Theology in the Raw - Evangelicalism's Fascination (Idolatry?) of Cultural and Political Power: Tim Alberta

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Tim Alberta is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. He formerly served as chief political correspondent for POLITICO. In 2019, he published the critically acclaimed book, "American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump" and co-moderated the year's final Democratic presidential debate aired by PBS Newshour. His recent book is The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, and it forms the basis of our conversation about the evangelical church and its quest for cultural and political power. Get a FREE one year supply of vitamin D plus 5 travel packs! https://www.drinkag1.com/TITR Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, do you remember when I had Dr. Lee Camp on the podcast to talk about a Christian political identity? It was episode 1139 and it was a fascinating conversation. Anyway, Lee is one of my favorite Christian writers and thinkers and he also hosts a super engaging podcast called No Small Endeavor. It's kind of like The Old General actually. On No Small Endeavor, Lee will have curious conversations with theologians, philosophers, bestselling authors, all to explore what it means to live a good life.

His diverse range of guests include people like Amy Grant, Tish Harrison Warren, Philip Yancey, Malcolm Gladwell, Eugene Cho, Miroslav Volf, and many others, all asking what it means to live a life worth living. So if you like Theology Neurah or even if you hate Theology Neurah, you've got to go check out No Small Endeavor on whatever app you use to get your podcast. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Neurah. My guest today is Tim Alberta, who is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author and staff writer for the Atlantic Magazine. He formerly served as chief political correspondent for Politico. In 2019, he published the critically acclaimed book, American carnage on the front lines of the Republican civil war and the

rise of president Trump. And just last year he released this book, which I have in my hands right now. It's an excellent, excellent book. I'm currently reading it's titled the kingdom, the power and the glory American evangelicalism in an age of extremism. I've really appreciated. I mean, first of all, this book is incredibly well-written. It's hard to put down. His journalism is really, really good and he's a very thoughtful writer, but he critiques the underbelly of the American evangelical church from the perspective of somebody who clearly loves the evangelical church. That's what I appreciated most about his posture, both in the book and in this conversation. He's not a church basher.

He's one that wants to see the church be more like Jesus at the end of the day. And sometimes political idolatry is getting away with that. And that's what we talk about in this really interesting and fascinating conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Tim Alberta. All right. Welcome to The, not Tim. Very excited to have you on really loving your really fascinating and in some sense, disturbing book, which we'll get into. But why don't you just tell us a bit of background of who you are specifically, you know, you're an

evangelical, grew up in the church, dad's a pastor. How'd you get into the intersection between faith and politics? Well, Preston, thanks for having me. I would say in a word, accidentally. I really never had any grand plan to write about this stuff. If anything, I was pursuing a career in journalism as a young man because I fantasized about being a baseball writer

and just traveling around the country and writing about games and hanging out with players in the hotel bar and just sort of being a part of the traveling circus there. And I wound up taking an unplanned detour into covering politics pretty late in my undergraduate studies when I was at Michigan State. Wound up covering the state capital, was good at it, wound up getting an opportunity to go to Washington and intern for the Wall Street Journal, cover Congress. One thing led to another.

And after this sort of series of happy accidents, I wound up in a position to be sort of really on the front lines covering the intersection of conservative movement politics with the Republican Party's evolution, certainly in the post George W. Bush years and with the rise of Trump, and then kind of where all of that met with the activist wing of the evangelical movement and understanding how this alliance came to be and really watching up close and having a front row seat to see the ways in which the sausage is made so to speak. And you know as someone who was raised in the church and who

speaks the language and who is you know still very much a part of the church. You know, I had really begun to grow uncomfortable in recent years with what I'd seen. I mean, frankly, I'd been uncomfortable with it for a long time, but I think a combination of things sort of just compelled me to keep quiet about it for the most part. I mean, I would have conversations with friends and family, but I was never, you know,

I never wanted to be that guy to go like air the dirty laundry of the church or speak out against his tribe. You know, it's not, it's no fun to do. You know, I think I, like many Christians, many evangelicals, I was just sort of hoping that it would go away on its own, that it would resolve itself

and that these flare ups would just be temporary and that I could afford to just turn the other way and kind of turn a blind eye, pretend it wasn't happening. But instead it just sort of kept getting worse. And that's, I think, ultimately what forced my hand. Well, why don't you unpack what you mean when you keep saying it or how the sausage is made when you peek behind the curtain, what did you see? What is this thing that was disturbing to you? How would you describe that? You know, yeah, I've heard it described

as like the evangelical industrial complex or, you know, different sort of ways of labeling it. I mean, I think for me, it's really just the sense that the church and that the sort of affiliates of the church, and by that I mean, you know, what the entire sort of constellation of American evangelicalism, the seminaries, the non-for-profits, the media enterprises, the conference circuit tour, all of that stuff, you know, that it was becoming, that it was losing the plot, that it was becoming less and less invested in the work of discipleship and engaging the culture in a humble, winsome, and loving way, and more concerned with a zero-sum us versus them militaristic approach

to everything in the world around it, the politics and the culture wars and the sort of, and I think that this is happening at a time, mind you, when American life across the board has been really sucked into this phenomenon of self sorting and self selection where depending on the kind of car you drive and the kind of sitcom you drive and the kind of sitcom you watch and the kind of beer you buy at the grocery store, like that these indicators are going to push you into these little silos that you really don't leave otherwise.

And I think that the church, which should be our one institution that rises above those silos and is better than that self-sorting, I think has instead become sort of in many ways the poster child for that self-sorting. And I understand why. I mean, the culture has obviously been in turmoil for a long time, but at least talking in the modern post-911 era, I understand why so many evangelical Christians, friends,

family members of mine, people who I love, came to feel themselves being sort of always on the defensive and under attack and then feeling therefore justified and sort of lashing out, fighting back, whatever. But it just, it became clear to me that that was doing a profound damage to the credibility of the church and ultimately to the witness. Hmm. That's, that's helpful. I, I, yeah, I just have to say, but your, your book, it's very clear that you're a writer who happens to be a Christian. And what I mean by that is, you know, there's lots of Christians who get a platform and then they write a book, but they're not like a, you could tell, I mean, writing is unless they have like a really good ghost

writer, which a lot of them, you know, the writing isn't their, their primary artistic, you know, uh, gifting if it's not passionate, but for you, it seems, it seems like you're primarily a writer, you know? And so the book is, I mean, it's a page turner. It's, it's a massive book. It's huge. I don't know. I don't know how many words it actually is. It's like, what, three, 400 pages, but it actually feels almost like a light read, just because all of a sudden you look up and it's like, gosh, I blew through like 25 pages

because it's such a fluid book. What I appreciated most about it though, is I feel like you were like very genuine and sincere. And while you unveil, I would say, a pretty, the dark underbelly of evangelicalism, you did so in a way that I'd never, ever got the sense that you were bitter at the church, angry at the church. It was very much a deep love for the church. So, that's what I appreciated most about the book. So that's what I've, I appreciated most about the book. Cause it's easy to find all the dark stuff. That's, there's been books that have done that, but the posture, which you did, I thought was so, it made it so compelling.

Can you, you, you do talk, so you named names in the book. I mean, I mean, you're, you're quoting people that you're, you know, discussions you've had with people. What are the institutions that I feel like it almost, I don't know if this is an accurate representation, almost like a lens that represents a lot of what you're talking about that comes up over and over is Liberty University. Can you, I don't know for the audience hasn't read the book or maybe they're, they're, they are reading it. Tell us about the history of Liberty University and, and, and I'm sorry, one more qualification. I, I, I've actually taught at Liberty online for like a couple of years. Um, lots of professors come out of their students that are amazing. So there's lots of good people there that

have come out of there, but there is a dark side to the history. Can you tell us a bit about that and kind of what you discuss in the books? I think it's really an important part of the narrative. Yeah. You know, to your point a minute ago, I think being able to love the church and love its people while also calling out what is wrong and what is corrupt and what is hypocritical. I mean, those things are not mutually exclusive, right? To my view.

And, you know, liberty in a lot of ways is sort of a perfect case study for understanding both the promise of evangelicalism and the potential of evangelicalism, but also that dark side you're describing and understanding the ways in which power and earthly exaltation and money can corrupt the soul of the church. So, I try to use the story of Jerry Falwell Sr. dating back to, of course, the mid 1970s,

to really paint the picture of what has happened to the movement as a whole. Because if you hear a lot of the rhetoric today around, you know, we are under attack, we are under siege, we're being persecuted in our own country, that the cultural values that we once knew are gone, that they're indoctrinating our children,

that this is our last stand, and if we don't take back our country now, then it'll be gone forever. If that rhetoric sounds familiar, it's because that is exactly the rhetoric, the messaging that Jerry Falwell Sr. mastered and weaponized so effectively, you know, 50, 60 years ago. And of course, it seems a little bit silly because at the time, looking back, Of course, it seems a little bit silly because at the time, looking back, you know, this is when America was 90% white, 90% Christian, everybody went to church, right? There was not seemingly some existential crisis facing believers at that point. And yet, you did have, you know, the Supreme Court ruling taking prayer out of public schools.

You had Roe v. Wade, you had the sexual revolution, you had the drug culture, you had divorce rates spiking, you had homosexuality suddenly sort of in the face, pornography in the face of families. And so, of course, Falwell Sr. and a lot of like-minded Christians, whether they be sort of more leaning in the fundamentalist camp or evangelical camp, and of course, they eventually sort of merge, they really saw an opportunity there to capitalize on that crisis, capitalize on that fear and build out a movement that was really all about social, cultural, and political power, right? And believing that if

they could secure those things, then that would sort of preserve their place in American life. And that they were right, you know, they were right. Falwell builds out Thomas Road Baptist Church, his mega church in Lynchburg, Virginia. He builds out Liberty University into this behemoth and then of course builds out the moral majority into this overwhelming electoral force. And with those three cogs of the machine, Falwell Sr. and his allies, they really transform American life. I mean, they are able to impose their value set on the Republican party and then more broadly, or sort of by consequence then,

impose their value set on much of the nation and create sort of very specific litmus tests for that anyone aspiring to hold office in the Republican party, what must pass. And, and it's, it's difficult to overstate just what a dramatic effect this all had on, on our, on our social culture, our political culture. But I think, you know, what hasn't necessarily been appreciated was how that success, that earthly success, corroded the soul of those very institutions. I mean, it's...

And Liberty, again, is sort of the case study of this where you would know, Preston, having taught there, having gotten to know people there, but what I do in my book is I retrace just through the eyes of one family to understand the generational disillusionment and the damage that is done when people who have invested themselves in that school and then of course sort of invested themselves in the movement more broadly come to realize that they have been played, that they've been manipulated, that they've been abused spiritually or otherwise. And how the sort of collective effect of that is actually sort of draining evangelical spaces

of its most valuable resource, which is people. People who love the Lord, you know, people, people, people who love the Lord, who want to preach the gospel, who want to spread the gospel, who want to be evangelists in their community, but have become really skeptical, if not downright cynical about what it really is that they are a part of and whether they want to be a part of it anymore. Yeah, it was really, I mean, I love that you trace it through the lens of the family and everything you did was so, you humanize the story, the good and the bad. Like you humanize

the people that were really, I think had, were good hearted and started to see some of the corruption. Even the people that were maybe part of the corruption, you even humanize them, which I thought was really helpful. Yeah. It's just so, I'm curious. So the moral, even though I was born in 76, so I grew up in the eighties, you know, but still I was just a kid. I didn't pay attention to stuff. It's almost like looking back. Now I see this whole thing about the moral majority and like the marriage between like the evangelical church and the Republican party. Did that, was it Jerry Falwell senior that that really, he really was the catalyst that

sparked this still ongoing close relationship between evangelical church and the Republican party? Like before Jerry Falwell senior, was it not really there or? Well, you know, it's interesting because you can look back at these certain inflection points and really see how this alliance was formed. And it's not any one person, it's not any one moment, but I think in a lot of ways that yeah, the Falwell senior is sort of the godfather of this alliance, right? Because what you have is a, you have, you know, it's important to remember that Falwell, of course, was himself

coming from a fundamentalist background where they preached a separatism, right? Their churches were really invested in this idea of politics being dirty and sorted business that is beneath us as believers and that we need to just be invested in saving souls not winning elections. And you know, Falwell Sr. rather famously would rail against Martin Luther King Jr. and some of the black clergymen who were marching for civil rights using that same that same rationale, right? Saying that this is not our job. This stuff you're obsessing over, it's not our job.

And then of course he has this very dramatic change of heart and he would later point to abortion. But the fact is, and this is obviously very well documented, Falwell Jr. didn't preach about abortion from his pulpit until five years after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Right? So there's this very neatly constructed history that people in the evangelical movement, specifically the sort of the Greybeards, some of the founding fathers of the modern evangelical movement, would like to tell you about where this started and why.

But a lot of it, I'm going slightly off course in response to your question, but I think this is really important for people to understand. A lot of that history is very complicated and it's very dark. The truth of the matter is, and this is again, there's a great amount of historical evidence

to back this up. A lot of the activity, a lot of the organizing that was done in the early to mid 1970s around sort of fusing conservative theological institutions with conservative politics and political entities was around the IRS activity at Bob Jones University where Bob Jones would not, initially would not admit black students

and then was later banning any interracial dating on campus. And when the IRS, under both the Nixon and Carter administration, was nosing around there, a lot of religious conservatives were saying, well, hold on a second, this is the government trying to dictate to our, trying to violate our First Amendment rights,

trying to dictate to us how we should run our religious organizations. And that really, in a lot of ways, was kind of a spark that lit the fire. And people are uncomfortable discussing that history for the same reason that they're uncomfortable talking about how the Southern Baptist Convention was born out of opposition to the abolitionist cause, right?

I mean, the SBC was founded as an explicitly pro-slavery entity. And that history has to be addressed. But I think, getting full circle back to your question, Falwell was such an influential figure in the fusing of conservative politics with conservative theology, in part because he straddled this intersection of,

you know, the sort of old Confederate South coming out of the Jim Crow era, a lot of this racial resentment build up. I document in the book some of the very unsavory remarks that Falwell Sr. himself made about race over the years. And so understanding how racial resentment kind of merged together with cultural resentment, a belief that not only does the country not look like it used to, wink and nod, but also that the country's core values are changing and that we find ourselves on the defensive. Falwell sort of embodied both. And I think that that's why he emerges

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That's drinkag1.com forward slash titr. Check it out. Hey friends, my book, Exiles, the Church in the Shadow of Empire is out now. I am so excited and a bit nervous about the release of this book. This is a topic I've been thinking about for many, many years and finally put pen to paper to write out all my thoughts. Specifically, I'm addressing the question, what is a Christian political identity? As members of Christ's global, multi-ethnic,

upside down kingdom scattered across the nations, how should we as members of that kingdom think through and interact with the various nations that we are living under? So the book is basically a biblical theology of a Christian political identity. We look at the nation of Israel, we look at the exile of Israel,

we look at several parts of the New Testament, the life and teaching of Jesus, several passages in the book of Acts, the letters of Paul, do a deep dive into 1 Peter and the book of Revelation, and then explore some contemporary points of application. So I would highly encourage you to check out my book, Exiles, and would love to hear what you think,

whether you hate the book, love it, or still thinking through it. Would love to hear what you think by dropping a review on Amazon, or I don't know, post a blog, just, you know, ripping it to shreds. I don't really care. I would love for you to just wrestle with this really important topic

in this really volatile political season that we're living in. You take us up to kind of recent day. I mean, the book came out in 2023, I believe. Yeah. Or 2020. Yeah. Yeah. In December. But I mean, you are yet documentation for like a few months before the release. So your publisher must have hated you sneaking in data at the last second. I know how that works, but we're two questions kind of similar, like DC Liberty university as being in a much more healthy spot. Has it learned from some of the these, you know, the dark side of kind of its movement. And I'm also curious the

response to your book. Cause you need, I mean, you had like apparently phone conversations with Jerry junior. I mean, you, your apparently phone conversations with Jerry Jr. I mean, your document pretty well from people at the top, like again, some of the dark side of what went on. So yeah, two, I guess two, two sides of the same question. Like what, how would you understand the health of Liberty now? And what's, have you gotten any lawsuits or not? You're doing anything for like, what's been the response to you being very explicit in, in, in your documentation in the book?

Yeah, no lawsuits yet. We, uh, we had to be pretty careful with, uh, with lawyers and whatnot going through all the language before the book published, you know, the, to the, to answer the first question again, I just, I can't overstate it because we've talked about this a bit already. You know, Liberty is a place that is filled with wonderful students, wonderful faculty, people who are not a party to this corruption and the abuse. And a lot of students, like I know, in fact, right now, a pastor friend of mine,

his daughter is going to Liberty next fall, right? And it's because she's a graduating senior and she wants to go to college somewhere where she's surrounded by faithful Christians. And she doesn't, you know, when she investigates her options and comes across Liberty and sees the campus, which is beautiful, it's like, if people have not been to Liberty in the last, you know, five, 10 years, it is, I've been all over the country, I've been, I speak at college

campuses everywhere. Liberty is one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever all over the country. I've been I speak at college campuses everywhere Liberty's one of those beautiful campuses. I've ever seen I mean it's it is a spectacular world-class Environment what they have built there. It's it's just really stunning. So for a 17 year old or 18 year old Put yourself in their shoes You find this place and it's big and it's beautiful and they've got all these majors that appeal to you and and and it's beautiful and they've got all these majors that appeal to you and they've got convocation where they bring in these A-list speakers and you're thinking to yourself, this is great, right? You're really not dumpster diving on the Falwell family.

You're not doing some deep investigation to find the skeletons hidden in Liberty's closet. Now, maybe after reading some of what I have in my book or some of the other work that's been done in recent years, that would behoove some of these young people to really understand exactly what they're getting themselves into. But I can see how, for years and years, a lot of these young people who don't really know any better, they just love the Lord and they want to get an education, so they go to Liberty. And they are, I think, largely blind to a lot of the institutional decay there. They're just going to class, getting grades, graduating, moving on into the world.

And even now, I spend time in the book talking with the student body president, who's a wonderful young man. And he and I are chewing on this question of, well, how do you reform a place once you see what's wrong? Which I think for kids like this young man, Daniel, the student body president, he can see it. He's on the inside and he's trying to change it from the inside. But there are also others who have just walked away entirely, who have left the school because they feel

like maybe it can't be saved or they just don't want to pour themselves into saving it because it would do too much damage to their souls or whatever the reason. So liberty is a really confounding case study here to understand that an institution can be really broken in a lot of ways, but can still have a lot of good in it, can still have a lot of really, really, really just great and God-fearing and lovely people who are there doing the work every day, trying to do the Lord's work, but there's this tension that underlies everything there. And it's been interesting, Preston, I've gotten a ton of feedback from Liberty World. Really? A lot of alums, a lot of current professors, current students. And what's really interesting to me is that despite having really scrutinized the place the way that I did and having turned up some really ugly information and presented Liberty

in a not very flattering light, almost every single response I've gotten, email I've gotten from Liberty people has been very gracious and grateful and basically just people saying, you know, we knew some of this was going on. Thank you. I think you've done a service to us by writing about it, you know? And that's encouraging to me. Have you gotten some negative feedback or any like aggressive? Oh yeah. Okay.

You know, I don't know if I can put you on that. No, no. I mean, look, you know, here's the thing. Like, um, you know, I, I've covered Trump for years. I, you know, I've, I like, I've gotten, I've gotten very used to the hate mail and the threats and that sort of stuff. It doesn't really bother me anymore. And I think there are people who are, let me say it this way, I'll be a little bit diplomatic with how I say this. I am not infallible. I know that I got things wrong in the book. I know that my personal beliefs, my personal exegesis, my journalistic analysis is not bulletproof, right? And I am welcoming of good faith criticisms.

I asked my pastor to read the manuscript before it ever went to print. And we had some great back and forths where he was criticizing certain things. And I love that. And it made the book better, right? And I have friends who have read it who have their own. That's great. I welcome that sort of thing. But then you also have a cottage industry of people who have a vested interest in whitewashing tombs and who are going to respond in bad faith, trying to delegitimize me, trying to delegitimize my findings, trying to undermine some of the core arguments of the book. And they're doing so to try to protect a status quo in the evangelical movement that is, that is badly broken. Isn't it ironic that if you critique, say, the evangelical use of worldly power, if you, if you poke that bear, they will react by using power to try to intimidate you. That's the very same kind of posture. You're kind of saying this isn't really Christian,

you know, they will turn around and write you that strong threatening email or threaten this threat and they'll try to use their money and power to shut you up. It's just, it is a little, I guess, ironic. I mean, so Liberty isn't, isn't, you know, you look at the, I feel like a better terms, the underbelly of a lot of, and I would say, I would almost frame it like that. Is that fair that like the, the wedding, the kind of worldly use of power, you know, money influence top down, you know, like the, the church is kind of like an entanglement with that, whether it's politics, whether it's money. Yeah. You expose that on various levels. Do you see

it? Let me go back to like the rise of the moral majority when this was just such a popular thing. You had a lot of these really Uber influential people. I mean the whole like, yeah, Falwell and I maybe could throw in maybe like a Dobson or whatever. I don't know much about that, but I've heard he was kind of part of that kind of, you know, the rise of the moral majority. Have you seen things? So that was, let's just say 1980 to 2024 in my world, we just see so many problems with that. Like I'm in a more moderate kind of brand of evangelicalism where it's just like, there's just such a disgust with that kind of, that kind of evangelicalism. Is it getting better? Or is it getting worse? Cause it depends on what social media kind of look at. It seems

like it's even worse now. Other time, other, it's like all I see people is like, if I, you know, looked at my Twitter feed and said, what's, I want to learn about Christian nationalism, 19 out of 20, you know, people who mentioned it, it's profoundly critical. It's like, well, if anybody's critiquing is this even a thing? But then people say, oh no, this is a very powerful thing and it's growing and it's threatening democracy and all these things. So we're in your sense, where are we at now in 2024 compared to 1980 in that kind of wedding of evangelicalism and the use of power and money and so on?

You know, it's a really good question. And I think from where I'm sitting, it's getting worse, but it's got to get worse before it gets better. And what I mean by that is one of the sort of thematic undercurrents of the book is the generational component to this. I think for someone like my dad who is with the Lord now and I miss him every day and in a lot of ways, he was my role model in the faith. And yet, you know, he and I disagreed on some pretty important things, some pretty fundamental things, specifically when it comes to that marriage

of sort of cultural, political, tribal identity and faith identity. And I think that for someone like my dad, who, you know, if he were still alive, he'd be in his late seventies. He was really sort of born in that moment spiritually and born again, actually, in that moment in the seventies, where this feeling of we've got to do something came very naturally to a lot of people of his generation. And particularly if you were already of a really strongly held

conservative political disposition, as my dad was before he even became a Christian, people like that, I think it became, it was sort of a no-brainer, it was very effortless, it was almost subconscious to merge those identities together. And I think what we've seen, particularly in the last 10 years here, as I write about in the book, with the radicalizing of the Republican Party,

the emergence of Donald Trump, COVID-19, which I just can't begin to explain how significant that has been in the fracturing of the church, but also in the sort of revealing of these generational fault lines I'm describing. I think when you add all of that up, what we've seen is that those older generations who really bought into this thing are now sort of seeing the whirlwind being reaped and that the younger generations are witnessing it and are saying, no, thank you. I just, I don't want any part of this, right? You guys had this experiment and it failed.

It failed spectacularly. Now, and I, and I want wanna say that in a respectful, loving way because I do think that a lot of those older folks, you know, they were just sort of working with what they knew. You know, and in fairness, some of them stepped away a long time ago from this. Cal Thomas, who I write about in the book, you know, Cal wrote this book 10, no, no, much longer.

He wrote it in the 90s. He wrote this book called Blinded by Might where he had been Falwell Senior's deputy as a vice president of the moral majority. And he eventually stepped away and said, guys, like this is, not only are we losing a lot of these culture wars, these political battles that we're charging into.

But in the process, we are just doing enormous damage to the gospel and we are undermining the legitimacy and the credibility of our own witness here. So you've had sort of little breaks along the way, but by and large, what you see, the elements that I'm writing about in my book, these dynamics are driven overwhelmingly by Christians, evangelicals who are over 50, who have really sort of stuck to their guns with this old school moral majority approach. And I think that until there's sort of a changing

of the guard, demographically speaking, you're not going to see this get any better. The interesting thing, Preston, we're talking about Liberty, I've spent a lot of time with kids at Liberty, students there who are very conservative. They're conservative theologically, culturally, politically. On paper, they look a lot like their parents.

But when it comes to questions of Trumpism, when it comes to questions of engaging with their neighbor in the culture, they're completely different. I mean, they have a very, very different outlook on these things. And so my hunch is that here in the immediate term, the next five, 10, 15 years, it probably continues to get worse. But if we can survive this short term and buy ourselves some time for these younger generations to really get their footing and to take hold of these institutions and evangelical life, then I think it's going to get a lot better. That's good. I have a theory. This isn't my theory. People have talked about this, but

when it comes to the generational difference, at least, well, I love your thoughts. It seems like part of it has to do with where people are getting their news from, whereas like older people, they trust kind of these mainstream outlets, whether it's, you know, the left more CNN or MSNBC or Fox news on the right or others, you know, but then like younger people typically they get their news on like, you know, Tik TOK or social media and stuff. We have just a whole array of different stuff that oftentimes isn't revealed on the, you know, sometimes at the top. I mean, you see, I mean, not to get into Israel, Palestine, but it is fascinating. What few people have of what's going on is largely based on the outlets they are trusting

and getting their information from, or any kind of conflict. Right now you have campus protests and stuff and it's kind of the same thing. I don't know, do you think the source of where people are getting their information from has something to do with kind of what narrative they typically will resonate with? Oh man, totally. And this is a generational thing. You're right. I agree. Without fail, when I have, in these last bunch of years, traveled around the country, spent time with some of these older folks in these evangelical settings, one of the questions I always will come back to is, okay, so, okay, so where are you getting your news,

your information from, right? And at the shallow end of the pool, a lot of these people have Fox News on every day, buzzing in the background of their living room for three, four, five hours. And in the deep end where things get really sort of dark and dangerous, I think, is these people are listening to podcasts that you've never even heard of. And in the deep end where things get really sort of dark and dangerous, I think, is, you

know, these people are listening to podcasts that you've never even heard of. They are, you know, they're imbibing these really conspiratorial, nutty social media pages. They are listening to really hardcore conservative talk radio that's like militant and sort of just reliably hostile and antagonistic in its approach. And that is a feature, not a bug. It is a feature of these older generations where, and again, I wanna say this lovingly and, and, and

graciously because I know a lot of these people. I mean, my dad was one of these people. He had Fox news on every day of his life. Uh, the last 10 years he was alive. Right. And I would sort of tease him about it and say, like, you know, call me crazy, but like, that doesn't sound like the Beatitudes to me. That doesn't sound like the sermon on the mountain to me.

Like now, now I'm not suggesting that we all need to be Puritans me. That doesn't sound like the Sermon on the Mount to me. Now, I'm not suggesting that we all need to be Puritans here, right? But there is something interesting about how, when I was a kid, and I'm guessing a lot of evangelicals out there listening to this will be nodding their heads in agreement in solidarity, my parents were so, they were so intense policing what my brothers and I were

putting into our minds. Right? Um, if you had, if you had a beastie boys album that you snuck into your room, you were done. If they caught you, they caught you watching an R rated movie. If they even heard that you were watching an R rated movie at a friend's sleep over. The Simpsons, the Simpsons are like, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Don't a friend's sleepover. Well, the Simpsons, the Simpsons are like, ah, I'm so busy. Simpsons, Simpsons, totally. Simpsons, I mean, yeah, yeah, don't get me started, right?

So, and honestly, Preston, looking back on that, I'm really grateful because I think it was a good thing. I think my parents were really smart in making sure that our impressionable young minds were, to some degree, guarded from a lot of garbage that's out there, right? I appreciate them and I respect them for that. And yet what makes my head spin a little bit is how a lot of evangelical parents who are like that have themselves completely suspended any standard when it comes to their own sort of political and cultural intake, right? That they can allow this steady stream of hate and vitriol and violence and racism

every day to be just invading and they just don't think twice about it, right? And that to me, Russell Moore shares this really funny anecdote and I print it somewhere in the book where he says that this very thing, where he says, at the beginning of my ministry years, Russell says, I used to always run into parents who would say, you've gotta help me with my kids. They're filling their minds with all this dangerous stuff

and it's taking them further away from Christ. And he says, now, and everywhere I go, I have young people grabbing me and saying, Hey, you have to help me with my parents. They're filling their minds with all this dangerous stuff and it's taking them further away from Christ. And that is, I mean, it's kind of, it's funny, but it's sad, right? Because that is, I think a big part of this generational crisis we're dealing with. I would have to, cause it's, it seems like you and I can see it as a double standard because we get it, but I could see, you know, people might just take the news as well. This is just passing on neutral information, but it's like, you know, that's just what's the, who's that famous writer who wrote,

he talked about the medium is the message. Oh, Oh gosh, back in the eighties, ah, killing me. Anyway, that the meat, the means by which you're getting your information will shape your heart and mind. Don't think you're just getting just neutral facts. And I feel like in my, from my vantage point, it's gotten in the last 10 years, more and more and more polarized and tribalistic, largely because maybe the way the algorithms are, or even the economics of it, that now to keep people angry and fearful, they're going to keep clicking and clicking and clicking and go down that rabbit hole you said so many people go down. And so I think people, if you just view it as, oh, this

isn't like something bad like the Simpsons. This is just neutral information I'm consuming. It's like, no, it's actually not that at all. Like it's shaping your mind and heart. Whenever I sample, I try to get my info. I try to get diverse sources, typically more independent, non-partisan, you know, and then I cross check that with others. But what I do dabble this stuff

that does seem to be clearly more partisan. Like I know within five seconds who they voted for or will vote for. I find my own heart, even though I'm like aware of this, I'm like, I feel like I've got a good immunity to it. Like I can within minutes I get sucked in. I start getting angry like, Oh yeah. You know, that side of this side. Like, well, if I'm aware of it and I still feel my heart getting start to pound, like I can imagine somebody who just has a steady drip all day long of this stuff. Hey friends, if theology in the raw has blessed or challenged you in any significant way, would you consider supporting the show financially? You can do so through patron at patreon.com

forward slash theology in the raw. All the information is in the show notes. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And in doing so, you get access to all kinds of different premium content. And most of all, you just get access to the theology in the raw community. We have all kinds of awesome chats and messages back and forth and it just, it means the world to us that you support the show as the show has grown. So have all the expenses and all the work that goes into pulling it off. So again, if you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology and raw. And I just want to thank my, uh,

the people that are already supporting the show. Thank you so much for keeping this show not only going, but also thriving. So patreon.com forward slash theology in Iran. I wonder if you've gotten this critique and I had it in the back of my mind, but I feel like I kind of know, well, not know, but I feel like I can almost answer my own question knowing your heart. Like could the critique be like, okay, you really picked on kind of the right-wing marriage between right-wing politics, Christianity. Isn't it just as bad, maybe not numerically, but isn't the same problem with those who just swing it the other direction. And all of a sudden now, instead of being, you know, they're so anti-Trump that now they

think the Messiah is not Jesus, but Biden like this. And now everything is about anti-Republican party, but it's almost like now that are just kind of doing the same thing on the other side. Do you see that as well? I guess a problem is, would that be a fair critique? Have you gotten that critique and what would be your response to that? Yeah, look, so I have, and I've gotten no issue with the critique in an abstract way, but what I write in the opening pages of the book is meant to address that head on, which is to say, look, in any setting where for Christians, something else has taken center stage and sort of pushed Jesus to the side, then it has become an idol to you, then that is sinful and it is wrong and it has to be addressed.

I cannot hope to address that in all of the various traditions and subcultures of American Christianity. What I can try to do is address it both in the place where it's most immediate for me and where I think it's been the most dangerous for the American experiment in pluralistic self-government. So those two things, I'll unpack them individually. So number one, I am a white evangelical. I grew up in a small, super white, super conservative, super Republican, super evangelical town

and in a church that reflected those dynamics. So that's the world that I was raised in and it's the world that I know intimately from the inside out. And I think you always have to be careful whether you're building a business or writing a book or whatever, or preaching a sermon. Like when the main thing stops becoming the main thing

and you suddenly start trying to sort of do everything at once, then you fail. And this book was not necessarily meant to address the entire sweep of problems across American Christianity, even though there are lots of them. And again, I say that early in the book, to be clear. I think the second thing is, you know, for all of the issues in the progressive church, and there are a lot of them, and I'm happy to even get into some of them with you if you'd like, you know, I did not, I have not seen a marriage of political progressives and Christian progressives create the conditions for violence

and mass civic unrest that we've seen from the other side, from the political right and from the religious right. So to me, that's a qualifiable and quantifiable difference, like a major one, where to say that on the one hand, is it completely cringe-worthy and inappropriate in my view that when Joe Biden is in this black church in South Carolina several months ago and the congregants are chanting four more years inside the sanctuary? Yes. Do I place that in exactly the same category as I do the people who are in prayer circles outside the Capitol on January 6th

and then carrying crosses into the Capitol as Capitol policemen are being beaten with American flagpoles? No, not exactly. I think those are slightly different things. And yet I think they both stem from I Think maybe you would consider them both symptoms different symptoms of the same basic illness, which is that in American life we have been coddled. We have been spoiled

we have become so accustomed to the comforts and the security of empire that we have no idea what it's like to live in a truly marginalized, countercultural state, the way that Christianity thrived at least in the first three and a half centuries after the death and resurrection of Christ. And when you spend time with people, Christians from around the world, or if you do missionary work, which I have, and you interface with these people, they just sort of cock their head to the side and look at you like you're a little bit crazy, right? It's very difficult for the American Christian to not make an idol out of politics, not make an idol out of the culture, out of your sort of social tribe, because you have come to view those things as being sort of

very much all interconnected. And I think if the core message of what I'm writing in the book is that we are called to be disciples of Christ, and only by dying to those other identities can we truly discover our identity in Christ. That same message applies across the board. It just so happens that I'm addressing it very directly to my little corner of the kingdom. I think that's completely fair. That's exactly what I... So, I get accused of the kingdom. I think that's completely fair. And that's exactly what I, that's, that's what I, so I get accused of the same thing. I I'll see people on social media saying, you know, that I, I punch right and coddle left. Like, well, if you got me in a room and asked me, let's all right, let's just talk more comprehensively political stuff.

You're not going to hear any coddling to the left. In fact, you might, I might sound probably more conservative than you think I would be. But as you said, there's two things on the right that you don't have in a left. Number one, the numbers. I mean, if you ask like, what's the percentage of evangelicals that might struggle with right-wing political idolatry versus left-wing, it's, I don't know what the date is going to show is it, you know, 90% night, you know, 95% more, more of a problem on the right wing. And secondly, you don't have as much of left-wing political leaders pandering to the evangelical church. They, they might, as you met, they might do so with maybe, maybe the black church

more. And we have to see some of that come out. And if there's actually been an uptick of black, younger black voters, especially voting more Republican, which is interesting, but, but in general, you have this dominant machine as white evangelical church that the right wing will pander to that they, that they will take the lead on using Christian rhetoric. You have, you know, a lot more right-wing kind of Christian people or people who say they're Christians in office that are saying the most un Jesus like things about all kinds of stuff. So, um, yeah, so both the numbers and, and the clear attempt to, to, to enmesh the evangelical church with right-wing political, uh, positions.

Um, is that, yeah, that sounds like that's kind of what you're saying to you. Like, and it's you and I, both this is, I think it's easier. It's probably better. It's what's more prophetic to critique Euro and tribe rather than constantly lobbying, maybe, you know, the bomb across the bow and, and try to hit another tribe that you weren't really raised in. So are you hopeful? Like where you said, it needs to get worse before it gets better. Well, let me ask you a specific question within that Christian nationalism, cause this is kind of, you know, a theme you've addressed as well. I don't know what the thing is. Is this a loud, largely insignificant movement

a largely insignificant movement that seems bigger or more powerful than it is, or is it the greatest threat to the church and democracy as we know it, or is there something in between those two perspectives? And I honestly don't know the answer to that question. I think it's somewhere in the middle, but you know, here's the way i would i would categorize it is when you look at the data when you listen to. The social scientists who have really studied this and can speak to it with a lot of a lot of authority and authority that comes from the study not just not not the anecdotal. not just not the anecdotal, they will sort of emerge with the conclusion that basically this is a problem. It is not a problem at scale, but it is a problem. And when you sort of read between the lines and you study this, I think the great threat at scale isn't Christian nationalism as it exists in this moment. It is sort of the huge adjacent the line between wanting to be a little bit more faithful and a little bit more rigid, trying to compartmentalize their politics away from their faith and trying

to be discipled in the right way and not sort of have this cultural formation dominate their lives. But they're freaked out by what they see around them. And especially in an election year, right? They maybe start to lose that discipline a little bit, right? They're kind of in that gray area. You know, based on some of what we see happening in this country right now, I mean, you were alluding to some of it earlier, but like, let's face it, if you are on the fence,

if you are sort of Christian nationalists curious, if you're even a little bit susceptible to this message that they are out to get us, that they're trying to, you know, de-Christianize this country, they want to persecute us, they want to marginalize us, they're trying to, you know, decristianize this country. They want to persecute us. They want to marginalize us. They want to eventually eradicate, you know, faith from public life. If you, if you're looking around in recent years, I can understand how you might just sign on and say, okay, I'm in, you know, uh, right. Because, you know, there's no doubt that there are forces in the culture

that are trying to, that are completely hostile towards Christianity and that would love to see the church destroyed. But I think there's a couple things we have to consider. And one of them is, okay, if there are people who want to see the church destroyed, are we by responding in kind only serving to advance their mission? Right? By fighting fire with fire, are we actually helping to destroy the church? Because we are feeding this perception that all we care about are the culture wars, all we care about is political power, all we care about is vanquishing our opponents and subjugating our enemies and conquering the world around us, right? I quote near the end of the book this professor at Liberty who has sort of, he and his family

have seen sort of the rise and fall of the school and he's sort of heartbroken over it. And I talked to him about what it might look like to do things differently. And he's very emotionally talks about what if we were to lay down our defenses? What if we were to truly turn the other cheek and just love those who hate us? What would that look like? Right? And I think it's a sign, it's a reflection of the state of American Christianity that when I say that, many of your listeners will sort of think that it's a rhetorical flourish rather than a genuine idea.

Right? What if we tried it? What if we lived out the Sermon on the Mount? Like, I don't know. What if we... Yeah? What if we lived out the sermon on the mount? Like, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, really, I mean, and again, by the way, let me let me be clear, like, I struggle with this every day. I'm no better than anyone else here. Maybe I'm worse. I'm not holding myself out to be some some exemplar. But I think it's really easy in this environment with the world looking the way that it does and

with this country at loggerheads and hyper-polarized around everything. I think it's really easy to get sucked into this us versus them, good versus evil mentality. When you do that, then you start to assign a good versus evil. It becomes politics become like the proxy war for it. And so you sign up with your side thinking, you can't negotiate with evil, you have to destroy evil. And when you take that sort of approach to your neighbor and to your community and to the people who disagree with you on things, that is a recipe for disaster for the church. And so while I understand it,

and I'm sympathetic to a certain degree to why people have become radicalized in these religious spaces, if we allow what is at present, this very pretty small base of hardcore Christian nationalist ideologues, if we allow that group to sort of grow its ranks and to grab ahold of the levers of institutions

and then try to sort of weaponize those institutions to dominate their enemies, real and perceived, it is going to do just incalculable damage to, to, to the reputation of the church. And I think that's what we should all be on guard against. Oh man. So good, Tim. Love your perspective, man. I I'm glad you're out there and I'm so glad this book has gotten so much attention. Whenever I look at the Amazon rankings, I'm like, dude, you're crushing it with sales, man. And I'm so glad, I'm so glad so many people are reading this.

And your book has found its way into a lot of more secular spaces. I think the first interview I heard you on was on Breaking Points with Crystal and Sager, which was, I was shocked to hear on this very secular outlet. And I think they do great journalism. But to hear you talk really explicitly about your evangelical faith, like I've never heard anything like that on breaking points before. So it's funny because that's another criticism I've gotten. Oh, here's this guy lecturing about what's wrong in the church while he's on the MSNBC set. And it's like, well, hold

on a second. Well, I mean, ultimately, what does it mean to evangelize? Right? Are we not supposed to be? Are we not supposed to be prioritizing these secular spaces? Are these not? Are you know, this is I view it as a mission field, man. So like, that's it. I just I'd be remiss if I didn't address that, because that for whatever reason, that's been, that's been a real touchy subject for a lot of people believing that like well some good Christian you are hanging around CNN primetime. I'm just thinking well like okay but what if there's even a single person watching who might be out there searching for something and and in the amazing thing I will just say this in

closing because it's been totally unexpected, but totally life-giving to me in this process. Some of the deepest, most respectful and curious conversations I have had in the last six months have been in the green rooms at MSNBC, have been at these very secular, like New York society events that I've gone to, where people, they might be hostile reflexively towards, you know, evangelicalism or hostile towards the church, but they're not hostile towards Jesus. In

fact, when you start talking to them about Jesus, they lean in and they want to know more. And so maybe we should so maybe that's a sign that we've been thinking about this in the wrong way, right? Maybe these secular spaces, which seems so scary to us, maybe if we approached them with something more loving and something more Christ-centered, as opposed to something more sort of belligerent and culture war centered. Um, maybe just maybe we would, uh, find ourselves in a very different situation. Man. That's so good. That's a great way to end our car. Keep going. But we both have stuff to do, Tim. It's an honor to talk to you on theology

and her off. Thanks so much for your work and thanks so much for your book. I'll hold it up here one more time. The kingdom, the power and the glory American evangelicals in the age of extremism. And yeah, I highly encourage my audience to pick it up. It's a, it's hard. It's one of those books. It's really hard to put down. Thanks so much for being on the altar on Tim. Hey, my pleasure, Preston. Thanks for having me. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.