Jared Yates Sexton breaks the rules here and offers a very special *FREE* episode of the Weekender Show. And why? Because he's talking to an anonymous strategist/consultant for the Democratic Party to get an inside look at what's happening behind the scenes. You're going to want to hear this.
Also, equally important, he talks with Reverend Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: A Journey Into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage It Leaves Behind.
Become a patron to support the show and gain access to these regular Weekender episodes. Go to http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to a special edition of the Weekender episode of The Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
Nick Kalsman is still out of commission for the week.
Hopefully, we will be joined by Nick starting on Tuesday.
I say special edition for a couple of reasons, and I just want to go ahead and give a heads-up about a couple things before the episode starts.
I had a conversation, a really, I think, important conversation this week, and you're going to hear that in just a little bit.
I had mentioned on the podcast and on my live streams that I, in the past couple of weeks, have had a lot of Democratic strategists and consultants reaching out to voice their frustration ahead of the November midterms.
And this happens sometimes.
Most of the time, right before an election, and I've talked about this on the show before, there are these moments of what some of us refer to as the fleeing of a sinking ship by a bunch of rats.
That happens because people want to get out ahead of losing campaigns and they want to go ahead and shift the blame around to other people.
But this was different.
What I have noticed from this outpouring has been of a different tone.
And what I've been hearing from a lot of these people within the strategist and consultant class, it isn't blame for losing elections.
It's a loss of faith in the party and the direction of the party and how this party is handling the growth of authoritarianism.
So I was talking to one of these people and we agreed to have a conversation.
And so what you will hear in just a little bit is a conversation with an anonymous Democratic consultant and strategist who we're calling James.
But I have to tell you, This is a really special conversation, and you're going to want to hear this.
You're going to hear directly from somebody who is involved in the party machinery, someone who is involved in the fundraising campaigns that you are no doubt inundated with, and you're going to get a peek inside the Democratic Party and the way things work today.
We're very fortunate for that.
As well, I had a really amazing conversation this week with Reverend Angela Dinker, who is a Lutheran pastor and the author of Red State Christians, a journey into white Christian nationalism and the wreckage it leaves behind, which is an excellent book.
And Angela is a really, really gifted communicator and thinker.
And the conversation that we had about the problems within the white evangelical community and what it means for the rest of us and what it portends and what it could possibly lead to.
It's a really, really important conversation.
So I'm making an executive decision, and the executive decision is this.
These two conversations are really, really important.
And I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to make this episode of The Weekender free for everyone, because I want you to hear what this Democratic consultant has to say, and I want you to hear what Angela Dinker has to say.
So, there we go.
We have a free episode of The Weekender, but I would go ahead and say for those of you who are listening to this who have not become patrons yet, we really need your support.
We really need your help to continue to air programs like this.
You're not going to get conversations like what you're about to get on other programs, particularly in the mainstream media.
We're an independent media venture.
We depend on your support to remain ad-free, editorially independent.
That way we can talk about these things, we can have in-depth conversations that get into things that other people are afraid to.
I really, really would appreciate if you go to patreon.com slash mcraigpodcast and become a patron.
You'll gain access to these weekender episodes, but also to the Muckrate community, which is some of the greatest people around.
And particularly as we're staring down the barrel of Elon Musk buying Twitter, you know, it's going to be necessary to find your places of refuge like this.
So again, that's patreon.com slash mccrackpodcast.
But again, I really hope that this episode and what you're about to hear, I hope it sheds some light on a lot of different things.
And yeah, I really hope you enjoy that.
Before we get going, I just want to go ahead and say just a little bit of housekeeping.
So I am taping this introduction on Wednesday, October 26th.
It's my mom's birthday this week.
She's turning 70 years old, and I'm really excited to go celebrate with her and just really celebrate her as a person who has made a tremendous impact on my life.
So this is being recorded early.
Here's hoping that all hell doesn't break loose over the next couple of days after I record this.
If it does, I'll record something else.
I'll record some sort of haphazard bootleg weekender edition, which this already is, but that'll be over on the Patreon if something needs addressed, obviously.
But I wanted to talk very, very quickly about something disturbing as hell that occurred last night and today.
Uh, There obviously has been a lot of talk on this show and in my writing that has been focused on how our media and our political class are normalizing the growing authoritarianism.
And I got to tell you, what has occurred in the wake of the Pennsylvania Senate debate between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz has been It's really been something.
And I say that in the midst of a time in which the Republican Party is just absolutely unabashedly embracing anti-democratic conspiracy theories.
Blatant antisemitism and homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, you name it.
Just this stuff is just everywhere.
And what we're now seeing with John Fetterman, you know, you can have a conversation about how His having a stroke has affected maybe his ability to communicate like that.
That's something that you can talk about.
But watching our media spin this and wrap it up as sort of a Here's a horse race.
Here's a dramatic event that has taken place right before the election and watching the way these stories have been spun.
I mean, Mehmet Oz, in this debate, I don't know how to emphasize how disgusting he was and is.
His stances, of course, on abortion, but also just any ability whatsoever for the state to help people or a person's right to health and happiness.
It's really upsetting.
And then to watch this obviously get spun around Fetterman's rehabilitation from having a stroke.
Which is something that people have to deal with all the time.
People have strokes.
Joe Biden has had strokes.
Like, to sit here, though, and take this person who is still in the recovery phase, and by all accounts, doctors, people who have been around him, even critics of him who have been around him, say, you know, this hasn't, like, impaired his thinking.
It impairs his ability to hear and vocalize, but that will eventually get better.
He is healing and everything shows that he is well on the path towards total recovery.
This is not only really a non-issue, But what we're watching is the normalization of really, really crass and dangerous ableism in our media.
And I want to point out, it's not just the ableist sort of approach that's coming out here.
This is part of a larger observable phenomenon.
Which is that as a reaction to the past few years, so-called wokeness, so-called CRT, so-called cancel culture, you name it, that itself was a reaction to Donald Trump and the beginnings of this craven authoritarian movement.
But now the counter reaction to that is gaining steam.
And so what happens in cultures is that there are reactions and then other reactions to the reactions.
And in this case, we're literally watching this type of stuff being normalized.
And it's really repugnant and upsetting.
And I just want to put that out there that this isn't how society is supposed to work.
I mean, this isn't how a good society works.
Anyway, you don't go ahead and take an authoritarian movement and legitimize it and go ahead and spin around something like this.
You just don't do it.
And it only shows us more and more how mainstream culture Whether it's the middle class, the upper middle class, the upper class, the media class, the political class, how they are sort of in public through their writings, through their publications, through their communications, they are talking themselves into accepting this.
And the economic conditions and the collapse of American empire and the faltering of the neoliberal machine We are watching people in public, powerful people, with massive platforms, with reality-shaping powers.
We are watching them talk themselves into being okay with white supremacist, patriarchal authoritarianism.
And it's disturbing as hell.
And I just want to go ahead and say, if you haven't listened already to the podcast on Tuesday in which I broke down that absolutely awful Federalist article, go and do that and understand what they are mainstreaming.
Understand what they are talking themselves into accepting.
And as they talk themselves into it, There are widespread larger implications where so-called liberals, the middle class white people, upper middle class white people, people who were against Trumpism, people who consider themselves the resistance, people who consider themselves open-minded people, that they are coming around on this, which is when you start going down an even steeper slope.
So we're going to keep an eye on this and I just I grow so frustrated and I get more pissed off every day.
I can't even begin to tell you what it's like watching this thing play out.
Another piece of housecleaning before we get to the interviews and I cannot emphasize enough how important it is these how important these interviews are.
So, right now, my book, The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis is available for pre-order.
I have started the Midnight Kingdom lecture series.
It's a video lecture series that you can find on YouTube.
This thing is an attempt to take some larger theoretical concepts and historical information and make it more accessible.
I lay this out like I would a university lecture with notes and scaffolding and all of that.
So if you want to get deeper into this thing, understand the concepts yourself, you know, gain the ability to sort of analyze this and bring together these different components.
And also, if you have people in your life that need to understand this, please send this out.
Get the word out about this.
And yeah, this will be a five-part series.
It starts with the marriage of Christianity and the Roman Empire and how that created a power structure we're still dealing with.
But also, it traces that history all the way up to the birth of liberalism and conservatism, which is the defining battle of our times that we are unfortunately stuck between and we're seeing play out in our modern politics.
Anyway, so that is the Midnight Kingdom lecture series.
Give that a view and send this out to anybody that might benefit from it.
All right, so we're going to start with this conversation with James, a democratic strategist and consultant who has expressed his concerns about a lot of what he has seen and experienced in that role.
And I got to tell you, I left this interview First of all, I felt hopeful because James is a really, really intelligent, conscientious person.
And the fact that there are people within the party who are thinking like this and feeling like this is reason for hope.
But I have to tell you, this is a really, really revealing look behind the curtain of the Democratic Party.
All right, let's get to it.
Hey, everybody.
So we're going to do something a little bit different today.
I've been talking about this for the past couple of weeks that we had done a segment where we were talking about Democratic consultants and, you know, what the limitations are, what the frustrations are.
And I had a few people reach out and they wanted to talk about their experiences and sort of share stories.
And I'm here right now with one of them.
We're not going to give you their name because we respect their anonymity and we respect their career.
This person is chosen to go by James.
I was really excited about asking you for a fake name.
I always wanted to be named like Mike or Jake.
I think James is a really interesting choice.
Well, hopefully not giving away too much.
I just chose my dad's middle name.
So, classic like credit card security question, you know.
I love it.
I love it.
So we're going to have a conversation.
I think this is one of those things that I think a lot of people want.
They want to hear about this.
They want to hear what it's like on the other side of this thing.
James, can you do us a favor and just, you know, protecting yourself as much as possible, can you give people a little bit of an idea of what your sort of career trajectory has been?
Obviously, you don't have to give away too much in terms of details, but Can you give people a decent idea of what you've been doing?
Absolutely.
So I started working in democratic politics in the 2018 cycle.
Up to that point, I had kind of just been a deadbeat dude in his 20s, worked a lot of odd jobs, struggled to pay the rent.
Yeah.
And but I'd always been a huge politics junkie, always kind of been a, you know, considered myself a progressive Democrat.
Was, you know, deeply disturbed, of course, by Donald Trump.
And when I sort of got in a job initially as a tracker, so it's one of these, that's one of those positions where you kind of, you follow around a Republican candidate, you film them at their events.
And that was really my entree into working in this world.
I've done a lot of different things since then, both on the campaign side and the consulting side.
It's a revolving door, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit.
But yeah, I've sort of, you know, I've been in research, I've been in comms roles.
And along the way, I've sort of seen these little things that have sort of upset me or maybe questioned some of the ethics and the morality of what's going on inside this world.
But this cycle, I started working in fundraising.
And that really sort of made everything click into view for me in terms of just kind of how deep the rot is in this world.
Yeah, so James, you're one of the people who is absolutely annoying the living hell out of all of us right now.
I mean, it is, you know, and one of the things I've noticed is there's such like a repetitive nature to it.
There's obviously a base level psychological appeal behind it.
Can you talk a little bit about sort of the theory behind this fundraising and then we can get into the larger sort of political implications?
Absolutely.
You know, I will say when you work in this industry, something that you sort of every single job interview I've ever gone on, I've been asked this question, which is what is the biggest issue in politics?
And my go to answer has always been money in politics, kind of owing to that classic idea that like whatever issue you care about, whether it's gay rights or housing policy or foreign aid, doesn't matter as long as billionaires are buying school board races.
Absolutely.
And I took for granted that this was sort of a basic democratic principle, you know, that like, we want to get rid of Citizens United, like we have to play by the rules, because Republicans are playing by them, and we need to be on that level.
But then I sort of entered the world of fundraising and discovered just sort of how Sort of craven a lot of it feels.
And I do think there's a, the biggest thing really is about urgency.
That's what sort of gets pushed over and over and over again, every email every text message, just got to be the utmost urgency, you sort of hear these jokes.
You see these jokes online a lot where you'll get people doing fake like Nancy Pelosi text messages, which really give us $25 before a meteor hits the earth.
That's sort of a tone you strike.
And so a lot of it is just about urgency.
That's just the word that we say over and over again in this industry.
And it's about scaring people.
It really is about sort of saying, you know, Republicans are going to do all these bad things unless you give us $25 right now.
Yeah, and I've noticed, and tell me if this is correct, because I've studied people like Alex Jones for a while and like right-wing extremists, there's an interesting whipsaw effect to it.
One day all is lost unless you give us $25, and the next day you're winning.
Right?
Something has changed.
It's almost like a front has flown in.
There's some sort of, I don't know, it's the back and forth between absolute hopelessness and also victory.
Does that check out?
It does.
And there's a lot of A-B testing that goes on between these messages to determine what's going to be the most effective.
And of course, fundraising, even in the most local of races now, it's very much like a national fight.
But everyone has different email lists.
Everyone has different text message lists.
Everyone has different social media followings.
These things are monetized.
bought and sold and traded between candidates, just back and forth and back and forth.
And they'd sort of been AB test these messages of what works best.
Some candidates in some regions, it just works best if you say like, yeah, like Democrats are kicking ass, we're going to win all these seats.
And for certain segments of the population that motivates to give them money.
So they then get more of those messages until it stops.
And then you switch back to the urgency.
The other piece of this obviously is polling.
And I think something another kind of area where I was maybe naive or something I took for granted is just like there are a million polls that say a million different things.
You can find whatever you want.
Exactly.
So it's like, if I want to write an email about a race in whatever state, and it's like, just find a poll where the Democrat's behind, you can find that poll, you can use it, and you can use it to whatever end, or find the one where they're ahead.
And so it really is, I mean, it's A-B tested, and there's audiences, and it's very refined science, the way these things are targeted at people.
So, you know, we had talked a little bit before we started recording about what the moment was for you that you started feeling.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think a little bit repulsed, a little bit frustrated.
Can you talk about what that moment was for you?
Yeah, and you know along the way there have been a few different moments where I felt sort of a little cynical about things or sort of felt like a lot of things just seemed to have sort of a capitalist goal as opposed to a goal of helping people and so forth.
And I certainly felt that more and more and more the more time I spent in the fundraising sector.
It really clicked into view for me around the Dobbs decision.
Part of that was when that leak came out, you know, I was in meetings right away talking about, you know, we've got to get emails out.
We've got to get texts.
How quick was the reaction to that?
I mean, it was, you know, it happened in the night and there was pretty much an understanding that like we all had, you know, 7 a.m.
meetings on our calendar.
It was all hands on deck from there.
Yeah, exactly.
And it was.
So it's interesting, too, because a lot of what we have, a lot of fundraising projections and a lot of fundraising projections are based on previous years.
And in the digital space where there's not a lot, there hasn't been a lot of precedence in terms of like digital fundraising yet in democratic politics, there was a huge spike around August 2020.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
Sure.
Generated tons of money.
And I think there was a moment when the Dobbs decision happened where it's like, now we have that opportunity in this cycle to generate a lot of money.
Now, I badly want Democrats to win.
I badly want abortion rights to be protected.
But I was writing emails being like, you know, we need to elect Democrats to protect jobs and you need to give us that money to do this.
That money was going to pay people like me.
It wasn't going to Planned Parenthood or organizations that were actually doing the work.
That was sort of like a big ethical conflict for me.
Well, so I want to I want to put a pin in that because I think that's a really important thing to talk about, because I personally believe the conversations I've had, the research that I've done, that a large part of the problem is the consultant class and the strategist class within the Democratic Party, even even more so probably than the Republican Party.
We'll get to that in just a second, because I think we could have a pretty good conversation about that.
Can you talk about the tone and the tenor of the conversation following the Dobbs decision?
How does that take place?
Because obviously, no one's going to go in that room shooting off guns and letting balloons go, but in your line of work right now, it's literally as if you hit the jackpot, is it not?
Exactly.
Yeah.
You know, you're exactly right.
It's not as though people were celebrating and people were excited and people were like, you know, there was broken hearts and people were upset about what was happening.
Like we are Democrats at the end of the day, we are progressives to varying degrees.
But there was a sense that this is now the primary focus.
This is the main thing.
This is where all the attention has to be.
And it's political malpractice not to do it.
And, you know, that's right, that's true.
But it is, you do have to sort of ask, how much help are you doing when the goal is just about racking up the biggest dollar amount.
And, you know, touching on a little bit what we were talking about before this conversation, you know, we're talking a little bit about sort of the history here where I think there is sort of this understanding for a long time, sort of amongst pundits in the party structure, that Republicans liked Roe v. Wade.
Liked that they locked up this segment of the population who only voted around that one issue and they were going to reliably vote for Republicans.
Republicans never had to answer for not doing anything about it because there was this structural impediment that prevented them from doing anything.
And of course, we know what happens.
They bring enough true believers into the fold.
They started posing witness tests for judges.
They built the Frankenstein monster that ultimately strangles Roe.
I have a serious fear right now that those things are just going to switch.
Democrats now have an issue that they raise tons of money off of people are going to reliably vote for them because they're the ones who are going to protect abortion rights, but They don't really have a way to do much about it.
And even worse, what is their incentive to do anything about it when they're generating all this capital from the existence of the problem?
I was talking about that the other day because, you know, it's one of those things when you actually start understanding the financial incentive and how it drives these things, right?
I suddenly realized, like, the most logical thing in the world is for the Democratic Party to consistently point at Roe v. Wade being overturned and talking about wanting to do something about it.
But also within the Democratic Party, there is a, I don't know how else to put it, an aggressive helplessness at times, right?
Like an unwillingness, of course, to play hardball in certain circumstances.
But this is I hate saying this.
It's really disturbing to say it.
This is the perfect circumstance for not just democratic politics, but also democratic fundraising, right?
Completely.
And I think you look at the history of the Democratic Party and, you know, whether it's messaging, whatever it is, this has been such a consistent pattern.
You know, the times that Democrats have won big, since basically Barack Obama, is when things are so goddamn awful, that the Democrats are the best option.
There's not much like being proactive about things.
And it's sort of become The operating procedure of how they do things.
Things are awful under George W. Bush.
Obama wins.
Things are awful under Trump.
We have these big pickups in 2018.
COVID happens.
We win the presidency in 2020.
And frankly, if Democrats win the Senate, if they don't get totally blown out in the House, it's going to be because of the Dobbs decision.
That's why.
You know, it's it's hard because it's like they're not helping people.
They're just sort of like benefiting from shit situations and like figuring out ways to capitalize off them.
And, you know, going back to what I was saying before about how, like, where's their incentive to fix anything?
It is a little different than the Republican situation because there's no incentive to fix the problem.
But the problem's way worse.
People are going to die.
Like people are actually like in really awful situations.
And there's going to be financial gain from it inside the party structure and the consultant class.
So I want to get into the split between the two different sectors here.
But I want to ask you a question because you seem like a very conscientious person.
You seem like your ethics are in the right place.
It seems like your conscience is in the right place.
You got into this because you wanted to make the world better.
What is it like to be in these rooms?
Like, what, what, how, how is it?
Because so much of politics, I've been in enough of these rooms, and I know how I have felt having these conversations.
Like, so for instance, you know, having to like sort of tamp down an excitement that something catastrophic has occurred, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that suddenly that makes it more likely that you might not just make money, but you could potentially win races.
Like, what is that experience like for you?
And how is that different from maybe what you expected going into this thing?
You know, it's disheartening.
And no one likes to feel naive.
But I have certainly felt that way at multiple junctions in this career.
I'll just tell a quick story about something I worked for in the past.
Yeah, please.
I worked for a presidential primary candidate in 2020.
Long shot candidate, never had too much of a chance.
But before I went to work for them, I saw them at a town hall event.
They were incredible.
They connected with people.
They gave this speech that just moved everyone in the room to tears.
It was this incredible experience.
And I was like, there's a dark horse candidate here.
This person has an opportunity to get on TV and just blow people out of the water with this special talent they had.
I applied for a job with them.
I went to go work for them.
Very quickly, very early on, we were preparing for their first appearance in a debate.
And they had brought in debate consultants to sort of You know, train them and do the media training and all these necessary things.
And I remember the debate consultant saying, you know, like, you know, the practice is going, okay, like, we're really trying to like, break this candidate of their speaking pattern of the way they talk, trying to change it.
And a lot of us were like, why are we trying to strip away The one thing that this person is good at.
There's one thing that we agree is this person's strongest talent when they get out there on that stage.
And it's sort of, that was sort of the first time I saw there was a problem with the consultant class in terms of like, these people are getting paid no matter what.
Oh, it does not matter at all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they get paid for their expertise.
But maybe, you know, maybe there's just, like, it's sort of like, like, classic economic, like, principle.
It's like, there's no product here, like, that's being sold.
And I would say that was really sort of the first time that I just remember feeling, like, disheartened.
Like, I really Believed in this candidate.
And I would say also in that same time, you know, something, the big talk in that primary cycle was about health care plans and who has the best health care plan.
And again, bringing in consultants to look at crosstabs and polls and formulate the best possible health care plan.
I wasn't naive that this is the way policy was made, but there was part of me that was like, well, what about what the candidate believes is the right thing to do?
And you sort of, I think when you're outside of politics, we all have a tendency to kind of lionize politicians and, you know, look at them as celebrities in one way or another, superhumans.
They are just people.
And that was, like, that remains one of, like, the hardest lessons I had to learn.
A lot of them are narcissists and psychopaths as well.
That's its own problem.
But I just come back to the feeling that it's disheartening.
Like I said, I consider myself a progressive Democrat, very much of like the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren lane of politics.
I really believed I'd be able to kind of get into these rooms and sort of espouse that view and sort of push what I think would be good ideas.
In truth, there's just a lot of best practices and you're sort of conformed to those best practices.
And I think a lot of it is just like awful advice.
It gets hung over from the Bill Clinton era and it doesn't like, you know, we just kind of keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that always strikes me is if you get into the Democratic consultant class, particularly the upper rungs of it, you never have to pay for dinner the rest of your life.
Like, it literally does not matter.
You are going to lose one race after another, and it doesn't matter.
Occasionally, you'll win one, you know?
You'll look up somehow or another and like you'll win this big race and then you lose 98% of the rest of them but you even make some more money from the things that you lose.
There's hardly any incentive to sort of push this thing and it's been DLC stuff.
For decades, and it's it's the exact same argument and it drives me nuts it's it's looking out for this fabled fucking independent voter in Dayton, Ohio, who it's the the old thing they've always said, which is you want to find a housewife.
Who considers herself progressive and socially progressive.
She's a little uncomfortable with civil rights, right?
Like she's just a little bit worried and she's worried about what her next paycheck is going to do.
And we've gotten to the point, I know that you know this, that voter doesn't exist anymore.
Like the the fabled independent voter died a long, long time ago.
And the Democrats keep going after this, and in a way have turned into a Republican Light Party, simply because the strategist consultant class, they can't learn anything else.
And I think in a way their own If they ever had an ideology, right?
If they even ever had their own politics, it feels like it's been worn away simply by the payment of it.
Is that checkout for you?
A thousand percent.
I mean, I think, you know, you look at a lot of the evidence and, you know, you look at polling, you look at all this stuff.
There are people who are registered independents in this country.
But when you look at how they vote, they pretty consistently vote for one party or another.
They just don't subscribe to a party.
They just don't vote in primaries.
But they vote pretty consistently across the board the same way.
And that's the thing.
I am a I'm a big believer that we are living in a moment of politics where we need to be mobilizing voters, persuading them.
And you know, there's different times in history, maybe we'll go back into a phase where persuasion is the main thing.
But Democratic consultant class, the party structure, it is stuck in the idea that we need to persuade people that we need to bring people over to our side.
You know, another thing we touched on before this conversation was that while all these emails were going out about Um, you know, we need to protect abortion rights, and it's urgent, and you need to elect Democrats, you need to give us $25.
The January 6th committee hearings are happening at the same time.
So we're also sending out a lot of content that has quotes from Liz Cheney, and saying like, oh, Liz Cheney just like kicked Donald Trump's ass, like, give us $25 to hold Trump accountable.
Liz Cheney, who's an anti-choice zealot who votes with Donald Trump more than 90% of the time.
That's right.
Another kind of significant fear I have when you look when, you know, Twitter is not real life, but you look at Twitter, there's a lot of Democrats, particularly the Democrats who donate.
They love Never Trump Republicans.
Yes, they love them.
And this does not exist on the Republican side of the aisle.
Republicans don't love Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
They maybe appreciate that they're there.
But they're not like, you know, they're not sending out emails being like, Joe Manchin just said this awesome thing.
It's just it's not the same thing.
And we're a little lucky, I think, in some respects that the Republican Party has been taken over by total whack jobs, because I happen to think if Liz Cheney were the presidential nominee, she'd win in a landslide.
It's just what it says to me.
And I often feel like as the consultant class, don't we have some moral and ethical responsibility to educate voters about this stuff?
And there's sort of a chicken and the egg thing.
You know, a lot of what we do, I was talking about the A-B testing, a lot of what we do is about responding to what's happening with fundraising or responding to what we see in polls.
But can't we do something as well to sort of shape public opinion?
And that's what's not happening at all, like there's no effort to sort of shape public opinion or to sort of like lift up certain people that we should be listening to, or like lift up certain priorities or policies.
I was in the periphery of the 2004 campaign around the Howard Dean campaign and then some of the discussions around that.
I personally, I feel like part of what we're talking about here, and I completely agree, the Democratic Party, the problem is that they have alienated so many voters.
And, you know, they're supposed to be the alternative, they're supposed to be the party that stands up for, you know, vulnerable people, working people.
And starting, of course, with the DLC and Clinton, they became, you know, Reagan-lite.
And, you know, that's why they went after the independent voter.
And then you have, I think, almost an entire generation that is just like, I don't want anything to do with either of these fucking parties.
Right.
And I think somebody like Bernie Sanders activated that.
I think Elizabeth Warren touched that with a few people.
And basically, they're waiting on the Democratic Party to at least try and rediscover their roots.
But in 2004, what I noticed was, there was only one candidate, Howard Dean, who was capable of saying, I've been against the Iraq War from the very beginning.
And what the Democratic Party has become now.
And, you know, I'm old enough that, like, I'm watching them launder George W. Bush as a good Republican.
I'm watching them launder Dick Cheney as a good Republican.
You know, pictures with them, hugging them, celebrating them.
And that, to me, to be honest with you, is one of the reasons why I ended up giving up my party registration.
Because at that point, You are literally the sane Republican Party, right?
I mean, the Never Trumpers are now part of the Democratic Party, if not in name, then in affiliation.
And I got to tell you, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I think it leaves a bad taste in millions of people's mouths.
And I think in the consultant class, and tell me if I'm wrong, they don't even have the beginnings of an understanding of that.
They don't even, I don't even know if they have the capacity to even try and understand that.
You know, and you know, like everybody, I love when the Lincoln Project puts out a great video.
That's an organization that's run totally just by these hitmen of Republican politics.
Who created this situation?
They created this situation.
And part of their project is to reshape the Democratic Party into a party that they want to see.
And that's a huge part of what is going on.
I'm 34.
I came of age during the Bush administration, during the Iraq War.
That shaped my political beliefs and my political views on pretty much everything.
A lot of what happens in the campaign world though, if you, you know, there's bigger pushes now to sort of unionize a lot of these industries, which supposedly Democrats are supposed to be in favor and supportive, but there's a lot of tension right now between like parties trying to organize how staffers trying to organize and sort of the power structure, not liking it that much.
What happens to a lot of people, what's kind of happening to me now is I love politics.
I do love working in this industry despite all its ills.
But, you know, I do have a condo that I gotta like pay for and I can't be looking for a job every six months and you're just out of work every six months in this industry.
But what ends up happening is when you talk about those people who float to the higher rung, you have a lot of people in their 40s and their 50s up top and a lot of people in their 20s down below.
Those people in the 20s, they do great work, they do excellent work, but they have no historical reference points for George W. Bush being president.
He's the nice guy with candy at the funeral.
Yeah, and it just creates it just creates this like gap, in terms of, and I think that's part of the reason you don't see a lot of advancement in terms of the messaging or in terms of efforts to sort of shape public opinion at all.
So yeah, I mean, it's, it's an ongoing challenge.
You know, it's just the way the money just, it just flows around in a cycle, just goes between the party and the consultants.
James, I know this isn't going to shock you, but to a person, every single consultant and strategist who contacted me was in their 30s.
And I don't think that that is shocking for the exact reasons that you're bringing up.
Have you found Talking to other people, you know, I have to assume you have friends, acquaintances in this industry.
Have you found similar frustration?
Have you found, and I mean, listen, we're in a generational moment where, I mean, everybody around our age is looking at people who aren't retiring, who are still holding on to positions of power.
I mean, this is across the board, but have you found, like, pretty uniform frustration in this regard?
Like, what is the situation among I guess people with actual ideologies within the Democratic Party.
What's that like?
You know that and that's the part of it that's hard and gets a little like personal too.
Sort of like I was saying in the beginning, like getting this career for me, it was a dream come true when it happened.
I love politics.
I of course have my ideological beliefs, but I love politics.
I love political news.
I love the horse race element.
I love following it like it's sports.
A lot of people in this industry feel the same way.
They don't want to go do this work in a different industry.
What they love about this industry is that they get to be in adjacent to this world that they find exciting and engaging.
You get to be in the room.
Yeah, they like to be engaged with it every day.
And like, I love that.
The idea of like taking my talents to another industry, which is what I'm facing now, it's most likely what I'm going to do.
It's heartbreaking.
It just, it's depressing.
And, you know, I mean, Not like, you know, like you were saying, in the economic situation it's not like earning potential or the likelihood of retirement's any higher in another industry, but it is just, you just, a lot of people are getting chewed up and spat out, and a lot of people feel that way.
And I think especially, like you were saying, you get into your 30s and you really start to feel pretty chewed up by this industry.
And the other thing too is, like I was saying, very few people rise to the top, so there is a bit of a ceiling.
And what's exciting about sort of the unionization aspect of it is, you know, it's sort of a way to sort of address some of this thing, like we want to stay in this world, but a lot of the people who are the power brokers and have the most money and make those six and seven figure salaries, you know, they don't want to give up that power either, so.
So I think, and I'll let you get out of here in just a minute, but I have a couple more things I want to ask you.
So I think one of the problems with the Democratic Party is they have a really hard time finding candidates who can push back against the consultant class.
They have a really hard time seeming legitimate and seeming authentic.
I think this is one of the reasons why somebody like a Fetterman really stands out in the field, right?
Like he is an individual.
Do you, Do you feel like the Democratic Party in the future is going to figure that part out?
And quite frankly, the Democratic Party keeps marching out like former intelligence officers and like investment people.
Do you think that there is a possibility that that is eventually going to change?
Where do you see the Democratic Party going?
Do you think that there's some sort of a sea change up ahead generationally?
What do you see coming?
It's a little bleak.
The DCCC, the DSCC, these organizations recruit candidates to run for office.
They often, especially on the congressional side, the DCCC, they often recruit lawyers.
They recruit lawyers because they have big networks that they can raise a lot of money from.
It's about what candidates can raise the most money.
The DCCC, the Democratic Party in general, despite what they tell you, they have tons and tons of money.
They have enough money to go out, find union organizers, find public school teachers, and provide them with the resources to run for office.
They don't do that.
Instead, they go look for wealthy people who have a lot of connections, ask them to run for office so they can generate even more capital.
You bring up John Fetterman, who I think is such a stellar example, someone who I'm super excited about as a candidate.
On CNN, on the night he won his primary, again, just absolutely trounced, won like 60-something percent, secured his nomination.
On CNN, all the pundits are saying it's crazy because Conor Lamb is the perfect Democratic candidate.
Yes, yes.
And it's like, he's the perfect Democratic candidate.
He just got 30-something percent.
He just got his ass kicked.
Yeah, he just got absolutely destroyed.
Yeah.
But there seems to be like an unwillingness to sort of learn the lesson.
Like I said, my fantasy, my sort of dream scenario is that the Democratic Party would get back to those roots where they would go out, they would find labor organizers, they would find public school teachers, they would provide them with the resources to run for office, and they would spend the money to help those people.
That would starve the consultant class, it would at least force the reorganization of the consultant class, so I don't think that's ever going to happen.
What I do tell people, and it's a longer fight, but I think it's sort of the most pragmatic thing to do, is to really sort of start organizing people around policy and around sort of, you know, start thinking about like, what issues are we in support of, as opposed to what people are we in support of?
And that's, I think, sort of, again, it's a long road, but I think that's the road to sort of getting candidates who look a little bit more like America.
I think the answer is to find candidates who are organizers who are actually taking on the problems.
And they've shown themselves to be leaders.
And I think real fast, what you just said, I think about the Conor Lamb thing.
I saw that too.
And like, it was one of those things, I walked around like I had a bad song stuck in my head for days.
It was one of the dumbest things I've ever heard out loud.
Something you just said made me realize so much of this is about the consultant class.
All they understand is CNN and MSNBC, how somebody looks behind a podium, the optics of it, how they come across professionally on these shows.
And to be frank, CNN and MSNBC don't have that many viewers.
Like, you and I are political sickos.
The people listening to this podcast are political sickos, right?
We're into this, we're addicted to this, there's a reason why we're talking about this.
But most Americans are not.
Most Americans have no interest in how good Conor Lamb looks in a suit behind a podium, but the consultant class I feel like once you get to that certain level, you are so out of touch with Americans and regular people, and you are in that beltway existence to an extent.
It's true.
And I think so much of what we do in politics now is just about like pageantry and tradition.
So, you know, you talk about sort of being a politics junkie.
I love watching debates.
There's more and more evidence, though, that debates mean nothing.
They don't persuade people.
They don't move the needle.
They don't change anything.
You know, maybe there's specific races where they could have an impact.
There's just not a lot of evidence of that anywhere.
But what does shape a lot of public opinion is the coverage that debates get afterwards in the press, and that often kind of, you know, that often shapes people's perceptions of like what happened in those debates and who came out on top.
But there's all these things that we sort of do.
I always sort of is a strange example, but I always sort of say this about the Supreme Court, you know, like a decision comes in front of the Supreme Court.
We all know right away pretty much how everyone's going to vote on it, but they take months to talk about it and write these lengthy opinions.
It's just silly.
It's just dumb.
It's like, why do we operate this way?
And so there is a way in which it's like, you know, we have debates and we have town halls and we have these meet and greets.
And a lot of it I do is just about, I think, filling some of those hours on cable television.
It's content.
You got to make content.
Yes.
And that is my and creating a lot of that content has been my life.
So it's it's it could be a little punishing, you know.
So I finally I got to ask you this and and I people have to hear this.
Where should they put their money?
Like, and I know that that isn't great for your job, but because one of the things you just brought up, like debates, right?
Like, a debate performance can drive fundraising, and that doesn't always lead to victory.
In fact, the two things are not particularly together outside of whether or not you can gain the attention of the Democratic Party or not, and whether they'll be able to, you know, put their weight behind it.
People who are listening to this, people who are getting emails that you literally wrote, What should they be doing with their money, if they want to donate into politics.
Yeah, and I'll just amend that very quickly just talk about also, you know, we're talking before about like sort of the, what is the ethical and moral responsibility of consultants in terms of pushing the needle in one direction or another.
This has of course been talked about, but you know, there's certain things for consultants.
It's just a consultant feeding frenzy.
People have talked a lot about the Marjorie Taylor Greene race in Georgia.
The Democrat in that race raises obscene amounts of money for a Democratic candidate in a Congressional race.
Same with the Lindsey Graham contest.
My God.
It's they raise an insane amount of money because they have good villains.
Consultants look for that when they want someone to work, like to be a partner with them that they're going to work with.
You know, consultants look for those races where there are good villains, where there's good people to go like up against because it's going to generate a lot of money.
It's not about winning.
It is about making money.
And this is I always tell people it's not just that.
Raising money is more important than helping people.
It's literally more important than winning the election.
It's just the most important thing.
I just tell people, don't give money to politicians.
Especially don't give money to super PACs.
Just give money to organizations that are actually doing work.
Give money to labor unions.
Give money to Planned Parenthood.
Just give money to people who are really doing the work on the ground.
The one time I would say give money to a politician is if that politician literally does not take a cent a dime of PAC money.
And you gotta listen because a lot of them come out and say they don't take corporate PAC money.
They're still taking a lot of money from PACs.
If a candidate takes zero PAC money, go ahead and donate to them.
I think that's the one time it's okay.
James, I gotta tell you, I am both pissed off, as I expected I would be, but also, I gotta tell you, I'm relieved and a little bit hopeful.
I'm really glad, even though this is obviously taking a toll on you, I'm really glad that you're in the room.
Like I said before, you seem like a very conscientious person.
I am glad that, despite the frustrations, that you continue to fight for these things, and I gotta tell you, I think coming on this show and doing this interview was really brave and really good of you, so I just want to say thank you on behalf of everybody.
Yeah, well, I'm a loyal listener.
I was excited and happy to do it.
So I'm glad your voice is out there.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
And again, that was James.
I just want to thank James again for coming on the show and being so forthcoming and honest.
And I think this is something that a lot of us Have felt and worried over and you know every time that one of these emails ends up in your inbox I think we're all kind of aware what's happening, but also You know hearing it come straight from the horse's mouth is is really really important Alright, so now we're going to just run right along.
I just realized in the middle of putting this together, this is a double-stuffed episode.
A free double-stuffed weekender.
So maybe you've got some housework to do.
Maybe you've got to run around.
Maybe you've got some driving to do like I do this weekend.
So hopefully this is keeping you company.
But I'm getting ready to welcome on Reverend Angela Denker, who, again, really tremendous thinker and person and writer.
I can't recommend her stuff enough.
Let's go ahead and let's go talk about the problem of white evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, and the schism within that community.
As promised, we have a really special treat.
We're here with Angela Denker, who is a Lutheran pastor, journalist, and the author of Red State Christians, A Journey into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage It Leaves Behind.
She is also the author of the sub stack, I'm Listening, and I highly, highly recommend not just Red State Christians, but also a recent article called Sometimes I Want to be a Christian Nationalist, which we'll get into in just a moment.
But Angela, first of all, thank you for being on the show.
Thanks so much for having me.
Okay, Angela, I want to have a conversation with you about Christian nationalism, the threat that it poses, possible solutions, and also largely what has created it.
But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit, I think a lot of our listenership maybe aren't necessarily religious, or maybe they have fallen out of the faith, maybe they've moved away.
There is most definitely a feeling among a lot of people that Christianity is now synonymous with oppression, with persecution of non-believers, taking away rights, you name it.
We were talking a little bit before and you had said, and I just want to go ahead and get this on the record, you said that Christianity's brand right now is kind of trash.
And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about for you as a pastor, as as a believer, as part of the faithful who is watching this take place and watching this experience play out.
What is that like for you?
And what are the conversations you're having with other people?
What are those things?
What's the tone and the tenor of that?
Yeah, I was talking to a pastoral colleague like a couple of weeks ago, and she was saying like, I feel like we're almost getting to the point where this term Christian, you know, is just wholly negative for people and wholly really synonymous with the Republican Party, wholly synonymous with all the things you're talking about.
And she was like, I think we're almost getting to that point.
And I just said, we're there.
Like, we've been there, you know?
And as somebody who, you know, my main career is as a pastor, and I have served, you know, in a number of different church communities, it's really, really, really hard to see, but I also think This is part and parcel of history.
You know, Christian history, we were not meant to be in the dominant powerful group.
And so I think recognizing just wholeheartedly, like this needs to be a resistance movement within the church.
That's been something that's been on my heart since 2016.
And it was a real awakening for me because I spent a lot of my life as part of the dominant culture in a lot of different ways.
I'm so glad you brought up that history.
I was doing research on my new book and I started it with the combination of the Roman Empire and Christianity, the Catholic Church, when they came together.
And there's a lot of different reasons that we could, I think we could bore a lot of people getting into why it took place and why it occurred.
But there's kind of an amazing thing that happens, I think, with Christianity when it's put in power.
There are some different parts to it, right?
There is the martyrdom of Christianity, which is the idea, you know, sort of everything from turning the other cheek to, you know, being rewarded through your faith as opposed to holding power over secular affairs.
But then there's this other aspect to it.
St.
Augustine.
I was just doing a lecture on this.
St.
Augustine talks about the idea of righteous persecution.
The idea that you can go out and hurt people.
You can go out and suffer people because you have truth on your side and you're doing it For God, and you're doing it for the good of people.
And what you just said about Christianity is not meant to be in power.
I gotta tell you, that is a schismatic, orthodox conflict.
And Christian nationalism, and this is a word I'm going to throw around because I'm now talking to somebody who gets this stuff.
This is, I mean, it's a matter of orthodoxy.
It's a matter of heretics.
Like, can you get into what that actually is?
Because this isn't just political.
This isn't just societal.
This is like, this is a religious crisis, is it not?
Yeah, and I really am passionate that we need to decouple Christian nationalism from thinking that this is all about America.
You know, that We need to recognize that this is part of a broader historical story about religion, about Christianity, about things like the Crusades.
And one thing that that does, I think, is it undermines this argument on the part of Christian nationalists that they're the true patriots, they're the true Americans.
Because, in fact, this is part and parcel of a much broader movement, as you've talked about a lot, you know, toward authoritarianism.
But my real, what I think a contribution that I want to make to this discussion around Christian nationalism, there's such great, you know, historical studies, sociological study.
I think the theological component to Christian nationalism is like this, that Christian nationalism is an example of what Martin Luther called a theology of glory.
And it's this lie that was rampant in the Catholic Church of his time, Um, that says, you know, if you follow Jesus, if you follow the church, you're going to get wealth, you're going to get power.
I mean, this is classic Joel Osteen.
You know, you're going to be, these are the things the devil tempted Jesus with.
Um, you're going to have all this worldly power and success.
And that's the argument that the Christian nationalists say should be happening.
Um, Now Luther contrasted this theology of glory with the theology of the cross.
And that's like the underbelly, the reality of the Christian life.
It was a reality for part of Luther's life.
It was a reality for most leaders in the church, the Apostle Paul writing his letters that make up the New Testament in chains.
And the theology of the cross says that As you follow most closely to the path that Jesus asks us to follow, you're going to be rejected.
You're going to be persecuted.
You're going to be alone.
And I read part of a passage, I had a part of this passage from the Bible right at my ordination ceremony.
And it was all about Paul, you know, saying all the terrible things that the apostles went through.
And it was like, why, why am I doing this?
You know, I had this nice life as a sports writer.
But I think that this is really clear to say, like, that the theology of the cross reminds us that this is what Christianity is founded upon.
Jesus was crucified.
And so the theology of the cross says that in those moments when you're most closely following God, those are the times when you're going to feel the most rejected and the most powerless.
And that's when God does God's most powerful work.
So it really undermines this argument of Christian nationalism.
You know, it's really interesting because I was one of those people that I grew up in this like really radicalized evangelical Baptist background.
And again, religion was always sort of put forth as a war as opposed to some sort of, you know, there wasn't a lot of emphasis on Martyrdom was put out there in order to say, they're coming after you, here are the horrors that you could suffer, right?
These are the things that are going to happen, that apocalypticism.
And now, instead, that it feels like has jumped sort of the firewall away from I don't know, a small church in southern Indiana, which is where I experienced it.
And now it has gone ahead and merged with a power structure that is forming.
And of course, that brings us to Christian nationalism.
And I was wondering, can you go ahead and give what your definition of what Christian nationalism and where we are in the process of that?
I personally think it's becoming the dominant ideology of not just the right, But I think we're in a political and economic position right now where it's growing to become the dominant ideology, possibly in the United States of America.
And we can talk about how that could happen and what that would mean.
But can you go ahead and give your definition and what you think it means and where you think we are in the process?
Yeah, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna cheat because I actually wrote a definition.
So I got to find it here.
But as I said, I think that what's really important for me is that Christian nationalism is seen not only as a historical or sociological movement necessarily connected to whiteness and to race, but it's also a movement that is grounded in theology.
So what I say about, ah, sorry.
Here's what I wrote about Christian nationalism.
It's a version of the idolatrous, so ultimately I think it's about idolatry.
It's a version of the idolatrous theology of glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the civil rights movement or the women's movement.
Christian nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs in all people.
Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.
It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus' theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified Savior did.
So.
I think that's a, I think that's a really interesting and apt definition in part because I think a lot of this is steeped in the idea of white man's burden, the idea that Western so called Western civilization, and what was created, and I think you're exactly right to bring it to the 1950s particularly.
The idea, I think, that a lot of this white nationalism is peddling is, you know what?
Some of this has not been pleasant.
And yes, some people have been hurt.
And yeah, maybe there was racism at some point.
And maybe there was sexism at some point.
But these were necessary sacrifices.
And you don't know how hard it was for us to do that.
Right?
To dole out that cruelty, to carry out the war, to carry out the oppression.
And I think it's a really interesting thing to bring that back around to the idea of Christ, which is one goes on a cross and dies for your sins.
The other suffers by gaining power and wealth.
And it also goes ahead and gets rid of I think the rewriting of history is absolutely necessary, because you can't learn actual history, you can't learn actual facts, but it has to shift and change in order to make this holy and good with a capital H and a capital G, right?
Which is when God sort of endorses what you're doing.
Yeah, there's really this sense, there's a very hierarchical sense in Christian nationalism of some people, I mean, really, some lives are worth more than others.
And again, just completely goes against a biblical witness, completely ignores Christianity's own history and America's own history.
You know, I have to confess that I did not fully account for the role of race in Christian nationalism.
I was much more interested in classism.
But honestly, for me, I, I live just a few miles away from where George Floyd was killed and so for me being a part of the movement afterwards, among other clergy here in Minneapolis, and towards a further reckoning with racism here in, you know, white liberal Minneapolis.
It became really important for me to understand and for people to really know that in order to embrace Christian nationalism, you have to also embrace whiteness and white privilege.
Because if you are willing to say that America is the Holy Land, that this is this God-ordained country that was created as part of God's plan, then you also are saying that slavery, American slavery, American mistreatment of Black Americans, Was part of God's plan, was part of God's holy land.
And to do that, that's a really difficult thing for a black American to look back and say, yeah, I'm on board with this.
And so ultimately it really is grounded.
This is a white story for white Americans and for white Christians.
And that doesn't mean there aren't people of color who subscribe to Christian nationalism, but ultimately it is a story for white Americans.
Yeah, absolutely it is.
And I think, you know, you brought up Luther and sort of the Protestant schism that took place.
And I think that's really important because a lot of what happens, I think, after the Catholic Church sort of takes control is instructive.
I was just lecturing about this a couple days ago.
They create this thing called like the great chain of being, right?
The idea that there is like a natural universal hierarchy.
It starts with God, goes to the angels, goes to the church, goes to kings, and then the peasants.
And those artificial hierarchies, there's no reason for them.
There's no reason why white people should have any better life than black people at all.
There's no reason that women should be subjected to men.
And all of those ideas, the only thing that you can offer to validate them, there's no science, there are no facts, there's no historical actual precedent besides, you know, the oppression.
The only thing you can say is it's as God wills it.
And so it's a really incredible weapon to legitimize that hierarchy that you're talking about.
And it's brutal, but because it creates a story and a mythology, it creates that same story.
And they're actually looking to rebuild, going back to the Protestant schism, they're looking to rebuild the universal Catholic sort of model, whether it's Catholic or otherwise, they're looking to create something like it.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this This idea of hierarchy, this idea of some lives being worth more than others, and how that's found, you know, they're saying that this is because God ordained it to be so.
I think that's why it's also so important to talk about how people view God, because for so long, you know, American Christians have kind of taken for granted that God, the concept of God that we have, is definitely male and probably white.
Um, and because people see God in that way, it then sort of sustained this entire hierarchical set that ends with white men at the top.
Um, so that's why I really do think it's important for Christians to consider our language in worship, how we talk about God.
I mean, you know, varying, not only having masculine language for God and that, you know, that's not something that I believed several years ago.
I thought, Oh, just stick with the tradition.
But I've realized that it is very important because it really Changes how we think about the world, how we see God.
Yeah, that was something I used to get in trouble for that when I was in church.
I would suddenly start thinking about what that meant, the idea of genitals.
I used to have these fights with youth pastors and then eventually they would send me to the pastor himself to have these fights about it.
There's absolutely no reason.
An all-knowing, all-powerful God doesn't need to reproduce sexually.
I think Christ himself showed that if we're going to go through the mythology.
But it's very useful, right?
And this is one of the reasons, I think, why Christian nationalism is on the rise, is it is a reaction to feminism.
It is a reaction to civil rights.
It's a literal story and mythology that is meant to roll back any of that progress since, like you said, the 1950s.
And I think a lot of people are even looking to take it back into, you know, centuries before.
But I mean, that's a it's a pretty good vehicle for that.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's really uncanny and it's, that's why knowing our history is so important because it's uncanny to see the ways that history is being repeated here.
You know, whether it's in the Reconstruction times after the Civil War as a reaction to freeing of the slaves and the Indians victory.
And I do think some of that is, is an American culpability of this This idolatry of progress, this idolatry of always looking forward, this idolatry of positive thinking, this unwillingness to repent, this unwillingness to confess because somehow confessing means that we're weak.
So I think all that contributes.
So I want to talk to you about this article that you wrote.
Really quickly, though, I want to ask, I've noticed A lot of pastors.
I've had a lot of conversations with religious leaders.
You know, a lot of people who you would define as progressive, who have called this out for years.
You know, this has been a, I mean, it's been a struggle for decades, right?
And I've also talked to a lot of people who I think they were really blindsided by this.
A lot of people who were preaching in churches like mine who were peddling the same conspiracy theories, the idea of the wicked world, all these conspiracies.
It does feel like a lot of religious leaders, even the people who are involved in sort of laying the foundation for this, are starting to wake up and realize this is dangerous.
Do you get a sense that there is a building reaction to this in the religious community?
And if you do, and maybe if you don't, do you think it's possible?
And do you think it's a little bit too little too late?
Yeah, I do think there's a movement, and what's interesting is, you know, I start my book with a chapter on Christian nationalism, and the whole impetus for that was conversations I had with pastors from the SBC, with Southern Baptist pastors who were right at the center of the SBC leadership at that time, and they're really calling this out and calling it a gospel distortion.
So I think that's been there.
What I think is happening now, and I think some data has come out to sort of Back this up, is that, and I actually heard this from those SBC pastors too, all the way back in 2018, is that what's happening for people is that when forced to choose, like if their pastor or if their religious leader says, this is dangerous, we're not going to go down this path, people will choose to lose their faith before they lose their political ideology.
And they wouldn't structure it as losing their faith, but you know, maybe they'd leave church.
They won't go to church anymore.
People are much quicker because so many churches have so strongly emphasized worship of America, what it means to be an American, over teaching the stories of Jesus.
You know, there's that classic example of who gets more applause at a church on Sunday morning.
Is it the returning war veteran or is it, you know, the missionary?
Um, most missionaries have their own problems, but, um, so that, that to me says, I think that's what's happening is instead of, you know, Christians having a broad reaction against all this, what's happening is instead is they're just going to turn away from that local pastor, that local church, and hew even closer to this broader sense of an authoritarian American God.
Yeah, and I've seen a lot of that.
A lot of the pastors I've talked to are watching their congregations move to, and this sounds funny when you say it out loud, but they're moving to QAnon churches.
You know, they're moving, and I think some of us have seen these places.
It's like, I come from a small town, and you'll be like driving past the Dairy Queen, and you'll notice that it has shut down, and suddenly it's now a church.
Right.
It's like this upstart church, who knows who's running it or whatever.
And meanwhile, it's covered in like Trump, MAGA stuff and Christian iconography.
So you've got a lot of pop ups like this, but you also have a burgeoning, you know, Christian nationalist church movement that's sort of taking place.
And in a way, it's something that has happened, I feel like and I want to hear what you have to say about this.
The message of Spiritual salvation.
The idea that you need to work on your soul, you need to work on your life, and yeah, you're going to help your community and do all of this.
The message has changed in these sort of places and locales to, you know, you need to work on your country, and you need to take over the country.
And then, and the message of a lot of this is, there will be a new Great Awakening.
There will be, you know, it will set the table for Christ's return.
We'll suddenly have like an explosion of consciousness.
It's really weird.
It's like this mixture of racism, Christianity, plus New Age sort of parts to it.
And a lot of what I'm hearing is a lot of pastors look up and they realize that their members of their churches have moved on to these places because it gives them I don't know.
It gives them some sort of a different direction or some sort of a different kind of a secular worldly goal.
I think what I'm thinking about the whole time you're talking about this is profit motive.
Yeah, right.
Is that this kind of stuff is very profitable.
And there are these, you know, local pop-up churches.
I know what you're talking about.
But what's enabling this movement in an odd way, Is technology and these celebrity pastors and celebrity sort of influencers, if you will, so that people may go to a local congregation, but they're really getting their spiritual worldview from the radio, from podcasts, from YouTube.
And so again, like all the stuff that I wrote about in my book, even, you know, people like Bill Hybels, people, places like the Crystal Cathedral, people like Billy Graham, you know, this era of the celebrity preacher, Um, made it possible for, you know, all this movement into what's ultimately a profit motive.
It's very profitable for these guys to go out and write pro-Christian nationalist books.
Um, and it's, it's really sad, but again, that's that theology of glory, you know, and that's the thing that's the hardest for me to counter as a religious leader, as a theologically trained person, um, that I don't think Most of the people who are leading this movement are true believers in movement.
You know, I think it's just, yeah, I can't, I'm gonna, I'm gonna like, take as much from this as I can.
And then when it blows up, you know, at least I'll be rich.
Yeah, I think there's a really interesting parallel with that.
I don't know if you followed this, but Jerry Falwell Jr., after he had his, I don't know how else to put this, fall from grace, he kind of went on this weird media tour, and I think he wrote a book, and I can't confirm that because I don't care.
Uh, but he talked pretty consistently about how his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., who, by the way, is one of, if people don't understand this, is probably one of the most consequential Americans of the 20th century in creating this.
Everything that we're talking about sort of stems from that.
The fact that Jerry Falwell Sr.
didn't actually believe in any of this stuff.
It was just an incredible way to make money.
And I think a really telling part of this is the whole televangelist boom of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and you can even take it back further than that.
I mean, it's charlatans.
It's literal snake oil salesmen who figured out how to take Christianity, a faith, and not only turn it into an empire, but to go ahead and also start influencing politics for their own purposes.
I mean, it's a total bastardization of a faith that we've seen take place.
And I'm all about, you know, let's take the log out of our own eye before we, you know, take the speck out of somebody else's.
So I think there's a lot of responsibility to go around of, you know, local church pastors, mainline pastors, centrist pastors, and church leaders.
Because what I experienced, you know, coming up in the 90s, early 2000s, going to seminary in 2009, It was all about like, how do we emulate this?
How do we, you know, do what Willow Creek did?
How do we become Saddleback Church?
And there was such a, and you know, I'm not saying I didn't buy into it.
There was such an acceptance of the rules of capitalism for the church.
And there was such, you know, the church growth movement, the church building movement.
You have so many churches right now that are so hamstrung because they have huge mortgages to pay off.
And so then every single month, no matter what kind of mission you want to do, what kind of work you want to do in the community, you've got to pay that mortgage.
And so you've got to be beholden to some wealthy people to help you do that.
So I think there's a lot of blame to go around for how everybody got caught up in a theology of glory in so many different ways.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And you touch on this and I want to get your sub stack is called I'm listening.
I think it's a really, really good.
And you wrote something.
I don't say this very often.
It's pretty brave.
The article is called sometimes I want to be a Christian nationalist.
You know, and I want to set this up because I have to imagine considering the listenership on this the show, like there were some, you know, hankles that went up hearing that title.
But one of the things that I always talk about is, I think we need to understand the personal reasons why people right now are moving into authoritarianism, why they're embracing these charlatans and dangerous movements.
Can you talk a little bit about what it was that inspired this article?
Yeah, it had kind of, it was something I was thinking about a lot, and I told my husband I was thinking about that, and he was like, I don't know about that.
People aren't gonna like that, and it was, you know, an attention-grabbing title, but at the same time, I'm a mom of two.
My kids are 10 and 7, and for a really long time, I Even in all these other ways that I was so suspicious of the church and the church had harmed me as a woman, I still had in my mind like this vision of what the church as an institution was going to be like for my kids and what programs they could have, what Sunday school would be like, all these different things.
And, you know, I kind of am at a point where I'm having to recognize that's not going to be possible because so many of Those programmatic churches, you know, I was at a church where I was in a confirmation program with 200 other students.
To sustain that kind of staffing, programs, all these, you know, mission trips, fun trips, all these things that in and of themselves were innocuous, they were sustained by A church structure that was fueled by money.
It was fueled by, I mentioned this in the article, you know, you have a mass of unpaid labor in large churches, and you have a mass of underpaid labor in large churches.
You know, the senior pastor may be getting wealthy, but most of the other folks that are working at the church tend to be women, stay-at-home moms, you know, people that were paid terribly, if at all, and they're the ones who are really keeping it going.
And I think we're at a place in our country right now with, you know, that's just not economically possible for families.
And so there's a lot of reasons that kind of model of church had to die.
But I think that it can be hard to let it go.
And it can be hard to see the underside of what we took for granted.
Yeah, and I want to talk a little bit about how that happened and what it means and what it means long term.
But I want to say very quickly, I thought something that really struck me.
I left the faith, you know, I left it in my heart before I left it in body, you know, and I did it in part because it was racist and extreme and just so contradictory because it was peddling a lot of this stuff that we're talking about.
But I have to tell you, like, when I did leave it, it was one of the loneliest periods of my life.
And there are still moments, particularly when things get very tough.
And things are very tough right now, right?
You know, I was doing this live stream last night and somebody said, you know, I'm feeling so discouraged.
What do what do I do about it?
And it's right to be somewhat discouraged right now.
It's right to be cynical right now, to a certain extent.
But I think it's the loneliness sometimes that is really hard.
When you are part of a church, you have a natural community, you have people who are there, people that you know, you have this built-in network and just your own little internal society.
And that's been systematically destroyed in this country.
For a lot of different reasons.
I mean, we could talk for an hour or two about neoliberalism, hollowing out the experience together with other people, but we are a profoundly lonely country now.
And what you're talking about, I mean, it feels good to be in a crowd.
It feels good to listen to music and have people that are asking how you are and saying, I've been thinking about you or I've been praying about you.
Is it not a natural inclination in times like these to see something that is growing into a movement and feel like, oh, wow, maybe that feels better than being out here and feeling powerless?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And that's why I do think, too, you know, you drive around any part of America, there's there's still a lot of churches.
And there are still places where people, you know, are finding community in really powerful ways and ways that, you know, don't show up when we're talking about American Christianity.
So I will say, I think that's still happening.
I was reading today, I was preparing for Reformation Sunday on Sunday, and I was reading a letter from Martin Luther that he had written to a pastoral colleague of his whose baby son had died.
And it's Luther expounding on how he sees the gospel as comfort.
And the Christian nationalist leaders won't tell you about that Martin Luther.
You know, they will see if they use Luther at all, they'll use him with a cudgel to knock you down or to knock somebody else down.
And I think the community that's being formed around this movement of Christian nationalism Is a community formed against, and that kind of community, I mean, I'm going to sound, you know, way more optimistic than I actually am, but that kind of community never lasts.
That kind of community will cannibalize itself every single time.
And the communities that do last are communities that are built around being for something.
And so I guess when I turn to, you know, I can resonate with your sense of loneliness for sure.
And that sense of like, You know, I drive an hour west of my home in Minneapolis to get to this little rural church where I serve as pastor.
And it's, it's really hard.
You know, it's hard for a lot of different reasons.
But, um, last year when my brother-in-law died of COVID at age 42, my church was the one who got us a little rock for our front yard, remembering him.
And, you know, there's this, so I always turn back to when nothing else works, um, I call it, you know, pastoral care as a pastor, but it's really just community care.
It's care for one another.
And if we start to build communities around that building block, those are the communities that are going to last.
Probably won't be written about, you know, in the New York Times, but those are communities that are going to form a bulwark against this rising tide of authoritarianism and hatred and all that.
Yeah, and I want to talk about that cannibalization real fast because I think that's really important that people don't understand, some people don't particularly understand, but I want to say I completely agree in terms of what I think can sort of stem the tide.
I think it has to be, and here's the thing, I think when someone like yourself or someone like your church or your religious community Like, local organizers can work with you, right?
Because you're not, like, vying for power.
You're not, like, having some sort of an orthodox fight with them.
And I think that when that part of the religious community partners with the people who reject this, I think all of a sudden you realize there are so many more of us, and through solidarity you can actually gain power, but it's still Feels lonely, going back to what we were talking about, right?
It feels like everybody is sort of so spread apart and so focused on their particular objectives, but I think organization has to build off of local people of literally all stripes and whether it's denominations or faith or lack of faith, I think.
Yeah, and I think, you know, that the way we feel is Because of the stories we tell ourselves or the stories we read, and I know you've written about this, but the stories and a lot of times that national media tells about, you know, what's happening in our culture and sort of building this narrative that is false in a lot of ways.
I just think that's further a result of, you know, a news media that is also in the same way that mainline denominations became culpable in this buying into capitalism.
I think National news organizations in the same way became culpable in buying into capitalism.
And so we have a real lack and that's what I'm so grateful for you and your work and so many others you know that there's there's stories are other narratives are trying to get out there and I think come much closer to the truth.
I appreciate that.
And real fast on the cannibalization note, I just want to point out that when the Catholic Church had total control, basically, of Western civilization, it's not like it was just peace.
I mean, it was literally murdering one person after another.
Because orthodoxy absolutely requires cannibalization.
And if you look at when systems of religion or religious mythology mixed with the state, whether it's, you know, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, or the Taliban, exactly.
Well, and there's a lot going on with America and this.
Like, it requires othering, it requires violence, and it is, it's a suicide spiral, is what it is.
And I think, I was yelling about this last night, like, people who think that they're going to benefit from this, they need to understand it doesn't just stop with your enemies.
It comes for you.
And I think one of the most frightening things about this, and this is one of the reasons I actually think somebody, I think people should read your article, Sometimes I Want to Be a Christian Nationalist, The allure is there.
Because right now, politically and societally, there are a lot of losses piling up.
Christian nationalism is, I mean, it controls the court.
It controls the highest court in the land.
And by the way, it is the fastest growing ideology in the United States right now.
Like, it's going crazy.
It's spreading like crazy.
It is going to be a thing where people are going to have to choose.
Are you going to go with the easy thing?
Because it is.
It's the easy thing to go and be a part of it and to sort of reap the rewards of being part of the growing movement that is Christian nationalism.
Or are you going to understand that there is There is glory in the struggle, right?
There is something about staying on your own path and fighting the good fight.
And I think that that is, I think that's a question a lot of us are going to be asked in the very near future.
Yeah.
I keep going back to that Arnold Schwarzenegger video where he talks about his father as a Nazi war veteran and just the scars that that carries and the generational trauma that's carried by people who were part of these movements.
I think there's, you know, we don't talk enough about that, especially as white Americans of like, you know, the different generational trauma that's carried by being the oppressor.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And again, everyone, we've been talking with Angela Denker, who is a Lutheran pastor and a journalist.
The book is Red State Christians, A Journey into White Christian Nationalism.
Absolutely recommend it.
Substack is I'm listening.
The article is sometimes I want to be a Christian nationalist, which I got to tell you, I think is its own thesis that needs to be read.
Thank you so much for joining us, Angela.
Come back again, okay?
Thank you.
Thanks for good tech.
Alright, that's going to bring us to the end, again, of this bonus Weekender Double-Stuffed Edition.
I hope that this has been useful for a variety of reasons.
And yeah, I'm walking away from this episode I'm feeling a lot of things, deep in my feelings, and I hope maybe you are as well.
Thank you again for our loyal supporters, the people, again, who make sure that this is ad-free and editorially independent.
I don't think you're going to find a lot of this stuff anywhere else, for sure.
And again, if you are listening to this and usually just get the preview, please go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
We need your help.
We need your support.
Yeah.
So thank you, everybody.
I hope you have a fantastic weekend.
I hope like hell that things don't fall apart over the next couple of days, that I can go home, I can enjoy a little bit of cake and celebration with my mom on her birthday.
And see some of my people.
And be cold.
I think Indiana's gonna be cold this weekend.
So, I hope wherever you are, you are warm and safe and happy.
And we will be back next week.
If you need us before then, Nick, you can find it.
