Speaker 1: Native lampod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Speaker 1: Reason Choice Media. Nobody knows the troubles are seen? What
Speaker 1: role do white males play? What role do white male
Speaker 1: evangelicals play? One of the blessings we have about this
Speaker 1: show is we get to talk about it, all right,
Speaker 1: and so we have Reverend Shank here joining us on
Speaker 1: the show. We're going to bring them in. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a fifth will. This is the way I
Speaker 1: wanted to introduce you, Reverend. We found a video of
Speaker 1: you actually testifying, and I wanted to play that clip
Speaker 1: right here. It's testifying to Congress about your work influencing
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court of these United States of America. And
Speaker 1: then I got a question about Clarence Thomas on the
Speaker 1: other side. I'm just joking, go ahead, and wrote a clip.
Speaker 2: I am here to present facts as I know of
Speaker 2: them about Operation Higher Court, a Christian mission that I
Speaker 2: directed as part of Faith into Action for twenty years
Speaker 2: to bolster conservative Supreme Court justices in the views they
Speaker 2: already held. Operation Higher Court involved my recruitment of wealthy
Speaker 2: donors as stealth missionaries who befriended justices that shared our
Speaker 2: conservative social and religious sensibilities. In this way, I aimed
Speaker 2: to show these justices that Americans supported them and thanked
Speaker 2: God for their presence on the Court and the opinions
Speaker 2: they rendered. Our overarching goals were to gain insights into
Speaker 2: the conservative justices thinking and to shore up their resolve
Speaker 2: to render solid, unapologetic opinions, particularly against abortion. I called
Speaker 2: this our ministry of emboldenment. I believe we pushed the
Speaker 2: boundaries of Christian ethics and compromised the High Court's promise
Speaker 2: to administer equal justice. But I'm also conscious we were
Speaker 2: never admonished for the type of work our missionaries did,
Speaker 2: quite to the contrary. In one instance, Justice Thomas commended me,
Speaker 2: saying something like, keep up what you're doing. It's making
Speaker 2: a difference.
Speaker 1: So the right Reverend Robert Shank, did I pronounce your
Speaker 1: last name correctly?
Speaker 3: Yes? But sometimes I am the wrong reverence. And that's
Speaker 3: what that.
Speaker 1: Was all about, I understand. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: start the conversation with I think the two most important
Speaker 1: words in the English language, other words, thank you, and
Speaker 1: then I nearly said enough, So thank you for your
Speaker 1: time and thank you for the work that you are
Speaker 1: now doing. Ain't the work you used to do, but
Speaker 1: thank you for the work that you're now doing. What
Speaker 1: role do white male evangelicals play in changing culture, changing society?
Speaker 1: We talked about ice, we talked about jelly roll earlier,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you see a muted voice. I think it
Speaker 1: all ties in together. What can we expect, what should
Speaker 1: we expect? And what are we not seeing?
Speaker 3: Well, what we're not saying is some of the change
Speaker 3: that's happening right now, and a lot of it because
Speaker 3: of Minneapolis. I just read a report from Christianity Today,
Speaker 3: which has historically been the journal of record for American
Speaker 3: white evangelicals, and there's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: disruption in the in the positions of evangelicals in Minnesota
Speaker 3: right now because of what they're seeing playing out in
Speaker 3: the streets. H You know, I hate to say it,
Speaker 3: but you asked about, you know, white evangelicals. I think
Speaker 3: white males in general get a little more attention from
Speaker 3: white evangelical leader's keen sense of the obvious. They are
Speaker 3: been happening for a long time. But the reason I
Speaker 3: mention it is because, of course, the killing of Alex
Speaker 3: pretty as compared to even the killing of Renee good
Speaker 3: Renee Good was white, she would normally command attention, but
Speaker 3: discounted by the fact that she's gay, that she was gay.
Speaker 3: So but here we go, white male of a certain
Speaker 3: age and a gun owner gets the attention that others
Speaker 3: don't get. So I think that's part of the reason,
Speaker 3: but not the whole reason. I think a fair number
Speaker 3: of white evangelical leaders are now feeling uncomfortable with the violence,
Speaker 3: the threats, with the behavior after the shootings, with the
Speaker 3: abduction of children and their imprisonment in cages. It's starting
Speaker 3: to trouble the conscience. Not enough to tip the scales,
Speaker 3: not anywhere near, but it's changing. And I'm sorry for
Speaker 3: such a long answer to your short question, but I'll
Speaker 3: just add this. I do think it's critically important now
Speaker 3: that white male evangelical leaders start airing their conscience and
Speaker 3: their descent. And I know there are many of them,
Speaker 3: but they are silenced by fear. But they have to
Speaker 3: find their courage. And the reason they do is be
Speaker 3: because this administration will pay attention to that in a
Speaker 3: way they won't pay attention to anyone else. They'll write
Speaker 3: everybody else off. They're black, they're socialists, they're leftists, they're communists,
Speaker 3: their nutcases. But suddenly when when white males like me
Speaker 3: start speaking, I know from my contacts in the administration,
Speaker 3: I maintain friends who are working for Trump right now
Speaker 3: in the White House, and they will say, I got
Speaker 3: a little attention here that bothered some people. Not for
Speaker 3: the right reasons, but it bothered them.
Speaker 4: So if I could ask you, you know, there's a
Speaker 4: conversion moment biblically speaking, where Saul is converted to Paul.
Speaker 4: You're talking about finding your courage. I want to know
Speaker 4: what helped you to find your courage. And in this
Speaker 4: moment where you're talking about having friends in the White House,
Speaker 4: knowing now which you understand to be their agenda, how
Speaker 4: they choose to move forward, how are you maintaining those friendships,
Speaker 4: and how do you intend to help them to convert
Speaker 4: from Saul to Paul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, thanks for framing it that way. I talk
Speaker 3: about three conversions in my own life. My initial conversion
Speaker 3: to the Christ I saw in the Sermon on the
Speaker 3: Mount who blessed the poor, who blessed the forgotten, the
Speaker 3: margin lies, the lonely, the grieving. Then in the eighties
Speaker 3: I was converted to what I now call Ronald Reagan
Speaker 3: Republican religion, which is distinctly different from Christianity, and I
Speaker 3: spent thirty five years in that religious stream, doing the
Speaker 3: kind of work I'm now repenting from. Then I had
Speaker 3: a third conversion reading the work of church leaders in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and
Speaker 3: his racialized dictatorship, and that was the first crack.
Speaker 1: There were a.
Speaker 3: Few little, tiny threads before that, but it was really
Speaker 3: confronting that history and seeing that what I was engaged
Speaker 3: in for thirty years was identical to what the Ivan
Speaker 3: gaelicche Kirche, the Evangelical Church of Germany was doing in
Speaker 3: that era. In fact, it would be evangelical leaders who
Speaker 3: declared Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party a gifted miracle
Speaker 3: from God. Well, I was seeing the same, and so
Speaker 3: that was part of it. The other substantial part of
Speaker 3: my third conversion out of that right wing cult was
Speaker 3: my wife, who made a late in life professional change
Speaker 3: from being an occupational therapist to a psychotherapist. And when
Speaker 3: you're married to a psychotherapist, you can't escape the therapy
Speaker 3: no matter how hard you try, and that was a
Speaker 3: huge huge help for me, and I would enter my
Speaker 3: own period of therapy, which helped me face myself in
Speaker 3: a way I ever had and the realities of what
Speaker 3: was going on around me. So that was a lot
Speaker 3: of it. There was more. It was a long and
Speaker 3: complex formula equation that got me to the other side.
Speaker 3: But I'm so glad it did.
Speaker 5: When you think about the dates. I was just trying
Speaker 5: to help me understand some of the time periods of
Speaker 5: your third conversion, just so I understand where to where
Speaker 5: to sort of place my question.
Speaker 3: Well, it's been a kind of ten year progression for me.
Speaker 3: Those versed cracks appeared in oh nine, ten, twenty ten.
Speaker 3: It was particularly jarring when when I attended the eightieth
Speaker 3: birthday party for the now late televangelist Pat Robertson, who's
Speaker 3: built a right winging religious empire that continues to this moment,
Speaker 3: and his guest of honor at this big banish where
Speaker 3: virtually every e white evangelical luminary in this country was
Speaker 3: in the ballroom celebrate with Pat, and his guest of
Speaker 3: honor in twenty eleven was none other than Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and I was shocked by that. I didn't think of
Speaker 3: Trump as part of our our culture. In fact, in Bible,
Speaker 3: yes exactly. And when I was in Bible College what
Speaker 3: we call our seminaries to prepare for ministry, way back
Speaker 3: in the early eighties, I was told that Donald Trump
Speaker 3: was the classic example of everything it meant not to
Speaker 3: live that say, Christian, and that he makes a great
Speaker 3: sermon illustration for that. And I had used him as
Speaker 3: that over the years. But there he was at Pat's
Speaker 3: birthday party, and I asked one of my colleagues, a
Speaker 3: name well known in the white evangelical world, why is
Speaker 3: he here? And the answer was because he and Pattern
Speaker 3: now part of the same billionaire's club. Pat had just
Speaker 3: sold the Family Channel, his family became the heirs in
Speaker 3: the process, and now they were billionaire pals. And that
Speaker 3: was distressing to me. And it would be at the
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen Republican National Convention that I finally made the
Speaker 3: break left the movement. Theoretically, it took me two more
Speaker 3: years to extract myself legally and financially.
Speaker 4: But wey, I'm sorry. Can you say more about the
Speaker 4: financial piece? You said to extract yourself financially to what
Speaker 4: does that mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, first I was running an organization I had
Speaker 3: spent thirty five years building, which had fifty thousand donors
Speaker 3: spread across the United States, hundreds of churches. We were
Speaker 3: raising millions and millions of dollars, and I had legal obligations.
Speaker 3: And you know, I've lose nothing by being candid and
Speaker 3: completely honest these days, and that's what I was trying
Speaker 3: to do in Minneapolis. But I wasn't. I wasn't fully
Speaker 3: courageous all at once, and and I'm not even at
Speaker 3: this moment. I was afraid of donor lawsuits. I was
Speaker 3: afraid of contractors suing me. So I carefully deconstructed that operation.
Speaker 3: It took two years to do it, and to safely
Speaker 3: extract myself. Once I did, I left all of that behind.
Speaker 3: Every bit of that went for a little while I
Speaker 3: was driving Uber to pay my bills, all the cost
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm appreciative of your transparency, even with us
Speaker 5: now and our audience. And we didn't get to say
Speaker 5: welcome home at the start of this interview, but that's
Speaker 5: something we say to our guests when when they make
Speaker 5: themselves available to this community. I am I work for
Speaker 5: a long time on the other side of some of
Speaker 5: your court work at People for the American Way, which
Speaker 5: is also known as the House of Bork because we
Speaker 5: led the effort to defeat Robert Bork's nomination to the
Speaker 5: to the High Court. So I understand that that space
Speaker 5: very well, I am. I don't understand as well the
Speaker 5: space of white evangelism, mostly because if we subscribe to
Speaker 5: the same Jesus, the same God, the same scripture, and
Speaker 5: I know scripture can be used creatively by whoever wills it,
Speaker 5: but we miss each other at that intersection of what
Speaker 5: scripture seems to say to white evangelicals and then what
Speaker 5: it says and in the black tradition of the Christian faith.
Speaker 5: And it absolutely shows up differently in our politics, certainly
Speaker 5: in American and society and culture. I just wonder, on
Speaker 5: the other side of this of of your evolution, where
Speaker 5: you now where and how you now carry the message
Speaker 5: to other white evangelicals around how they see the lights
Speaker 5: come to evolution, come to transition. Because by and large,
Speaker 5: we're kind of we're kind of on the right track
Speaker 5: on our side, and it's still fighting to stay on
Speaker 5: the what we believe to be the right track. Yet
Speaker 5: a lot of our brothers and sisters on in the
Speaker 5: Christian evangelical side still tolerate outrageous forms of hate and
Speaker 5: terror uh and cruelty by the administration and what their
Speaker 5: politics often produces. How do you how do you sort
Speaker 5: of theorize the best way to move other white male
Speaker 5: evangelicals closer to the truth of the faith and away
Speaker 5: I think from some of the cruelty in devastating, destructive
Speaker 5: politics of the far right.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not easy, although I did retain thousands of
Speaker 3: just those sorts of folks on my social media platforms
Speaker 3: which I use as my pulpit these days, and I
Speaker 3: remind them of their conversions, what drew them to Christ.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's a passage in the New Testament
Speaker 3: Book of Revelation where the resurrec that Christ is speaking
Speaker 3: to the church from the heavenlyes if you read it
Speaker 3: that way, and he says to a particular church in
Speaker 3: a particular place, you're doing everything right, but I have
Speaker 3: this one thing against you. You have left your first love.
Speaker 3: So I try to remind evangelicals of their first love, Jesus,
Speaker 3: who I regularly reintroduce as the dark, complexted Middle Eastern
Speaker 3: man of the levant who had very dark skin and
Speaker 3: afro textured hair, wool hair exactly, and I put him
Speaker 3: out there and I just let them sit with him,
Speaker 3: and then I remind them of what he said. And
Speaker 3: I do get folks numbers, but regularly who come, usually
Speaker 3: through a direct message because they're afraid to go on
Speaker 3: the page, and they'll say, you know you've got me
Speaker 3: on that, You've got me thinking, and yes, that was
Speaker 3: the reason I gave my heart to Jesus all those
Speaker 3: years ago. It's still small numbers. The other task I have,
Speaker 3: which is the larger one, is to expose this as
Speaker 3: not just un Christian, but anti Christian. So I try
Speaker 3: to do that through my writing, through you know, on
Speaker 3: social media platforms and elsewhere, and then in conversation with leaders.
Speaker 3: I just invited a unabashed self identified Christian nationalist leader.
Speaker 3: He heads a small denomination in the United States with
Speaker 3: progressive leaders up in Boston. In two weeks. He accepted
Speaker 3: the invitation to a dialogue with them. We'll see what happens.
Speaker 3: But I want to do more and more of that.
Speaker 3: That's part of the repair work. There's far more than that,
Speaker 3: and it's much closer to people who have suffered because
Speaker 3: of what I did. But that's some of the work
Speaker 3: that I that I try to do.
Speaker 5: Nobody knows.
Speaker 6: Rama Shane, I can I ask you. You know, you
Speaker 6: talked about some of these folks that you're in relationship
Speaker 6: with and how they have looking at all that's going on,
Speaker 6: and particularly Minneapolis, they've changed, their hearts have changed in
Speaker 6: some ways. Do you think that that means they're going
Speaker 6: to show up at the polls differently? Are they going
Speaker 6: to vote different Are they talk about that or do
Speaker 6: you think because you know, one of the challenges that
Speaker 6: I have faced in working with white women. You know,
Speaker 6: I was one of the leaders of the Women's March.
Speaker 6: I have been on the streets of America organizing, marching
Speaker 6: with galvanizing thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of women, and
Speaker 6: oftentimes the numbers, the math doesn't math. As we say that,
Speaker 6: you know, they will say we're with you, We're with you,
Speaker 6: We're with you. And then when we look at the
Speaker 6: numbers after an election, it is very clear that some
Speaker 6: people either weren't telling the truth or they definitely didn't
Speaker 6: go and do the work at home of organizing not
Speaker 6: just us out in the community, but being there to
Speaker 6: organize their mothers, their aunts, their sisters, their friends, their
Speaker 6: you know, their family members. So how do you see
Speaker 6: this translating to as we are approaching the midterm elections.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great point, and it reminds me of
Speaker 3: the work I have yet to do to organize white
Speaker 3: evangelicals of conscience as I call them, or dissenters. M hum.
Speaker 3: I'm hopeful that a fair number of them are troubled
Speaker 3: enough that they just simply won't vote. They'll they'll just
Speaker 3: sit it out. Hoping they'll vote for a Democrat is
Speaker 3: probably too too great of a leap of faith for me.
Speaker 3: But maybe they'll we'll take them sit at home. Well,
Speaker 3: they can stay home, and I think that's more likely
Speaker 3: what they'll do it, and it would be a good choice.
Speaker 3: And I will be saying that to them. I'll say,
Speaker 3: if if you just can't, here's one way you can
Speaker 3: preserve your conscience in this. Sit it out. So that's hosibility.
Speaker 3: I do know of some already who in the last
Speaker 3: election voted for a Democrat for the first time in
Speaker 3: their electoral lives. I voted for Joe Biden, first vote
Speaker 3: for a Democratic candidate in how many years, was it?
Speaker 3: Because the last time I voted for a Democrat before
Speaker 3: Biden was nineteen seventy six, So it was a long time.
Speaker 3: Is that forty four at Carters for Carter? Yeah, so
Speaker 3: it was forty four years. And there are others. I'm
Speaker 3: not unique. I am not unique. There's a lot. I
Speaker 3: didn't vote for Trump either time. By the way, I
Speaker 3: voted for other Republican for another Republican in twenty.
Speaker 4: Sixteen, I if I can ask you, Reverend, there was
Speaker 4: just an arrest civil arrests made of nine Pea individuals
Speaker 4: who the Department of Justice is calling defendants on the
Speaker 4: other side of a protest at a church city's church
Speaker 4: in fact in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where one of the pastors,
Speaker 4: David Easterwood, serves as an icefield director. And I'm curious
Speaker 4: to know if you think there's ever an appropriate time
Speaker 4: to protest in church one and two, if you think
Speaker 4: that journalists should be exempt from any type of criminal
Speaker 4: indictment for covering said protests, Well, I did it.
Speaker 3: I did it at the Washington National Cathedral back when
Speaker 3: I was a leader in the national pro life anti
Speaker 3: abortion movement. I confronted Bill Clinton in the sanctuary during
Speaker 3: a communion service, and I was applauded for that. I
Speaker 3: was made a hero in the conservative Christian world for
Speaker 3: my disruption of a communion service on Christmas Eve. By
Speaker 3: the way, on Christmas Eve. So I'd like to say
Speaker 3: I did one better event these folks did on a
Speaker 3: comment Sunday morning, and I was made a hero for it.
Speaker 3: I'm reminding people of that. You want to denounce this.
Speaker 3: You applauded me when I did it, and that was
Speaker 3: I guess about nineteen ninety six ish something like that.
Speaker 3: I have to go back and records. But in any case,
Speaker 3: and ironically, the administration is using a law that we
Speaker 3: decried and that anti abortion activists and other white evangelical
Speaker 3: champions of religious liberty regularly denounced, and that is the
Speaker 3: Face Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,
Speaker 3: which we decried. We fought it in court, we raised
Speaker 3: tens of millions of dollars to oppose it, and now
Speaker 3: they're using it against Don Lemon, against the others. It's
Speaker 3: and I'm reminding my folks of that too, and hoping
Speaker 3: it will give some pause. Say wait a minute, what
Speaker 3: when we do here and Incidentally, this is a family
Speaker 3: issue in the church, and you know, families routinely disrupt
Speaker 3: one another's Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas celebrations with their differences,
Speaker 3: and that's what's happened here. So again it shows the
Speaker 3: hypocrisy that that I'm confronting my my family with.
Speaker 5: Got it, but carry I know we have to push.
Speaker 5: I did just want to ask this final question for
Speaker 5: me and that that's on the rev. Just sort of
Speaker 5: how in your in your most connected way, as you
Speaker 5: as you as you consider how some of your former
Speaker 5: compounderies and maybe even still Compoudreis might think about this,
Speaker 5: but just the hierarchy of threat that white evangelical men
Speaker 5: sort of consider when considering their politics. So for instance,
Speaker 5: if if we, if they, if the other side wins,
Speaker 5: and in there, if I'm them, the other side would
Speaker 5: be Democrats. I guess what is is it? Is it
Speaker 5: that they're going to promote black people above us and
Speaker 5: our sons and our children. Is it that they're going
Speaker 5: to make abortion free and available everywhere?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 5: Where do you when you get to the real crux
Speaker 5: of what barrier sits in the way of me being
Speaker 5: able to get over what coalition or alignment or agreement
Speaker 5: looks like with the other side. I mean, you can
Speaker 5: see bodies strown in the streets. You can see protesters
Speaker 5: mishandled disrupted. You can see even women who are approaching
Speaker 5: abortion clinics be railed against and cried and insulted and
Speaker 5: made to feel in fear, to watch children even put
Speaker 5: in cages. Because this isn't the first time the Trump
Speaker 5: administration has done that. They've done that before. But there's
Speaker 5: still these walls that exist that keep otherwise decent people
Speaker 5: from being able to make the leap to say Godly,
Speaker 5: that just isn't right and it is not just right
Speaker 5: because it happened to my wife. It's not right because
Speaker 5: it happened to another fellow family member of the human
Speaker 5: you know race, and it's indecent. What are I always
Speaker 5: try to think about, what's the thing that's keeping you?
Speaker 5: Is your fear of me?
Speaker 1: That big?
Speaker 5: Have you made me out to be that much of
Speaker 5: a threat, that that's keeping you from being a better human?
Speaker 5: But what is it? As you think about what that
Speaker 5: hierarchy of either threat or fear dislike I don't even
Speaker 5: know what to call it, because I don't know what it.
Speaker 3: Is well, I think fear is the best or at
Speaker 3: least principle way of understanding of understanding it. And I
Speaker 3: don't want to be Maudlin, and I don't want to
Speaker 3: turn your quality podcast into my confessional books, but I
Speaker 3: think it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got the.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, Well, no reason for you to associate in
Speaker 3: the first place. But you know, I'll confess that for
Speaker 3: uh thirty years, I did business with fundraisers who created
Speaker 3: millions of messages that went out across the United States.
Speaker 3: And I was a small, a bit player. I would
Speaker 3: send out five to ten million communic case a year.
Speaker 3: Many of my friends that I kept company with in
Speaker 3: those days would send out hundreds of millions of messages,
Speaker 3: mostly connected to fundraising platforms. And I'll describe those to
Speaker 3: you this way. In one exchange that I've thought about
Speaker 3: many times and I've written about, with one of my
Speaker 3: contracted fundraisers, he sat at a conference room table and
Speaker 3: he told me in nineteen he said, look, let me
Speaker 3: put it this way. The more fear and the more
Speaker 3: anger you'll give me, the more money I will raise
Speaker 3: for you. You give me a lot of fear and anger,
Speaker 3: I'll raise a lot of money for you. You give me
Speaker 3: a little fear and anger, I'll raise a little bit
Speaker 3: of money for you. So you decide. But let me
Speaker 3: tell you this, he said, I want you to think
Speaker 3: of Helen. She lives on a rural road in Kansas,
Speaker 3: neighbors three miles away. Her husband's been dead for several years.
Speaker 3: She rarely ever sees her kids or her grandkids. They
Speaker 3: all live in other states. The biggest moment in her
Speaker 3: day is when she goes to her rural mailbox on
Speaker 3: the roadside, pulls out a letter from you and reads
Speaker 3: through those eleven pages with multiple underlines and exclamation points.
Speaker 3: And when she's done reading, she is terrified of the
Speaker 3: world her children will inhabit. And you're going to tell
Speaker 3: her the only way that she can solve that problem
Speaker 3: is to send your organization one hundred dollars, and you're
Speaker 3: going to get that hundred and probably two hundred. Every
Speaker 3: single time I fired him, I canceled, but I acquiesce
Speaker 3: just enough to hire another group. Almost most at that
Speaker 3: level that's being done and has been done now for
Speaker 3: forty or fifty years. People have been shaped and formed
Speaker 3: in that year, and now they've taken the reins of
Speaker 3: government power, and they are also afraid, but they're more
Speaker 3: cynical when they are afraid. But the people who are
Speaker 3: giving them that power and that money are terrified of
Speaker 3: the world as they imagine it. And this has to
Speaker 3: do with what I call the southernization of American evangelicalism,
Speaker 3: who were once the leaders in the abolitionist movement. The
Speaker 3: first women's rights a conference was held at an evangelical
Speaker 3: church in Seneca Falls, New York in what was that
Speaker 3: eighteen forty But in any case, evangelicals were once the
Speaker 3: leaders of social progress and innovation. They were champions of
Speaker 3: minority rights, and they were overrun by the Southern churches
Speaker 3: that wanted to preserve the Confederacy, and they did it.
Speaker 3: Anybody wants to read some really revelatory work on that.
Speaker 3: Charles Reagan Wilson, American Southern historian, writes on the religion
Speaker 3: of the Lost Cause in a book, his principal book,
Speaker 3: which is very readable, only about two hundred and fifty pages.
Speaker 3: Baptized in blood. It's really worth reading it. It helps
Speaker 3: you to understand the white evangelical mind as it's been
Speaker 3: formed over the last one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 5: Appreciate that, appreciate reverse incentives.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just first of all, I just kind
Speaker 1: of want to want to wrap this up by where
Speaker 1: I began, which is to say, thank you for coming on,
Speaker 1: thank you for your journey, thank you for sharing your journey,
Speaker 1: and thank you for being what we but I believe
Speaker 1: to be the most powerful thing you can be in
Speaker 1: this country, which is an example. So I think we
Speaker 1: all say on this show Native Lampard, I'm the newest
Speaker 1: member here, but welcome.
Speaker 5: Home, welcome home, come home.
Speaker 3: You feel very undeserving of that.
Speaker 6: Thank you, praying for you, praying for you, Robert, thank.
Speaker 1: You, thank you. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the Reverend
Speaker 1: Robert Shank, former right wing activist turn dissenting evangelical organizer,
Speaker 1: and right here on the other side, we will do
Speaker 1: our calls to action and get us on out of here.
Speaker 1: Thank you, very Shank, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: We appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: Native lamp is a production of iHeartRadio and partnership with
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