WEBVTT - Gospel and Progressivism - Jack Jenkins on the Religious Right 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:16.360 Welcome to PM Mood then No Talking Points, no Bullshit 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.200 podcast that takes you behind the curtain, off the red carpet, 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.079 and to the front lines of progress with change makers 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:26.520 and innovators that are doing the work to shift our 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:35.000 culture and expand their social impact. I am so excited 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:39.400 to welcome to PM mood. Friend of mine. We will 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:43.640 also have to talk about our travels Jack Jenkins, who 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:46.760 is the author of the new book American Prophets, The 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.440 Religious roots of Progressive Politics and ongoing fight for the 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:54.400 Soul of the Country. It's so funny, Jack, because when 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.640 we talk, it's like we consistently are talking about the 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.440 soul of this country. I gotta tell you, I feel like, 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:06.880 on a regular basis it's dead. You are I would 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:12.119 assume maybe a lot more hopeful than I am about religion, 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.760 about the separation between church and state, but about the idea, 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:22.920 it's almost to me that progressive politics progressive religion almost 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.760 seems like an an oxymoron because of how we have 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:31.200 been inundated with the religious right. So talk to me 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:35.400 about the religious left and what led you to the 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:39.200 development of this book, American Prophets. I'll start with the 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.280 second question, that leads into the first, which is that 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:45.920 for me, when I first started doing reporting at Religion 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.480 News Service years ago as an intern, I was assigned 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:51.560 to try to find a faith story in the Occupy 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:54.840 Wall Street movement, which was happening at the time, and 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.440 I went I was near the Occupy Boston encampment in Boston, 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.480 and I I stumbled over there, and what I found 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.240 when I got there was there was this whole inner 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.840 faith tent where there was all of these activists, and 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:08.800 that a lot of the people who were helping organize 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.400 the encampment were seminarians and divinity school students, which I 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:15.160 thought was interesting. And then a lot of the people 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:17.440 that they were bringing in to speak to kind of 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:20.519 like critique capitalism and you know, try to critique the 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:25.280 verious different you know in results of capitalism with labor rights, etc. 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:27.480 They were bringing in these kind of faith leaders or 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.480 people who were attached to religious institutions, and so I 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:33.080 was like, you know, I had run into this in 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:35.200 a vague since before. But what struck me was that 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.920 I was the only reporter following that with a you know, 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:41.880 religious lens. Now that's not because I was special, because 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:43.760 I was assigned that by my editor. But it was 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:46.280 one of those things where I was like, that's interesting 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.120 that there's this dearth of people kind of looking into 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.600 this group. And so as I continued to stay in 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.480 journalism and I ended up in I think progress years later. 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.880 You know, basically my job there was equally split my 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:01.359 time between covering the religious right and then also kind 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:04.840 of looking at these you know, more progressive faith communities 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:08.040 that were advocating for you know, better housing, for communities, 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:10.000 for a better rent control, you know, to try to 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.880 push back against predatory lending practices, to you know, talk 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.120 about you know, immigrant rights and indigenous rights and fighting 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:19.040 against climate change, and they're all doing it and they 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.359 would have gatherings with hundreds of people, and then I 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:27.320 would be the only reporter there. So it's just why, 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:31.160 why would you think? Why why was that? Why Why 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:34.440 were you the only one that was interested in covering 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:38.080 and covering this. So I think there's that goes back 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:40.640 to your to your first question, which is what happened? 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:43.560 Why we did this dynamic come to be? And so 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.280 you know, the religious left has always kind of been 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:49.360 around in American history and various forms or that that 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:51.800 was the abolitionist movement or the civil rights movement as 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.120 one people often point too, and also around the turn 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.240 of the twentieth century, and the Social Gospel movement, which 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:00.560 still influences a lot of Christian traditions today, was actually, 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.160 you know, one of the pre eminent religious movements in 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.400 the country and actually had disproportionate influence over American politics. 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.720 And they kind of won. It was the New Deal 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:11.680 was directly influenced by the Social Gospel movement that was 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.320 critiquing capitalism and the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. But 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:20.000 after they won, the fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists of that time 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:23.279 kind of, you know, also lost in public. And this 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:25.400 is a little bit of a simplistic retelling, but they 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:27.599 kind of pulled back from politics a little bit and 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:30.880 started creating their own institutions. They created their own schools, 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.480 created their own magazines, their own publishing houses, their own 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:38.040 radio networks, and their own television network. So by the 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.400 time you got to the seventies, eighties, and particularly the nineties, 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.160 when they decided to re enter politics in a really 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:47.599 big way, they were bringing with them this huge media 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:50.760 apparatus that kind of helped funnel and fuel a lot 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.480 of their activism, and they know, kind of really dug 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.280 in around two issues in particular, opposition and same sex 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.400 marriage or just all LGBTQ relationships and identities and or shit, 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:03.919 and those issues kind of became the lynchpin throughout the 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:06.599 nineties and into the two thousands, and it's how George W. 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:10.159 Bush was able to secure such an arousing amount of 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:13.480 support among Wine Evangelical Protestants in particular in two thousand 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.599 and two thousand and four. What had happened in the 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:21.520 meantime is that while religious activists had never stopped doing 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:23.560 what they do, you know, in terms of progressive faith 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:26.960 activists fighting for racial justice, for instance, or for immigrant rights, 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.080 those movements actually continued to exist. A lot of those 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:34.960 large institutional organizations that had been mostly attied to white, 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.480 even white mainline Protestantism, because that was what was really, 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.599 you know, understood to be the big political crew in 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.240 the early twentieth century, they had kind of atrophied and died. 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.200 Whereas and so secular you know, we saw this group 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.400 of this growth of the religiously unaffiliated people who don't 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:53.120 claim one religious group or another, you who may worship 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:55.360 or go to church on regular basis, but don't claim 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:58.400 a faith tradition or they're atheists or agnostic. That group 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.719 became the largest single sub set of the Democratic Party. 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:03.839 Fast forward to two thousand and four or two thousand 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:07.400 and eight, and while the Democratic Party remained mostly religious 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:09.400 in terms of people were saying they believe in God 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.280 or affiliate with the faith tradition, the power of these 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.880 activists had changed dramatically. They had they didn't have this 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.320 sort of access to power that they once did. And 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.240 the left in general, nothing on the left looks like 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.000 the religious right, and because it's now more of a 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.719 coalition of coalitions as opposed to like one white group 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:30.160 of Christians yelling at another white group of Christians. And 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.440 so we have this different system for what the left 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:35.400 looks like today, and that's where the modern religious left 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:37.279 kind of emerges. And that's kind of what I cover 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:41.039 in my book. You know, it's so interesting because one 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.719 of the chapters that I really do want to dig into, 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:49.279 just given the current climate that we're in, is chapter three, 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:54.440 when God chooses a Leader. And I think that what 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:59.760 has become so troubling about the religious right, aside from 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:05.479 them being zealous. In my opinion is the weaponizing of 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:10.080 religion and the idea that they have the power white 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:15.880 evangelical Christians to anoint right a leader. And what we 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.960 have heard over the past three and a half years 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:23.320 under Donald Trump in so many from so many different people, 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.880 from religious leaders, but then from people withinside of his 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:29.920 cabinet is referred to Donald Trump as the chosen one, 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.240 referring to him as the one, as the leader that 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:37.040 God chose for this movement. You open up the chapter 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:40.720 with talking about Jerry Folwell Junior and Liberty University and 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:44.520 the speech that Trump gave there and he would later 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:47.440 come out, you know, obviously to endorse him, and he 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.000 has come out in fervor for Donald Trump. Talk to 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:58.680 me about the idea of like this deity's deity, this 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:04.600 idea of like deitizing political leaders and in crowning them 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:07.280 in some way as if they are above reproach, because 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.440 that's what it seems to me. It was like at first, 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.800 we have these issues, we are singled issue. We don't 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.560 want abortion, so anyone that is against abortion we're going 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:21.200 to be behind. There's something different about what is being 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.160 done at this particular time with Donald Trump as opposed 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.280 to what happened with the Bushes before him and the 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.960 religious right right, and I think there's a lot of 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.800 different factors going in there, but I think the core 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:36.679 of what I hear you talking about is this one 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.160 that's actually kind of flummoxed a lot of US religion 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:41.560 reporters as well, particularly early on in the Trump era, 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:43.880 is that we're used to one version of what the 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:47.800 religious right looks like. There's these key actors and theological thinkers, 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:50.920 and some of them really don't like Trump, and so 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:52.839 when they came out really hard against him during the 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.199 twenty sixteen campaign, we expected there to be some movement 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.920 among white evangelicals to say, hey, maybe we'll let you 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:01.280 go back a third party candator kind of looked like 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:03.520 the way Mormons did. Members of the Church of Jesus 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.280 Christ of Latter day Saints actually did pull away from 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.280 Trump at some level, more so than Why Evangelical Protestants 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:12.880 by far, but instead he's still some Trump still was 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.040 able to lock in eighty to eighty one percent of 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:18.000 Why Evangelical Protestants. And as we've gone back and looked 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.840 through that campaign and also looked at his presidency since then, 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.920 what you see is a lot of appeal to Christian nationalism, 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:30.199 and that is arguably less a theology and more an identity. 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.280 It's more of a marriage of this idea of what 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:35.800 it means to be an American and an idea of 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:37.880 what it means to be a Christian. And while there 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.839 are some people who make theological arguments about that or 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.480 like kind of they kind of retell American history in 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.959 a very specific subjective way. One of those figures is 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.880 Roy Moore, for instance, the failed Alabama sent a candidate, 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.480 former judge down there in Alabama. He's kind of one 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:54.920 of these people who might make a theological or historical 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.120 argument for a lot of Americans, and in white Evangelical 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:02.160 Protestants in particular, this idea of Christian nationalism. When Donald 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.160 Trump hugs an American flag or then says, you know, 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.480 we don't worship government, we worship God, that's a not 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.400 so subtle dog whistle to these communities that say, hey, 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:13.680 that's what I am. Now. Some of these people have 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:15.800 been to church and years, some of these people are 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:19.680 are active worshippers, and but for them there's that shared 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.840 sort of you know, longing for this very particular idea 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:24.840 of what it means to be a Christian that often, 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.160 you know, when they did a bunch of polls around 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.640 the twenty sixteen election and after that about people who 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.760 would might identify with Christian nationalism, and what you found 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:37.000 was that these people, disproportionately, compared to the rest of 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.560 the population, say, had negative feelings towards immigrants, had negative 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:44.080 feelings towards refugees in particular, or to Muslim Americans. They're 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.480 disproportionately more likely to say the police are doing the 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.319 right thing went in their interactions with people of color 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.040 than if they're doing the wrong thing. All things, when 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:53.640 you start to think about it, are kind of these 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:57.000 pillars of Trumpism that he used in his campaign in 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.880 twenty sixteen. And so it was actually an in phenomenon 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:04.440 that's happened that happened around the Trump rise where some 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.280 of the traditional actors the religious right actually kind of 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:11.040 got unseated and left adrift because they realized they the 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:13.800 flock that they thought they had who they could you know, 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:17.520 push in a theological direction, were more driving force behind 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.359 them was more this Christian nationalism rhetoric than the theology 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.800 that they were preaching at say, Wheaton College, and so 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:27.360 Trump's been a really interesting figure that way. And it 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.040 comes back to exactly what you were saying. Trump's a 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:32.160 person who can go down to a disaster site in 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:34.200 the South and meet a bunch of white Christians and 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.560 they hand him bibles for him to sign, to sign, 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:41.960 to sign. Yeah, I don't understand that. And you have 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.360 You've had you figures like Paula White And who is 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:48.600 this preacher out of Florida who's some many label as 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.600 a prosperity gospel preacher? Which is this this form of 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.640 Christianity that often says if you believe hard enough, good 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.840 things will come to you, and that often those that 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:00.800 are those that are wealthy, Right, those are wealthy are 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.560 then perceived to be better if you are. That's how 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.680 I have always broken it down in very basic terms, 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:10.480 is that if you are wealthy, then that means that 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:12.920 you are good. That means that you were closest to God. 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:17.240 And which kind of makes sense in terms of the 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:20.439 way that poor people are treated in this country right 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.760 by our government. If you are if you are poor, 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:27.480 being poor is a product, is a failure, is a 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:31.280 personal failure, right, It is about your laziness. If you 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:35.119 work hard and you are wealthy, right, then you are rewarded. 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.960 So this intermingling of this idea of prosperity as it 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.920 perceives as it pertains to faith, and then that as 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.000 it pertains to the policies that we put together for 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.760 poor people seem to me to be so disconnected from 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.360 the foundation of Christian faith, right, which is this idea 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:58.000 of serving most in need. How do we straddle that 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:05.000 very incredible and working it in America that about poverty 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:10.880 and about in general. Yeah, I think, you know, to 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:12.720 tap into a little bit of what you were saying, 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.480 you know, that campaign that there was this conversation that 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.480 developed basically from nineteen seventies on where there are you know, 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.600 there were people in religious contexts referring to the deserving 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:24.800 and basically undeserving poor. If you're poor, there's that's a 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.720 consequence of capitalism. But the great the people who achieve 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:32.680 in a capitalist mindset are blessed quite literally the idea 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:35.000 that that is that is an evidence of their faith. 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:37.240 And in what it has done is, you know, it 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:41.720 shores up a very specific capitalistic system. And and actually 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.240 the one thing when I talked about that gap between 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:48.200 when the fundamentalist Christians kind of lost in the early 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.400 twentieth century, and that came back in the seventies and eighties. 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:53.360 There was a thing that happened in between that in 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:55.840 the thirties that I think is really important, which was 0:13:55.920 --> 0:14:00.840 that there was this effort by businesses to back against 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.480 the social Gospel and the results of the New Deal, 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.720 and so they started developing these preaching groups where they 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:12.079 would rap them preach these sermons that melded capitalism and 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:14.880 of Christian faith and said that both of them can 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:18.880 be good. And then they attached a patriotic or nationalist 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:23.280 identity to that. And that movement grew to thousands and 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:26.000 thousands of pastors throughout the country, and one of the 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:28.280 earl in its it was the breeding ground for some 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:31.960 of the earliest prosperity Gospel preachers in the United States, 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:35.720 including a guy named Norman Vincent Peale, who was who 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.520 wrote this. He was this successful pastor who many people 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:41.200 call as one of the first prototypical examples of a 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.880 prosperity Gospel preacher. And he was at one point Donald 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:47.600 Trump's pastor, and he is one of the only faith 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.840 leaders that Donald Trump has mentioned by name. From his 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.360 past and to be able to reflect on his sermons. Now, 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:57.120 Norman Vincent Peale might even be weak compared to some 0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:59.720 of the modern prosperity Gospel preachers. But that's one of 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:03.320 the that some historians that help explain how when Trump 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:06.720 came into office, these prosperity Gospel pastors and this whole 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:11.080 strain of Christianity that had not been really politicized, Trump 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.760 brought with them because it you know, some one argument 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.120 is that it reflected his own mindset, his own worldview, 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:20.360 and it also may have reflected many conservative policies that 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:24.480 again defend capitalism not only as a virtuous system, but 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:26.720 are you, but they are you as a Christian system. 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.120 And as they've continued to shore that up, the religious 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.200 right aiding them along and along. You know, this is 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.400 why many of the activists you have seen among the 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.520 religious left, whether it's William Barber who's helping lead the 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:41.680 Poor People's Campaign with Reverent Theo Harris, or Alexandro Accassi 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.800 or Portz who is a Democratic Socialist and decided to 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:48.160 run for office after attending the Standing Rock demonstrations and 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.880 having a spiritual experience and has since been talking about 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.720 on the stump, you know, fusing faith that appeals to 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.080 the least of these, to the poor, to the destitute, 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:00.240 you basically have Now we re entered a conversation that 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:03.360 happened in the beginning of the last century, where the 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.400 poor are saying, maybe these policies aren't working out for me, 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.600 these religious poor, and some folks who have didn't defending 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:14.160 capitalism under a Christian context are just literally lifting up 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.000 Trump as the chosen one. And these are two very 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:21.800 different conversations. They're so different, and they're so contradictory to 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.480 one another. And I really don't and I think to me, 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.120 you know, personally, religion has always been something that I 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:32.160 have kept at Bay. I guess I would consider myself agnostic. 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:35.600 I'm a verially spiritual person and believe in the connectivity 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:38.760 of the universe and all people and living things. But 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:44.720 prescribing to a certain religious ideology has always been something 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:48.400 that I've kept at Bay because of the way that 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:53.080 it's constantly weaponized. It's weaponized against the poor, it's weaponized 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.880 against black people. Martin Luther King once said, the most 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:01.280 segregated time right in America is high noon on Sunday, right, right, 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:05.560 And so you know, as we are kind of moving 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:11.040 through what I have been talking about multiple pandemics in 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.680 this country right and witnessing them. We are living through 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:18.560 the coronavirus, which is an actual global health crisis, but 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:23.120 has revealed to us the inner workings of the racial 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:26.280 and racist pandemic that we have been living in in 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.520 this country. And then the capitalist structure that feeds into 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:32.840 all of that, keeping some at the bottom, namely black 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:36.240 and brown people, and then the wealthy people at the top. 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:41.840 But when you have this justification right of prosperity and 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:48.199 wealth being associated with good, right and godly, how do 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.600 you even come together? How do you bring these two 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:58.000 very different faiths together in order to even begin to 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:01.320 save the soul of this country? Like? What is that? Honestly, 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:04.800 what does that even look like? Right? Because we've been 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.800 battling for the soul of this nation since oh, I 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.760 don't know, the Pilgrims stole it from the Native Americans. 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:14.520 So it's like in every generation, at every time, we 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:18.160 are at war right with this idea of what America 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:20.639 should be, could be, what we want it to be, 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:25.040 and what it actually is. Right, I think what's a 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:27.840 really fascinating tention that you're pointing out is that, you know, 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.840 there's this concept of Christianity, right, and people always like 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:33.800 to remember the abolitionist movement, how many faith leaders are 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:35.800 were a part of that, and they just leave out 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:37.679 the part where there was a bunch of pastors who 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.040 propped up the institution of slavery to begin with, right, 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:42.400 you were saying that this was God's will, and then 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:44.479 that when we talked about the labor movement, it were similar. 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:46.840 There were these social gospel types they were arguing for, 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:48.480 you know, kind of liberating the worker. And then there 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:49.800 are a lot of people that's saying that, you know, 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:52.680 maybe the workers deserved it and like. And so there's 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.240 been this constant conversation between religious groups for quite some 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:58.639 time here in the United States. And then you have 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.480 faith groups, for instance, talk about in the book Indigenous 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:03.760 rights activists, for whom they say that their faith isn't 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:06.640 even recognized by culture in general. You know, they say 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.160 that when they're fighting for sacred land and standing rock, 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:11.639 or protests in the construction of a telescope on the 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.280 top of Mount Chaa in Hawaii, people just don't even 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:16.520 see their faith is equal as one that they could 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.879 have a con when they're talking about, say Christianity or Judaism. 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.680 And so it's one of those things where we're having 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:25.879 this debate where there's a reason you have heard of 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.040 people on both sides of this debate, whether it's William 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:30.879 Barber or someone like Jerry Foward Junior or Robert Jeffries, 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.600 whose sermon when God Chooses a leader, by the way, 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.880 is the sermon he delivered to Trump on his inauguration day, 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.240 where there have been comments where like they both kind 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.119 of infer that the other is a heretic. And the 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:47.120 implication there is that, you know, these might be very 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:50.439 different strains of Christianity for whom you know, finding that 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.040 sort of reconciliation. This is just in a Christian context. 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:55.360 We're not even including the multiple parts of the religious 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:58.000 left that are not Christian at all, you know, finding 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:01.480 the reconciliation across difference. There. They they're you know, they're 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.360 they're praying very different prayers, they are preaching to very 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.600 different groups of people, and even during this this pandemic, 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:09.880 you know, to your point, one of the fascinating things 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:12.720 I've seen develop is there's essentially been two strains of 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:16.280 religious activism in the United States. One Christian conservative, there 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:19.320 have been transaggressions of social distancing across the religious spectrum. 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:23.200 Conservatives in particular have taken it up as a cause, 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.320 and you know, saying that these these you know, lockdowns 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:29.119 on their houses of worship have been you know, unfair. 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:32.760 They've been pastors in Louisiana and Florida that have been arrested, 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:35.040 and conservative groups like the Liberty Council have come to 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.280 their defense to sue local or state authorities for cracking 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.959 down on worship communities. And then meanwhile, you have groups 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:46.200 like a Poor People's Campaign launching an initiative called Stay Home, 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.960 Stay Alive because they oppose the reopening of these of 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:52.639 these states and worship houses of worship, they say, because 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:56.440 he will disproportionately impact the poor. Or a Union seminary 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:58.440 in New York teaming up with the ACLU to run 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:01.560 ads calling for the release of prisoners who are disproportionately 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.960 at risk of contracting the virus, noting that the largest 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:07.720 COVID clusters in the United States are usually in prisons, 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:10.160 or the you know, the Jewish group Never Again action 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:13.160 that was helping organize for the release of immigrant TEA 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:16.719 detainees who are also disproportionately at risk of contracting this virus. 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:20.040 And you see the President this past week when he 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:22.920 released this statement saying that, you know, he wanted to 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.880 push push governors to reopen churches. You know, he's only 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.600 responding to one of those streams of activism and the 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:32.479 other one that's calling for, like, you know, to pay 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:34.680 attention to you know, what Christians might call the least 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.479 of these, the poor, the prisoner, the immigrants. That's just 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.920 a it's a completely different theological conversation than the one 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:44.200 conservative Christians are having right now is calling against these 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:47.960 shutdowns and for you know, this religious liberty quote unquote 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:50.560 for worship services, and they're just I know, it's a 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:53.520 long window way of saying, I haven't even seen many 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:56.240 conversations happening between these groups when I've gone to some 0:21:56.280 --> 0:21:58.680 of these demonstrations, some of which I chronicle in the book. 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:02.240 When people, for instance, when protested near Liberty University, these 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:06.000 red letter Christians, these more progressive evangelicals, they wanted to 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:08.360