Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 39: Jesus Christ Superstar Billy Graham (w/ special guest: Sarah Jones)

Episode Date: February 25, 2018

For our latest episode, we welcome back Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) of the New Republic to talk about her recent piece on the legacy of Billy Graham (the preacher, not the wrestler) in light of his recent death. We also talk about how the paranoid style of American Evangelicalism brought us to this current moment, and how Graham helped usher that in and bring it into the mainstream.

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🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Jesus Christus steht am Kreuz, Our apologies right out the gate for having to do this over phone. Although, I think last time we interviewed you, it was also over phone. I think it was, yeah. As Tom was saying earlier today, it's like we kind of take pride in our DIY

um, setup here. That and the internet shit. Yeah. It's really bad. I'm familiar with that feeling. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you listen to the interview we did with Elizabeth Katt, it was like two weeks ago. The internet went out like five different times. It was really embarrassing, honestly. listened to the interview we did with elizabeth cat was like two weeks ago the internet internet

went out like five different times it was really embarrassing honestly well you know trump's gonna fix it so you know so he says yeah yeah just hang in there the calvary's coming it'll be great right right right well uh i hope you're doing well sarah uh It's been a minute. Yeah. But welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me back. For sure. We wanted to talk to you about, as I worded it, we wanted to talk to you a little bit about Billy Graham, but more than that.

First we need you to lay out your Christian bonafides just to make sure that you're qualified to. Getting kicked out of Christian high school count. Fuck yeah. You get a lot of points for that. Yeah, my parents are super religious. They're still super religious. Although they hate Donald Trump,

so, you know, points for it to do. Yeah. But yeah, I got kicked out of Christian high school school and after that i still went to christian college which was a grave error in retrospect where what what college was that it was cedarville university in ohio so it was like super conservative baptist we had to wear pants the girls did but like that's about as far as i know you didn't go to a pentecostal college then no no i mean i got to cut my hair too i feel you there i a little known fact about tom sex and i nearly accepted a partial tennis scholarship to oral roberts university oh my god i dodged a bullet there i might have followed a different trajectory in life. It might have ended up being the same

trajectory. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I could have been working for the New Republic. Yeah, you know it works out sometimes. Yeah. The only people in my family that went to college went to Hardin-Simmons. Y'all know what that is? Yeah. It's a Christian college

in West Texas. Right. Also the alma mater of the famous poker player, Doyle Brunson. Hmm. That's quite the claim to fame. Is he still a Christian? I don't think so. Was he ever one? I don't know.

He gambles. How can he be Christian? Exactly. There's strict prohibition against casting lots. If you work on Wall Street, though, it's the same thing and consider yourself a Christian. So I don't know. There's a lot of. It's absolutely the same thing.

Like some of the shit they do, it might as well be witchcraft as far as I'm concerned. What does it mean to like trade futures? I don't know what that means. Right. I don't know what a derivative is or a. That sounds a lot like soothsaying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right.

The Apostle Paul didn't approve of that, if I recall correctly. Right. So yeah, got kicked out of Christian high school, but went to Christian college. Yeah, very controversial. Right. At what point did you,

I guess the term is backsliding, at what point did you, I guess the term is backsliding. What point did you start to do that? Like permanent backsliding. Right. Yeah, that was definitely in college. There's just something about being surrounded by it. I mean, I was already surrounded by it 24-7, but like living on a college campus and just not getting any escape from it whatsoever

um definitely made me an atheist so that that's that's where that happened yeah it's funny like as i was you know i was sitting around last night trying to make some notes about this show and what to talk about it's funny that like it's really hard, I think, to say that you're an atheist. And I know it's like, maybe that sounds stupid, but I guess what I mean is that, like, some individuals like Sam Harris and these sort of new atheist types have so thoroughly soiled the sort of...

The good name of atheism. The good name of atheism that it's really hard... Well, yeah. Go ahead. No, go ahead.ism that it's it's really hard yeah go ahead no go ahead well it's it's funny it's like i almost sort of um anticipate and i feel like i've already sort of started to see some people actually push back against the atheism thing to such an extent that they try to pick back up Christianity, which is, it's like, I mean,

you don't have to like compromise your core values just because of how shitty Sam Harris is, or do you? I really don't know. It's really hard. It's really hard to talk about. It's definitely tempting sometimes. And there was a big BuzzFeed story that came out yesterday about, you know, how Lawrence Krauss has been sexually harassing people and even assaulting a couple of people in the atheist and skeptic world.

I read that and I was like, I grew up in the church. We had plenty of that too, so I don't see a significant difference as far as this goes. The only problem is I still don't believe in God, so I don't know what's left for me after that. Right. Yeah. is like I still don't believe in God so like I you know I don't know what's left for me after that right yeah it's it's difficult because like for me personally like at the time I became an atheist um I you know I'm I'm sort of embarrassed to admit this but like you know there really wasn't um a whole lot out there in terms of like speaking to that experience with the exception of people like christopher hitchens and that's why like in my early 20s i got really into hitchens and a lot

of these other writers it's just because i was so angry and like didn't really have any way to make sense of atheism that i latched on to some really bad uh ideas and writers but I don't know. Yeah, I think a lot of people do that. Yeah, I don't know. Did that happen to you, Tom? I'm still, I've still got one foot at the foot of the cross, I think. Interesting, I've noticed this about you.

I've been sort of. I consider myself a closet deist with Rastafarian sympathies. Interesting. I think Thomas Jefferson also identified as that. Don't put me in that. Yeah, definitely. So, okay, so, all right, we're all, well, me and Sarah at least are atheists,

and you've got one foot in the door. I'll give you all an hour to convert me. Okay. Well, Billy Graham might have done that, at least for me. So, you know, he just died this week. Godspeed, Bill. Yeah.

You wrote something in the New Republic about it that I thought was pretty important because Billy Graham did leave a legacy and one of which you write is prejudice. And we'll get to that in a minute. Tom will talk a little bit about that. But one thing I wanted to talk about about Billy Graham's legacy was just like his media

presence. Like he was, he actually was very innovative at using media to project his message. And I think that had a huge impact on other, what we would call evangelists and televangelists. He was the first televangelist, correct? Yeah, I think that's fair to say. He was very much like, he grasped the theater of it. I mean, if you've seen a country preacher, you know that they're generally all pretty good at that.

He was really good at translating that for a mass audience and taking advantage of television, which was an emerging technology at the time, and it helped him reach the most people as possible. It also helped make him pretty famous. Right. Sorry, I'm choking on water here. I'm going to lay hands on you.

Yeah, could you lay hands on me? It's not holy water I'm choking on. Yeah, but no seriously um so yeah you were you were um i'm sorry i'm trying to i put i picked up some like passages from the thing you wrote yesterday and i put them in the wrong folder so i'm trying to get my shit together okay okay so um so like you write like back when billy graham was getting his start his start, you said the terms fundamentalist and evangelical, they're used interchangeably now, but back then they were two different things. Could you talk a little bit about that? Right, so they didn't actually differ much on doctrine. They were both, like, biblical literalists, and they generally believed the same group of people were going to hell.

So they didn't do much on that, but they differed a lot in how, like, how they believed that you were supposed to best lead a Christian life in a secular world. The fundamentalists believe, you know, the world is tainted, and we're going to be tainted if we associate with it too much. Billy Graham didn't chuck with that. Like, he very much, like, wanted to reach out to the world and thought that that was a more effective way of being an evangelist. And in fact, Bob Jones Sr. hated him for it. And I think Bob Jones University students were even punished at the time for attending a Billy Graham crusade, which sounds crazy to say now.

Like, who could imagine Bob Jones University students being punished for going to a crusade? But that's how it was back then. Right. Wow. That predates the Jay-Z Nas beef by decades. No, I think that's interesting. I think I grew up in the sort of charismatic Pentecostal stuff, and my mom was big into Oral Roberts and Kenneth Copeland,

some of those people who Billy Graham was sort of their ideological and theological forebear. When did, in your reading about Billy Graham and what you know about him, when did he sort of, like, I'm trying to think how I could phrase this. Help me out here like I'm sure I tried to say like like when did the whole sort of televangelism

thing take off I mean he started it but like you know what I'm trying to say yeah yeah I do I'd say mostly in the 70s and the 80s right like it coincided with sort of the genesis and evolution of the religious right as like a discernible political movement right um so television played an important role in that yeah and so yeah the christian right as a political

movement was basically a response to the 1960s sort of counterculture you know and sort of solidified into an actual political movement by the time the 80s rolled around and i think it's interesting you know and um one of the things that you're writing that is that like you uh billy graham sort of left this legacy of what we would call you know prejudice like that is That is Billy Graham's legacy, even though some of his apologists try to say that he was friends with Martin Luther King and supported civil rights and all this.

He was an inveterate anti-Semite. He supported, what was it? Was he part of the William Buckley wanted to put barcodes on AIDS victims? He said that was sort of the Pat Robertson line, right? It's like that AIDS was the judgment for... He did support gay conversion therapy, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah, he definitely did. And so this is legacy that he leaves behind. And me and Tom were talking before we called you. One of the most fascinating aspects of that is not only did he leave a legacy that you could call theological and based in literature and media and all this, it was also sort of hereditary. It's very interesting that a lot of these televangelists

Like their literal Sons wind up just taking over The mantle of their fathers But in a way more fringe End you know what I mean Like Franklin Graham And Billy Graham then you have like Robert Shuler And his son I don't remember what his son's name

Richard Roberts and Oral Roberts Joel Osteen and John Osteen. Gary Falwell Jr. Exactly, exactly. They take up the already pretty fringe and radical ideas of their parents and run with it. It's like if you take over the business from your parents, like the family business, and you run it into the grand,

I mean, you've got to actually run a business. You know, that takes actual skills and everything. But it's a pretty easy sale. I think it's a pretty easy grift to take over the evangelical business from your parents. Yeah. It is. So, like, I think one thing that's really interesting, especially when you're thinking about, like, this particular subculture is it's really patriarchal, obviously. Exactly.

You know, I feel like that's a factor here. You've got all these sons trying to, like, pick up from their fathers. And part of their father's legacy is because it's so patriarchal rests on how well their sons eventually do. And then, you know unfortunately franklin graham is like the chief male son as far as that goes and like did y'all ever like the whole preacher's kid syndrome did y'all run into this in church i was i was literally gonna ask you the the term pk was something i heard a lot yeah which was yeah and they were like the wildest one exactly yeah so it's like that except like magnified by a hundred times because like if

you're billy graham's son like literally everyone not everyone but like most people know who your father is and like that's that's a lot and i don't think it did wonders for franklin's brain to be totally frank with you i feel like i feel like it cracked him a little bit i think you're right yeah when um so like yeah he's got like this patriarchal expectation that there's going to be some son that can carry on the father's legacy and it's basically only sons that can do this and um it's quite a way and if you're franklin graham you're you're perhaps not best equipped to do that, but you know, what are you going to do?

Right. When, uh, when Terrence was living in Boone, North Carolina, a few years ago, we were roommates and he left to do a job down there. And he, uh, apparently thought it'd be cute to sign me up for Samaritan's Purse. And to this day, I get both emails and like real, like solicitation letters from Franklin. To this day, I get both emails and real solicitation letters from Franklin. To this day, I still deny it. Just a little too convenient. Yeah, I forgot that there in Boone, we used to do the Christmas shoeboxes.

Right, yeah. Yep. Oh, God. Yeah, no, I was, yeah, Franklin, or Billy Graham was actually, you know, this is as a sort of side tangent. He actually was sort of used by the Lyndon Johnson administration to sort of hawk the war on poverty in the mountains of western North Carolina. So that was pretty interesting. You know, and I put I was saying this on Twitter the other day, like, I think Graham saw the war on poverty as like the perfect amalgamation of like conservative, hardworking, bootstrap values and the more sort of progressive Christian notion of helping out the poor. It sort of like called out the contradictions of his faith and he didn't really have a choice but to sort of, you know, hawk the government's line on that.

Yeah, I think that's true. I think, like, there are points in his early career especially where you can see him experiencing a form of, like, class prejudice because he didn't come from money, obviously, and, you know, he didn't dress too fancy. Like, he wore pretty, you know, the typical Southern preacher suit. And people thought that he was, like, a fraud or, like, you know, they didn't give him the time of day just because he dressed like that and he talked in a certain way. It's also always struck me as, like, amusing for a number of reasons.

But, like, the Billy Graham Library is like a barn. Is it really? It's, like, meant to be like a barn is it really it's like meant to be like a barn and like there was originally i was going back and reading some of the washington post early reporting on it and i don't know if this ended up happening because i have not actually been to the library but there was originally going to be like some sort of like cow but it was in a real cow like an animatronic cow that was going to be in the barn and it was going to talk and shit about billy graham and it was just like just like incredible to me but also it's just like he he got like so far i guess remove from his roots like you're just gonna like build franklin is all franklin's idea of course

right and you're just gonna build like this barn and cow in it and that's like how you're just going to build, like, this barn and a cow in it. And that's, like, how you're acknowledging his class roots here. I wonder how, you know, kind of going back to what I was saying a little bit, I wonder how that the ideological forebear was this sort of modest person and then, like, all of his progeny are these sort of ostentatious, like, just sometimes downright tacky people. Terrence and I were talking, Sarah, before you came on, about Chuck Grassley's investigation into a lot of these televangelist operations a couple years back.

Maybe the only good thing Grassley ever did. Other than his tweets. He has good tweets. And then he found out that Joyce Meyer, who's a famous female televangelist in St. Louis, was spending money from her patriots on golden toilets and shit like that. And it's just kind of interesting to think about this sort of humble but fiery,

charismatic Southern preacher gave birth to all these just transparently fraudulent people. Yeah, I mean, there's always been a strain of that in the whole tent revival preacher tradition. Sinclair Lewis's novel Elmer Gantry is basically about that. It was very easy to be a fraud and to gain like this huge following as long as you were able to capture an audience and group of people, then you would have a career and you can make a pretty good bit of money off of it.

And then TV came along. And of course, you know, if you were good on TV, that just made it sort of magnified. Right, right. Yeah, it's if Terrence and I were also talking, if you're on Twitter and you're making all these smooth brain jokes about Max Chernovich's supplements and Alex Jones and all that stuff, you really have like the Benny Hens of the world and people like that to thank who were like hawking these sort of pseudoscientific, you know.

Yeah, like Benny Hen was the original smooth brain. you know. Yeah, like Benny Hinn was the original smooth brain or was it we were also just talking about the clip that you used Oh, Jim Baker. They were hawking a lot of this shit way back in the day.

Yeah, Jim Baker still does. Although he's gotten more into the prepper stuff. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Incredible to me. I guess he sells or hawks those buckets of slop, essentially, that you're supposed to be able to store in your bunker and then eat.

Right. That's right. That's right. He's probably got more in common with Alex Jones and his doomsday seeds. Well, it is interesting, and it could be a useful pivot, because I do feel like Billy Graham, his death may have been the ending of an era in the sense that his form of evangelicalism, to me anyways, and I'm not very strong in this,

and I was telling Tom, as a Christian, I was never really into evangelists or anything, but it feels like Billy Graham was not quite as an apocalyptic guy as these more recent guys are. And modern Christianity has, it feels like, taken on an incredibly apocalyptic dimension to it. And also, to that note, he's not really into the laying on of hands and healing cancer and shit. to it. And also, to that note, he's not really into the

laying on of hands and healing cancer and shit like that. You see a lot of televangelists into it. That was never really his bag. Which is interesting, because that does play good with an audience. The laying of hands. Who was the guy, Popov?

Peter Popov? That got caught doing this shit in the 80s where he would have plants in the audience and all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, but Billy Graham had a little more legitimacy than those guys, even though I would argue that he's kind of where these people got their worldview from.

Right, right. Yeah, I think he definitely established a kind of model that people were able to take up afterwards, but I'd argue that the fact that he didn't lay hands on people or do faith healing actually helped make him more mainstream. I feel like there's, like, if you look at, like, just class prejudices within Christianity itself, like, people who might be Baptist or, you know, Presbyterian, Episcopalian look down on people who are Pentecostal or charismatic.

Like it's kind of gauche to believe in all that. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that was a factor. I think that's exactly right. Yeah, and I think that's how a guy like Joel Osteen has got mainstream acceptance too because his is more of the self-help, self-helpy, kind of new-agey, power-positive thinking stuff that has undertones of that healing gospel stuff, but without the whole over-the-top presentation, laying on hands and all that kind of stuff.

Right. Yeah, he's just more like straight-up prosperity gospel. Right, yeah. Yeah, if you have any sort of need in your life, then it can be mediated through patronage and clientage to my church and all this kind of stuff. Right. Yeah, what do you think that says about,

you know, it's funny because when you were talking a minute ago about sort of like tent revivals even before Billy Graham and how preachers would go on these circuits and basically there was a whole element of theater to it. I think it's interesting when you contrast American Christianity with, you know, even European and, you know,

European strains of Christianity and, you know, like Islam and other religions. It's like our religion here in this country, our Christianity is so performative almost. And it has a millenarian element to it. It feels like even in some of the more Billy Graham, Joel Osteen types, there is a sort of millenarian, the world is going to end. America is this sort of vehicle for ruling over the world and implementing this Christian worldview. I don't know. Do you see that at all?

I mean, do you think that, what do you think Billy Graham's role in that was? I don't know if this is even making any sense at this point. Yeah, no, I get what you're saying. I think the short answer is yes like he did help make that happen and um the kevin cruz book that i cite and my piece about billy graham is really good about that because it kind of goes into how um this started to happen after world war ii when we entered the cold war and everyone was worried about the great red threat and you know also welfare policies that actually help businessmen were really invested in the idea of promoting capitalism and free market and free enterprise as being part of american identity in contrast with the soviet union right um and it's

a culture war of a kind and if you're going to fight a culture war you need propagandists and preachers are real good for that oh yeah um so how that got started, and Billy Graham was part of that. And I think you can make the argument that that generation of preachers, Billy Graham being one of them, really sort of helped just create this synthesis of, you know, capitalism and American identity and Christianity and kind of fusing it into this natural i mean the roots were already there for sure right um but i think that's when it started to become particularly performative and like to become its own kind of civil religion yeah it does plug into a lot of the um sort of material concepts like i don't know like billy graham for

me and part of the reason why i was never really into this as a teenager and um part of the reason sort of material concepts. Like, I don't know, like Billy Graham for me, and part of the reason why I was never really into this as a teenager, and part of the reason why I, you know, sort of renounced Christianity in general, but Billy Graham to me is a sort of embodiment of how hollow American spirituality is, American Christianity is. Like, for example, if you were to ask, I think, you know, and maybe this is a blanket generalization and it might be unfair, but I'm just using even myself as an example. I think if you were just, you know, sample poll a random pool of Christians, like,

explain your, you know, explain your beliefs in the Holy Trinity. You know what I mean? Like, what does it mean? What is the, what is God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? What does that mean to you? I don't think that really any of them could tell you. It's not something we talk about anymore. We don't talk about Christian ethics or anything. The real liturgical issues that were really important to a lot of early Christians.

I think one of the achievements of Protestantism has been to sort of do away with all of that in the pursuit of individualism and pursuit of, like, this, you know, and it plugs perfectly into American ideas. Which is a conundrum if you're a socialist, right? Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, it is.

And yeah, I think that's true. Like, most people can't really explain the doctrinal ins and outs unless the preacher just talked about it the week before, and I don't know how often preachers really go into it. I think it just depends a lot on what your specific denomination is or what your tradition is or just your congregation. Right. Yeah. One of the things that I think is really fascinating is that, you know, he wrote that social virtue has come to, it was excluded from Christian ethics from the beginning, mostly because, um, you know, in the sort of pursuit of, well, what he wrote, he said, a conception of personal holiness is something quite independent from, of beneficent action, since holiness had to be something that could be achieved by people who were impotent in action so he's basically saying that like um the focus on individual holiness your personal relationship to god basically pushed out any kind of notion of social virtue you know what i mean like so like i don't know it's like you don't hear a lot of people like

billy graham or anybody talking about that. It's all the individual. It's all your personal relationship to God. There's no concept of community or anything imbued in it. I think that's really true. It was really individualist. You only hear a more communitarian approach from teachers like William Barber, for example. I think it's really a function of politics.

Right, right. Yeah, he's good. Yeah. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, I love William Barber. And, you know, I think also... Did you have something? No, go ahead.

I thought you were going to add to that. Okay. No, I think also, like, if you're talking about American Christianity, I think part of it, and I think this is something that I've heard people like Cornel West, I think part of it, and I think this is something that I've heard people at Cornell West talk about a lot of times, that America is obsessed with success.

It's like, if you look at Easter, which is coming up, if you look at Easter, we celebrate Good Friday and we celebrate Easter, but nobody really talks about Saturday. And Saturday is sort of this deep experience, like God is dead, and it's unclear if there's even going to be an Easter at all. And it's that Saturday-like condition,

I think is what I've heard Cornel West talk about, that American Christians are missing, is that that's the reconciliation point when Jesus is in the grave. Right. Right. But as Americans, we only want to talk about the lighter, happier things.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a point around conciliation. I think, too, it should be a time of questioning and doubt. Like, if God is dead, if Jesus is in the tomb and we don't know if he's coming back, I don't know about you, but I'd be asking a lot of questions. I'd be asking if it's all worth it. And, you know, I think the average American evangelical is like, doesn't probably question themselves or their root beliefs very

often. That's exactly right. You know, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me is not a declaration of faith. Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Billy Graham. You got anything else to add to that, Tom? I was just, in my reading of your piece, you wrote, for Graham, who sparked right-wing ire for holding integrated services in the 50s and who claimed friendship with MLK, these incidents refer, you know, again,

back to his anti-Semitic remarks to Nixon on the White House tapes, and his believing AIDS was God's judgment on the LGBTQ community. Could seem like deviations, but prejudice is part of the legacy Graham bequeathed to American Christianity. And that line resonated to me really because I've always thought

you know, and just sort of connecting this to our bigger project of advocating for an egalitarian society that, and forgive me for sounding like a Twitter cornball here, but that the revolution will start to gain legs when people who are venerated or have clout in society, like a Billy Graham, sort of take up the cause and address the material needs of poor and working people. Graham sort of take up the cause and address the material needs of poor and working people. And in Christian parlance, because I think we all speak pretty fluent Christian here, it's the idea of starting with the least of these, you know, as laid out in Matthew 25. But Graham, it seemed like once he had achieved some standing and influence, sort of betrayed that in service to the American empire. Right.

And so for me, he kind of scabbed and it's echoes. Well, it's not really, well actually Obama 08 is echoes of Billy Graham thing, because Obama ran as something passable as a radical, he was gonna shut down Gitmo, all this stuff. But once he made it to the show, his became a presidency of deportations and drone bombings and all this stuff.

And all this is of course counter-revolutionary, but it's also anti-Christ because time and time again, what did Jesus do in his ministry? He met the material needs of people first, and their status of their soul was either connected to that need being met or it was a secondary concern. And I just kind of appreciated that because, you know, in my reading of the scriptures, I think it's interesting that Campaign, which was started by two ministers, William Barber being one of them, I think that's definitely more in line with the spirit of

what Jesus actually did. And I'm hopeful that that's going to take off, and we'll see more of that going forward, especially as you've got younger people coming up in the Church, and even if they're very religious, there's a lot of polling data out there, you know, showing that there's some ideological differences between them and between, like, their parents and their grandparents. So I'm hopeful, like, that we aren't going to have another Billy Graham, or at least if we have, like, someone else of that stature,

it's going to be a very different kind of person. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. That's more of that William Barber school. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's more of that William Barber school. Yeah, to me it's, and that's probably one of the reasons why evangelicalism and these individuals never really resonated with me.

To me, the whole point of Christianity was always subversion. It was always challenging power and sticking up for the powerless. And I don't know, I guess that's, yeah, that's why. I mean, you could argue Jesus was crucified because he was an enemy of the Roman state, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's hard. I don't know. What are your thoughts on Jesus, Sarah? Because I'm conflicted. I think the guy, like, you know, it's interesting because, you know, you said some of the things that, you know, he stood for, you know, it's interesting because, you know, you said some of the things that, you know, he stood for,

you know, they're very commendable. But he also advocated for, like, some very strange things, like the dissolution of the family. What does he say? Like, love, you know, you're supposed to love me more than your fathers and your brothers and sisters and all this. I don't know. It's like, I guess you're right.

He's a mixed bag. He's a complicated guy. He is complicated. If he existed, and I'm not sold on that, but if he existed, I think it's interesting to think about why he, if you just take the Bible literally just for a few minutes, why he was considered an if you just take the Bible literally just for a few minutes, why he was considered an enemy of the Roman state. Like, you have this guy who's homeless, and he doesn't mind that he's

homeless, and in fact he thinks everyone should be nicer to homeless people. And he's going around and he's talking about, like, feeding the poor and blessed are the meek and the humble, and they need to protect children. And, you know, that's the sort of career that he was having at the time, and he was considered an enemy of the state. Right. So, like, I don't think it's actually a bad thing to want to follow that example. It just depends on, I guess, how you're interpreting the actual Gospels, you know? Right.

For me, Jesus is kind of like a band that you really like, but you hate their fans. It just makes them totally uncool for you. Interesting. Interesting. I was disappointed to see that in the thing you wrote, you didn't write anything about the Billy Graham rule, or also known as the Mike Pence rule. Yeah, yeah.

I thought about that and didn't have faith. But yeah, Billy Graham is one of the rarest celebrity preachers who, to his credit, I can't recall any width of adultery or scandal. Right. Which everyone always credited to the Billy Graham rule, which seems really unnecessary to me. Yeah, which... It's like if you're that ruled by your glands,

you don't just need to hang it up. Right. Which for our listeners who may not be aware, the Billy Graham rule is never be alone in a room with someone of the opposite sex. Isn't that it, basically? Well, he would have his handlers check his hotel room

for what he called lascivious women. We're going to slip in there and tempt him. Tempt him, you know, so. I think that's interesting. Also, the assumption being. Like monsters under the bed. Right, right.

Root them out of the closet. Jesus Christ. Apparently, Mike Pence also believes in something similar. Well, he doesn't want to piss off Mother. Right, he doesn't want to piss off Mother. He's like, what's his name from The Simpsons? Yeah. So, yeah.

What do you think about the future of evangelical Christianity? And I guess a sub-question to that and something that we explored on a previous episode was, like, does the kind of Christianity espoused by people like Mike Pence, does it have an actual viable political influence? Like, is it something that is legitimately threatening to the projects of egalitarianism and, you know, humanism and all this other stuff? Yeah, I think at the moment it's in a position where it can do a lot of damage

and people should be actively worried about it. I have questions about its long-term future just because young people do seem to have ideological differences. Like, they're not as against gay marriage, for example. So I just, and they're also not as fond of Donald Trump, which is another important thing. So, like, I've always kind of thought they've kind of made this devil's bargain in a sense where they've got power now and they can use that power and a way to advance their agenda but it may cost them you know kind of the future of the movement right well yeah i mean yeah really sort of concerned and i get this sort of like in the back of my mind, I get really sort of like darkened, concerned about it.

Like especially I remember during, you know, right after the inauguration last year, this sort of like Christian identity movement really is for me a very dark thing because it basically, you i was saying like it basically advocates for a sort of apocalyptic solution to terence went down a rabbit hole about the dominionists oh yeah about like ted cruz's dad and steve banner right are you familiar with that yeah yeah i have heard of it yeah like it's hard to know like there aren't actually many actual dominionists it's just i think that evangelicals um all kind of shared this vision for you know purifying the country and that means achieving a certain measure of political power right right well um so i don't know i i think that we've probably kicked that dead horse do you have anything else you want to put in closing i just want to pose this to the both of you as uh lapsed

christians and me as uh somebody that's kind of floating out here what's your favorite bible verse is or is there any bible verse that still resonates with you even though you've given it up? Yeah. Maybe. But I'd have to think about it. I don't know. Sarah, what do you got? Do you have anything?

I'm going to throw you in front of the bus. I actually do. Which is surprising maybe. But I do. It's Micah 6-8. And I pulled it up in front of me so I can remember it. But I'm paraphrasing a little, though. What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God? That's good.

That's good stuff. Right. What about it appeals to you? You know, before I left the church, to me it just sort of summed up that I wasn't a Christian that I wanted to be, and, you know, how I thought of how I ought to live my faith in the world

and how people ought to know that I was a Christian. And, you know, I'm not religious anymore, but it still shapes my politics in a particular way. Like, I am a socialist because I think that this is the most effective way to do justice, and it's how you love mercy, and it's how you walk on the earth as a humble person. Right. That is a great answer, sir. But I like how Terrence used that filibuster question while he's over here thumbing through Bible Gateway. Yeah. I'm like, good, sounds good, great.

I'll buy you a little extra time, Terrence. I have two, and it's so strange because, I mean, as principled as I think of myself, the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fourth person appearing in the fire still can move me to tears sometimes. But my favorite verse, I think specifically, is Matthew 5 and 37.

Let your yes be a yes and your no be a no. The rest is the work of the devil. I like that. I like that a lot. I think I just like the way it sounds more than anything. It's good. It packs a punch. It like that a lot. I think I just like the way it sounds more than anything. It's good. It packs a punch. It's like to the point. You're right.

Did you say you had a second one? That's it. Oh, that's it. All right. Damn. You're just going to go with Jesus whip? Yeah, I like that one. I can't come up with anything.

In my adamant refusal, I don't know, rejection of anything to do with Christianity in my early 20s, I like did a men in black, like, you know, like the little device they use to wipe your memory. All right. I did one of those. Got a cool guy over here.

Right. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on today and for... Got a cool guy over here. Right. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on today and for talking shop with us. I wanted to do a reading thing, but I don't have the book in front of me. But one thing I find a lot of comedic value in is creation science. Oh, yeah.

Just because I think it's so fascinating that so much energy and intellectual concentration is poured into this huge field of knowledge that is totally bogus. It's fascinating to me. It's like an entirely separate reality like with its own precepts and you know its own like scientific coherence yeah it's just like yeah it's crazy like my college they would give us

extra credit for one of our science classes if we went to the creation museum oh hell yeah hell yeah i just didn't do like i kept my d in the class this is like also one of the reasons i had a d in the class yeah all of it was insane um but i don't know anything about science now still i'm interested you know you personally me and tom have talked about this a lot, you know, and it's something that, like, guides my life, even though I don't adhere to it anymore. I think the idea of sin and the ways of thinking and modes of thinking, it's still really difficult to escape the sort of psychological pattern of guilt, self-flagellation, you know what I mean? Yeah.

I don't know. Do you experience that at all? That, yeah, the Sunday morning condition. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I still do all the time. I mean, I'm 32, and I haven't been to church in a long time at this point,

but it just never quite goes away. Right. That's good news. We're going to be dealing with that all of our born days. Yeah, sorry about that. Fuck. It still sucks. Yeah, it does.

Sarah, yeah, I didn't mean to jump the gun there and push you. I did want to talk about one thing real quick. We can probably just go back and splice this in, because I meant to talk about this when we're talking about Billy Graham's anti-Semitism. What are your thoughts on this sort of evangelical preoccupation, I guess, and fetishization of Israel? It's so sinister. It's so sinister because the reason they're obsessed with it

is because they believe certain things have to happen in the nation of Israel in order for Armageddon to happen, and that's the only reason they care. That's it. Right. I think it's interesting. We were watching a clip of John Hagee, and for folks that don't know,

John Hagee is sort of a famous doomsday televangelist out of San Antonio. He's crazy. Oh, he's batshit. But he sort of broke with orthodoxy. I mean, when I was growing up, I don't know about y'all, but when I was growing up, it used to be the case that christians should try to convert jewish people like they were even like crackpot theories about how like a certain amount of jews

were going to make it to heaven yes yeah i've heard that theory and so john hagie like he sort of broke with orthodoxy and said it's's not incumbent on Christians to try to convert Jews, which is sort of like, really? You know, like to my mind, it was just so reared in that, like you should try to convert everybody, Muslim, Jew, Christian, indifferent and otherwise. Right. But I just wanted to get your thoughts on that before we took off.

Yeah, I kind of look sideways at Netanyahu for a number of reasons, but one of them is just evangelical American Christians are not actually your friends. Yeah. They do not have your pet teachers at heart. They think that the Valley of Megiddo is literally going to fill with blood. Literally. I thought it was pretty vile in a lot of ways, but that Bill Maher documentary, Religulous,

kind of touches on some of that stuff. And I think it's clearly got some ugly anti-Muslim stuff in it. But I think there's some. Well, the whole thing is very, it's so strategic in the sense that, like, the whole point of it is, it's just colonialism. That's all it is. You know what I mean? it is you know what i mean it's like united states needs a country in the middle east that it can funnel billions of dollars and weapons and aid into to prop up you know it's just like that's why john hage i think probably came around to the idea like yo you don't have to convert jews

because like they understand the geopolitical significance of Israel and don't want to disturb that or lose that, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. It's pretty bad. Pretty crazy. Well, anyway. Well, anyway.

Geez, geez. Well, so we've, you know, I guess we've exercised the Billy Graham rule here in our, you know, you're not actually here in the studio. You're over the phone. But thanks. Thank you for joining us, Sarah. And we always have a good time talking to you. And it's always very enlightening and fun. Thanks for having me back. For sure, anytime. We hope to have you back soon, because, you know, a lot of the things that you have been writing about lately are, you know, we should plug all the other great things you've been writing lately, because, you know, it's not just, you know, we just wanted to talk about Christianity today, really, but, you know, we just wanted to talk about Christianity today, really. But, you know, you've been writing a lot of really great stuff about the decline of, you know, infrastructure and all these other things in rural areas. And a lot of our interests and, you know, activist interests overlap.

And so we always appreciate your insight. We should have you on again to talk about some of that stuff sometime soon. Yeah. That would be great. I love that. Definitely check out Sarah's work at The New Republic. We hope you have a great

weekend, Sarah. We'll talk to you soon.