Brad and Dan discuss the latest of Falwell's Follies. They then analyze the presence of religion and faith at the Democratic convention, the fallout from the president's affirmation of QAnon, the GOP's problematic future, the arrest of Bannon and the Senate Intelligence Commitee's confirmation of Russian interference and collusion, and the criticism of Kamala Harris as not Black enough from pundits on the Right.
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My name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I'm here with my co-host today.
I'm Dan Miller.
I'm Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and Brad, it's good to see you.
In the 2020 bingo, right, like wildfires in California are something that everybody could have planned on, but I think like end-of-the-world apocalyptic lightning strikes and things like that or not, and clearly affecting you so much that you don't even remember where you teach at this point.
I think that's right, yeah.
Yeah, so those of you who don't know, we had a blazing heat wave in California over the last week.
That led to a very unusual lightning storm that took place over the course of the weekend.
And I've lived all over the country.
I know that other regions like to make fun of, you know, places that struggle with things that seem innocuous.
So, like, when I lived, you know, when I live in upstate New York and Atlanta gets one inch of snow and it tears up the city, everyone's like, oh, look at that, you know.
So, I know what you might be thinking, like, what do you mean lightning?
But we do not have lightning storms here in this part of the country.
During the summer, it's just very rare if you add to that the global warming effects of just dry... Anyway, I could talk about this forever.
I'm not going to.
What I'm trying to say here, Dan, is as I speak, about 10 miles, 15 miles east of me is a fire that is 200,000 acres at this point.
We've been sort of on evacuation alert for the last three days.
We packed a bag, it's all sitting in front of the door.
So anyway, it's been a pretty difficult week over here.
If you can, folks, think of, or if you're a praying type, pray for California.
It's just not a good time.
So, silver lining of all that, Dan, is I'm here with you today and we get to talk about all of these I mean, there's a lot.
I feel like we say that every week.
It's cliche at this point, but it's just absolutely true.
So, I'm going to start, though, with our old friend Jerry Falwell Jr.
We thought we were done with Falwell's follies, but we are not.
Friends, some of you may have seen it, maybe you have not.
If you didn't see it yet, I will warn you, it is not something you can unsee.
Yesterday a video emerged of Jerry Falwell Jr.
in the gym doing an exercise that is meant to strengthen your glutes where you put a barbell over your midsection and thrust upward.
You might have seen people do this in the gym or something.
But Jerry Falwell was doing this with two women standing on either side of the bar and it just did not, you know, Dan, there's a lot of jokes I can make.
It did not look like there was much room for the Holy Spirit except Jesus into your heart and you too can turn women into weights.
I don't know.
I mean, what do you think, Dan?
I mean, we could do a whole 50 minutes on Maybe he's trying, he's no longer President of Liberty, he wants to be on the power team?
Like maybe he'll be ripping phone books apart soon and telling us about how God gave him the power?
I don't know, what do you think?
Doing all to the glory of God, right?
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that.
I was thinking of the power team.
For those who don't know or didn't grow up in the evangelical subculture at the time we did, there was this, I don't know if it's as prevalent evangelicalism as it was, but there was this time where like no matter what you did or were good at, if you could say that you were doing it as a Christian, you could like Make a ministry out of it.
And the power team were these really, really big guys who would do like feats of strength.
Like throwing around weights and tearing up phone books with their teeth or their hands or like, you know, whatever.
So yeah, that Liberty thing didn't work out.
So maybe, maybe the power team it is.
That's Paul Wells' next move.
Yeah, maybe he's training.
So that's all the best for him with that endeavor.
Let's jump in.
We've got to talk about a lot.
We've got to talk about Dem Convention.
We've got to talk about numerous fronts of corruption related to Bannon and Senate Intel.
We've got to talk about QAnon.
We've got to talk about Kamala Harris.
Anyway, there's a lot to get to.
Let's start with this, Dan.
Dem convention wrapped up last night.
Biden gave what I think is being touted as a pretty good speech.
I know you'll get into that here in a sec.
I want to start with this though, with religion.
Fox News earlier this week put up an infographic that said, and I'm looking at it right now, Biden pretending to be faith and family candidate.
Okay, so that's fun.
And if you were an alien and you saw that, you would think, that doesn't make any sense.
Biden has been a Catholic ever since he's been public office.
He's been a Catholic his whole life.
And he's clearly a family person.
Like, we've all seen and empathized with him as like, he's talked about his son dying, about his wife dying, his first wife dying when he was young.
I mean, the idea that he's not a family man is so strange.
The idea that he's not a person of faith is so strange.
And yet, after the Dem Convention, Franklin Graham decided he needed to wake up today and talk about how, here's what he said, it has been interesting to see the absence of God at the Dem Convention.
I don't believe America's finest hours will be in front of us if we take God out of government and public life.
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