Capitalist Christianity: A History of Evangelicalism + Big Business
Brad speaks with author David Clary about his new book, Soul Winners: The Ascent of America's Evangelical Entrepreneurs. They discuss the history of evangelicalism's intimate relationships with big business. David explains how for centuries revivalist preachers have relied on financing from angel investors to fund their churches, rallies, and programs. He also explains how modern megachurches rely just as much on business principles as theology to grow their churches and appeal to the masses. The conversation provides a window into why so many Christian churches oppose collective action, unions, and anything that questions the gospel of capitalism.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Soul Winners: https://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9781633887824
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
To Donate:
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundy Axis Mundy So your day job is as a news editor at the San Diego Union Tribune, but you're an author who's written several great books.
Previously, you wrote Gangsters to Governors, The New Bosses of Gambling in America, which earned medals from the Independent Publishers Book Awards and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in 2018.
The book we're going to talk about today is Soul Winners, the Ascent of America's Evangelical Entrepreneurs.
As listeners will know, this book obviously hits home for me.
I'm from Orange County.
I focus in my work a lot on the history of evangelicalism and white Christian nationalism in Orange County in the Southland.
So it's just a real treat to get to sort of talk to you about this book that really is in many ways sweeping in nature.
You really do take us on a historical tour de force of the ways that evangelicals have been not only entrepreneurial, but innovative in the ways that they have worked with big business and other partners in industry to advance their message.
And so let me start by asking you this.
The book focuses on this relationship between big business and evangelical churches.
You really argue that there's kind of innovation on both sides.
So I'm wondering, you know, if we think about evangelical leaders in the 20th century, the 21st century, What do they get from partnering with big business?
Well, when you have a large-scale church or a television ministry, or you want to start a Bible institute or university, all that costs a lot of money.
You need capital.
You need a lot of it.
And these evangelical entrepreneurs, they go to where the money is.
So it's usually Wealthy businessmen, large corporations.
And you see this, you know, the reason why I wanted to go back in history is this has been going on for well more than a century.
You go back to Dwight L. Moody, his large-scale crusades, revivals, whatever you want to call them.
I mean, those cost lots of money to advertise.
You have to organize it.
Uh, Billy Sunday, who came a little bit later.
No church was large enough to hold the number of people who wanted to see him, so he had to build his own cathedrals, essentially.
That costs a lot of money.
And, um, so he partnered up with people like John B. Rockefeller Jr., uh, in his committees where he stalked with, uh, with, with, with wealthy people.
And those are the people that have the money.
And people like Billy Sunday, you know, he was, um, very skeptical as a government action.
You know, he, he, he didn't like unions.
They preached about that.
He thought that, you know, they were tied to communism and they were, and he derided socialism.
And those are the kinds of messages that large, uh, wealthy business people like to have disseminated.
So they, so it was really a symbiotic relationship.
You know, they, they both got something from, from the other side.
And, and so they, uh, And then you see it, obviously, for Billy Graham and then our contemporary entrepreneurs as well.
You really hit on something that was kind of my next question, which is, okay, so I'm Billy Sunday.
I've got this massive church.
I have so many followers.
There's no Instagram at this point, so I actually need people to be in person.
And I need a building.
And hey, Rockefeller says, hey, let's do it.
But you're going to put my people on your elder board, on your committee, on your church governance, policymaking decision structures.
All of a sudden, I mean, here's my question.
Let's just take Billy Sunday as this sort of early 20th century figure.
Folks, if you're not familiar with Billy Sunday, just an enormous influence on American religion in the early 20th century, kind of a forerunner to some of the people you might be familiar with, Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell or Joel Osteen or others.
If I'm Billy Sunday, is it just out of nowhere, you know, that I decide unions are bad and government get out of my business?
Or is it, is there a kind of, you know, quid pro quo here of like, hey, we'll finance your building, but we're going to need to make sure that your sermons really do include this idea that the government needs to get out of here.
Low taxes and unions totally from the devil.
Yeah, I think some of it really is sort of baked into evangelicalism because it's such an individualistic religion in that it's great that a person can decide, you know, I'm going to convert and commit to Jesus today.
I don't have to go through this long period of study.
There is something ingrained in evangelicalism that's so individualistic, and I think that permeates into politics, and Billy Sunday really exemplified that.
I mean, he, you know, at the time he was popular, there was, you know, a social gospel movement, and he derided any kind of government activity as just nonsense.
You know, he just felt like businesses should be left to You know, to do their own thing.
And so he was always at war with the liberal Protestants.
You know, there was a sense that the liberals were in charge of all the important seminaries of the time.
And he was an exponent of individualism above all.
So in terms of worrying about the idea for opposing unions, I just think that just fell in really neatly with his worldview.
And I think when you take money from a patron, you tend to take on what the patron likes.
There is a built-in resonance here, right?
If you're a businessman who has a worldview that hard work and individualism lead to prosperity and a kind of capitalist payoff, and then you have an individualist ethos in your preaching and your understanding of the Christian gospel, then I think people should just take away very easily that there's a reason that this relationship has been so symbiotic for so long in the United States.
One of the periods that I am really interested in and I focus in on my work in The Orange Wave and in my book is the middle 20th century.
And one of the things that I think some folks are aware of, but maybe not totally, is that after World War II, there really is this kind of renaissance of pro-business, pro-capitalist, and anti-communist Christianity Especially in Southern California.
I mean, you're in San Diego.
I grew up in Orange County.
So, I'm just wondering, you know, what did the evangelical business marriage look like during, like, the Eisenhower years just after World War II?
You know, 1948, 1950.
How is big business trying to really cozy up in even more intimate ways to evangelical Christianity?
Yeah, I think what you see in the Eisenhower years is a real marriage of Americanism, pro-capitalism, It tied in so neatly with Evangelicals.
Evangelicals really were just primed because during World War II, they were starting to organize better.
You have the foundation of the National Association of Evangelicals.
That was in 1943.
You had Youth for Christ, which is how Billy Graham got started in the 40s.
Captain's Crusade for Christ came later in the 40s.
So all those para-church organizations were primed, and they worked so closely with these large-scale preachers like Billy Graham and Laurel Roberts in the 50s.
And I think the country was just, it really was unblocked in this battle with the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was seen as anti-religion, religion is the opiate of the people, anti-capitalism.
And so that was really where you saw this Americanism and Christianity so closely tied in Eisenhower.
Support of that.
He was very close to Billy Graham.
Eisenhower was actually baptized after he was elected in 1952, and Billy Graham helped him find a church in Washington.
And that's where we saw it, under God, inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance.
So all this in the National Prayer Breakfast started early in Eisenhower's career, and that was the The ultimate marriage of big business and politics.
I think it was just the era of the Cold War and just that battle between capitalism and communism and religion and anti-religion that was manifesting then.
It really is a fascinating time because you, this is, I mean, most folks don't realize like, I mean, Eisenhower himself is fascinating.
As you say, he has this sort of religious renewal as president.
I mean, can you imagine if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris announced today that, Oh, I'm getting baptized next week.
Everyone, I mean, the country would lose its mind, but you know, Eisenhower got baptized In God We Trust, all of the One Nation Under God.
And I think what you point out and what your book really shows us is that And this is something obviously we talk about every week on the show, but the Americanism and the Christianity are just so entangled during this period.
It's not like they hadn't been before, but it just seems so rich at this point.
It's just overwhelming in terms of the flag and the cross.
They go together.
To be a real American is to be pro-capitalist, pro-private property, pro-God, not the godless communist.
And it's just amazing how In your book, you really show us like capitalism and Christianity are just seen as like natural allies.
You know, Billy Graham talks about private properties.
That's what Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount.
And it's like, you know, really, does he?
I thought I'd read that.
I hadn't found that part.
So it really is quite fascinating time, I think.
Yeah.
And you look over and over again, you know, I study people like Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and over and over again, Billy Graham lets you start a magazine.
You know, J. Howard Pugh.
Yes.
It was a conservative Christian.
He he's the one who bankrolled that magazine and kept it going.
And it's still Christian today is still, you know, it's a it's a really it's a great magazine.
But it's like that.
The reason why it exists is because J. Howard Pugh stepped up to to fund it.
But over and over again, his career, Billy Graham wants to go on TV as a businessman to help him.
You know, an oil man, Sid Richardson, helped him.
Meet Dwight Eisenhower.
I mean, it's so remarkable.
Every year, they want to start a Bible Institute.
They want to build a larger church.
There's always a rich person there to help them along.
It's always somebody who believes in big business.
It's so interesting.
Every step of the way, these entrepreneurs are helped by wealthy individuals or wealthy corporations.
I get asked almost every week, hey, is there a religious left?
Is there a Christian left?
And I say, of course there is.
But one of the things we have to realize is the funding is so different.
If we take everything you're showing us in your book, the idea that folks on the religious left would just have billionaires who are like, yeah, let us just bankroll everything you're up to.
It's just not going to happen.
And perhaps would not be welcome in most cases because they wouldn't want that money.
Whereas on throughout American evangelical history, as you just said, business interest after business interest, whether it's starting Christianity today, whether it's bankrolling Billy Graham's revivals, whether it's Billy Sunday, it just never stops in terms of the episodes of this.
Let's come into the into the present.
And I think many folks listening will be familiar with the nondenominational church.
A lot of You know, memes about this online, the mega church that isn't connected, at least the name to a denomination.
Maybe if we go back through their documents, they're Southern Baptist or there's something else.
But we, you know, most of us know how this works, right?
Casual clothes, a cool guy, pastor.
Maybe it's a Hawaiian shirt, maybe it's skinny jeans, a latte, rock music, some lasers perhaps in the worship space, kids on a rock climbing wall.
I don't know, you know, all of, all of the, the, the cool stuff.
What most folks won't know is just how this phenomenon is as much a product of business principles as anything else.
Can you help us understand that?
How is a megachurch really the product of modern day business strategies and business ideas more than perhaps theology or biblical doctrine?
Yeah, well, especially the non-denominational churches.
They have to rise and fall on their own.
They don't have a structure to lean on.
So they really are start-up churches.
They have to look at their market.
Who are they serving?
And what do people want?
And they really strive to meet people where they are.
And so they try to find what the need is in their market, and they try to fill it just like any business does.
You give people what they want.
So if people want to have a Starbucks-style coffee bar and they want to have a 12-piece praise band and they want to have stadium-style or theater-style seating, or they want a pastor who's relaxed and there's no dress code or they want a pastor who's relaxed and there's no dress code and it's a guy talking about being a great dad or tips on how to have a good marriage, you
They really tried hard to study what people want in a church and what they don't want.
They also go after the largest group is people who are unchurched.
That's their target.
So they really go for the people that maybe they were a Christian, they fell away, or they never went to a church.
That's their target, the target audience.
And that's the largest audience there is, you know, especially today, you know, with the rise of the religious nuns, you know.
So, yeah, they really, it's marketing.
They know how to advertise.
You know, they're not afraid to try new things.
They're not afraid, you know, during the pandemic, you know, a lot of these churches were, they were set up pretty well because they already had a very robust social media channels.
They already had their services online that you could stream anywhere.
They know how to reach people and they are very good at it.
Actually, as far as my research, I went to nine different churches.
So, right ranging from the Rock Church here in San Diego, I went to the Saddleback Church and some smaller forefront churches.
And they were, it was just fascinating to go there and say, you know, I just went as an observer and I participated.
You know, sometimes I got a tour of the church if I got there early and they were, they were, they were very prominent people.
There are rock climbing walls, like you say, or the coffee bars, and They want people to come, not just on Sunday morning, but come seven days a week.
A lot of these places have gymnasiums, they've got kids programs, they've got all kinds of Bible study groups, and then they have groups at home.
That's actually kind of the secret sauce.
A lot of these megachurches are these small groups that meet every week, and that's where you build those connections to the church.
I want to focus on Rick Warren Saddleback Church because I grew up just half an hour from there and when I was in ministry in the early 2000s, it was an enormous influence in the region and really across the country.
And friends, if you're not familiar with Saddleback Church, it's one of the largest churches in the country.
Rick Warren is one of the most influential pastors in the country, you know, has has hosted presidents, has has been somebody who's really become a face of American Christianity at certain times.
And he wrote this book called The Purpose Driven Life.
And it was really like, here's your five purposes for life, for living.
And it was for you, Christian.
And I'll just be honest, David, when I was in ministry, everybody at my church, every pastor was reading that book.
And they were all like, I kind of wish we were Saddleback Church.
I wish we could be them.
And, you know, if and I would have like colleagues of fellow pastors who would go to Saddleback and be like, all right, what do they do?
How do they do it?
You know, let's take one of their seminars.
Let's see if we can't reproduce the secret sauce.
What's the ingredient.
Right.
And what I realized, I'm not going to lie, uh, just me being the curmudgeon professorial type that I am.
I picked up the Purpose Driven Life in 2000, whatever it was for, and I got about 10 pages in and here's my, here was my reaction is.
This is a business self-help book with Christian words inserted, and I don't want to read it.
At the time, I was like, I want to be a hardcore disciple of Jesus.
I don't want to get inspired by Tony Robbins.
And The reason I bring that up is because to me, that exemplifies the whole approach of the megachurch non-denominational ethos is let's take principles that work in business and let's appeal to customers.
And if we can just get the most customers, that will be success.
So yes, we have to appeal to them and their needs, and hopefully they will want to come here and we'll get money, we'll get donations, we'll get big business interests, and we'll be off and running.
Is that fair?
I mean, am I just a sort of, you know, curmudgeonly kind of critical guy?
In your research, does that line up?
That basically it's almost like it's better to get an MBA to get an MDiv if you want to be successful as a megachurch pastor.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair.
I mean, I think these pastors do, they really style themselves as CEOs or, you know, or as much as, say, as much as secret pastors.
And they really, if you're working at that kind of scale, you almost have to be a CEO.
You're overseeing, you know, in Saddleback's case, a very large campus.
Their main campus is in Lake Forest.
They have satellite campuses around Southern California.
It's a large operation.
You have hundreds of groups.
You've got a school.
You've got so many ministries.
You have to be on social media.
So there's a lot to it.
It's a large organization.
And then if your goal is to grow, then you're constantly You're constantly looking for the next thing, you know, you're looking for the next market to tap.
So I think that is fair that they do see themselves as CEOs.
And in Warren's case, you know, he was really influenced by Peter Drucker.
You know, you might know he's the management guru, kind of the founder of management theory.
And, you know, he was one of Israel's guiding stars, you know, in starting Sailed Back because Drucker taught that, you know, that nonprofits often lack a clear mission, you know, because they don't have a bottom line.
We also felt like that churches, especially, you know, they should stop doing things that don't work.
You know, don't try to maintain yesterday.
And that's what a lot of churches, a lot of businesses do.
They try to preserve what worked in the past.
And then by doing that, you're not able to change and grow.
So Warren took that to heart.
And so if he had a ministry that started and it didn't work well, he stopped it.
And he wasn't afraid to try new things and to change.
And so I thought that was interesting.
You mentioned the purpose-driven life.
Warren, before that, he wrote a book called The Purpose-Driven Church, which is basically a blueprint for pastors to basically start a Saddleback-type church.
Because by that time, even in the 90s, Saddleback was a really prominent church.
Warren's a really fascinating character.
Well, I had the Purpose Driven Church, and I was a youth minister back then, and I remember reading it and thinking, okay, so this is, and every, don't get, I mean, I'm not lying, everybody around me doing youth ministry was like, okay, Purpose Driven Church, and we're going to organize our ministry according to the five purposes he gives, and we're going to, everything we do will, and it was really like watching people Um, who felt like they had found a business guru, a business magician.
Um, and they were just willing to follow the principal's carte blanche because obviously they worked because he had the most customers, you know?
Um, and I think that's for me, something that's really important to point out.
I'll just say too, and I'll just throw this in, this is a kind of interjection, but I think once we get to the Trump years.
A lot of what you show in the book about big business and the bankrolling of many of these evangelical institutions, whether it's going back to the middle 20th century or all the way to the Trump era, if you are the leader of a church of 10,000, 20,000, if you have been really given the platform by way of mega donors whose politics you know very well line up with MAGA and Trump or whatever,
It's really hard for you to get up on that stage and condemn that stuff.
And so I think a lot of people are mystified, like, when are the megachurch pastors going to say that enough's enough?
And I think it's basically like saying, you know, a CEO coming out and saying that all the investors and all the people that were the angel kind of funders of the of the startup are immoral and ruining everything.
And that was just never going to happen because of those reasons.
I mean, I think This is a real drawback.
If you're going to align yourself with big business, you are tied to big business and you're tied to customers.
A lot of people would say that it's really hard to be true to whatever you know is Christian principles or Christian gospel because you're really tied to that set of actors.
Does that sound fair to you, given everything you've looked at?
Yeah, I think what we really see in the Trump years is so much of this is about power.
It's not about piety or faith.
I interviewed Robert Jeffress, who's the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas.
It's a very, very large church, 15,000 members.
He's got a radio program.
He's on Fox News a lot.
So he's a really well-known Pastor, and I asked him, so what, you know, you're from Texas, you know, in 2016, you know, Ted Cruz was running, he's from your state.
Why do you support Trump?
You know, because see, Jeffress is one of the first evangelical leaders to actually back Trump, and he campaigned with him in Iowa.
And Jeffress just said, I just thought Donald Trump had the best chance to beat Hillary Clinton.
That's it.
I think people try to look for, like, why are evangelicals going to support Trump this time, or why are they supporting him?
It's because they thought he could win.
And then they asked about the Access Hollywood tape that came out, and why do you feel when that came out, when you had Trump, you know, saying all those vile things about women.
You know, Jefferson, I didn't like this, but it was enough to give me the change to vote for Hillary Clinton.
You know, it's just... And I think you see that over and over again.
What's going to be the thing that's going to... Is it going to be January 6th?
Is it going to be the latest thing that Trump says?
And really, like you say, those bonds just will not break.
Yeah.
Yeah.
As long as they think that he can win, that's the key.
You know, if they think that DeSantis can win, then they'll go to hell.
Well, and I think a lot of people are mystified, too, about this idea that we need a businessman to run the country.
But, you know, everything that we're talking about today really points us to the fact that there's a lot of Christians for a long time who have thought that running your church like a business is the best way to do it.
And getting the backing of big business to run your church is the best way to do it.
So it's not really out of nowhere to say, well, we need this businessman who runs casinos and everything else to run the country.
It actually is baked in.
Yeah, yeah, and one of Trump's, you know, his top spiritual advisor was Paula White, you know, who was a pastor in Florida, and she's a TV personality, prosperity gospel preacher, and you can really see if you study the prosperity gospel and you tie it to Trump that that's a perfect marriage, you know, it's this idea of you can If you want something, just give money and it'll happen for you.
She's very telegenic.
She's an entrepreneur.
She's a business person.
Trump is also an entrepreneur.
So you can just see how they really were perfect for each other, for sure.
She had a role in the White House during the Trump years.
She was probably as influential an advisor that That we've seen since Billy Graham and Richard Nixon.
I mean, she was very influential in the Trump White House.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think this really points us to the prosperity gospel, which I want to come back to.
It also points to, we did a whole series on the New Apostolic Reformation, and the New Apostolic Reformation is really, Paula White Kane included, a kind of networked movement where you have a kind of charismatic leaders who are bonded in a kind of spiritual oligarchy rather than denominations.
And I think that movement really points us to the kind of ways that business principles or growth principles work here.
One of the founders of that movement is C. Peter Wagner, and Wagner was a sociologist.
He had a PhD and he studied how institutions grow, how they prosper.
And he just just basically said, let's do that with church growth.
And, and, and there you have it.
So anyway, people listening will be familiar with, with all of that.
Let's talk prosperity gospel here at the end.
I I've interviewed John Compton over at Chapman university and Gerardo Marty, who are both just great researchers and voices on the crystal cathedral in orange County, the development of the prosperity gospel in Southern California.
We, of course, have a lot of figures who represent that coming from this part of the country, but elsewhere.
Could you expand a little bit on what you just said?
The Prosperity Gospel is really kind of like the crescendo of the marriage between Christianity and big business in some sense.
I think there's ways that we could actually talk about it being not, but how do you see that relationship?
Yeah, that goes back pretty far.
I read about Oral Roberts.
He had a teaching called Seed Faith, which was the idea that believers need to give a donation and then they will receive something in return, just like when you put a seed in the ground and then you'll get a plant.
That was his teaching.
And so he taught people that something good will happen to you, you can expect a miracle.
And that was, that's a really powerful idea that people, you know, especially, you know, Worrell Roberts had later in his career, he was more of a television figure.
Some people were watching at home and they see him and they They really developed almost a personal relationship with him.
He was great at direct mail, so he was able to make people feel like they were getting personal letters from him.
So, World Roberts really popularized a lot of that idea of seed faith and the prosperity gospel.
You mentioned Joel Osteen earlier.
He's probably the best known of the prosperity gospel preachers today.
You know, Joel Osteen doesn't have any pastoral or theological training.
His father was a Pentecostal pastor, and Osteen basically was a television producer for his father.
That was his expertise.
For 17 years he was in the control room, which was actually a good training for him to be so telegenic.
But he teaches about North Carolina.
The Prosperity Gospel and all his books and his TV shows, and they all kind of promote this idea that you just have to want something and pray for it and then that it will happen.
And explicitly, God will prosper you and your finances if you believe.
Yeah, Kenneth Copeland, another one that is, I'm sure, well-known to your listeners.
He has his own private airstrip outside of Fort Worth, Texas.
He's on TV all the time.
You know, I think we live in such an aspirational culture, you know, in America.
And I think, you know, a lot of people, when I did this book, they're like, well, you know, how can these pastors take all that?
You know, they live in a 12 billion dollar mansion in Houston.
You know, Copeland has private, you know, Gulfstream jet.
You know, how can all these people take money?
And I said, well, I think, you know, people look up to, you know, their followers looked up to them and think, well, if they made it, then I can make it too.
If I just believe hard enough and I give the money regularly, then good things will happen.
I mean, I will have $1,000 stickers as well, and I will be enriched by faith.
It's a really powerful idea.
It can be a really destructive one as well.
Yeah, just as we close here, it's just really hitting me that, you know, we talk a lot on this show about the ways that Christian nationalists especially, but many folks don't really want to question the systems that really govern our lives, whether they're economic or political or cultural, and the inequalities built into them.
Because it would disrupt those systems, it would cause the need to rethink them, maybe disassemble, reassemble, etc.
And, you know, we talk a lot about that when it comes to race and gender and sexuality, when it comes to, you know, conservative Christians in the United States.
But, you know, I think this discussion today should really highlight for folks that one of the reasons that that is so difficult for prominent evangelical pastors is that, you know, questioning the capitalist system would basically question the very means by which they gain their platform.
And so to do that is not just something that perhaps ideologically or theologically they're opposed to, but Just personally, it's like, that's my meal ticket.
That's how, you know, it's business principles that makes Rick Warren into Rick Warren.
It's capitalism that makes Joel Osteen into the very rich man that he is.
And so questioning that, along with the racial dimensions of capitalism and the other forms of inequality that come with it, just It doesn't make sense from a personal interest standpoint.
I want to make sure people see that before we go.
David, I just want to say thank you for your time and thank you for this book that really does provide a sweeping view of the ways that evangelicals have aligned with big business.
One of the things I will say too is that it shows the innovation.
It's easy to think of Of folks in churches and other places.
And this is not me, but this is a common misconception that they're not sophisticated, that they're not kind of really thinking through how to do things.
And my agreement would be no.
In fact, their ability to innovate, their ability to adapt, their ability to use media is actually well beyond most folks who would be in some ways on the other side of the aisle from them.
So your book really shows us that.
Where are ways that people can link up with you and the book, Soul Winners?
It's available at all the booksellers online, all the usual spots.
I have my own website, davidclaryauthor.com.
I'm also on Twitter.
I'm really glad to have this opportunity to talk to you, Brad.
I am tempted to ask you where the best burrito is in San Diego and especially the best California or otherwise known as San Diego burrito with French fries in it, but I don't want to get you in trouble or fired.
It's a controversial topic.
You're going to get letters at the Tribune about that, so I'm going to just ask you offline about it, but anyway.
All right, folks.
Thank you for listening.
As always, find us at Straight White JC.
Find me at Bradley Onishi.
I will be at Santa Clara University February 23rd if you'd like to come hang out and hear me talk about my new book.
We'll be in Santa Barbara on February 20 at Chaucer's Bookstore.
We'll be in Solvang, which is right near Santa Barbara, on February 19.
So if any of those places are near you, come hang out, come say hello and talk about the very cheery topic of Christian nationalism.
Other than that, we'll be back later this week with the weekly roundup and other stuff.
We can always use your help on PayPal and Patreon.