Speaker 1: Welcome to PM Mood then No Talking Points, no Bullshit
Speaker 1: podcast that takes you behind the curtain, off the red carpet,
Speaker 1: and to the front lines of progress with change makers
Speaker 1: and innovators that are doing the work to shift our
Speaker 1: culture and expand their social impact. I am so excited
Speaker 1: to welcome to PM mood. Friend of mine. We will
Speaker 1: also have to talk about our travels Jack Jenkins, who
Speaker 1: is the author of the new book American Prophets, The
Speaker 1: Religious roots of Progressive Politics and ongoing fight for the
Speaker 1: Soul of the Country. It's so funny, Jack, because when
Speaker 1: we talk, it's like we consistently are talking about the
Speaker 1: soul of this country. I gotta tell you, I feel like,
Speaker 1: on a regular basis it's dead. You are I would
Speaker 1: assume maybe a lot more hopeful than I am about religion,
Speaker 1: about the separation between church and state, but about the idea,
Speaker 1: it's almost to me that progressive politics progressive religion almost
Speaker 1: seems like an an oxymoron because of how we have
Speaker 1: been inundated with the religious right. So talk to me
Speaker 1: about the religious left and what led you to the
Speaker 1: development of this book, American Prophets. I'll start with the
Speaker 1: second question, that leads into the first, which is that
Speaker 1: for me, when I first started doing reporting at Religion
Speaker 1: News Service years ago as an intern, I was assigned
Speaker 1: to try to find a faith story in the Occupy
Speaker 1: Wall Street movement, which was happening at the time, and
Speaker 1: I went I was near the Occupy Boston encampment in Boston,
Speaker 1: and I I stumbled over there, and what I found
Speaker 1: when I got there was there was this whole inner
Speaker 1: faith tent where there was all of these activists, and
Speaker 1: that a lot of the people who were helping organize
Speaker 1: the encampment were seminarians and divinity school students, which I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting. And then a lot of the people
Speaker 1: that they were bringing in to speak to kind of
Speaker 1: like critique capitalism and you know, try to critique the
Speaker 1: verious different you know in results of capitalism with labor rights, etc.
Speaker 1: They were bringing in these kind of faith leaders or
Speaker 1: people who were attached to religious institutions, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I had run into this in
Speaker 1: a vague since before. But what struck me was that
Speaker 1: I was the only reporter following that with a you know,
Speaker 1: religious lens. Now that's not because I was special, because
Speaker 1: I was assigned that by my editor. But it was
Speaker 1: one of those things where I was like, that's interesting
Speaker 1: that there's this dearth of people kind of looking into
Speaker 1: this group. And so as I continued to stay in
Speaker 1: journalism and I ended up in I think progress years later.
Speaker 1: You know, basically my job there was equally split my
Speaker 1: time between covering the religious right and then also kind
Speaker 1: of looking at these you know, more progressive faith communities
Speaker 1: that were advocating for you know, better housing, for communities,
Speaker 1: for a better rent control, you know, to try to
Speaker 1: push back against predatory lending practices, to you know, talk
Speaker 1: about you know, immigrant rights and indigenous rights and fighting
Speaker 1: against climate change, and they're all doing it and they
Speaker 1: would have gatherings with hundreds of people, and then I
Speaker 1: would be the only reporter there. So it's just why,
Speaker 1: why would you think? Why why was that? Why Why
Speaker 1: were you the only one that was interested in covering
Speaker 1: and covering this. So I think there's that goes back
Speaker 1: to your to your first question, which is what happened?
Speaker 1: Why we did this dynamic come to be? And so
Speaker 1: you know, the religious left has always kind of been
Speaker 1: around in American history and various forms or that that
Speaker 1: was the abolitionist movement or the civil rights movement as
Speaker 1: one people often point too, and also around the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, and the Social Gospel movement, which
Speaker 1: still influences a lot of Christian traditions today, was actually,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the pre eminent religious movements in
Speaker 1: the country and actually had disproportionate influence over American politics.
Speaker 1: And they kind of won. It was the New Deal
Speaker 1: was directly influenced by the Social Gospel movement that was
Speaker 1: critiquing capitalism and the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. But
Speaker 1: after they won, the fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists of that time
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, also lost in public. And this
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a simplistic retelling, but they
Speaker 1: kind of pulled back from politics a little bit and
Speaker 1: started creating their own institutions. They created their own schools,
Speaker 1: created their own magazines, their own publishing houses, their own
Speaker 1: radio networks, and their own television network. So by the
Speaker 1: time you got to the seventies, eighties, and particularly the nineties,
Speaker 1: when they decided to re enter politics in a really
Speaker 1: big way, they were bringing with them this huge media
Speaker 1: apparatus that kind of helped funnel and fuel a lot
Speaker 1: of their activism, and they know, kind of really dug
Speaker 1: in around two issues in particular, opposition and same sex
Speaker 1: marriage or just all LGBTQ relationships and identities and or shit,
Speaker 1: and those issues kind of became the lynchpin throughout the
Speaker 1: nineties and into the two thousands, and it's how George W.
Speaker 1: Bush was able to secure such an arousing amount of
Speaker 1: support among Wine Evangelical Protestants in particular in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two thousand and four. What had happened in the
Speaker 1: meantime is that while religious activists had never stopped doing
Speaker 1: what they do, you know, in terms of progressive faith
Speaker 1: activists fighting for racial justice, for instance, or for immigrant rights,
Speaker 1: those movements actually continued to exist. A lot of those
Speaker 1: large institutional organizations that had been mostly attied to white,
Speaker 1: even white mainline Protestantism, because that was what was really,
Speaker 1: you know, understood to be the big political crew in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, they had kind of atrophied and died.
Speaker 1: Whereas and so secular you know, we saw this group
Speaker 1: of this growth of the religiously unaffiliated people who don't
Speaker 1: claim one religious group or another, you who may worship
Speaker 1: or go to church on regular basis, but don't claim
Speaker 1: a faith tradition or they're atheists or agnostic. That group
Speaker 1: became the largest single sub set of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to two thousand and four or two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and while the Democratic Party remained mostly religious
Speaker 1: in terms of people were saying they believe in God
Speaker 1: or affiliate with the faith tradition, the power of these
Speaker 1: activists had changed dramatically. They had they didn't have this
Speaker 1: sort of access to power that they once did. And
Speaker 1: the left in general, nothing on the left looks like
Speaker 1: the religious right, and because it's now more of a
Speaker 1: coalition of coalitions as opposed to like one white group
Speaker 1: of Christians yelling at another white group of Christians. And
Speaker 1: so we have this different system for what the left
Speaker 1: looks like today, and that's where the modern religious left
Speaker 1: kind of emerges. And that's kind of what I cover
Speaker 1: in my book. You know, it's so interesting because one
Speaker 1: of the chapters that I really do want to dig into,
Speaker 1: just given the current climate that we're in, is chapter three,
Speaker 1: when God chooses a Leader. And I think that what
Speaker 1: has become so troubling about the religious right, aside from
Speaker 1: them being zealous. In my opinion is the weaponizing of
Speaker 1: religion and the idea that they have the power white
Speaker 1: evangelical Christians to anoint right a leader. And what we
Speaker 1: have heard over the past three and a half years
Speaker 1: under Donald Trump in so many from so many different people,
Speaker 1: from religious leaders, but then from people withinside of his
Speaker 1: cabinet is referred to Donald Trump as the chosen one,
Speaker 1: referring to him as the one, as the leader that
Speaker 1: God chose for this movement. You open up the chapter
Speaker 1: with talking about Jerry Folwell Junior and Liberty University and
Speaker 1: the speech that Trump gave there and he would later
Speaker 1: come out, you know, obviously to endorse him, and he
Speaker 1: has come out in fervor for Donald Trump. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about the idea of like this deity's deity, this
Speaker 1: idea of like deitizing political leaders and in crowning them
Speaker 1: in some way as if they are above reproach, because
Speaker 1: that's what it seems to me. It was like at first,
Speaker 1: we have these issues, we are singled issue. We don't
Speaker 1: want abortion, so anyone that is against abortion we're going
Speaker 1: to be behind. There's something different about what is being
Speaker 1: done at this particular time with Donald Trump as opposed
Speaker 1: to what happened with the Bushes before him and the
Speaker 1: religious right right, and I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different factors going in there, but I think the core
Speaker 1: of what I hear you talking about is this one
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of flummoxed a lot of US religion
Speaker 1: reporters as well, particularly early on in the Trump era,
Speaker 1: is that we're used to one version of what the
Speaker 1: religious right looks like. There's these key actors and theological thinkers,
Speaker 1: and some of them really don't like Trump, and so
Speaker 1: when they came out really hard against him during the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen campaign, we expected there to be some movement
Speaker 1: among white evangelicals to say, hey, maybe we'll let you
Speaker 1: go back a third party candator kind of looked like
Speaker 1: the way Mormons did. Members of the Church of Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ of Latter day Saints actually did pull away from
Speaker 1: Trump at some level, more so than Why Evangelical Protestants
Speaker 1: by far, but instead he's still some Trump still was
Speaker 1: able to lock in eighty to eighty one percent of
Speaker 1: Why Evangelical Protestants. And as we've gone back and looked
Speaker 1: through that campaign and also looked at his presidency since then,
Speaker 1: what you see is a lot of appeal to Christian nationalism,
Speaker 1: and that is arguably less a theology and more an identity.
Speaker 1: It's more of a marriage of this idea of what
Speaker 1: it means to be an American and an idea of
Speaker 1: what it means to be a Christian. And while there
Speaker 1: are some people who make theological arguments about that or
Speaker 1: like kind of they kind of retell American history in
Speaker 1: a very specific subjective way. One of those figures is
Speaker 1: Roy Moore, for instance, the failed Alabama sent a candidate,
Speaker 1: former judge down there in Alabama. He's kind of one
Speaker 1: of these people who might make a theological or historical
Speaker 1: argument for a lot of Americans, and in white Evangelical
Speaker 1: Protestants in particular, this idea of Christian nationalism. When Donald
Speaker 1: Trump hugs an American flag or then says, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't worship government, we worship God, that's a not
Speaker 1: so subtle dog whistle to these communities that say, hey,
Speaker 1: that's what I am. Now. Some of these people have
Speaker 1: been to church and years, some of these people are
Speaker 1: are active worshippers, and but for them there's that shared
Speaker 1: sort of you know, longing for this very particular idea
Speaker 1: of what it means to be a Christian that often,
Speaker 1: you know, when they did a bunch of polls around
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen election and after that about people who
Speaker 1: would might identify with Christian nationalism, and what you found
Speaker 1: was that these people, disproportionately, compared to the rest of
Speaker 1: the population, say, had negative feelings towards immigrants, had negative
Speaker 1: feelings towards refugees in particular, or to Muslim Americans. They're
Speaker 1: disproportionately more likely to say the police are doing the
Speaker 1: right thing went in their interactions with people of color
Speaker 1: than if they're doing the wrong thing. All things, when
Speaker 1: you start to think about it, are kind of these
Speaker 1: pillars of Trumpism that he used in his campaign in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. And so it was actually an in phenomenon
Speaker 1: that's happened that happened around the Trump rise where some
Speaker 1: of the traditional actors the religious right actually kind of
Speaker 1: got unseated and left adrift because they realized they the
Speaker 1: flock that they thought they had who they could you know,
Speaker 1: push in a theological direction, were more driving force behind
Speaker 1: them was more this Christian nationalism rhetoric than the theology
Speaker 1: that they were preaching at say, Wheaton College, and so
Speaker 1: Trump's been a really interesting figure that way. And it
Speaker 1: comes back to exactly what you were saying. Trump's a
Speaker 1: person who can go down to a disaster site in
Speaker 1: the South and meet a bunch of white Christians and
Speaker 1: they hand him bibles for him to sign, to sign,
Speaker 1: to sign. Yeah, I don't understand that. And you have
Speaker 1: You've had you figures like Paula White And who is
Speaker 1: this preacher out of Florida who's some many label as
Speaker 1: a prosperity gospel preacher? Which is this this form of
Speaker 1: Christianity that often says if you believe hard enough, good
Speaker 1: things will come to you, and that often those that
Speaker 1: are those that are wealthy, Right, those are wealthy are
Speaker 1: then perceived to be better if you are. That's how
Speaker 1: I have always broken it down in very basic terms,
Speaker 1: is that if you are wealthy, then that means that
Speaker 1: you are good. That means that you were closest to God.
Speaker 1: And which kind of makes sense in terms of the
Speaker 1: way that poor people are treated in this country right
Speaker 1: by our government. If you are if you are poor,
Speaker 1: being poor is a product, is a failure, is a
Speaker 1: personal failure, right, It is about your laziness. If you
Speaker 1: work hard and you are wealthy, right, then you are rewarded.
Speaker 1: So this intermingling of this idea of prosperity as it
Speaker 1: perceives as it pertains to faith, and then that as
Speaker 1: it pertains to the policies that we put together for
Speaker 1: poor people seem to me to be so disconnected from
Speaker 1: the foundation of Christian faith, right, which is this idea
Speaker 1: of serving most in need. How do we straddle that
Speaker 1: very incredible and working it in America that about poverty
Speaker 1: and about in general. Yeah, I think, you know, to
Speaker 1: tap into a little bit of what you were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, that campaign that there was this conversation that
Speaker 1: developed basically from nineteen seventies on where there are you know,
Speaker 1: there were people in religious contexts referring to the deserving
Speaker 1: and basically undeserving poor. If you're poor, there's that's a
Speaker 1: consequence of capitalism. But the great the people who achieve
Speaker 1: in a capitalist mindset are blessed quite literally the idea
Speaker 1: that that is that is an evidence of their faith.
Speaker 1: And in what it has done is, you know, it
Speaker 1: shores up a very specific capitalistic system. And and actually
Speaker 1: the one thing when I talked about that gap between
Speaker 1: when the fundamentalist Christians kind of lost in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, and that came back in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: There was a thing that happened in between that in
Speaker 1: the thirties that I think is really important, which was
Speaker 1: that there was this effort by businesses to back against
Speaker 1: the social Gospel and the results of the New Deal,
Speaker 1: and so they started developing these preaching groups where they
Speaker 1: would rap them preach these sermons that melded capitalism and
Speaker 1: of Christian faith and said that both of them can
Speaker 1: be good. And then they attached a patriotic or nationalist
Speaker 1: identity to that. And that movement grew to thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of pastors throughout the country, and one of the
Speaker 1: earl in its it was the breeding ground for some
Speaker 1: of the earliest prosperity Gospel preachers in the United States,
Speaker 1: including a guy named Norman Vincent Peale, who was who
Speaker 1: wrote this. He was this successful pastor who many people
Speaker 1: call as one of the first prototypical examples of a
Speaker 1: prosperity Gospel preacher. And he was at one point Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's pastor, and he is one of the only faith
Speaker 1: leaders that Donald Trump has mentioned by name. From his
Speaker 1: past and to be able to reflect on his sermons. Now,
Speaker 1: Norman Vincent Peale might even be weak compared to some
Speaker 1: of the modern prosperity Gospel preachers. But that's one of
Speaker 1: the that some historians that help explain how when Trump
Speaker 1: came into office, these prosperity Gospel pastors and this whole
Speaker 1: strain of Christianity that had not been really politicized, Trump
Speaker 1: brought with them because it you know, some one argument
Speaker 1: is that it reflected his own mindset, his own worldview,
Speaker 1: and it also may have reflected many conservative policies that
Speaker 1: again defend capitalism not only as a virtuous system, but
Speaker 1: are you, but they are you as a Christian system.
Speaker 1: And as they've continued to shore that up, the religious
Speaker 1: right aiding them along and along. You know, this is
Speaker 1: why many of the activists you have seen among the
Speaker 1: religious left, whether it's William Barber who's helping lead the
Speaker 1: Poor People's Campaign with Reverent Theo Harris, or Alexandro Accassi
Speaker 1: or Portz who is a Democratic Socialist and decided to
Speaker 1: run for office after attending the Standing Rock demonstrations and
Speaker 1: having a spiritual experience and has since been talking about
Speaker 1: on the stump, you know, fusing faith that appeals to
Speaker 1: the least of these, to the poor, to the destitute,
Speaker 1: you basically have Now we re entered a conversation that
Speaker 1: happened in the beginning of the last century, where the
Speaker 1: poor are saying, maybe these policies aren't working out for me,
Speaker 1: these religious poor, and some folks who have didn't defending
Speaker 1: capitalism under a Christian context are just literally lifting up
Speaker 1: Trump as the chosen one. And these are two very
Speaker 1: different conversations. They're so different, and they're so contradictory to
Speaker 1: one another. And I really don't and I think to me,
Speaker 1: you know, personally, religion has always been something that I
Speaker 1: have kept at Bay. I guess I would consider myself agnostic.
Speaker 1: I'm a verially spiritual person and believe in the connectivity
Speaker 1: of the universe and all people and living things. But
Speaker 1: prescribing to a certain religious ideology has always been something
Speaker 1: that I've kept at Bay because of the way that
Speaker 1: it's constantly weaponized. It's weaponized against the poor, it's weaponized
Speaker 1: against black people. Martin Luther King once said, the most
Speaker 1: segregated time right in America is high noon on Sunday, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so you know, as we are kind of moving
Speaker 1: through what I have been talking about multiple pandemics in
Speaker 1: this country right and witnessing them. We are living through
Speaker 1: the coronavirus, which is an actual global health crisis, but
Speaker 1: has revealed to us the inner workings of the racial
Speaker 1: and racist pandemic that we have been living in in
Speaker 1: this country. And then the capitalist structure that feeds into
Speaker 1: all of that, keeping some at the bottom, namely black
Speaker 1: and brown people, and then the wealthy people at the top.
Speaker 1: But when you have this justification right of prosperity and
Speaker 1: wealth being associated with good, right and godly, how do
Speaker 1: you even come together? How do you bring these two
Speaker 1: very different faiths together in order to even begin to
Speaker 1: save the soul of this country? Like? What is that? Honestly,
Speaker 1: what does that even look like? Right? Because we've been
Speaker 1: battling for the soul of this nation since oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, the Pilgrims stole it from the Native Americans.
Speaker 1: So it's like in every generation, at every time, we
Speaker 1: are at war right with this idea of what America
Speaker 1: should be, could be, what we want it to be,
Speaker 1: and what it actually is. Right, I think what's a
Speaker 1: really fascinating tention that you're pointing out is that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's this concept of Christianity, right, and people always like
Speaker 1: to remember the abolitionist movement, how many faith leaders are
Speaker 1: were a part of that, and they just leave out
Speaker 1: the part where there was a bunch of pastors who
Speaker 1: propped up the institution of slavery to begin with, right,
Speaker 1: you were saying that this was God's will, and then
Speaker 1: that when we talked about the labor movement, it were similar.
Speaker 1: There were these social gospel types they were arguing for,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of liberating the worker. And then there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people that's saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the workers deserved it and like. And so there's
Speaker 1: been this constant conversation between religious groups for quite some
Speaker 1: time here in the United States. And then you have
Speaker 1: faith groups, for instance, talk about in the book Indigenous
Speaker 1: rights activists, for whom they say that their faith isn't
Speaker 1: even recognized by culture in general. You know, they say
Speaker 1: that when they're fighting for sacred land and standing rock,
Speaker 1: or protests in the construction of a telescope on the
Speaker 1: top of Mount Chaa in Hawaii, people just don't even
Speaker 1: see their faith is equal as one that they could
Speaker 1: have a con when they're talking about, say Christianity or Judaism.
Speaker 1: And so it's one of those things where we're having
Speaker 1: this debate where there's a reason you have heard of
Speaker 1: people on both sides of this debate, whether it's William
Speaker 1: Barber or someone like Jerry Foward Junior or Robert Jeffries,
Speaker 1: whose sermon when God Chooses a leader, by the way,
Speaker 1: is the sermon he delivered to Trump on his inauguration day,
Speaker 1: where there have been comments where like they both kind
Speaker 1: of infer that the other is a heretic. And the
Speaker 1: implication there is that, you know, these might be very
Speaker 1: different strains of Christianity for whom you know, finding that
Speaker 1: sort of reconciliation. This is just in a Christian context.
Speaker 1: We're not even including the multiple parts of the religious
Speaker 1: left that are not Christian at all, you know, finding
Speaker 1: the reconciliation across difference. There. They they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're praying very different prayers, they are preaching to very
Speaker 1: different groups of people, and even during this this pandemic,
Speaker 1: you know, to your point, one of the fascinating things
Speaker 1: I've seen develop is there's essentially been two strains of
Speaker 1: religious activism in the United States. One Christian conservative, there
Speaker 1: have been transaggressions of social distancing across the religious spectrum.
Speaker 1: Conservatives in particular have taken it up as a cause,
Speaker 1: and you know, saying that these these you know, lockdowns
Speaker 1: on their houses of worship have been you know, unfair.
Speaker 1: They've been pastors in Louisiana and Florida that have been arrested,
Speaker 1: and conservative groups like the Liberty Council have come to
Speaker 1: their defense to sue local or state authorities for cracking
Speaker 1: down on worship communities. And then meanwhile, you have groups
Speaker 1: like a Poor People's Campaign launching an initiative called Stay Home,
Speaker 1: Stay Alive because they oppose the reopening of these of
Speaker 1: these states and worship houses of worship, they say, because
Speaker 1: he will disproportionately impact the poor. Or a Union seminary
Speaker 1: in New York teaming up with the ACLU to run
Speaker 1: ads calling for the release of prisoners who are disproportionately
Speaker 1: at risk of contracting the virus, noting that the largest
Speaker 1: COVID clusters in the United States are usually in prisons,
Speaker 1: or the you know, the Jewish group Never Again action
Speaker 1: that was helping organize for the release of immigrant TEA
Speaker 1: detainees who are also disproportionately at risk of contracting this virus.
Speaker 1: And you see the President this past week when he
Speaker 1: released this statement saying that, you know, he wanted to
Speaker 1: push push governors to reopen churches. You know, he's only
Speaker 1: responding to one of those streams of activism and the
Speaker 1: other one that's calling for, like, you know, to pay
Speaker 1: attention to you know, what Christians might call the least
Speaker 1: of these, the poor, the prisoner, the immigrants. That's just
Speaker 1: a it's a completely different theological conversation than the one
Speaker 1: conservative Christians are having right now is calling against these
Speaker 1: shutdowns and for you know, this religious liberty quote unquote
Speaker 1: for worship services, and they're just I know, it's a
Speaker 1: long window way of saying, I haven't even seen many
Speaker 1: conversations happening between these groups when I've gone to some
Speaker 1: of these demonstrations, some of which I chronicle in the book.
Speaker 1: When people, for instance, when protested near Liberty University, these
Speaker 1: red letter Christians, these more progressive evangelicals, they wanted to
Speaker 1: pray with Jerry follow Junior, and instead he put out
Speaker 1: in a restaurant for one of the main organizers. So
Speaker 1: I feel like, that's how big the divide is between
Speaker 1: these computers. And I feel like between that divide, America
Speaker 1: is falling in the cracks, right like, because you know,
Speaker 1: one of the most disturbing images that I've seen, and
Speaker 1: I've seen, you know, several from these reopened protests that
Speaker 1: are happening is a sign that was held by this
Speaker 1: young white girl that said, don't wear a mask. God
Speaker 1: has you covered. And I looked at this image and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself, Oh, there's nowhere for us to
Speaker 1: go from here, right Like, you can't you can't rationalize.
Speaker 1: You can't come up with a factual argument to somebody
Speaker 1: who is telling you that they don't need man made protection,
Speaker 1: They don't need ppees, they don't need masks and gloves
Speaker 1: and sanitizer. You just need to believe in God. The
Speaker 1: assumption would follow. Then what that the hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: who have since died to date of the COVID virus
Speaker 1: are what are all heritas are all exactly? I don't understand.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, I mean that that is the implicit message
Speaker 1: of that of that message is that all of the
Speaker 1: all of the people who have died, were you were
Speaker 1: they not protected? By God, and I think again, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to rationalize with people who, to me
Speaker 1: seem incredibly irrational. Right. And you know your book, I
Speaker 1: I love it because it presents like a different view
Speaker 1: from me. Right, And I'm sure many people about religion
Speaker 1: and the purpose and the role of religion in politics
Speaker 1: because we are so broken and so so shattered as
Speaker 1: a country. I'm assuming the answer is yes, but I
Speaker 1: want you to dig into it more with the removal
Speaker 1: of religion from our government, from our systems be a
Speaker 1: way to begin to heal this country, because if you
Speaker 1: choose one side of the other, one is a losing
Speaker 1: I don't want to knock people's faith, but I want
Speaker 1: to challenge like the foundation of their thinking and who
Speaker 1: they shut out with it. You know, we're supposed to
Speaker 1: have a separation of church and state. We're supposed to
Speaker 1: have these things, but we don't. We and we never have, right,
Speaker 1: And so I feel like different activists who respond to
Speaker 1: your question differently, because it really kind of depends on
Speaker 1: what we really mean by the separation of church and state. Right,
Speaker 1: Because there's one thing to say, you know, no violations
Speaker 1: of the Establishment Clause. A part of our constitution that
Speaker 1: says you can't establish one religion, and that's sometimes been
Speaker 1: interpreted to mean any like religion. In general, you can't
Speaker 1: get preferential treatment to religion as opposed to those who
Speaker 1: are non religists, who often in polling or you know,
Speaker 1: fall behind every other religious category in terms of what
Speaker 1: somebody would vote for. You know, if you're an atheist, um,
Speaker 1: you were, you were, you know, according to polling, significantly
Speaker 1: less likely to be elected than if you were religious
Speaker 1: of almost any other any other religious identity. And so
Speaker 1: I think that there has been this sort of frustration
Speaker 1: among a lot of secular activists saying like, look, you know,
Speaker 1: even even when looking at the religious left, saying, look,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're excited about the causes you're you're
Speaker 1: supporting we have, we also share a lot of these
Speaker 1: progressive values. But if we just trade the religious right
Speaker 1: for the religious left, then we're just going to end
Speaker 1: up with this other community that occupies space in spaces
Speaker 1: of power that you know, well, the gateway to entries
Speaker 1: you have to believe in, think like I do, and um,
Speaker 1: and if that's the gateway to entry, then then we're
Speaker 1: not going to be there. This is me speaking hypothetically
Speaker 1: on behalf of a secular activist. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: some people who are people of faith hold that exactly.
Speaker 1: You are just articulated. You know, They're like, I go
Speaker 1: to church every Sunday, but I really don't want you
Speaker 1: to preach it me from a presidential podium, right. But
Speaker 1: I think what some of the religious left activists that
Speaker 1: I've spoken to argue is that because the religious left
Speaker 1: in its current iteration is so fundamentally different than the
Speaker 1: religious right, and that the left in its current iteration
Speaker 1: is so much, so much fund elimentally different from the
Speaker 1: religious right, because it is this coalition of coalitions. You
Speaker 1: cannot win unless you get enough of these different groups
Speaker 1: on board that there's significantly more negotiation and compromise and
Speaker 1: you know, just working together to get a goal occurring.
Speaker 1: Then the religious right, ever has to do. The religious
Speaker 1: right cannot compromise. It can just not compromise and still
Speaker 1: influence the Republican Party every election cycle, whereas the religious
Speaker 1: left has had to learn how to like being able
Speaker 1: to be in conversation with atheist agnostics and you know,
Speaker 1: try to elevate them. There are definitely critiques that they
Speaker 1: are not elevated enough even within these movements, but the
Speaker 1: fact that you're hearing people like you. For instance, Peo
Speaker 1: Budh Judge got a lot of attention for talking about
Speaker 1: his faith this last go round. He would begin every
Speaker 1: one of those conversations by saying, but I want to
Speaker 1: be a president of people of all faith and no faith.
Speaker 1: You heard that similar lines articulated by Hory Booker or
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Because they
Speaker 1: understand that you're going to have a hard time winning
Speaker 1: if you're not also able to appeal to secular voters
Speaker 1: who would occupy, who would go to the voting booth
Speaker 1: and vote for a Democrat, and so you know, whether
Speaker 1: they would I think a lot of these activists would
Speaker 1: say that you shouldn't. You know, the removal of religion
Speaker 1: from politics, I'm sorry, the removal of church from state
Speaker 1: is like a foundational tenant. Whether you can extricate faith
Speaker 1: from politics, though, is a significantly different conversation. That's like,
Speaker 1: you know, how could you As long as there are
Speaker 1: religious human beings, religion is in and of itself and
Speaker 1: often a political act. You know, when you organize when
Speaker 1: you make an economy, when you make your own schools,
Speaker 1: when you have your own books that you read, that
Speaker 1: will often have political implications, and so I think it
Speaker 1: would be really difficult to fully ever extricate faith from politics.
Speaker 1: And I think from the activist's point of view, you know,
Speaker 1: they show up to support immigrants because of their sacred texts,
Speaker 1: they show up to support sacred land and indigenous activists
Speaker 1: because of the spiritual beliefs from which they were raised.
Speaker 1: So it really kind of comes down to a negotiation,
Speaker 1: I think, among progressives and the country in general, about
Speaker 1: where is that line where what your religious freedom means
Speaker 1: can impinge on my freedom to do other things. And
Speaker 1: I think the left is having a different version of
Speaker 1: that conversation and the conservatives are, but I would expect
Speaker 1: and I actually this is an interesting question because how
Speaker 1: the religious left has kind of risen into prominence in
Speaker 1: the last three years under Trump. Were Joe Biden the
Speaker 1: presumtive Democratic nominee to become president, I'm curious of whether
Speaker 1: or not that coalition stays together, that religious left coalition
Speaker 1: stays together, and whether a lot of the secular activists
Speaker 1: have been relatively less critical of their activism during the
Speaker 1: Trump era, if we renew that same conversation that I
Speaker 1: heard you having a few minutes ago, to say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: I get it. You're religious, you're showing up, You're you're
Speaker 1: supporting the same cause as I am. But I do
Speaker 1: not want to live in a theocracy, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to live in a universe that only privileges people
Speaker 1: of faith, even if they know they have different faiths.
Speaker 1: So how do we have that have a society where
Speaker 1: where my rights are just as protected as yours? And
Speaker 1: I think that's an ongoing conversation, you know, because one
Speaker 1: of the really eye opening things that I have come
Speaker 1: to realize in this current political time is that the
Speaker 1: right right, whether it be the religious right or the
Speaker 1: political right, and the left are so different in their
Speaker 1: discussion and understanding of liberty and what justice actually looks like,
Speaker 1: and what faith actually is and what I have come
Speaker 1: to understand and I talk I talk about it, spoken
Speaker 1: about it with with several people on PM Moved but
Speaker 1: also also on woke. A f is that it seems
Speaker 1: to me that the right and the religious right, in particular,
Speaker 1: their desire and their understanding of liberty is about their
Speaker 1: ability to persecute and oppress others. Right, it's about it's
Speaker 1: about their freedom to tell other people what they can
Speaker 1: and can't do with their body, what they can and
Speaker 1: can't do with their land, what value they do or
Speaker 1: do not offer to society based on how much money
Speaker 1: they have in their bank accounts. It's the ability to dictate.
Speaker 1: And for me, I don't see there being any reconciliation
Speaker 1: because the religious left has come to the understanding of
Speaker 1: liberty and faith as you being able to practice what
Speaker 1: it is that you choose or do not choose. Right.
Speaker 1: But let's but let's fundamentally connect to the principles of
Speaker 1: uplifting all people right and recognizing that all people are
Speaker 1: human right and should have inalienable rights. And so it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, when we again the you know, the battle
Speaker 1: for the soul of the country, it's something that you know,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden has used that this is his call this
Speaker 1: is this is his calling card for I want to
Speaker 1: point out that before, but he uses it. He used
Speaker 1: it in his opening political ad about the battle for
Speaker 1: the soul of this country, and we hear it all
Speaker 1: the time. So I just want you know, in our
Speaker 1: in our last few minutes together, you to tell me
Speaker 1: what you mean by the battle for the soul of
Speaker 1: America and what that looks like today for you. I'm
Speaker 1: really glad you asked this question, because other people just
Speaker 1: skip over that because they assumed it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a presumed understanding, you know, like battle for the soul,
Speaker 1: like whatever. And obviously there's a religious connotation, right, and
Speaker 1: that there is this sort of debate happening between religious
Speaker 1: conservatives and religious liberals, progressives, um leftists about what it
Speaker 1: means to not only to be an American, what it
Speaker 1: means to be a religious American. And you can even
Speaker 1: go all down all the mutations, say what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be a specific kind of Christian or not?
Speaker 1: And so those all all those those theological debates and
Speaker 1: battles are happening at the same time, and they affect
Speaker 1: one another. Right, when Catholics fight amongst each other, that
Speaker 1: can have national implications. In fact, the opening chapter of
Speaker 1: my book is about how Catholic nuns and Catholic groups
Speaker 1: in particular had a disproportionate impact on getting the Affordable
Speaker 1: Care Act passed, but they only did that by defying
Speaker 1: the Catholic bishops who were not supportive of the final
Speaker 1: version of the Affordable Care Act, and the nuns came
Speaker 1: out and gave a lot of Catholic lawmakers covered. So
Speaker 1: those inner fights, that those internal debates, even within religious traditions,
Speaker 1: can have very large impact. But I think what it
Speaker 1: means to have a soul of a country obviously that
Speaker 1: has both a explicitly religious definition as well as this
Speaker 1: more rhetorical definition, and I think they overlap, and that
Speaker 1: whether you come to that conversation from a perspective of
Speaker 1: faith or spirituality, or whether you come to that conversation
Speaker 1: with trying to, you know, from a more secular mindset,
Speaker 1: what we're really talking about here is that how are
Speaker 1: we allowed to treat each other? And how are we
Speaker 1: allowed you know, what are their priorities? And who are
Speaker 1: their priorities that we are going to lift up in
Speaker 1: this country? You know, the people that I talk about.
Speaker 1: There's a reason I call the book American Profits, and
Speaker 1: that's because the religious left often uses the mechanism of protests.
Speaker 1: That's what it's been most successful in wielding. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason for that is that while the religious
Speaker 1: right has been very successful at the ballot box and
Speaker 1: in the courts. And to be clear, there are elements
Speaker 1: of the religious left in which they have been successful
Speaker 1: in certain scenarios when it comes to showing up on
Speaker 1: election day. But the part of the reason they are
Speaker 1: using the vehicle of protests is that that is the
Speaker 1: vehicle of influencing power that those who often don't have
Speaker 1: power still have access to. They're able to influence institutions
Speaker 1: through protests because they're not the institutions don't recognize their
Speaker 1: power reflexively to begin with, you know, That's where we're
Speaker 1: going back to. It's like, these are people in communities
Speaker 1: clamoring for society and for the powers that be to
Speaker 1: even recognize the validity of their faiths and the validity
Speaker 1: of their people. And that's what I think a battle
Speaker 1: for a soul really is is is what are you
Speaker 1: willing to you know, whether that's a religious soul you know,
Speaker 1: which you answer to a higher power, or a secular
Speaker 1: soul that answers to everybody immediately around you. The effect
Speaker 1: is very similar, which is that what are you willing
Speaker 1: to be as a country and who are we collectively
Speaker 1: going to decide to care about? Well, that is a
Speaker 1: question that I feel like will almost never be answered,
Speaker 1: you know. To be honest, I feel like each generation,
Speaker 1: each administration, has their own idea of what that means. Right,
Speaker 1: Who is deserving? Who isn't? American prophets, Jack, I'm so
Speaker 1: proud of you. This is amazing. I want to tell
Speaker 1: folks so that they know that I met you five
Speaker 1: years ago on a trip that we were both on
Speaker 1: to Israel and Palestine, which forever changed my perspective on
Speaker 1: a lot of things. Who was It was a hard
Speaker 1: fucking trip? It was. It was tough. It was exhausting mentally, emotionally,
Speaker 1: experience was like every everything it was. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a tough trip. Have you been back? I have not
Speaker 1: been back. I've wanted to. Have you been back? Since? No,
Speaker 1: I have not, and I have, and I honestly I
Speaker 1: have wanted to. When we left, I said that I
Speaker 1: would never go back because of how traumatic the experience was.
Speaker 1: Just I just have you know, and this is going
Speaker 1: to sound very interesting in this particular moment, being a
Speaker 1: black queer woman in America, I had never seen such
Speaker 1: overt discrimination and oppression in my entire life, and that
Speaker 1: means a lot coming from me. I had never and
Speaker 1: it was just like one of the most and the
Speaker 1: way in which religion again was used, is used to
Speaker 1: do that, to create one group that should be oppressed
Speaker 1: because they're deemed as voler less than has always sat
Speaker 1: with me so like so deeply. Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was an interesting experience. Yeah, I carry it with me.
Speaker 1: I mean I've I've written many stories based off of
Speaker 1: the reporting I did in that trip and and it
Speaker 1: has informed a lot of things I've done since then
Speaker 1: as well. And I think it's, you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where as a reporter, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a religion reporter, so understanding relation it's really important for
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons. And just going is not reading
Speaker 1: about it on the news or you know, watching videos.
Speaker 1: It's just not the same as going. And it makes it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does well. Everyone needs to pick up American prophets,
Speaker 1: religious roots of progressive politics and the ongoing fight for
Speaker 1: the soul of the country. Jack, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to this week's PM mood. My political podcast, Woke af
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