The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart Katherinestewart.me For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America’s religious nationalists aren’t just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today’s Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding anti-democratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America’s past. It forms a common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals. The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart’s probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms. Katherine Stewart is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, NBC, and the New Republic

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 hi folks just boss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my god we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in and being with us today. We have the most brilliant authors ever known to man. I'm not sure if there's another species out there like aliens, but these are the most brilliant authors known to at least man. So

we just, we'll set the bar there. And we have one today that's going to blow your freaking mind. But before we get to her, be sure to see the video version of this. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Foss. Hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of everything that we do. And also, you can refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. You can go to thecvpn.com, thechrisfosspodcastnetwork.com. You subscribe to all nine podcasts. You'll probably hear this podcast copied to three or four or different podcasts that are out there. And also, you can order all the books that you're going to find, all the great authors we've had on The Chris Voss Show,

Amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash Chris Voss. You'll see all the books there. You can just click the ones you like. Just order them all. Hell with it. I mean, that's what credit cards are for, really. Anyway, the most amazing, brilliant author that we have today is Catherine Stewart. She's the author of The Power Worshippers, Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.

She takes and works in the New York Times, Op-Ed Department, NBC, Washington Post, The New Republic, and many others. How are you doing, Catherine? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me today. Awesome, Sauce. Welcome to the show. And give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, check out your websites, and order your book. Sure. You can follow me on Twitter at Kath S. Stewart. There are two S's there. Or you can check out my website, katherinestewart.me.

Or you can look at my Amazon page. My book is The Power of Worshippers Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. And we've been having a discussion about religious nationalism, Christian nationalism. A lot of it, you know, seemed to start it out. I don't know if it's not its fault, but, you know, we had Eddie Glaude Jr. on. We talked about Baldwin, James Baldwin, a lot of different things. And that's when I really started delving into the separation of black and white churches, finding out about this stuff.

I mean, I started learning about all these things that I didn't know about. And it's evolved in some great different authors that we've had on. And you've got some great data on that, how that works. What motivated you to write this book? Well, I started down this path when I was living in Santa Barbara, California in 2009 with my husband and our two kids. We had a baby boy and a girl who was in first grade. And something called a Good News Club came to our daughter's public elementary school. You know, at first I didn't think anything of it. This is a group that

advertises itself as Bible study from a non-denominational standpoint. Look, I was really naive. I thought non-denominational meant non-sectarian. And I think you can teach about the Bible, even in public schools from a truly non-sectarian standpoint, like it's literature or mythology or history or things like that. And then, you know, this was not, I wasn't thinking about culture wars. I mean, this is Southern California um you know this was not a i wasn't thinking about culture wars i mean this is southern california you know the culture war there is like do you drink pinot grigio or do you doing syrah do you do stand-up paddleboarding or do you surf i mean this is not a part of the world known for its culture wars but then i started hearing stories from other parents in town whose kids

were attending goodness clubs and And I started to hear that how the kids attending these clubs were targeting their peers at school for what I could only describe as bullying and bigotry. They would figure out who the kid in their class was, who either wasn't a Christian or wasn't the right kind of Christian and tell them they were going to go to hell without Jesus. And one of the girls who was attending a good news club said to another girl who didn't happen to be religious, she said, I know it's true. I know you're going to go to hell without Jesus. And I know it must be true because they taught it to me in school and they don't teach things in school that aren't true. And that really opened my eyes. It kind of gets to the heart of the problem with these good news

clubs. Public schools have a kind of cloak of authority in the minds of little kids, and if something's happening in their school, they think it's what the school wants them to believe. So this kind of really struck me. It sort of called into question everything I thought I knew about the separation of church and state. I realized that there were thousands of these Good News Club operating in public elementary schools across the country, and they were using their position inside the schools to confuse in the minds of little kids the authority of the public school and the government with their particular religious viewpoint. So at first I thought this was like wildly inappropriate

in a diverse public school setting, but I also thought that was a relic of the American past. And it turns out I was really wrong about that. The more I learned about these clubs and what they represented, the movement behind them, the more I saw that the Good News Clubs were one part of a larger attack on public education as a whole, and then that was just part of a much larger attack on

America as a modern constitutional democracy. Wow. Yeah, I'm looking at their website right now. These guys are everywhere internationally. They're in nearly 100 countries worldwide yeah and they have thousands of good news clubs in public elementary schools now mind you elementary schools we're talking little kids here we're talking like 5 to 12 maybe you know kids at that age can't make a distinction between activity that's happening in their school and wants one that's sponsored by the school.

They think what's happening in their school, that's what their school wants them to believe. And the Good News Club leaders know that, and that's why they want to be in public schools as opposed to churches or private homes or even public parks or anywhere else that we're all free to practice our faith, if any. This is insidious by, like, just insane. I'm looking through the website. And it seems like a, you know, good news club. Really innocuous. But you know, there's a fellow who did a sort of

independent study of the five year curriculum that's taught in every good news club from coast to coast. And he found thousands of references. This is a few years old, his study, but he found thousands of references to being separated from God forever, hell. One lesson plan had the word obey 40 times in that one lesson plan, and only just a handful of references to the golden rule or the royal law, which is loving your neighbor as yourself. So it's a very particular interpretation of the Christian faith. It's deeply fundamentalist.

Sounds like a little bit of programming, too, and subconscious programming. I'm looking at the pop-up. It says it's got a little picture of a kid and question marks, and it goes, why do bad things happen in the world? Why did God allow this to happen? Oh, what a hellish and insinuation uh presupposition i suppose um and you can learn more and probably get the fact is you know we you know we shouldn't be turning in a diverse public school environment we really don't need

to be sort of igniting these needless religious battles i I mean, we can have our religion if we like, but when one particular religious group tries to commandeer the public resource, the public school, that's supposed to be common to all, you know, it's bad for four reasons. And it's bad for the same, and I'll tell you why it's bad, okay?

Is that okay? Yeah. Well, it's bad for kids because it confuses kids into thinking that the authority of the public school is bound up in the religion of the club. And it won't turn every kid into an evangelical Christian, a conservative evangelical Christian,

but what it will do is teach them that there's a so-called right religion in society, one that's in their public school, and then wrong religions, which is everyone else, which is, frankly, the majority of our country. Number two, it's really bad for communities, because if, you know, public schools are to be effective in diverse communities, they have to be welcoming to all families and not make families feel disenfranchised

or they'll withdraw their support from the public schools. And, you know, it's bad for schools themselves because when these, you know, needless religious wars break out in the public school playgrounds, families start to withdraw their support from the school. I found that in my reporting over and over and over. And then they stopped donating their money. They stopped, you know, volunteering and public schools kind of need that support from families and communities. And number four, it's really bad for our democracy. Oh, yeah. Also bad for schools because, you know, principals shouldn't be dealing with this

religious stuff. They should just be focused on all the stuff they have to focus on, like budgets and teaching. And, you know, erosion and separation, church and state, is really damaging to all of us. This is a principle that is not just for atheists. It's a principle that's served our society so well over time, even as other societies have been torn apart by a religious conflict. Yeah. Most, most, uh, most governments, the fall of fascism, they, they use religion to do it.

And we may be seeing that here. We'll talk about that some more as we go along. Um, but certainly like Hitler, uh, Stalin used religion, uh, and they courted the, the religious churches to give them enough power. And then once they'd siloed enough and they could turn the the religious churches to give them enough power and then once they'd siloed enough and they could turn on them then they did uh which i which i you know we've talked about a lot recently with some of our authors um what i feel is going to happen but we'll talk some more about that about so and you know the the interesting thing is if i call up a school and i go hey man i have a product i had on company. I want to sell some crap and recruit some people. Uh, can I come over there and sell, you know, I don't know,

whatever I'm selling widgets. Uh, they'll be like, Hey man, no, we don't, you're not allowed to raise money and, you know, make money off this. But somehow there's this insidious thing with religion where it's like, we're in here and, and, uh, we're just recruiting for more money that we can make and power and stuff. So what happened then? What happened after you started identifying this and recognizing what was going on?

What happened next? Well, I researched the movement behind these goodness clubs. I researched the sort of history of sort of legal activism that had allowed them to enter the public schools in large numbers. And the more I researched and wrote about this topic, I published a book in 2012 about the religious rights longstanding hostility to public education. This is not a new thing. This is something that dates back actually from the pro-slavery era and the emancipation when pro-slavery theologians were very hostile to the idea of public education and pluralism. And they didn't want white people to have to pay taxes to support black children, their education. And they also didn't want, and these theologians also

insisted on, like the Good News Club, like many of the religious right leaders and leading groups today, insisting on biblical literalism, the idea of hierarchies as rooted in the Bible. Obedience is like a must for them. And it's like a very sort of reactionary understanding of the Christian faith, which does not describe all of the Christian faith, which does not describe all of the Christian faith. I actually think most American Christians reject the politics of conquest and division that this movement represents. But I started to kind of see the ties between this movement and other forms of religious nationalism around the world. And one thing that they all have in common, apart from their hostility to democracy, is an alliance with a kind of reactionary religion.

I mean, Americans have long told ourselves the story about our exceptionalism. We think, you know, fascism can't happen here. Autocracy can't happen here. But in fact, there is a religious nationalist movement within America. And when I started to sort of understand the components of that, I wouldn't say it's not so much a leader-driven movement, even though there are leaders, as much as a movement drawn by all of these sort of different components of like a machinery. There's, you know, for-profit and non-profit organizations, legal advocacy groups that I think to a largely

underappreciated degree are providing a lot of the strategic direction. Data initiatives, right-wing policy groups, something like Focus on the Family and Family Research Council networks that are sort of like the Council for National Policy and to some degree the family that sort of serve to help organize leadership. There's just a lot of components to this machine. The religious right has invested in all of the tools of modern political campaigns like data, media, and messaging. And so, you know, as I kept doing my investigative research over the past 10 years, I attended strategy meetings, I attended right-wing gatherings, met with a lot of different right-wing leaders of the movement, I would say,

some who knew that, you know, I was an opposition journalist and invited me to events anyway, spent a lot of time reading what they write, listening to what they have to say. And so the Power Worshippers is really an effort to sort of get inside that machinery and sort of expose it from the inside. Wow. Wow. And so you started going to these events, and you're seeing how these things work. And one thing that came out of the conversations that I had with some of the great authors that we talked about earlier was I started watching right wing, I think it's called right wing watch. Oh, yeah. And I started seeing these pastors that are, I guess, have a huge effect.

And they are spouting this rhetoric of insanity, like, you know, Biden's going to destroy God and there will be no churches if Biden's elected. You know, like Biden's just going to be like, yeah, remember how I let churches go those eight years under Obama? Yeah, under me, we're just going to raise all of them up, and everyone's going to go into, I don't know, those Chinese concentration camps with the Uyghurs. Yeah, we're going to do that with all the Christians. Yeah, sure, that's going to happen. Oh, the rhetoric is really different. Like, you know, during modern, during political campaigns, both political parties often appeal to religion and God, and sometimes in order to unite the country. But, you know, the rhetoric on display has really changed on the Republican side.

I mean, when I watched the RNC, it was downright delusional and paranoid. Donald Trump Jr. said, you know, people of faith are under attack and you're not allowed to go to church. Jim Jordan repeated the lie. He said, Democrats won't let you go to church. I mean, you know, Trump has actually put it this way himself. He said, you know, no religion, do anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. You know, he, meaning Biden, is against God. Meanwhile, you know, 600 Catholic leaders have just come out in support of endorsing Biden. 350 other faith leaders have endorsed Biden. But it doesn't really matter. It's like, you know, this is what all good fascists do. Trump and his associates assert that anyone who is not a member of their tribe is out there ransacking everything

that is holy and good. And they're casting this as a choice between, as Donald Trump Jr. said, church work and school versus looting, rioting, and vandalism. It's one or the other. And it's amazing. People often accuse the left of playing identity politics. I think the right plays it harder. You know, it's you're in or you're out. You're with us or you're against us. You're either on our team or you're not. And, you know, this is the way religious nationalism ends up manipulating large segment of the public is through these types of identity politics so like when you're talking about the rank and file like when you're talking about you're talking about a wide like really large number of people who have many different interests and ideas and so you know when they're persuaded to vote um to ban abortion or when they say america's found as a christian nation not really arguing for major changes in the way our government is run. They're really kind of making a statement more about their identity and something they value in themselves. But, you know, I think it's really helpful in understanding this movement to focus on the distinction between the rank and file,

those large, massive people, some of whom, you know, very well-meaning and, you know, they just want to sort of, they say they want to preserve the american family whatever um and and the leadership of the movement that actually is not just talking about banning abortion or these sort of um culture war issues in a way those are just the shiny baubles that they dangle in front of the electorate to get them vote a certain way i mean you know when they're in their forums that they share or when they're talking to the plutocratic funders of the movement, there are a number of like very, very well-resourced funders of the movement. And when they're at their strategy meetings, it's not just about abortion. A lot of it's about money. The money favors no taxes or low taxes for the rich, about how the Bible favors minimal regulation of businesses, minimal regulation of the environment,

and about how they don't want the government to fund any social services. They want to hollow out the social – there's a hollowing out of the social safety net, but they want the government to fund their churches and their religious organizations, so that those, so that some of that money can then funnel down. So it's like, this is their whole thing about privatizing public education. They don't think the government should be in the business of educating, but they want the government to fund church schools so that they can have all this lovely taxpayer money to, you know, deliver,

you know, religious education along with other kinds of education. You know, that was the thing that I was doing my research on you and blew my mind because I didn't see Betsy DeVos coming until I heard you say it. I mean, I saw, I always thought Betsy DeVos, and I knew she was kind of right-wingy, but I always thought she was just doing this for money and that she was trying to disable and destroy public education so that she can do vouchers. In fact, they really made a push for it during the coronavirus thing.

They're like, well, we need to do, you know, and she was going on TV going, well, public or private schools, you know, have better, healthier places. So we should be vouchers. So we'll send them there. But I didn't know that her agenda, and you talked about this really well, their agenda is to infiltrate the schools, basically turn us into Christian schools, almost like everything you talked about in the book and stuff really sounds like ISIS to me, man.

Like it's just another name, but it's that same, we take over the government, we take over the schools, we brainwash everybody, and we kill the nonbelievers. Definitely not talking about killing nonbelievers. Not yet. There's a disenfranchisement i mean i think that for you know the extreme members of the movement i mean let's back up for one second you know a lot of people describe this as an evangelical movement it's not quite right the movement does include a lot of evangelicals but it excludes a lot of evangelicals too we've got to you know remember four out of five white evangelicals, but it excludes a lot of evangelicals too. We've got to, you know, remember four out of five white evangelicals voted for Trump.

One in five did not. Most evangelicals of color did not. And it includes representatives of both, you know, variety of both Protestant and non-Protestant religions. So like hyper-conservative Catholics form a large cohort, some cohort, a cohort. The movement also draws on a segment of the charismatic and Pentecostal forms of faith, which are sort of on the rise. So we were talking about Betsy DeVos, and, oh, how do I get off on this tangent? I'm not sure, but it sounded great. Betsy DeVos.

Oh, yeah. So what they want to do for public schools is um yeah so she stands at the intersection of these two family fortunes that helped build some of the key policy organizations like of the religious right um such as uh focus on the family and um members of her extended family contributed heavily to the lies defending freedom as well, which is one of the major legal advocacy groups. And she and her husband couched their sort of efforts some years ago as a means of advancing God's kingdom. They were actually, you know, at a gathering, I think, I don't remember the year exactly when they said that, but they, you know, they were very involved in voucher activism at that time. And they've had, she sort of comes from a tradition that does have a longstanding

hostility to public education. Okay, oh, here's a really great one. And since we've got video here, I've just got these books in front of me. So this dude, his name is D. James Kennedy. He wrote a pamphlet that was made out of a sermon he gave called A Godly Education. D. James Kennedy was one of these very powerful sort of radio pastors where they get on the radio and, you know, radio preachers and say stuff. So he's writing about public education here. And the family of Betsy DeVos gave at least $5.5 million to his ministry.

And here's what he said about public education. He writes, the anti-Christian, anti-God bias, the censorship of all things Christian, the infusion of an atheistic, immoral, evolutionary, socialistic, one-world, anti-American system of education in our public schools has indeed become such that if it had been done by an enemy, it would have been considered an act of God.

This is what he said. He was supported by Betsy DeVos' family. So there's this longstanding hostility to public education, drawing initially, of course, from the time that sort of pro-slavery era, pro-slavery theologians who opposed it. There's a kind of through line into the era of civil rights when a lot of folks like Bob Jones Jr. didn't want public, Bob Jones, the pastor, didn't want integrated schools

and argued against them. And going through here to G. James Kennedy, who wrote this in 1986, and then members of the Trump administration, even Trump today has referred to public schools as government schools, government and evil. But the real problem with public education is that that's pluralistic. Look, this is the movement that is against equality and it is against pluralism. It sort of rejects those values that have held our country, which is irreducibly pluralistic, together. It's basically an anti-democratic ideology.

That was just astounding. Like, I did not even connect Betsy DeVos or the religious, taking over the religious schools, destroying public schools. I thought that was just all for money. And when you said that on a research, I was like, oh, my God, I see the bigger picture now. And you talked about how the issues with them is, you know, they're anti-science. And, you know, I mean mean clearly they have issues because they believe that what the earth was created 4 000 years ago and the problem with schools that they teach

you know the dinosaurs and everything else you know it's not just about evolution really it's about critical thinking which i think perhaps they're afraid that if kids start thinking critically they might start to question some of the sort of orthodoxies and hierarchies that they hand down somehow, you know, ordained by God. And I think that that's sort of, you know, public schools also teach kids how to get along with children who are different, children of different backgrounds and faiths. And that's something that I think is sort of hostile to a movement that is trying to sort of get everyone to conform. Subjugation.

Like you mentioned in that one book, there was several examples, a ton of examples of the word obey. This is all very like NLP sort of unconscious programming, control, manipulation. You know, I grew up in a cult here in utah and i didn't believe any like right away i was like there's something wrong with this i got better things to do on sunday um and but right away you know i'd ask questions and i'd put logical tests to it and i'd be like you know why does this doesn't make sense to that those two there's no line there and they'd be like you just shut up and have some faith jesus doesn't got to believe and i'm like uh no i don't think so man i just i want to know where that line goes and then you know then they backhand you uh but uh so that's what i see a lot

of it in there is is control but what was what was amazing is what you've got in the book is how insidious this goes and how internationally this goes and how it has ties to extraordinary, uh, like with Russia and with, uh, uh, fascism and authoritarianism. And it's almost like this is being used as a tool to destroy,

uh, democracies. Well, democracy, you know, when I was researching power worshipers, I went to Italy to a group, a conference called the World Congress of Families. They hold this typically every year,

every couple of years in a different location. And it brings together leaders of what they call the so-called global conservative movement. But really, they very explicitly declared war on liberal democracy. And some of the speakers stood up and said, you know, please make, you know, make a liberal politicians fear you. They really are against sort of values of pluralism and equality. And, but this is what, you know, when these sort of authoritarian leaders like Putin and Russia or Erdogan in Turkey or Duda now in Poland or Orban in Hungary, when they bind themselves tightly to religious hyper conservative leaders in their countries in order to consolidate an authoritarian form of political power, we rightly recognize this is a form of religious nationalism and clearing the way for more authoritarian power. And we're seeing this today with Trump and his alliances with hyper conservative religious leaders.

This is what scares the crap out of me, especially with discussions with you folks that are writing these books about identifying what's going on inside religion. And unfortunately, I'm just getting this way too late. But what is scary to me is, like you mentioned, the fall of Erdogan, Hungary, everything else, Poland, they say will fall next. And this is the rise of fascism. We are experiencing a coup, if you will. Yeah.

The law and the Constitution draw certain bright red lines, and his cronies just sort of hop all over them. I really do think we are on an all-hands-on-debt moment because that sort of disregard for the law, that blatant disregard for the law, it clears the way for the law is, it clears the way for, you know, sets the groundwork for dictatorship.

Now, we're not quite there yet. And I think it's also really important to remember that this is not a majority of the population. This movement represents a minority. They just punch above their political weight because they're so disproportionately organized and very networked and they really get out and vote so you know to get a handle on the numbers i i you can look at the work of somebody like uh george barna he's an evangelical pollster who's very you know embedded

in this movement and he estimates that the most sort of devoted religious right voters a group he calls sage cons it's an acronym for something like Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservatives. He says that only 10% of the country, but in the last election, 2016, 91% turned out to vote, and 93% of those voted for Trump. And they're not just voting.

They're the ones who are knocking on doors and making phone calls. And then you have just voting. They're the ones who are like knocking on doors and making phone calls. And then you have all these right wing policy groups like, you know, Ralph Reed is another sort of movement leader. He has a group called the Faith and Freedom Coalition. He's promised to devote, I know they all use these like amazing names. Yeah, I know those guys. And American flags. It's all red, white and blue and bright, shining lights.

And, you know, he's promised to devote $40 million to get out the vote efforts in this election cycle. But there's just, and that's just one organization out of many. You know, I continue now to go to these events online because of COVID. And I went to these anti-abortion, a couple of anti-abortion strategy meetings,

and they're talking about the need to get out to vote. They said, you know, you've got to create single-issue voters because if you can get people to vote to save the babies as they see it, you can get them to ignore the economic policy stuff that they're endorsing that makes it so much harder for families to succeed, right? All these far-right libertarian economic policies that are actually hollowing out the middle class, hollowing out the social safety net.

And yet if you get people to vote to ban abortion, they're going to end up voting in politicians who are basically intensifying economic inequality. But so they did talk about, we get to create single-issue voters, and they said there is no victory without unity. This is something the right understands, no victory without unity. So, you know, they vote disproportionate numbers, but the same tools are applicable to all, you know, of those, you know,

they can work for those of us who reject the values of conquest and division that this movement represents. Yeah, this scares the hell out of me. I mean, the more I know, the more I just, I'm freaking out. So two things for you. One thing you talked about was how abortion is kind of more like a monomic device of like build the wall. Like they're not really into it. They're just, that's like the thing that, that's the hot button that turns people on and gets them out to motivate. But this isn't like a big thing for them, especially if, you know,

you're Jerry Fallin Jr. and your pool boy knocks your wife up, you're going to need an abortion. And so if you want to address that just a little bit. Sure. I mean, I think that, you know, abortion was really created as a, as an issue. I mean, let's remember what happened when abortion was was ratified. At that time, the Southern Baptist convention held it.

Most American Protestant Christians at that time supported some form of abortion rights. Let's not forget that it was Ronald Reagan who signed into law the most liberal abortion law in the country. I think it was 1967. Barry Goldwater, who was a conservative hero, he supported abortion, at least early in his career. And his wife, Peggy, okay, this is a great little detail, one of my favorite little factoids, Peggy Goldwater, you know, so it's like Uber conservative couple. She co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona. Oh, seriously?

Yes. Isn't that incredible? I did not know that. Yes, indeed. So, and it was seen mostly as a Catholic issue at that time, but it didn't divide issue at that time, but it didn't divide. Abortion at that time did not reliably divide Protestant from Catholic necessarily, although Catholic hierarchy was mostly against it, but it didn't reliably divide Democrat from Republican. It really wasn't like a voting issue. It was really over time that a new movement called the New Right, they were sort of looking for an issue that they could use to purify their movement and to get people to vote on their side. They were really unhappy with the Republican Party at that time, which they thought was too soft on communism. And they were sort of insufficiently sort of reactionary. So there's a scene where they kind of went down.

Randall Ballmer, who's a fantastic academic and sort of was in on some of these gatherings, he describes this. There's an incident where they sort of had a meeting, strategy meeting, and they're going down the list of issues that might serve to unite their new movement, sort of reunite what they call a new right. And the issue that really bothered them was the fact that these segregated religious schools, which were actively practicing segregation, the IRS was starting to look at them and say, well, why are we giving you a tax exemption for segregation? And Bob Jones University was a target of this kind of inquiry. And this was really offensive to them. They're like, how dare they look at our segregated schools and deny us our tax privileges. So, but they knew that like, it wasn't really going to be a reliable issue. Like, you know, let's, you know, defend the tax on segregation wasn't gonna, to be a reliable issue. Like, you know, let's defend the tax on segregation.

It was just so ugly, right? So they went down a whole number of other issues, like school prayer and the women's movement, stuff like that. But it wasn't until they got to abortion, it was almost like a light bulb went off. And they're like, huh, that could work. So over time, pro-choice voices were purged for the Republican Party. And there were many.

I mean, let's remember Betty Ford hailed Roe v. Wade as a great, great decision. But over time, those pro-choice voices and even pro-choice groups, like pro-choice Republican groups at that time, like a number existed, and they were sort of purged from the Republican Party until what happened is it's almost like

they boiled all of politics to religion and all of religion to the issue of abortion. We have almost like a new religion of pro-life these days. And what matters in this movement is not theological distinctions. I guess this goes back to where I was talking about evangelicals and Catholics and others. It's not so much a theological distinction that unites the movement.

It's really sort of positions on a few yes or no culture war issues. If you can get people to vote on, you know, abortion, their idea of religious liberty, which is the rights of people with certain correct beliefs to discriminate against others, sort of their idea of religious liberty, and LGBT issues, anti-LGBT stuff, then you can capture their vote. So when movement leaders are talking to pastors about how they should communicate to their congregants in order, like the conservative leading pastors,

the issues they should communicate to their congregants in order to turn out the vote, the conservative leading pastors, the issues they should communicate to their congregants in order to turn out the vote, it's all abortion all the time. You know, it's like abortion. In fact, I have a friend who's a pastor in South Carolina who just got this sample voter guide from the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which I mentioned earlier. It's Ralph Reed's organization. And it sort of shows like, you know, Jane Doe, Democrat versus John Smith, Republican.

And abortion on demand, she votes yes, he votes no. Taxpayer funding of abortion, she votes yes, he votes no. Right. So it's sort of like, I mean, these kinds of voter guides that are handed out by, you know, the faith. And this is a sample. And they're saying, we're going to give you a sample. And then we're going to give you the real ones, you know, Biden versus Trump. And it's going to have these kinds of questions, you know hand out in huge quantities, they leave absolutely no question as to which candidate the person receiving the voter guide is supposed to vote for in order, if they're going to vote their so-called biblical values.

That's crazy. Now with the schools, with the schools, one of the things I wanted to hop back to, if I can just do a quick jump back, I think the other reason they want to control the schools that I, one of the things I wanted to hop back to, if I can just do a quick jump back, uh, I think the other reason they want to control the schools, they want to stop LGBTQ and start programming, you know, like programming, you know, uh, boy and girls, I guess, technically in marriages, boy and girl on LGBTQ is bad. I imagine that's one of their other agendas.

Yeah. You know, it's really funny. I go every year to the Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., which is the big gathering of some of the leading activists. They bring in their sympathetic politicians. And a couple of years ago, I was at the Values Voters Summit. Every single person who got up on that podium said, we've got to talk about transgender bathrooms. Now, over and over and over, we've got to talk about transgender bathrooms. And what they're doing is finding another one of those shiny bobble issues that they use to turn people out to vote, you know. And, again, it's just like

these culture war issues are, are used to distract people from the larger agenda of the movement, which is all about power and money. The religious right has allied for a very long time with the sort of libertarian, hyper-conservative economic wing of the Republican Party. So they're going out there and saying, we're defending the American family, and yet the politicians that they're allied with are supporting economic policies

that are hollowing out the middle class, making it harder for American families to succeed. Yeah, I mean, the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies World Congress of Families as an extremist group. And part of it is their attack on LGBTQ rights and stuff. And it's just quite extraordinary uh you talked to in my research and i think in the book uh there was there was groups you're going to where they're really organized and and a lot of the pastors come to the group i forget the name of it i think it's on my browser there are different pastor organizations and networks one of them is called Watchman on the Wall. They've got tens of thousands of affiliated pastors.

And I went to one of their gatherings in North Carolina. They brought together a number of area pastors. I went with a friend of mine whose church is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. He happens to take a different view of sort of different, has different conclusions about politics and policy necessarily. But here's the thing. A lot of people say, well, the religious right is basically turning these sort of conservative churches

into, you know, cells of, you know, like cells of a shadow political party. You know what they do is like to communicate to these pastors, the precise issues they need to communicate to their congregants in order to turn them to vote, you turn them out to vote, including they've really sophisticated tattoos. And people often say, well, why don't progressive churches do that same thing? Our mainline churches. I mean, here's the thing.

Most progressive and mainline religious leaders would really rather keep church and state separate. They really take our constitutional principles very seriously. And they understand that, you know, the reason we have a diverse and vibrant religious landscape in America is precisely because we have a separation of church and state and sort of the justification for, you know, all of their unique tax privileges and benefits is that they sort of should keep themselves separate and clear from government. But here's, it's like another bright red line that movement leaders don't mind sort of jumping over. They, you know, in many instances violating sort of the spirit of the law, if not the letter, and sometimes even the letter, sometimes the letter is flouted. So I've been to these gatherings where they're telling pastors

how they need to get their congregants out to vote, and it's always the culture stuff. And you talked about how they have a certain way that they skirt, you know, the IRS and the federal government, you know, outlook at them where they're, they're instructed to create these culture impact teams within churches where the preacher doesn't have to say, Oh, you got to vote for so-and-so, but what he does, or that's almost always a he, right. Is find people well within the conservative, certainly within the conservative, you know, evangelical and Catholic denominations. They, they, they find a team of people who are, you know, evangelical and Catholic denominations, they find a team of people who are, you know,

with those sort of governance engaged, the sort of people in their congregation who are willing to sort of, you know, be the busybody and say, hey, Mrs. Jones, you know, you're going to vote your biblical values. Let me show you all these resources and how you need to vote your biblical values so that it's not, you know, it's not the, you know, it's like, think about like a peewee soccer league. Okay. It's like, you got the kids, you know, like playing together, but the whole thing wouldn't happen without the adults on the sidelines, like giving them the tools, funding the whole thing,

you know, telling the kids what to do, telling them the thing, you know, telling the kids what to do, telling them the rules, you know, setting the whole game in motion. So I talked to a pastor about one of these initiatives, these sort of culture impact team type initiatives, where they're getting congregants to become like, you know, tell other people how they should vote in the congregation. He said it threads a separation. He said it's a God-given loophole. He said it threads a separation of church and state loophole. I thought that was pretty interesting.

And it's highly organized. I mean, you talked about how they give them these manuals. I have a manual right here. I'm just going to hold it up. You see this culture impacting resource manual, how to establish a ministry at your church. I mean, a church is already ministry, right? But it's all about turning out the vote for so-called biblical values.

And it's not simple. Like there are, I don't know. Yeah, that thing is. Of tabbed materials. See, look, it leaves no room for, like, failure, really. And it covers every single aspect of establishing these teams. And then the data tools are really powerful. I mean, they've got, for the, in my book,

The Power Worshippers, I wrote about an initiative called United in Purpose that is now, I think, reformed somewhat. But at the time they were offering and they still have like the data. You know, the head of the organization said we have 200 million voter voter files in our database. We know it makes somebody turn out to vote one way and we know it makes them not vote at all. Basically stay home. and then they use these um you know uh strategies to target individual voters with um very strategic messages

about you know and and one of the things that they do is assign people points if they ever signed you know uh an anti-abortion list or an anti-gay marriage list, or even if they are a fan of NASCAR or fishing, they know how to get that data. Maybe it's Facebook or whatever, and they assign people, and they attend a church, and then they assign people points. And if a person meets 600 points, they target that as an individual to go after to get them to vote, to turn out that vote. Do they incorporate that data into, you know, Kushner used a lot of, you know, Facebook ads and targeting.

Did they incorporate that data into like Facebook ads and stuff like that? Well, you know, I'm not sure about that particularly, but, you know, it's important to know that all political, modern, you know, modern political campaigns use data to turn out the vote. But the difference is that this initiative was operating largely through religious organizations, or in large part through religious organizations, which are exempt from taxes and scrutiny. So there's a difference between operating through other means. difference between you know uh operating through um you know other means that's what makes me so angry it's like wait you get to be tax-free and then i just saw the money was paid out to them in ppes and i'm like wait why are you getting ppe money when and that was the payoff of of substantial proportions um one of the things that really

scares me about this whole thing is that these people do not give a damn about the Constitution. They believe that they will turn this into a God's country. And I'm not being a hyper-bullet because the more I talk to folks like you that are writing these brilliant books, the more I realize what we're in. And this is a cue to take over America, trash the Constitution, the Bible will become the new Constitution. Correct me if I'm wrong here. And everything will go with, you know, Ten Commandments will be on every courthouse.

You know, I don't know if you'll imprison and behead LBGTQ, but I don't know. ISIS probably didn't start out that way, but I don't know. I don't trust. All I see, like when i see the trucks running down the road i go those sure look like isis type trucks with the flag you know um and so this is my biggest fear and then i know how this story ends because i've studied hitler stalin everybody else who who courted the the thing all all trump needs is to get those votes to get an office second term every president is a lame duck president and what he's going to do is he's going to seize power and he's going to

silo he's going to turn on the christians too he's going to screw them as well because they're going to be like we want to share some power the and they're like fuck you guys and that's what hitler did that's what every one of them did that's what this is moving to and in fact i told people when you saw up on the dais all of the the family of him right that's the new royal family that's the new monarchy royal family of freaking america right there that's what he just put in front of you you know it's funny that the bob no it was michael cohen i think he said something like you know he he wrote, you know, Trump is saying like,

can you believe that these people believe this crazy stuff? But, you know, it makes me think about that. Isn't Bob Seger's on like, you know, he uses them, they use him and neither one cared. I mean, really, they're getting what they want because a lot of their advocacy, a lot of what they want runs through judges. And like I've been to all

these strategy meetings where leadership will stand up and say, this election is about judges, judges, judges. So let's just look at that piece. A couple of days ago, I checked. At that moment, Trump had 204 of his nominees had been confirmed. That's nearly 25% of the judiciary. It's like a huge number. And I think that some of them are comparing him to a biblical leader like a king, like a King David or King Cyrus, an imperfect leader through whom God is enacting his will.

It's also this kind of thing about kings is they don't have to obey the rules, do they? They are the law unto themselves. And they're not the kings of democracies. Yeah, they don't care. He's the angel of destruction against the sinners. And, you know... Destruction against democracy itself, actually.

And we're the, you know, and they think he's going to hand them the golden chalet when he's done. And he's not. I think he's going to hand them the golden chalet when he's done. And he's not. I think he needs them. He needs them because that's the only way that he is going to, you know, maintain any cohort of, you know, voters behind him.

They're spending so much money to get him elected. They stand by him. There's nothing he can do that will, you know, earn their criticism. But once he gets into office again, once he's reelected, he's going to continue to silo power, destroy the government, take pieces apart. He's going to continue to keep operating. And eventually you'll turn on them.

It's definitely an all-hands-on-deck moment. It really is. And I'm scared to hell because there's that silent, there's that silent sub that came in 2016. And now, I don't know, it's hard to call it because now people are more overt in supporting Trump. And so there's either that silent sub still there, or now they're above the water. One thing that thing that was, that really blew my mind and I was cracking my pants earlier was, uh, you talked about capital ministries, ministries. And so I started Googling these guys and Holy crap. I mean, I, I didn't even know there were so many insidious members of our government that

are involved with these guys and that are promoting this agenda. So. 12, I think it's 12 out of 15 current and former members of Trump's cabinet have participated in capital ministries. He's a pastor who targets political leaders at the highest echelons of power. So he's got, you know, Trump's cabinet, he's got Bible study for that. We're talking folks like, you know, Betsy DeVos, Sonny Perdue. Oh, I don't have the list in front of me. They're like, you know, Carson, Pompeo, Alex Azar, I mean,

12 out of 15 current and former members have participated. And then he's got also ministries targeting the senate uh house of represent uh house of representatives um and he's also international i mean he's sort of conducting a kind of shadow diplomacy uh on behalf of our government around the world um so yeah he's an interesting fellow i just realized that on the show i need like a scream bag you know like a bag where you step off and you just scream into a bag i need one of those in the show right now uh this is this is horrifying and yeah you open my eyes to all this stuff that's going on i didn't realize those cities um there was a moment for hope i really really do. And I'll tell you why. I'm seeing a lot more political organizing among those of us who defend our democracy than we saw four years ago. I think people, you know, the right has been trained not to vote on the personality of Trump, although, of course, there are those who love him because he sticks it to the limbs, but they're like, you know, vote on policy, vote on issues, vote on abortion, vote for judges.

And I think people, you know, who sort of oppose that are starting to get it. It's not about what a person might've said in 1992. It's not about some thing they voted for once. It's really, you know, are you voting for somebody who, you know, is he going to, you know, appoint a climate denier to run our climate policy? Are you going to vote for somebody who wants to destroy public education to run the government, you know, Department of Education? Are you going to vote in science deniers? Are you going to vote in somebody who's going to appoint

justices that have all been like these sort of hyper conservatives that have all been sort of vetted and groomed by the federal society or, or judges who actually believe in the rule of law and the constitution. So, you know, I think, I think, you know, they say there's no victory without unity and I think people are starting to get it on the other side too. I hope so. I mean, folks like you that are writing great books and others that we've talked about and had on the show, I hope that they're going to make some difference.

I fear we might be too late to the party, but I think we've seen enough. I mean, there's a lot of – Trump really seems to be collapsing, so knock on wood. Now, you talked about Capital Ministries, and this guy, I was watching a bunch of his videos from Capital Ministries, and he is insidious, man. He knows how to go into state and screw you up. He knows how to go for control in the throat. And there was another group that I looked up, and they had a podcast called The Wall Builders.

Wall Builders, yeah. Yeah, and I'm just like, oh, my God, They had a podcast called The Wall Builders. Wall Builders, yeah. Yeah. And I'm just like, oh, my God, could you be more overt to what sort of racism you're promoting there? And in one of these groups, I couldn't remember which, you talked about how they're very anti-LGBTQ. They're very anti-women's rights, women's feminism. I mean, they're subjugated to women where, you know, it's all about men. I couldn't remember which of these individuals or maybe it was another individual that you talked about. Oh, a number of them.

I mean, Ralph Bungers, you know, he studied at the feet of a fellow named John MacArthur. You should look him up if you're up for Googling. So John MacArthur has been in the news recently because, yeah, he's, you know, one of these, you know, they're, you know, oppressing the churches by not letting us sing, you know, and crowd large numbers or something like that. He's got a wild, so he started this seminary called the Master's Seminary. It's in Southern California. This is where Ralph Drollinger studied and got's degree. And the master's, John MacArthur wrote this wild, it's a sermon, and you can find it online. It's called The Willful Submission of a Christian Wife. And he instructed,

you are to rank yourself under your husband. You're to rank yourself under your husband. Basically, your job is your husband. And I spoke to somebody who had worked at the Master's Seminary for almost 25 years. He was there for 24 years. And he said that, he told me that MacArthur, if your wife worked, he'd either fire you, or if he liked you, he'd give you a raise so she could quit her job. And there was a really famous German theologian. I'm probably mispronouncing her name,

Etta Leininger. She was like this famous Protestant theologian and she came to campus and she wasn't allowed to actually be on campus. She had to meet students off campus. And he said, this guy ran a library for a while and he said he was even discouraged from purchasing books by female

authors a drama yeah some of this kind of submissive stuff uh female submission stuff and his some of his uh sir uh sermons you can find them on catman.org none of this is hidden i mean some people like you know say this is a conspiracy this is not a conspiracy conspiracies happen you know behind closed doors with unnamed actors um this is a conspiracy. This is not a conspiracy. Conspiracies happen, you know, behind closed doors with unnamed actors. This is happening out in the open. It's not that they're hiding. It's that we are not listening. And this is why they hate Me Too. They hate cancel culture, even though I'll embrace it if it's good to your tires, I guess.

But this is why they hate this stuff is because it's calling out their sexism. And then, of course, Black Lives Matter calls out their overt racism and their and their demand for power over those folks as well. It's true. But I also think they sort of work that cancel culture thing because it's a way of trying to get sort of look. They specialize in the politics of resentment. And so in some ways it's time to get certain people who might be resentful, but not particularly religious themselves, or certainly wouldn't think of themselves as, you know, agreeing with many of the other positions of the, of the, of the religious right. But they might be like, you know,

I'm a big believer in free speech. And I think we should have a marketplace of ideas and people should be allowed to, you know know say what they want and I've actually seen some of this like they'll sort of um you know work that group and talk about you know they're canceling this and they're canceling that and um and and and they they're doing it to sort of draw in you know that cohort of people who actually are on um you know might be be progressive in other ways, but also, you know, want to, but are concerned about, you know, people getting, you know, they're disinvited, they're free speech suppressed or whatever. But, you know, the right is really good at exploiting.

But, you know, they're complaining about cancel culture. But all you have they they do it they they run it harder i mean all you like listen look at the silences you know i watched the rnc did you watch the rnc like a little bit of it but i i i tried to quit drinking here for a while okay all right well good luck between now and november yeah after november i've taken up heroin until nove pretty much. I'm the fattest guy on heroin right now but I'm just going to go with heroin. I'm going to do this cancel culture thing. So like you know they're going after cancel culture on the left

during the RNC but there were like vastly you know plains of silence deserts of silence there was not a single word uttered that might possibly offend, you know, anybody who might want to take a more nuanced position on abortion rights or might want to take a more nuanced position about LGBT equality or not a single word that would offend some of the movement's most plutocratic funders who have an absolutely libertarian economic philosophy. So I actually think that there's no room in that movement for deviation. As they say, it's like a kind of a thought control.

No victory without unity. I was going to go with Adderall and cocaine, but evidently Trump and Don Jr. and his, his girlfriend are buying up the market. So I couldn't, couldn't find any. It was really something, right? It really is.

Especially when you saw like a gem fall out of his nose the other day when he was speaking and he noticed it too. With his little deviated septum. I don't know if you've ever read anything from i think it's noel castor who used to be the reminders on the set of whatch mcclellan he's a comedian and and he uh he was the one who finally came out and broke the story on the snorting ant or all stuff um but yeah it's it's really interesting to me uh you know i for me a lot of this is still a surprise because when I left the cult as a kid, I just pretty much became an atheist. And I'm really cool with people.

I don't knock on your door at Saturday morning and go, hey, have you heard about nothing? Do you want to hear more about nothing? Like, I don't do that, right? And, you know, my good Jewish friends, they don't bang on my door. They don't even give a crap. So, you know, I don't have to, you know, want to Jewish friends, they don't bang on my door. They don't even give a crap. So I, you know, I don't have to, you know, want to hang out with them. They don't give me problems. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, so I haven't been around this Christian thing for a long time. I just kind of stay away and they stay away from me and I stay away from them.

And so let's start learning about all these things. I'm kind of like, what the hell? Um, oh, that was the other question I had for you. Uh, during the Obama era i'm kind of like what the hell um oh that was the other question i had for you uh during the obama era he kind of started going after churches and i think he identified a lot of this what was going on and started i don't know if he really sent the irs after him but they are you know there's no i know you know it's really interesting they i think it was 2006 i have it in my book i i don't want to take the time to look up the exact date, but a Republican led committee, Charles Grassley, Republican led this committee. They started looking at some of these preachers like Paula White or Creflo Dollar or, you know, a whole bunch of them. There were like six or eight pastors that are like, they own airplanes, they own, you know,

houses worth tens of, you know, like huge amounts of money. One of them had an airplane leasing company. This is not Obama. This is like a bunch of Republicans who are worried about, they're traditional Republicans worried about fiscal responsibility. Why are these pastors getting all of their tax exemptions? Why are their businesses, why is an airplane leasing company? Why is a massive private, why all their tax exemptions? Why are their businesses? Why is an airplane leasing company?

Why is a massive private, why is this tax exempt? They started to investigate. And this is a Republican committee that did this, you know, in the sort of spirit of, you know, the former, I guess, conservative Republican, you know, out of a concern for fiscal responsibility. And they got so much blowback that they kind of, and Paula White was, at the time I think she was with her ex-husband, Randy White.

They had a church called Without Walls. And they got so much blowback for doing this that they sort of backed off and said, well, we encourage you to self-monitor. Well, let's see how well that's going. But that was like a Republican initiative. So all of this sort of talk about how Obama's against the church is absolutely nonsense. I think Jerry Falwell was self-monitoring from the corner of the room. Ah! Ah! Yeah, that's a bit.

Well, those scandals happen over and over and over. But the funny thing is, you know, they happen, and it doesn't really, I mean, have any effect on the movement whatsoever. I'm sure there's a certain amount of hand-wringing going on within Liberty University, but, you know, the movement doesn't depend on a particular leader. There's like a kind of leadership cadre, but it shifts all the time. And I think it's actually sort of the,

you know, the organizations that have are actually more fixed. I mean, this is the reason why the movement is so powerful and has some staying powers because it's very complex and it consists of sort of a variety of organizations. But again, it represents a minority of the country.

It's like a sort of radicalized minority. And I think it represents, you know, like a diminishing percentage of the country. But it's really all about, you know, I went to this Evangelicals for Trump event not too long ago. And one of the speakers there, Johnny Moore, he said, we need to become evangelists for the vote. And I think that that's really true for those of us who don't want to see Trump get a second term, too. Don't just vote yourself. Hold your, you know, members of your family and your inner circle um available uh you know accountable to vote volunteer to babysit somebody who might have trouble getting to the polls or make sure everybody's got all of their sort of voted mailing stuff in order as early

as possible yeah i i want paula white jailed because she ruined the band journey for me because she's married to jonathan kane he wore a surprise and i believe really good songs right well they they had i can't listen to it anymore without thinking about it i know don't stop believing i had to i had to give it to believe in man uh no i kid she's so great because she opens her mouth and the wildest stuff comes out you know wasn't she the one who talked about like i don't know satanic pregnancies or something like this yeah i think so yeah like and and yeah it's just it's just it's just astounding what people eat up and buy and and you know trump the whole time he's

just sitting there going these guys are suckers man we're just gonna play them right in the ground like they're his best friends because they put him in office and he maintains control it'll be because of their efforts yeah it's going to be really scary and i hope christians wake up to this man uh i mean he will be ordained king and it won't be a cool king like he's he's going to go after everybody when he's done and he's going to need money for all the for all the debt we're in for bailing out the coronavirus and the crashed economy he'll i i wouldn't put it past him to start taxing churches i seriously would not put it past the dude um because i mean he's just it's hitler you just look at hitler hitler i think he's gonna continue to give them what they want i really do because they put him in office and he knows it. But he doesn't have to get their vote again.

But he understands that transactional thing. Look, he's not going to, you know, he's not all powerful. He will be. He'll keep deconstructing the government like he has quietly. And then he'll just have people around him that are willing to giveing the government like he has quietly and then he'll just he'll just have people around him uh that are willing to give up the government and and he already he already is building that infrastructure now if you look at theocracies around the globe um once these dictators take power they often do maintain their alliances do they hyper conservative religious

leaders i mean you know it happens throughout the Middle East. It's happening in Turkey, Russia. I mean, it's just that it's sort of, you know, religious conservatives in his country to consolidate power. Thinking about Mussolini, you know, same story. Same thing. Yeah. Same old, same old story. And then, yeah. Anything more we should know about your great book in this discussion we've had today? Well, the book is titled The Power Worshippers Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. And we've covered today well um the book is titled the power worshippers inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism and we've covered a lot it's been such a pleasure to speak with you today

it's been a pleasure to speak with you today aside from the fact that you've scared the crap out of me i'll probably have nightmares for the next 60 days uh and and who knows it's probably another 30 after that before we know who won the election but But no, it's a wonderful book. Go check this out, guys. The Power Worshippers, Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Catherine Stewart. Guys, you really need to get registered to vote. You need to go out and vote. Get your early mail-in ballots now and vote.

If you're a Christian, please read these books, some of the ones we featured on the show. Realize the Constitution is up for grabs. You have a republic as long as you can keep it, according to Ben Franklin. And what's really important is to identify that there is a sickness within all of these groups, whether they're white people or whether they're white religion. And these people want to subjugate people, whether they're men, women, women, LGBTQ. They want to pretty much burn the Constitution to the ground.

They want power, ultimate power. And if you think Black Lives Matter, you know, is angry now, they're probably going to be more angry because this is a racist agenda to make those people's lives even more a living hell. And we've all got to rise to stop this because if we don't all bring together and kumbaya you know there's a lot of people to talk about civil war and crap these people are just going to go back in their little racist closets i know these people i unfriended most of them was friends with them for years and they're just

going to go back in their racist closets they're going to you know throw some sling around on social media you might have a couple nut jobs uh guns off, but for the most part, they're just going to go back to their thing. You know, I do want to kick back to one thing that you identified for me. I had all those friends that were coming out of the closet that had resentment with PC. I couldn't figure out what it was. I'm like, what is your deal with PC? Like, you really have a fucking, you can't just be polite to people to people i mean maybe you think racist thoughts in your head but just be polite but you talked about the resentment of that and what i didn't realize is those people resented not being

able to say their hate out loud well the politics of resentment is so important this movement how do you get large number of people to support a really reactionary agenda that's ultimately going to hurt most of them in their pocketbooks is you feed that resentment and you feed that sense of persecution. And that persecution narrative is too important to the movement to discard just because most of the sort of forms of persecution they're identifying are, you know, completely irrelevant to their lives or simply not true. And I think, you know, you get to this point where this is like a movement that's a political movement and it's

exploiting religion for political purposes. It's not a religion. It's a political movement. And I think that, you know, sometimes when we speak about these things, you know, we could be perceived as being speaking about religion. But what we're really talking about is a political movement and anti-democratic movement that is exploiting people and exploiting religion in order to consolidate authoritarian power. And that's a dangerous, dangerous situation. I know my brothers and sisters and Christians recognize that, especially the racist element, because we can't get this guy elected again. Thank you for being on the show, Catherine. We certainly appreciate you coming and spending your time and your,

and your wonderful knowledge that has enlightened us. And I encourage everyone to go out and grab the book. You can go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash Chris Voss. You can go to the ECBPN. You can go to Amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash Chris Voss. You can go to the ECBPN. You can go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Catherine, do you want to give us your plugs and websites people can look you up on? Sure. You can follow me on Twitter at Cath S. Stewart.

There are two S's there. My website is CatherineStewart.me. And you can always look at my amazon page and um and uh learn more about the book thank you so much for having me on thank you so much do you want to plug your earlier book that you wrote and sure um in 2012 i uh wrote a book just for back to school and time for back to school um my book is called the goodness News Club Inside. Sorry, The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children. And it's about efforts by the religious right to infiltrate and undermine public education in America. Check that out as well, guys. Brilliant thinker.

Thanks for tuning into my audience and be safe. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye.