Thank you that was a great podcast episode. I love this book and Netflix series the Family. That totally openedopened my eyes to it and as you say, it’s happening in plain sight.
To 'normal' biblical believers, this movement is the apostate church. The idea that mere mortals can 'fix' anything for Jesus is found nowhere in scripture. Revelation says (true) believers will be martyred for refusing the mark of the beast. I'm guessing these people will welcome the anti-Christ since it is also clear he deceives many and would deceive 'if possible, the elect'. But it is not possible. Those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (in Ephesians) will NOT take the mark or line up with anyone in this growing movement of deceit.
Proving exactly why we need to record these pastors- politicking in the pulpit can cost them their tax status. I think I might start returning to church once I find new glasses that record every damn thing. Only when the IRS is inundated with the videos of the lawless pastors politicking from their pulpits can we hope to start the lose of non profit status. It’s past time.
Have you heard of this new movie by Rob Reiner coming out soon? It puts into a story how the evangelicals have co-opted the real values of Christianity for power. And having Reiner, who is Jewish, produce this film is terrific. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTQKmR6a9fw
Excellent article and excellent podcast with Jeff Sharlet. Helped me get a better understanding of how the evangelicals-of-the- extreme have morphed into this Christian Nationalist movement. As disturbing as it is, understanding the danger of their creeping and hidden agenda is something, as you have pointed out, we all need to understand. As always, thanks for all you do. I look forward to your next podcast and article.
You nailed it Reed! Because I’ve been so concerned about the White RW Evangelical influence on the MAGA movement, I’ve purposely followed some dissident voices in Evangelical spaces on Twitter. (Kristin Kobes DuMez, Beth Allison Barr, Zach Lambert, Beth Moore, etc). The vitriol and hate they receive rivals anything I’ve seen the normal political Never Trumpers receive online. The comments are cruel, and dare I say, evil.
I grew up in a mainline Protestant church (Episcopalian) For awhile, in high school I considered applying to Yale Divinity to become a priest. I’ve watched in horror, in real time, what a monstrous monolithic disaster the white Evangelical movement has become over the past 50 years. 10 years ago, Skye Jethani ( a former pastor, a former editor for Christianity Today, and a speaker in Rob Reiner’s new documentary “God and Country”) called the Evangelical movement “The Evangelical Industrial Complex”.
Like many mainline Protestants, moderate Catholics, Orthodox, etc, I find myself having to tell people “I’m not that kind of Christian” when people ask me about my faith. I gave up the dream of becoming a priest because I could not abide by the cruelty, othering, fear mongering, anger mongering, and basic butchering of what I knew of Scripture that was spewed by Evangelicals calling themselves Christians.
I chose to become a teacher instead. My faith never wavered. However, like a good Episcopalian, I was trained that modeling good pluralism was one of the highest forms of demonstrating Jesus’ 2nd Commandment (love thy neighbor as thyself…). While I learned it was okay to argue or disagree with others about many things, people’s religious beliefs were to be honored (even if internally I thought a person may be nuts or fed bad information). This was especially true with other Christians.
I stayed silent when Evangelicals would talk about complementarianism, (women’s roles in the family and the church) post -millennialist, pre-millennialist (Left Behind series), abortion, gun rights, caring for the disabled, the poor, etc. etc. I was silent when Evangelicals would tell me I was a heretic or going to hell. (Inside I was thinking -What a load of **** this person has been fed and is spouting.” Outside, I remained quiet, and like most of my mainline peers-I’ve kept my powder dry.
However many of us laity are saying to ourselves we missed the mark. We’ve needed to say to white Right Wing Evangelicals “Knock it off-you’re acting like bullies, not Jesus. You are not the victim. You are victimizing others. Start modeling better Christian praxis and fruit of the Spirit”.
We need to hear mainline and moderate leaders like Bishop Curry and others start speaking up and calling out this ****. I fear it may be too late. However, maybe “better late than never”
There is then major asymmetry in the “fight”. Evangelicals are loudly playing the victim, pushing fear, anger, othering, etc, while the mainliners have quietly left the field completely. For generations most of us mainliners would do anything to AVOID a disagreement or confrontation about religion. This reticence, however, has put our country at greater risk. To see the likely outcomes, I ask the reader to go to the US Holocaust Museum website and read and watch the artifacts on the complicity of the churches and the churchgoers in Germany and Austria before and during the 3rd Reich.
Those of us who know better, need to start speaking up and confront this garbage.
Bunch of fing hypocrites. Lead a bible study then get their gun to protect themselves from peaceful black protesters. So sick of their BS. It’s been happening since Jesus walked the earth.
Some of us are old enough to remember long past events, such as the Jonestown massacre, in 1978, in Guyana, where a religious cult was located. In this cult, more than 900 people, including babies and children, died. Most were followers of religious charismatic leader, Jim Jones, and were persuaded that “the end had come,” and drank Flavor-Aid, mixed Valium & cyanide, some willingly, others at gunpoint. Mostly, the end had come for Jones, as a US California Congressman, Leo Ryan and an NBC crew who flew from the US to investigate the cult, “The People’s Temple,” had just arrived at the Jonestown airstrip.) The top lieutenants, of course, did not drink the poison, but were dispatched by Jones, to the airport, as they were leaving, attacked and killed Congressman Leo Ryan and four others, wounding many more. Jones died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
I also recall being accosted on Connecticut Avenue, when I lived in Washington, DC, by one or another young man, who would fall in, walking next to me, then ask, “Have you heard about Scientology?” Well, I had. I’d also looked up a friend of my father’s, while I was in California, researching the book I was writing. (Muscle & Blood, c. 1974, EP DUTTON). I met my dad’s friend in a park in California, in about 1972. He was a hobby printer, as was my father.
He also belonged to a group of struggling science fiction writers, which met periodically. He told me that one of the group was L Ron Hubbard, who told the others, the best way to make money was to “start a religion.” I was fascinated to discover Hubbard’s original motivation.
So, by the time the third or fourth time a stranger fell in beside me to ask, again, “have you heard about Scientology?” I was ready with a reply. “No,” I said, “But let me tell you about my religion.” That worked like magic. The Scientology recruiter would peel off, reversing course, without another word. That was just what I’d hoped would happen. Scientology still survives.
Many people are searching for something to believe in, someone with all the answers. Traditional Christian churches don’t assume the role of providing all of the answers, believing perhaps, in autonomy and in free will. I’ve found that mainstream Christian faiths—for me, the Congregational Church, which merged with the United Church of Christ, provides the familiarity of religious teachings I grew up with, beliefs which teach the gospel, without engaging in politics. and, at least, officially, without judgment. The same is true in my own experience of the Methodists and Episcopal churches—closely related, religiously, but separated by the politics of the Revolutionary War.
The religious movements which have become radically political, do so in conflict with the doctrine of “separation of church and state,” which is in the US Bill of Rights. It was first proposed when Rhode Island became one of the original 13 colonies, was the first to establish separation of church and state. It seems paradoxical to me that the Pilgrims, having fled persecution of religion in England, at great personal cost, then required those immigrants who arrived later, to follow their church. One of my ancestors, a Quaker, was fined for not attending church for a year. The amount of the fine was so high, he had to sell land to pay his debt. Then he and his family left Plymouth and moved to the New York colony.
Religion has been a source of conflict throughout American history, which has been somewhat glossed over, at least when I was in school. I think the Mormons, lead by Bringham Young, were mentioned at some point. Because of intolerance, they traveled west, as far as to Utah, then well beyond the reaches of mainstream religions and “American civilization.”
I’m looking forward to the rest of Reed Galen’s podcast series on “The Lincoln Project” to learn more about recent religious movements, some which now, apparently, want to see their own religious principles become codified into law. I was unaware of this; a lot has changed—flown under the radar, not widely reported, I guess. With the rise of the internet, (and before that, television news) the need for newspapers has floundered, fewer and fewer news outlets remain. Those that do, occasionally accept free-lance stories, but as I know from personal experience, free-lace writers are paid so poorly, it’s a wonder they survive at all. The newspapers depend on subscriptions and advertising, which has moved into television and on-line, finding larger and more specifically targeted audiences.
My most recently published free-lance story, which took me a month to research and write, was published in 2016, a front page story on the recent troubles of the Duluth Zoo, for the Duluth-based weekly free paper, the Zenith News, complete with a photo I took of a curious and unusually photogenic lemur. The editor was pleased. She told me that when my story was published, newspapers were “flying off the stands.” I credited the lemur photo for that. Well, that was great.
I was told not to expect to be paid “much,” but the check for $20 was well below anything I imagined; I was so insulted, I didn’t bother to cash it. My mistake. (What hurt was that it was the same amount I was paid by the Olathe (KS) Daily News, for my very first freelance story in 1968, when I was still in journalism school at Kansas State University, on summer break.
My account of the death of Robert Kennedy, which I dictated to the paper by phone from the Ambassador Hotel, in California, where I had been following the Kennedy campaign for a week. My editor then had also said not to expect much, but I’d at least gotten credentials from the paper—my real goal at the time—which got me a seat on the press bus, and the same access any other member of the news media might expect. Twenty dollars went a lot further in 1968, too, than it did 50 years later!)
It’s too bad the age of deposit by computer had not yet arrived. Then I would have been able to both keep the check—and deposit it.
The nadir of my free-lance experience in journalism came when I sent several photos of Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign to a south Texas weekly paper, at the request of the paper’s owner, and was paid nothing at all…. Clearly, the writing is on the wall.
I actually knew this, in the late 1970’s. After trying out for a position as a reporter for the Washington Post for a few months, during which time I had TWO front-page investigative stories published, yet I still wasn’t hired—a good thing, in retrospect.
I went back to school, took pre-med science courses, then applied and got into medical school, graduating with an MD from UTHSC—San Antonio, TX, in 1984.) Medical practice is—or was to me—all-consuming, so I knew almost nothing about what was happening, outside of the field of medicine, for two decades, forced to leave practice in 2001 due to disability.
As I’m gradually learning, more and more, much has changed!
Reed, I am in agreement with the consensus of people who have commented above. I was not aware of how widespread these allegedly “Christian” views have become. Not that it’s new—we had “The Crusades,” and “The Inquisition.” I didn’t realize these charlatans are back, and in such large numbers! It’s scary.
Your article is so damn important. It drives me to distraction to see how little attention the MSM pays to Christian Nationalism and the extreme danger it poses to American democracy.
Consider also religion scholar Matthew Taylor's recent essay, which The Bulwark published on February 6.
The first link below goes to Taylor's essay. The link beneath it goes to the essay that I published the following day, commenting on his.
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/mike-johnson-mainstreaming-jan-6th-spirituality
https://decencyandsense.substack.com/p/good-faith-over-bad
Yes, let's do explore collaboration.
Excellent post! People read this!!!!
I salute your choice of image for this one, Reed!
As always, Thanks Reed!!!
Thank you that was a great podcast episode. I love this book and Netflix series the Family. That totally openedopened my eyes to it and as you say, it’s happening in plain sight.
To 'normal' biblical believers, this movement is the apostate church. The idea that mere mortals can 'fix' anything for Jesus is found nowhere in scripture. Revelation says (true) believers will be martyred for refusing the mark of the beast. I'm guessing these people will welcome the anti-Christ since it is also clear he deceives many and would deceive 'if possible, the elect'. But it is not possible. Those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (in Ephesians) will NOT take the mark or line up with anyone in this growing movement of deceit.
Proving exactly why we need to record these pastors- politicking in the pulpit can cost them their tax status. I think I might start returning to church once I find new glasses that record every damn thing. Only when the IRS is inundated with the videos of the lawless pastors politicking from their pulpits can we hope to start the lose of non profit status. It’s past time.
It is appalling to me how little coverage Project 2025 is receiving in the MSM. It is journalistic malpractice, IMHO.
Have you heard of this new movie by Rob Reiner coming out soon? It puts into a story how the evangelicals have co-opted the real values of Christianity for power. And having Reiner, who is Jewish, produce this film is terrific. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTQKmR6a9fw
I have! Katherine Stewart, upon whose book the movie is based, will be on the LP podcast next week!
Will you be interviewing Rob as well?
Excellent article and excellent podcast with Jeff Sharlet. Helped me get a better understanding of how the evangelicals-of-the- extreme have morphed into this Christian Nationalist movement. As disturbing as it is, understanding the danger of their creeping and hidden agenda is something, as you have pointed out, we all need to understand. As always, thanks for all you do. I look forward to your next podcast and article.
You nailed it Reed! Because I’ve been so concerned about the White RW Evangelical influence on the MAGA movement, I’ve purposely followed some dissident voices in Evangelical spaces on Twitter. (Kristin Kobes DuMez, Beth Allison Barr, Zach Lambert, Beth Moore, etc). The vitriol and hate they receive rivals anything I’ve seen the normal political Never Trumpers receive online. The comments are cruel, and dare I say, evil.
I grew up in a mainline Protestant church (Episcopalian) For awhile, in high school I considered applying to Yale Divinity to become a priest. I’ve watched in horror, in real time, what a monstrous monolithic disaster the white Evangelical movement has become over the past 50 years. 10 years ago, Skye Jethani ( a former pastor, a former editor for Christianity Today, and a speaker in Rob Reiner’s new documentary “God and Country”) called the Evangelical movement “The Evangelical Industrial Complex”.
Like many mainline Protestants, moderate Catholics, Orthodox, etc, I find myself having to tell people “I’m not that kind of Christian” when people ask me about my faith. I gave up the dream of becoming a priest because I could not abide by the cruelty, othering, fear mongering, anger mongering, and basic butchering of what I knew of Scripture that was spewed by Evangelicals calling themselves Christians.
I chose to become a teacher instead. My faith never wavered. However, like a good Episcopalian, I was trained that modeling good pluralism was one of the highest forms of demonstrating Jesus’ 2nd Commandment (love thy neighbor as thyself…). While I learned it was okay to argue or disagree with others about many things, people’s religious beliefs were to be honored (even if internally I thought a person may be nuts or fed bad information). This was especially true with other Christians.
I stayed silent when Evangelicals would talk about complementarianism, (women’s roles in the family and the church) post -millennialist, pre-millennialist (Left Behind series), abortion, gun rights, caring for the disabled, the poor, etc. etc. I was silent when Evangelicals would tell me I was a heretic or going to hell. (Inside I was thinking -What a load of **** this person has been fed and is spouting.” Outside, I remained quiet, and like most of my mainline peers-I’ve kept my powder dry.
However many of us laity are saying to ourselves we missed the mark. We’ve needed to say to white Right Wing Evangelicals “Knock it off-you’re acting like bullies, not Jesus. You are not the victim. You are victimizing others. Start modeling better Christian praxis and fruit of the Spirit”.
We need to hear mainline and moderate leaders like Bishop Curry and others start speaking up and calling out this ****. I fear it may be too late. However, maybe “better late than never”
There is then major asymmetry in the “fight”. Evangelicals are loudly playing the victim, pushing fear, anger, othering, etc, while the mainliners have quietly left the field completely. For generations most of us mainliners would do anything to AVOID a disagreement or confrontation about religion. This reticence, however, has put our country at greater risk. To see the likely outcomes, I ask the reader to go to the US Holocaust Museum website and read and watch the artifacts on the complicity of the churches and the churchgoers in Germany and Austria before and during the 3rd Reich.
Those of us who know better, need to start speaking up and confront this garbage.
Bunch of fing hypocrites. Lead a bible study then get their gun to protect themselves from peaceful black protesters. So sick of their BS. It’s been happening since Jesus walked the earth.
Here, from last September, is another important piece:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/september-web-only/christian-nationalism-patriotism-extremism-moderates.html
Some of us are old enough to remember long past events, such as the Jonestown massacre, in 1978, in Guyana, where a religious cult was located. In this cult, more than 900 people, including babies and children, died. Most were followers of religious charismatic leader, Jim Jones, and were persuaded that “the end had come,” and drank Flavor-Aid, mixed Valium & cyanide, some willingly, others at gunpoint. Mostly, the end had come for Jones, as a US California Congressman, Leo Ryan and an NBC crew who flew from the US to investigate the cult, “The People’s Temple,” had just arrived at the Jonestown airstrip.) The top lieutenants, of course, did not drink the poison, but were dispatched by Jones, to the airport, as they were leaving, attacked and killed Congressman Leo Ryan and four others, wounding many more. Jones died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
I also recall being accosted on Connecticut Avenue, when I lived in Washington, DC, by one or another young man, who would fall in, walking next to me, then ask, “Have you heard about Scientology?” Well, I had. I’d also looked up a friend of my father’s, while I was in California, researching the book I was writing. (Muscle & Blood, c. 1974, EP DUTTON). I met my dad’s friend in a park in California, in about 1972. He was a hobby printer, as was my father.
He also belonged to a group of struggling science fiction writers, which met periodically. He told me that one of the group was L Ron Hubbard, who told the others, the best way to make money was to “start a religion.” I was fascinated to discover Hubbard’s original motivation.
So, by the time the third or fourth time a stranger fell in beside me to ask, again, “have you heard about Scientology?” I was ready with a reply. “No,” I said, “But let me tell you about my religion.” That worked like magic. The Scientology recruiter would peel off, reversing course, without another word. That was just what I’d hoped would happen. Scientology still survives.
Many people are searching for something to believe in, someone with all the answers. Traditional Christian churches don’t assume the role of providing all of the answers, believing perhaps, in autonomy and in free will. I’ve found that mainstream Christian faiths—for me, the Congregational Church, which merged with the United Church of Christ, provides the familiarity of religious teachings I grew up with, beliefs which teach the gospel, without engaging in politics. and, at least, officially, without judgment. The same is true in my own experience of the Methodists and Episcopal churches—closely related, religiously, but separated by the politics of the Revolutionary War.
The religious movements which have become radically political, do so in conflict with the doctrine of “separation of church and state,” which is in the US Bill of Rights. It was first proposed when Rhode Island became one of the original 13 colonies, was the first to establish separation of church and state. It seems paradoxical to me that the Pilgrims, having fled persecution of religion in England, at great personal cost, then required those immigrants who arrived later, to follow their church. One of my ancestors, a Quaker, was fined for not attending church for a year. The amount of the fine was so high, he had to sell land to pay his debt. Then he and his family left Plymouth and moved to the New York colony.
Religion has been a source of conflict throughout American history, which has been somewhat glossed over, at least when I was in school. I think the Mormons, lead by Bringham Young, were mentioned at some point. Because of intolerance, they traveled west, as far as to Utah, then well beyond the reaches of mainstream religions and “American civilization.”
I’m looking forward to the rest of Reed Galen’s podcast series on “The Lincoln Project” to learn more about recent religious movements, some which now, apparently, want to see their own religious principles become codified into law. I was unaware of this; a lot has changed—flown under the radar, not widely reported, I guess. With the rise of the internet, (and before that, television news) the need for newspapers has floundered, fewer and fewer news outlets remain. Those that do, occasionally accept free-lance stories, but as I know from personal experience, free-lace writers are paid so poorly, it’s a wonder they survive at all. The newspapers depend on subscriptions and advertising, which has moved into television and on-line, finding larger and more specifically targeted audiences.
My most recently published free-lance story, which took me a month to research and write, was published in 2016, a front page story on the recent troubles of the Duluth Zoo, for the Duluth-based weekly free paper, the Zenith News, complete with a photo I took of a curious and unusually photogenic lemur. The editor was pleased. She told me that when my story was published, newspapers were “flying off the stands.” I credited the lemur photo for that. Well, that was great.
I was told not to expect to be paid “much,” but the check for $20 was well below anything I imagined; I was so insulted, I didn’t bother to cash it. My mistake. (What hurt was that it was the same amount I was paid by the Olathe (KS) Daily News, for my very first freelance story in 1968, when I was still in journalism school at Kansas State University, on summer break.
My account of the death of Robert Kennedy, which I dictated to the paper by phone from the Ambassador Hotel, in California, where I had been following the Kennedy campaign for a week. My editor then had also said not to expect much, but I’d at least gotten credentials from the paper—my real goal at the time—which got me a seat on the press bus, and the same access any other member of the news media might expect. Twenty dollars went a lot further in 1968, too, than it did 50 years later!)
It’s too bad the age of deposit by computer had not yet arrived. Then I would have been able to both keep the check—and deposit it.
The nadir of my free-lance experience in journalism came when I sent several photos of Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign to a south Texas weekly paper, at the request of the paper’s owner, and was paid nothing at all…. Clearly, the writing is on the wall.
I actually knew this, in the late 1970’s. After trying out for a position as a reporter for the Washington Post for a few months, during which time I had TWO front-page investigative stories published, yet I still wasn’t hired—a good thing, in retrospect.
I went back to school, took pre-med science courses, then applied and got into medical school, graduating with an MD from UTHSC—San Antonio, TX, in 1984.) Medical practice is—or was to me—all-consuming, so I knew almost nothing about what was happening, outside of the field of medicine, for two decades, forced to leave practice in 2001 due to disability.
As I’m gradually learning, more and more, much has changed!
Reed, I am in agreement with the consensus of people who have commented above. I was not aware of how widespread these allegedly “Christian” views have become. Not that it’s new—we had “The Crusades,” and “The Inquisition.” I didn’t realize these charlatans are back, and in such large numbers! It’s scary.
Your article is so damn important. It drives me to distraction to see how little attention the MSM pays to Christian Nationalism and the extreme danger it poses to American democracy.