temptation, right? Give up everything in order to get power. We've kind of gone through this, right? We've gone through it, man. And Charlie, like how many times have you and I had this conversation about a devil's bargain, right? But this is where it comes from.

This is it. This is the devil's bargain. Satan temptsesus in the wilderness and says all of this all of the kingdoms all of their glory all of the power it can all be yours you just have to you just have to bow down to me right and this is the fulfillment in so many ways of the old testament which is one giant warning against idolatry. Israel falls out of covenant with God because of idolatry, because they constantly want to pursue the idols of this earth and the gods of this earth, rather than following their true God, Yahweh. And so here's Satan tempting Jesus with this.

Not only does Jesus reject him, but he tells him, he says, get behind me, Satan. Yes. Now the reason that's so important, Charlie, but he tells him, he says, get behind me, Satan. Yes. Now, the reason that's so important, Charlie, is later on in the New Testament, Peter, who we, you know, St. Peter, in many ways, the most important disciple and someone who means so much to me personally in his writings. Peter, when Jesus tells them for the first time what the plan is, that he's going to be handed over to the authorities, he's going to be crucified. He's going to be executed by the state. Peter rebukes Jesus and says, no, no, no, no, no. You can't be, what are you talking about? Don't talk like that.

You're being a defeatist. Don't you know that you're the Messiah? Don't you know that you're here to slaughter all the Romans? Don't you know that you're here to rule with an iron fist that you're going to be this great military leader? And do you know what Jesus says to Peter? Get behind me, Satan. He uses the exact same phrase with Peter, his disciple who he loves. Same temptation. Same temptation. So Charlie, none of this is new, man.

It's like, in some sense, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills that we even have to have this conversation. The evolution of all of this, because clearly the idea that America is a covenant nation, this has been around a long time. The fact that America is uniquely blessed by God, not a tremendously controversial idea in evangelical circles, but it feels like it's taken this turn that you're describing here. I remember when the Christian right was starting to become more active, it felt like it was on the defensive, that it felt like that the culture war was coming to it. And one of the things up until like, it felt like just a few minutes ago, that they were clinging to was don't tread on us, we don't want the state telling us what to do. And clinging to and emphasizing the idea of

religious freedom and religious liberty, actually using the separation of church and state to carve out a zone that the state could not interfere, couldn't take away their rights. When did it transition from leave us alone, religious liberty, to religious domination? Because the idea that we are a Christian nation in one context is not controversial. The idea that you are describing, that we are a Christian nation that needs to be governed by Christian doctrine, strikes me as something that was very much a fringe minority attitude up until recently, or is it just like this wasn't on our radar screen? You know, the pre-existing

condition versus the what has actually changed? No, it's, I mean, it's a really good question. And one of the real differences is exactly what you said. It has moved from a defensive fight to an offensive fight. And in some ways, that's almost epitomized by this relationship with Trump. Not that I want to spend a lot of time on Trump, but I think in some sense, Trump went from like protector figure, right? Someone who could defend them from, you know, the barbarians are at the gates and we need a barbarian to fight back. He was Cyrus. Yeah, he was Cyrus. Exactly.

To now, it's this, you know, when Trump says, I'm going to be your retribution. Charlie, like, when he's using this language in context of speaking to evangelicals, like, you see the nodding and it's resonating in an entirely different way. You know, the persecution complex thing is very real. You and I have talked about this a little bit before, but I also think that helps to justify the offensive fight that, well, and by the way, again, gosh, I hate to bring this back to Trump, but when people say,

well, what about these indictments, right? You know, doesn't that, and it's like, no, no, no. The indictments only help him with a lot of these folks because it's that same persecution complex, right? They're coming after us. First, they have to get through him, which is what he says all the time. So really, you know, this is a part of the persecution. And in some sense, Charlie, that idea of being persecuted,

it creates a permission structure to not only say things, do things that you would never do otherwise, but to sort of go on the offensive, you know, turning the other cheek as Don Jr. said a couple of years ago, like turning the other cheek, where has that ever gotten us? You know, and it's like, that's a pretty good window into the thinking right there. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to. At work, in social settings, around our family.

Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself, so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Whether you're navigating workplace stresses, complex relationships, or family dynamics, therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with

BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. As you point out, I mean, there's this low simmering schism in the church that's been there for a very, very long time between the Christians who want this transcendent experience and who don't want the church fighting the culture war versus the more, you know, militant approach. And again, I want to talk about this transition. So you're right. In the last five or six years, though, that's really bubbled up. I mean, so was Trump, COVID, George Floyd, what's happened in the last five years to take the simmering schism and to make it so toxic? So, Charlie, I really think two things. Number one, just to preface,

we might be living through what some people are referring to as a 500-year moment for Christianity. These schisms, this realignment, this infighting in the church, you know, do the math, go back 500 years, we're talking about the Reformation, right? So when people say that this is a 500-year moment for Christianity, that's quite a statement. I think if in fact it is a 500-year moment, Charlie, people will look back for decades and decades, maybe centuries, They will look back at COVID-19. They will look back at COVID-19 because if you grew up steeped in the evangelical subculture like I did, that means that you will have been marinating for decades in this idea that

one day there's going to be this imminent clash between the good God-fearing Christians in America and the godless secularists, the evil progressive humanists, whatever, you know, the labels have changed obviously over the years, but that they're going to come for you, that the government's going to come for you, that they're going to come for Christianity, that they're going to persecute you, they're going to purge religion from public life and that they're going to shut down your churches. I mean, Charlie, that's been there for a long time. Jerry Falwell Sr. helped to build an entire movement around that fear. And it has been percolated ever since. And it percolated even before that, but that's the thing. And then COVID-19 arrives and Gretchen Whitmer in my

state of Michigan tells churches that they can't meet, right? For some short period of time. And that was prophecy fulfilled. That was it. This was the moment that your parents warned you about, your grandparents warned you about. You can't say that you didn't see this day coming. And now the question, Charlie, for all these pastors in the blue states where the governors shut down churches, are you going to stand and fight? Are you going to put on the full armor of God and are you going to go to war with the government and defend your faith? Or are you going to cower? Are you going to be a weak, spineless collaborator with the regime who's willing to let them do this to God, right?

That was the litmus test, Charlie. I have traveled the country. I have spent time in hundreds of churches with hundreds of pastors, Charlie, and the great majority of them, I should make this clear, the great majority of them in the evangelical church, these are guys who are conservative theologically, conservative culturally, conservative politically, but they decided for two weeks, three, four weeks, maybe a month, they decided to close down their churches to protect their congregations because they were scared. They didn't know what was happening, right? At the beginning of COVID, they decided that they would comply with the government.

And they became Marxists overnight because they decided that it was in the best interest of the health of their people, their community, to close down for some period of time. They suddenly became Marxists, woke, the enemy of their congregants in some cases. And some of these guys got run out of their churches for it, Charlie. And those schisms, those wounds, they have not healed. What about George Floyd? You mentioned Trump, COVID, George Floyd. What role did that play in this schism? Well, look, let's just say this for what it is. I make clear in the book that I am talking about white evangelicals, right? The reason that I make that distinction is that if you spend time around

evangelicals of color, they will have some pretty different conversations with you as it pertains to not just even the issue of race in the church, but kind of an assortment of different social, cultural issues, right? They just, they don't line up squarely with some of their white brethren. Charlie, much of the white evangelical tradition in America is rooted in kind of an identitarian struggle, particularly if you look at the Southern Baptist Convention. I mean, it's the history there is not murky. I mean, the Southern Baptist Convention was born as an explicitly pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist movement, right? They felt like the mainstream... No mystery, no subtlety. No, I mean, the mainstream Baptist tradition at that time was, you know, they were abolitionists and they were woke, right? I mean, they didn't use the word back then, obviously. The Southern

Baptists broke for those purposes, right? Now, that's not to say that all of the other denominations did as well, but there has been this long festering struggle in the white evangelical movement around this question of race, of slavery, of America's original sin, because Charlie, this takes us back full circle. This is something that we could spend a whole podcast talking about, but this has to be unpacked psychologically. Go back to the beginning of our conversation, this idea of America born in covenant with God, a Christian nation, right? Squaring this idea of a Christian nation born in covenant with the Almighty, and yet also a nation that trafficked human beings and that owed much of its early material wealth and commercial successes and financial growth to the industry of chattel slavery,

that's really difficult to reconcile those two things. And so for a lot of white evangelicals, that's been kind of a no-fly zone. They don't really want to go there. They don't want to have those conversations. So when George Floyd is murdered and you have this summer of racial unrest, it's like ripping the bandaid off of this wound that's been oozing inside the church for generations. And there was just no way to put it back on. Because, I mean, you also can't tell the story of America's redemption on race without talking about the role of the Christian church in the abolitionist movement, in the civil rights movement. So, I mean, there is that completely, I mean, you want to talk about a split screen, you know, Martin Luther King, just the role in the 1960s, the abolition of slavery in Britain being led by people like Wilberforce.

I mean, this is a deeply, deeply Christian movement. So, I imagine that most of your interviews have focused on Donald Trump and Trumpism and everything, which, you know, I think is a hugely important issue. But I am fascinated by all of your reporting in this book about the other really extraordinary story. You mentioned Jerry Falwell Sr., you know, who raised millions of dollars for the moral majority and created Liberty University. And it's one of those almost classic cartoonish stories about how, you know, the mission becomes the racket at a certain point. You know, you tell the story, he buys his private jet, he flies all over the world,

telling people the end was near, you know, that America was under siege. But Liberty University is really an incredible story. And it's one of those stories that it almost defies the script writer's ability to say, okay, let's make a story of this evangelical Christian thing that just goes horribly off the rails. And of course, the fall of Jerry Jr. is pretty spectacular and very telling, isn't it? Yeah, and tragic, right? Charlie, this is the thing. I spent 25,000 words over the course of two chapters, one at the beginning of the book, one at the very end of the book, detailing kind of the rise and fall of the Falwells and of Liberty. And this is a tragic story in a lot of ways. I think one of the truly tragic elements is that Jerry Falwell Sr., who was a brilliant businessman, a brilliant marketer, right? This guy could have

succeeded in anything. You know, I get some people to go on the record at Liberty who have never gone on the record before. And because Liberty has basically been run as almost an organized crime syndicate for decades. I mean, you don't step out against the family or else you sleep with the fishes. That's kind of how it goes there. There are people who go on the record in this book who are deep inside of the Liberty establishment. And what one of them said to me at one point, he said, look, we have to be honest about this. This is a professor who he goes on the record. His name is Aaron Werner. And Dr. Werner, he turns down a pretty nice NDA, you know, the hush money that Liberty offers when they ax people. He turned that money down to talk with me for the book, which is pretty extraordinary. And one of

the things he said to me that was so striking, he said, this is not quite verbatim because I'm not reading from the pages, but he said, look, Jerry senior and Jerry junior, these guys, they're great businessmen. They could have made their millions with anything. It could have been moonshine, right? But they chose Christianity and it gave them power and it gave them money. And those are the two things that they truly worship. That's the gist of what this guy said. And, you know, when you trace this long arc at Liberty University, as I do in the book, to the founding of the school, Jerry Falwell Sr. recognizing that his mega church there in Lynchburg, that it wasn't enough, that they needed a parallel institution. So he's got this school, this little Baptist school,

Lynchburg Baptist College. And at the time of the bicentennial in 1976, he decides, you know what, we're going to rebrand it. It's going to be Liberty University. The colors, they used to have Green Bay Packer colors, Charlie, green and gold, and they change it to red, white, and blue. And he takes the choir around the country, basically putting on this traveling roadshow talking about how America, how it's on its last legs. And Jimmy Carter, we're doomed. The apocalypse is here, right? Does it sound familiar to you? It's scary, yeah. Oh yeah, Jimmy Carter, the Sunday school teacher, the evangelical who builds you know is in his 90s still doing habitat for humanity he's the bad guy which by the way is a quick aside charlie as a student of history i'm sure you've already made this

connection yourself but in case your listeners haven't one of the great galvanizing moments for jerry falwell senior informing this movement that eventually became the moral majority, was in 1976 when Carter, as a presidential candidate, he gave an interview to Playboy magazine. Oh, gosh, yeah. And to Falwell Sr., this was unforgivable because how could anyone lead the country if he would be so depraved as to give an interview to Playboy magazine? And fast forward 50 years, 2016, right? 50 years later, on the dot there's donald trump

there's donald trump with jerry falwell jr in front of the playboy magazine playboy magazine thumbs up right i mean it's just like you could as you said earlier charlie the script writers would throw it out it's just too so it's tragic i mean it's tragic because you have at Liberty, you have generations of 18 year olds, Charlie, who go there because they don't really know any better. They're young, idealistic Christians who think, okay, I want to go to a Christian college. And they go there and they've been used and they've been manipulated. And in some sense, they've almost been brainwashed. A lot of them.

That's what one of the other people who went on the record with me, who's a current professor, he said that. He said, look, I was brainwashed when I went there. That's what they do. And Liberty has no longer even tried, in many cases, to be an ambassador for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a Republican culture-warring, power-brokering institution above all else. You also talk about something that, this is very interesting when you talk about, you know, how amazing it is that they didn't censor, you know, Paul's letters, because there's a culture within the church that you don't air the dirty laundry, right? That we can examine the brokenness of society in great, great detail, but that somehow you're violating the faith.

If you examine the brokenness within the church, you call out the sins of the leaders of the church. But I think you make a great point when you point out, okay, anybody ever read Paul's letters? Because he doesn't spare anybody. And you're right. The Bible is a book of brutal candor. Man's sinful nature is, you know, stars from Genesis through Revelation. But it is interesting that there has been this kind of, again, this sort of omerta. We don't criticize the developments within the church. How else would this stuff fester unless people were reluctant to call out the betrayal of people like the Falwells and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Charlie, I mean, for me, this is like the whole ball of wax in writing the book, which

is just to address this question of, okay, well, hold on a second. Institutions, man-made institutions, they do not police themselves very well. We know that and if you want to have accountability and transparency it has to come from somewhere so this idea that by criticizing what's happening inside the church that you are somehow betraying your faith you know that betraying your brothers it's utter nonsense i again, the biblical standard here is really clear. I mean, even get beyond Paul and his epistles, which were just, I mean, really brutally honest about the sins of the church and what was happening in some of these congregations, even get beyond that.

Charlie, the whole New Testament model for the church predicated around this idea that we as Christians are to be gracious and merciful and forgiving towards the outsiders, towards the unbelievers, because they don't know God. So they don't know any better. And we are to love them unconditionally. And at the same time that we are to practice real strict accountability inside the church, that we are to hold believers to a higher standard because they do know God, right? That New Testament model in the American context, Charlie, we have completely inverted it. We are taught basically in this country, you know, in the American evangelical tradition, like we are hostile, reflexively hostile towards the outsiders, completely unmerciful, so quick to judge and to condemn. But when it's our tribe, when it's somebody on the inside who's abusing

somebody in their congregation or somebody who's been, you know, stealing money or somebody who's been preaching total heresy or whatever, like, no, no, no, it's just, you know, we treat them with the kid gloves. It's okay. We keep this inside the family. And that is just completely abiblical. Let's end with a warning and a little bit of hope. A second Trump term, I think we've talked about, you know, the authoritarian nature, but you have said in a number of the interviews that you think he would just surround himself with people who like the idea of marrying church and state, eliminating the walls that he would have in a Trump White House, self-identifying Christian nationalists who do not see theocracy

as a dirty word and who will promote the Christianity at the expense of other religions. So this would be a much higher profile in a second Trump term than we've ever seen before in American politics. That case? Yeah, totally fair. Totally fair. And Charlie, just a few weeks ago, this is how desensitized we've become. But Donald Trump said when he was campaigning in New Hampshire, he floated this idea of a religious litmus test on migrants coming to America, that if you're not a Christian, maybe we won't let you in anymore. I mean, that is a spectacularly stunning thing for a candidate for president to say, and we don't even bat an eye anymore.

It doesn't even make the list of the top 30 most outrageous things he said. It doesn't. It doesn't even crack the top, yeah, the top 100, right? And yet, here's Donald Trump basically flirting with, if you want to look at, you know, what is the entry point to Christian nationalism, or what is the entry point to state religion, or maybe even one day, what is the entry point to theocracy look like? It probably looks a little something like this. I mean, we should be taking this seriously. Okay, so the hopeful note, you are seeing new congregations, though, springing up who are looking at this and thinking we have a different way that, so you see some hopeful signs with younger conservatives and younger families looking for something different from the church?

Yeah, I do. I mean, well, and Charlie, let me be clear. Like my, my great hope is as my dad used to say all the time that, you know, his favorite expression was God doesn't bite his fingernails. And that is my hope. That's where my hope is found because I believe that that that's true. In this immediate context on this earth, look, yeah, I do have some optimism that when you spend time around younger believers, younger evangelicals, who I should note, like they're conservative, culturally, theologically, politically, just like their parents, but they want nothing to do with a

lot of this stuff, Charlie. They don't. I mean, we can focus on like the Charlie Kirk rallies and how many young people he draws. But when you go to Christian campuses, you talk to the student body leaders there, they have rejected Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA like it's a bad virus. There's a really interesting struggle there. Like even at Asbury, the school that had the revival in Kentucky that obviously drew a lot of national media attention. There was this really fascinating moment that I document in the book where Russell Moore was talking with leaders at Asbury and they told him that Tucker Carlson, his show had tried to come and set up to shoot and do a live segment from the campus of Asbury. And the student leaders were like, nope, not going to happen. You are not going to hijack this moment of spiritual revival for us, for your culture war,

electioneering, dominate the country purposes. It's just not going to happen. So that is something, Charlie, that does give me real optimism that the children of the moral majority have seen through the facade of the moral majority, and they really want to do this differently. The book is The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta, the New York Times bestselling author of American Carnage. This is a massive bestseller. It is a must read. Tim, thank you so much for joining us on the Bulwark podcast and best of luck on the book. Charlie, I appreciate you a lot, man. Thanks a lot for having me. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.

We will be back on Monday and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.