The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump by Angela Denker

Episode Date: August 13, 2022

Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump by Angela Denker Winner of a 2019 Foreword INDIES Award Silver Medal Donald Trump, a thrice-married, no-need-of-forgiveness, blustery billionaire who rarely goes to church, won more Evangelical Christian votes than any candidate in history on his way to winning the 2016 US presidential election. Veteran journalist Angela Denker set out to uncover why, traveling the United States for a year, meeting the people who support Trump, and listening to their rationale. In Red State Christians, readers will get an honest look at the Christians who gave the presidency to the unlikeliest candidate of all time. From booming, wealthy Orange County megachurches to libertarian farmers in Missouri to a church in Florida where the pastors carry guns to an Evangelical Arab American church in Houston to conservative Catholics on the East Coast--the picture she paints of them is enlightening, at times disturbing, but always empathetic. A must-read for those hoping to truly understand how Donald Trump became president.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss i'm here for the serious brain bleed hi guys chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show or should i say the serious brain bleed who the hell wrote that script at the beginning? Oh, I think I know who it was. It was me.

Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys. Welcome to the Chris Voss Show. I'm your host. They tell me, it says here on the placard, say that you are Chris Voss. So it must be me, unless I'm impersonating myself. Can you impersonate yourself? I don't really know. But that's the ramble today folks we just make it up as we go along and if it's funny it's funny and if it's not well sometimes when you die it's

funny rather than kill as they say for comedians on stage today we have an amazing author on the show you i know you didn't see that one coming because we have so many amazing authors put them in the google machine and and they just come out the ticker tape there. Remember the ticker tape? Yeah. Just come out the ticker tape. That's what we run off on the Curious Vodas show. Running off old-timey ticker tape things.

Those of you, the millennial and Gen X generations, you can Google what the hell that is. It's the newest thing on TikTok. Trust me. Today we have an amazing author on the show. She is Reverend Angela Denker. She's on the show to talk to us about her amazing book, Red State Christians, Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump. This came out on August 6th, 2019, but she has a new revised updated issue that she's going to be putting out in August, or I'm sorry, August 6th, 2019, this came out. And then I believe August 16th, 2022, it's going to come out. She's going to correct me if I'm sorry, August 6th, 2019, this came out. And then I believe August 16th,

2022, it's going to come out. She's going to correct me if I'm wrong here in a second, which is probably what everyone should do because I'm wrong a lot. She is an amazing author and she is a Lutheran pastor and veteran journalist. She's written for many publications, including Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post. We love The Wall Post, The Fortune Magazine as well. She has appeared on CNN, BBC, and Sky News to share her research on politics and Christian nationalism in the U.S. Her book, Red State Christians, was the 2019 Silver Forward Indies Award winner for political and social science. She's the mother of two boys and lives with her husband, Ben. Why isn't Ben here? I'm just kidding. In Minneapolis. Welcome to the show. How are you, Angela? I'm great. I'm in Columbus, Ohio from Minneapolis,

but other than that, I'm doing good. There you go. There you go. Well, say hello to Ben. I always think it's funny when people put their family in the thing. He lives with his wife and two kids in Nantucket. And I'm always like, well, I mean, if people are just like, damn it, I'm buying that book now. I'm just being funny. Anyway, welcome to the show. Give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Yeah, easy. Just AngelaDenker.com, D-E-N-K-E-R. There you go. And what motivated you to want to write this book? Yeah. So as I'm sure you hear from many authors, the book was information for a long time. It

draws on so many different experiences I had in my life, including previously I interned for a Republican congressman, worked as a journalist in covering sports, which sports overlaps with a lot of the topics that we're covering right now as well. But the immediate reason for the book came out of in 2016 and leading up to the 2016 election. I was pastor at a large Lutheran church in name, really evangelical in style church in Orange County, California. Incidentally, in the hometown of Richard Nixon. That's right. church in name, really evangelical in style, church in Orange County, California, incidentally in the hometown of Richard Nixon, California. That's right. So, you know, very conservative corner of Orange County and also very evangelical. And so I was watching the 2016 election and the buildup of popular among evangelical Christians for Donald Trump from that position

in the U.S. And initially, I had pitched an entire book on Southern California Christianity. So many people assume that Southern California is entirely liberal, but there are huge pockets of conservative Christianity in Southern California, particularly Orange County. And you see that as you look at Trump's administration and even a lot of the leadership among prominent evangelicals, a lot of them tend to come from Orange County, center of wealth, power. Anyway, so I first pitched a book called Bibles and Boob Jobs entirely for California. And you know, people tell me they're like, you should have stuck with that title. That's a great title. I lived in Whittier and spent a lot of time in Orange County and

yeah, that and lip injections. So yeah. Not for me personally, but yeah. You should try it. Look at it. There's still time. So in that, I should say that that title did survive as a chapter title so i have a chapter isn't uh isn't that one radio station guy who's very toxic who helped to give rise to steven miller isn't he from orange county yeah yeah he just recently ran for governor at least southern california yeah i'm not yeah i think yes yeah larry elder yeah larry elder there you go yeah there was a book that someone did it escapes me right now on stephen

miller and i was surprised that's when i learned about larry elder and i was like holy crap and yeah it's amazing stephen miller being from santa mon, too. There you go. There you go. Mr. Goebbels himself. So I submitted the book idea and the publisher came back to me that they had been wanting to do this book, Red State Christians. And they really wanted, you know, as you mentioned before the show, there's been so much coverage of this topic from different authors. I think the niche that my book wanted to fill was that it also brings a theological and a pastoral perspective to the topic, which we hear a lot from historians, from sociologists. And I also wanted to address the theological and the pastoral. And the pastoral really involved me getting to have the opportunity to travel across

the country in 2018 and really talk to know, talk to people whose voices often weren't being heard. So those were the two elements that I wanted to bring to the book. And of course, since it came out in 2019, our entire world has just continued to change and shift on its axis. So I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have this revised edition. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize it. I think it's great that you're bringing it from a perspective of calling from inside the building. We've had a number of authors that I think most

of the authors that we had were religious. I know Robert P. Jones from PRI was on the show. He's a devout Baptist. I'm not sure if he's Southern Baptist or Baptist by nature. But I mean, people that are calling from inside the building to go, hey, the building's on fire and we need to fix our house sort of thing. And so I think it's great that's perspective out of there. You know, we recently saw your books really topical again, too, because we recently saw kind of this Christian nationalism thing pop up. And, you know, it was kind of interesting to me. I can't remember who made the meme, but a meme circulated recently, and it was that one toxic gal.

What's her name? Marjorie? Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I guess I've tried to block her name out of my mind. And a couple others, you know, announcing, you know, we are Christian nationals. And somebody put out a meme recently where they interwove the David Duke stuff that David Duke said. You know, I remember from being younger, interwove that with some of the stuff that Republicans are saying. And I'm like, holy crap, you know, I mean, these are people that are hardcore KKK.

And now it's just mainstream and you see the doubling down of that. You know, I remember the day after Trump was elected, I sat down and I was like, I need to fight for what the hell is going on. And I, you know, I started reading like white nationalism came up and I was like, what's a white nationalist. And I started, you know, seeing all the stuff that was there. And I've just been amazed at how much undercurrent there was that led to this. So let's talk about the book and some of the stuff that you have in it and your perspective. Yeah. So Christian nationalism is how the book begins. The first chapter takes place

in Plano, Texas at Prestonwood Baptist Church on Fourth of July weekend. And I went there. It was actually not on my initial list of places I was going to go that particular church. But when I had gone to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. in January of 2018, I met with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention headed up by Russell Moore. And I was told by several members of that commission, they said, if you want to understand Christian nationalism, which they were calling it, even at that time, you know, this is four years ago, they were calling it a gospel distortion,

meaning that the power of Christian nationalism for them within the Southern Baptist Convention, for me as a pastor who's not Southern Baptist, this goes beyond the SBC to, you know, every corner of American Christianity, even those that consider themselves liberal. We've been, we've so bought into Christian nationalism, this idea of America being the promised land, this idea of Jesus being an American savior, Jesus sort of as an element of the American military, it's become so powerful that it's distorted the gospel, it's changed the gospel. So for me as a person of faith, you know, that's the biggest worry beyond, you know, what it's doing in our country, beyond what it's doing to democracy. It's distorting the gospel. It's distorting the mission of Jesus. So I went there,

I reported on what was happening there. And really what's significant for me is that the idea of Christian nationalism has its roots in theology. And it lifts up something that's much older than America. It lifts up this idea of a theology of glory that first began to creep into Christianity in 8300. Back when Roman Emperor Constantine on on his deathbed, converted to Christianity. And suddenly, the most powerful empire in the world became Christian. And so Christianity went from being this persecuted religion to being aligned with empire. As you can see, the way that manifests itself in Christian nationalism in the US is, and I think what Trump did that was so powerful and had not been done before,

is he sort of unified these two distinct wings of American Christianity, probably the two largest wings outside Catholicism, and it's both within Catholicism as well. He unified this wing that was very sort of God and country, patriotic, the military, sort of this sense, again, of military sacrifice being akin to Jesus' sacrifice. He used that wing with more of a global prosperity gospel, which suggests that if you follow Jesus, if you are a Christian, you are entitled to money and power and wealth. And what we've done in America, and this is, and this is where the book has kind of gone in this new revised edition, is that both of those two things are inextricably connected to whiteness

and to white nationalism and to white Christian nationalism. And for me, being in Minneapolis, just six miles from where George Floyd was killed, that's really been a journey that I've gone through over the last three years to connect those two pieces more powerfully. Wow. So how much went into, you know, we saw what he was kind of doing in the, you know, the lead up to the election and seeing, you know, him portray himself as almost a Jesus figure and people buying into it.

And then, of course, you had, who was the, he was embraced by, I think it was Franklin. Franklin Graham. Yeah, Franklin Graham and a bunch of, you know, these cronyisms. And I think Obama had seen some of the issues that were coming up with, you know, I've seen it since where I've watched, where I've seen, you know, people preaching from the pulpit and they're not preaching religion. They're preaching politics.

And you're just like, wait, I don't see any Jesus stuff going on here. This is just, you're just doing politics and you're getting a tax write off for it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've, we've neglected the cross. You know, American Christians have put aside the cross. And it's interesting if you go into a lot of these, you know, more modern church buildings, you don't see the cross anymore, just visually. You don't see crosses very often.

And what we've done is we've sort of neglected to teach the reality of the crucifixion that Jesus really died. You know, it wasn't some idealistic thing. It wasn't some imaginary symbolic death. Jesus really died. And because we've ignored that for so long, we've created generations of Christians who think that following Jesus, being a Christian is just sort of about ascribing to a sort of white middle-class American life, which necessitates subjugation of anyone who doesn't kind of fit into that box. Yeah. The subjugation part is the, is the, is the part that always bugs me the most because it's not about, you know, I remember,

I think it was when Robert Jones was on the show. I said to him, I said, you know, I'm an atheist. But I believe everyone, you know, I get people need to have something to go through this life to hold on to. But the problem that I see with Christian nationalism is it's very, it's kind of like the dark ages where you believe in us or die. What was that thing that they did where if you didn't accept Judaism, they'd just kill you? Or they'd kill you anyway, I think. And it's very much like that. I wouldn't have a problem if you want to put Ten Commandments on a courtroom steps. I mean, there are kinds of problems with the Constitution,

but technically I wouldn't have a problem with it if you put everybody else's on there, the pagan people and the you know the jewish people and the you know if everyone's representative then great as long as we can have everything but the problem with the the christian nationalism is they they they want theirs and no one else's and everybody else will bend a knee or you know fall to the sword to them it seems to be their attitude do i have that correct yeah yeah and again you know if fall into the sword to them. It seems to be their attitude. Do I have that correct? Yeah. Yeah. And again, you know, if we look at the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, there's, there's none of that in Jesus' life. You know, Jesus meeting with Samaritans,

he was lifting up people from all different types of ethnic and religious groups. And ultimately, like for me as a Lutheran, you know, we are saved not by what we do, or even not by what we believe. We're really saved by Jesus. But Christian nationalism betrays itself to a sort of earned righteousness, which then helps people to feel that they have the right to, you know, exclude other people. And we see that, we see this bleeding into, you know, exclude other people. And we see that we see this bleeding into, you know, recent Supreme Court decisions that have Christian nationalists underpinnings. We do see it happening, you know, across this country. And it's especially troubling when the US was really founded on this idea of religious freedom. And unlike, again, there's been this revision of history, where you'll hear in the churches I went to for the book, you would hear over and over again that, you know, our founders put into these documents that we were to have a Christian nation.

And that just wasn't the case. It's amazing how many people I meet. I'm like, hey, you know, the Constitution is this. I'm like, when's the last time you read the Constitution? Yeah. And I even sat down a couple years ago and read the Constitution. I think it was right before the Biden election and read the Constitution and passed copies out to friends for Christmas gifts. And it's amazing.

And we've had a number of authors on the show that, you know, talk about the origin of the original lie. You know, the person who did the shining on the, the, the city on the shining hill lie. And then, you know, Reagan hijacked it and we've kind of seen this escalation of Christian nationalism rising ever since. Yeah. And he, so is it getting worse in your opinion? I mean, we seem to be still just escalating. I mean, you know know we reached this point

where you know they they overturned abortion and now they're after contraception and i mean they just they're just like avenging angels sort of attitude of like let's we want full control of everything there you know you see victor orban you know complete fascism if you if you study the rise of fascism and authoritarianism it usually always comes from right-wing religion and control seizing by violence usually yeah and as when you mentioned orban that's why i always want those of us who are in america to to expand our understanding of yes this is right now a phenomenon that's happening in the GOP.

It's happening in the US. It's focused around the flag and around America. But really, this is a global phenomenon. And again, it is a phenomenon that goes back to the Roman Empire, goes back to this time when Christianity became intertwined with violence. But it's definitely getting worse. I mean, I, I entered into the travels for this book in 2018. And you can see it, my subtitle changed. So the initial subtitle of the book, which I had wanted meet the voters who elected Donald Trump, they changed it

to understanding the voters who elected Donald Trump. I don't, you know, I don't know, I think sometimes there's no understanding, Sometimes it's just meeting people. But I went into that with a really open heart. I mean, I come from a family of, particularly on my in-law side, people who are big supporters of Trump, people who go to Trump rallies. My church where I pastor right now is located in a county where two-thirds of people voted for Trump in 2020. So when I was writing about all these ideas and people, you know, I was writing about people that are close to me, people that are close to my heart. And I was hopeful at that time, you know, that we'd be able to back away from this a little bit, that, you know, Trump is such an opportunist, right? And I always kind of fault these evangelical pastors

and Christians in leadership more than I do Trump. You know, he kind of latched onto it, but they're the ones who laid the groundwork and betrayed the government. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, the most extraordinary thing to me, you know, I'm an atheist.

I mean, I read the Bible when I was a kid. I, you know, when I, like, should I be a good person or a bad person? Like, yeah, I'd probably be like Jesus, be a good person. You know, I still, I think it's a good advice. And to see that, you know, Joe Biden, President Joe Biden is a, I guess he's a Roman Catholic. He regularly goes to church. I think Trump showed up to church, what, like three times or something during his thing? And that was usually to get some votes or raise some whatever, you know, promotion.

You know, and here, you know, and Biden's been a devout Catholic, I think, or yeah, Catholic all of his life, you know, to have them treat him horribly and tout this philanderer, you know, guy who's, I don't know, he's clearly hijacked the thing, the movement, and is manipulating it. And the fact they can't see that or, I don't know, there's just money that they see being made. Because that's what I see a lot of the pastors a lot of the money changers you know jesus threw the money changers out of the temple a lot of the money changers you see that were the the big money who brought him up that guy who got kicked out of the college and was having an affair i think or some other stuff was going on you know turn he was the guy who was

the first i think big preacher to to give Trump an endorsement. And that was because he needed some pictures hidden, to my understanding, or reporting. Yeah, it's follow the money, right? Yeah, follow the money. And again, you know, looking at Jesus' arrest and death, it was the partnering of the religious leadership of his time with the government leaders of Rome that ended up crucifying Jesus. And so I think we have to really be careful whenever we see a partnership between religious leadership and governmental leadership. And, you know, Democrats aren't immune to that, but it's certainly, you know, the violence. So when you ask if I've become less hopeful, you know, between COVID and just watching COVID explode and expose the fallacy of the pro-life movement.

I lost a brother-in-law at age 43. I'm sorry. He was unvaccinated, you know, because of his, he, he believed what he was told from right-wing leadership. And so for those same people to turn around and claim, you know, we really care about life when they called for the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to lift up the economy. Um, you know, that, that just shot a arrow through my hopefulness because I'm ultimately a hopeful person. You know, you kind of have to be to be a pastor and to be a mom, to be a wife. But that and then to, you know, feel some hopefulness around some of the racial reckoning after George Floyd,

but then to see how quickly that turned into a backlash, how quickly this exposing of justice for Black people in this country was turned upside down of people claiming, you know, there's riots and there was no acknowledgement of the hold that this movement has on people and has on good people. It's rough. Yeah, and it's amazing how deep they go. Do you get any of the craziness of it. I've seen so many interviews at Trump rallies between QAnon and just crazy stuff that they'll believe. It seems like there's no end

or no bottom to how far they'll go. I've heard some people saying John F. Kennedy and his son are running the government. He's like, what the hell? Everyone knows it's really Nixon that's running the government. That's a joke. People don't take that seriously and start a cult. Thank you. Somebody will watch out. So is there, was there in delving in meeting all these people,

was there any sort of psyche or is it, you know, what's, what's the core? What gets you off the rails to buying this? Are people just used to trusting a pastor and so they run with it? You know, one of my favorite things to do for a while there was watching, of course, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the growing hate thing, the monitor they had, but also right-wing watch. Normally, you'd see the videos on Facebook and they would post, you know, these clips of pastors, you know, saying all this stuff and running politics from the thing. And of course, anti-COVID stuff, et cetera, et cetera. Is there a psychological makeup or is there a reason these people are turned? Is there some sort of consistent core?

I mean, I think that, you know, the psychology is probably above my pay grade. But what I would say is that I see for so many, there's a deep insecurity. There's a deep way in which the American economy has failed so many Americans, particularly American families, a lot of rural Americans. And this has left people with a lot of insecurity, particularly white people, right? And so the answer to this insecurity, it's very hard for people who are insecure to admit where they've been wrong.

Because it feels like if I let go of this little piece, then I'm going to lose everything. and everything's going to be gone. And what I remember when I was beginning to do this reporting on Christian nationalism and speaking with folks from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC, what they were telling me is that when people let go of of Christian nationalism, when they attempt to sort of separate out and say, you know what, this idea that the 4th of July is our high holy day, you know, that's actually not it. We're going to go back to Easter. We're going to go back to Christmas. What they said happened is people lose their faith. They drop their faith.

And I think what we're starting to see too, and I was actually seeing this in an interesting corner of the internet when it comes to sort of this merging of like wellness culture, essential oils, yoga culture, and, you know, anti-vax movement and how it's kind of moved these left wing hippies with the right wing. What you're starting to see is people are dropping the religious aspects of it and they're just holding on to these cultural moments, you know, and I think that's where it leads, you know, and I'm, I'm a Lutheran, I'm of almost entirely German descent. And we got to be real careful. Because this is what happened in Nazi Germany. And I'm not saying we're going there in the U.S., but what happened is that the majority churches in Germany ended up signing an oath to say they're going to support Hitler and the German nation. It was all about German pride, bringing, you know, make Germany great again,

for lack of a better term, after a national recession. And they had so obliterated the teaching of Jesus that it was real easy to just kind of sub in Germany for God. And we're right on that edge here. We definitely are. And I think you nailed it on the head. You know, when I was 18, 20, they started talking about the dissolving of the middle class. And it was the 80s and trickle down economics. And that really started destroying the middle class. And of was the 80s and trickle-down economics. And that really started destroying the middle class. And of course, Reagan's war on unions and the backbone of American society. And then, you know, we see these areas turn into rust belts. But no one blames the GOP, which is kind of interesting. Well, I mean, there's people that do, but the people who vote always seem to vote against their best interests. Hey, let's vote against the people who shouldn't put a cap on insulin. Let's do that. Let's vote against the people who don't vote

against policies to not raise gas prices or price couch. But there you go, because they're cloaked usually in religion. But I do agree with you. The dissolving of the middle class, I think, is the proponent before it. And when people get desperate, when they lose, you know, their ability to, you know, have a picket fence in the car and the two car garage. And what's that line from, from the movie network, you know, just give me my tires and my lazy way recliner. Let me watch my TV and just leave me alone, man, for five seconds so I can have some peace basically. And, and, and then it dissolves from there. The more desperate we get, the more crazy things get. You saw that, like you mentioned, in Hitler.

Ruth Van Gate's been on the show a couple times. She wrote a great book called Strongmen. And she profiled the rise of the right-wing takeovers of any government. Duterte, the names of Chile escape me. Everything's escaped me at this point. But any one of these governments, like you mentioned earlier, use religion to keep going. Even Putin is, you know, allied with the Russian Orthodox Church and a billionaire pastor there. You know, all these guys use that as a way. And a lot of times they can't get away

with it without having that endorsement. And that's what's really scary it is really interesting what you said to me because i've watched the dissolving of of religious power in america and less less and less people claiming that they're religious but then you you mentioned the giving rise to the other mysticism stuff like essential oils and and all sorts of other sort of fantastical things i'm sorry if you're fantastical. Central is great, but once you start going mysticism, and I see more people with rocks and crystals and everything else. Me, I worship coffee, so that's probably demented. But it makes me feel good.

And if there's a heaven, I hope coffee's there. I don't know. That's my new shirt. That's the new thing of the show. But you bring up a good point. And then one thing that I was really surprised by was the terror that I saw in people's eyes that, you know, there was the perspective thing that in 2050, white people would become a minority. And I really didn't think it was that big of a deal because you can't stop what's coming. It's the old line from New Country Fall of Men, one of my favorite lines. You can't stop what's coming.

That's vanity. But to see interviews of Trump voters and GOP voters who talked about that and they were really alarmed. And some of them I heard say they're going to do to us what we did to them for 450 years to this country of ugliness that we did to slavery and Indian, I'm sorry, American Americans. You know, it's to see how much they worried about that. And, of course, immigration, they're like, they'll come here and they'll breathe off kids and they'll vote us. The loss of power and the extraordinary grab for a dying power, if you will, you know, just all that put together. So that's a lot of information to pack into one place. Yeah, I mean, it's and it's again, you know, race is the elephant in the room.

Right. Because when we talk about economic anxiety for white Americans, you know, we ignore the fact that most black Americans, many Americans of color have never had the same opportunities to be a part of the middle class as white Americans have. And again, it's like, you know, I will say when I was growing up, I probably subscribed to some of these things that sound real, like they sound real innocuous on the outset. You know, when people wouldn't get into a college, they wanted, oh, it's affirmative action, you know. Well, no, it's not. And this is an economic critique as well. And it's sort of been the people in this country that hold the power and the wealth, which has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of very few people. It's like, oh, look over here, look at this American Indian student who's getting a scholarship. Don't look over here to the 80 percent of legacy students whose parents went here, who's donated money to to say, well, I'm going to feel better if I can just say, well, I'm still better than this person. And I think it's, it's really painful, but I don't believe that, you know, we experience resurrection without repentance. We don't experience resurrection

without death. And so, um, there's gotta be a lot of that surfaced right now. And I think we're experiencing it and, you know, it's much less painful on the other side to, to realize that we live in a country that looks different and that is a good thing. You know, I don't want to go back to the 1950s, but a lot of people do. Yeah, and there's this fantasy that it was a much better time. And it really wasn't for a lot of different reasons. But there's this fantasy of that, you know, the two-car garage and the picket fence and the vacation,

the two-week vacation stuff. And you're right. There's a lot of the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. I came of age and graduated high school during the Ivan Bioski era. And, you know, greed is good. And when Wall Street started going, hey, if we fire mass amounts of people, the stock goes up. Push this button here.

And, you know, the robber barons basically, the Michael Miltons. And it was really interesting. And a lot of this plays into and is intertwined with the collapse of our societies. Do you see a lot of religions fighting back yet are are people standing up and saying no and and we're done with this and get out of our get out of our you know yeah i mean i do see that i don't think it gets a lot of play you know it doesn't the stories about the, there's a lot of sort of treating, you know, Christians as zoo animals in national media a lot of times and like,

look at this crazy, you know, they'll go find the craziest thing they can find happening. I do think there, there are certainly people pushing back. There's Christians against Christian nationalism. There's groups of clergy that I'm a part of who are constantly working and looking to lift up other gospels. But prominently, I mean, I think we also need to look back to history. You know, history can give us all these examples of places where people have prioritized idolatry of wealth or power over God. But even in this country, you know, the civil rights movement was a movement that was championed primarily by Black Christians and by Black Christian leaders. Not entirely right, but a lot of movement among Black Christians who use the words of the Bible, who use the story of Jesus to remind us that the

movement of Jesus has to be one that lifts up the marginalized, that sets the oppressed free. These are the words of Jesus. And we have, you know, anti-poverty movements in this country. So there are places to look and to see. There's, you know, people doing work in immigration, people doing work with refugees. So I think there are places to see that, but it's certainly an uphill battle. It definitely is. What's even surprising to me recently has been the Hispanics folks have moved from, I think, Catholicism to Protestantism largely, and they're moving and becoming and going to the GOP, which really shocked me. But I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

I have a, I have a chapter on Latino Christians in, in the book. I went to El Paso and really dove into border issues and also walked across the border to Juarez, Mexico. And I think that there's been too much paternalism on the part of white Democrats. And there's been some tokenism. I think there needs to be really a desire to listen more to people on the ground. One thing that I wanted to do in my own reporting, because I think it's really important to listen to people who are the minority political voice where they live, you know, and people who are really doing work on the ground and also people who exist in multiple camps. So of course, you know,

we haven't missed the nuance in some of these stories. And, you know, there is a hopefulness on the part of recent immigrants in the American dream. And I don't think Democrats have always done a good job of articulating what the American dream looks like for Democrats. I think that could be helpful. And our left wing is really, I'm a moderate Democrat. Our left wing is really extreme and very anti-family. I think that drives the Hispanics away. The woke culture in our left wing is really anti-family. And I think it's been very destructive and it paints the party very ugly.

I try to pull as many people as I can towards the middle of democracy. And there was probably a time you called me a liberal before I really understood how toxic the woke culture had gotten. And I think that's what's driving my theory. It's a theory. It's one of the big things that's driving Hispanics away because Hispanics are largely familiar, very family-oriented people. At least I think they are. Everyone I've ever met, I mean, they have huge families. They love their families.

The other thing that's interesting to me, I had someone speak to this on the show that I didn't fully understand because I was really confused. You know, the Cubans voting for Trump and stuff. And I was like, what's going on there? And they referred to it as the slam the door behind you policy and i'm like what is that about and they're like well when mexican hispanic people come here they you know they get the goods and they become like americans where they go hey you know we we did come across the border illegally we got our citizenship now but slam the door behind you because we we want more for us and i'm like wow i never heard of of the closed door behind you

policy of how, you know, or this mental attitude where, you know, well, I got in, but, you know, screw those other people. And to me, we basically turned them into Americans, I guess, when it really comes down to it, the ugly asshole Americans, I guess. But it's extraordinary to me. And I think I noticed that, you know, in a lot of different, I mean, I definitely heard that from folks I talked to in El Paso, but I think I noticed that in a lot of different contexts, particularly among people who have been part of marginalized groups. So even for me as a woman, like you'll experience that with women, you know, women who have so-called made it and then slam the door behind them, you know, I'm going to make it hard for the next woman who's coming up behind me. And I think it stems from, you know, maybe you called it internalized

oppression. Maybe you, maybe you think of it as, you know, when you're operating from, you already know, you've got this certain size piece of pie that you can choose from. You don't get the whole pot. You've got like a certain size of the piece of pie that's going to be accessible to you. And, you know, a rational response to that is to say, well, I'm not other people who are entitled to this little tiny slice of pie that I've just gotten access to. I don't want to give them any of it. So I think that's, you know, it's rational. I think when you talk about, you know, the left wing being anti-family, I mean, it's interesting because last summer we had the family tax credit. And what did we get it for? Like six months, right? But that was a hugely

important piece of legislation for families with young children. And so I think that was a piece where the left wing could have sort of said, this is what we're really going to get behind and really talked about why this is important, why families are important. So I think sometimes there's a rhetoric issue. I think, you know, my hope is that some of the younger Democrats coming up are having a little bit easier time articulating this. You know, some people who've been in political power for a long time, it's very easy to get very isolated from the average American life. And our politicians are held accountable to their fundraisers, to their donors, not to their voters. You know, you see the consequences of that. I mean, we see that in the Democratic Party where we have our set of donors and they run the party and the GOP has their set of donors.

And I'm not sure sometimes one side. I i mean i well let's put it this way i mean i i'm a constitutionalist i'm a i want my democracy i if if trump had been a democrat and you know spouted all the ugly hate he had done i would have voted for someone the gop even though even though I'm a Democrat, because, number one, I want to keep my constitution. I want to keep my democracy. And I'll vote for what's best for this country in that sense of freedom. And I don't know who it was. Maybe it was Obama. This is a baton race of a young democracy where, you know, this person may not be the best for this country. And you hear a lot of millennials and Gen X whining about that crap.

Oh, I don't like this person perfectly. Even in the Democratic Party, people are like, I'm not voting for Hillary because he's not Bernie, you know. And you're like, hey, man, you got to vote. You got to vote for who's going to be able to carry that baton the best for the next four to eight years and move forward this young democracy, this republic that can fail at any time, especially in its youth. A lot of people don't realize how youthful this is, but you bring up some good points, and I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier with money,

where you talked about how if people don't have enough, then they're like, well, I finally got access to this piece of pie, so I'm not going to share it. There used to be this time in this country where we kind of shared a little bit more, cared about each other a little bit more. And we've definitely moving away from that probably because of trickle know, trickle down economics and everybody living on, you know, crackers and Ritz crackers, you know, everyone's fighting over scraps basically. Yeah. And you're able to see, you know, I think social media and as a journalist too, I think the conglomeration of mass media, the death of local newspapers, all this has combined to an atmosphere of distrust,

an atmosphere of envy, and an atmosphere of media members are increasingly isolated from those they cover. Yeah. And you're right. The Democrat Party has always had trouble with messaging. The interesting thing about Donald Trump was the language he uses. And if you watch videos on YouTube about how simplistic his language is and how basic it is and how it preys on a victimhood sort of mentality, that's another thing that we've had in this country for the last 60 years, three generations. This whole victimhood emotionalism has kind of affected the country. And more and more, I mean, you saw with the participation trophy kids, you know, the victimhood has kind of risen and probably out of that financial sort of strife.

So this has been a really interesting discussion. Anything more we want to touch on or tease out on the update for your book and what's coming out? Yeah. I mean, like I said, it's the three things since 2019 that I think have dramatically shifted the conversation around Christian nationalism in this country and political extremism, which is COVID, the murder of George Floyd, and the January 6th insurrection. And you cannot understand these movements without understanding this theological idolatry of many people who call themselves Christians in this country to wealth and power. So I'm examining that and I'm living it as a parish pastor in rural America while I live in the city of Minneapolis. So I have an interesting perch from which to experience all of this and I'm grateful for it.

And also, you know, it's a challenge. Definitely. Most definitely. Well, I encourage people to read the book. Check it out. The one thing man can learn, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history and thereby we go round and round. So let's stop doing that and learn from history because like you mentioned earlier, the same dark path that previous things were on, Hitler, Duterte. I'm trying to think of the Chilean president for so long that disappeared so many. All those guys rose to power

through white ring nationalism. And we need to stop the march. And it just gets scarier and scarier. I mean, if you saw CPAC recently last week, I think it was just crazy. And they're just outright saying it right now, white kids and nationalists. So anyway, thank you for being on the show. We really appreciate it.

Yes, thank you. And give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Yeah, AngelaDenker, D-E-N-K-E-R.com, and Red State Christians available anywhere books are sold. There you go. There you go. Order it up, folks, wherever fine books are sold. The State of the Valley, we have bookstores as well. Red State Christians. Understand the voters who elected Donald Trump. And be sure to go to

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