Special Episode: ONE NATION, ALL BELIEFS - Christian Nationalism on the Ground in Oklahoma
On this episode of ONE NATION, ALL BELIEFS (subscribe links below) brad speaks with Dr. Allyson Shortle an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she studies group identity in the context of American political behavior. She runs OU’s Community Engagement + Experiments Laboratory (CEEL), Oklahoma City’s Community Poll (Exit Poll), and OU’s Democracy Survey of OU freshmen. Dr. Shortle’s new co-authored Cambridge University Press book, The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics (2022 – w. Eric L. McDaniel and Irfan Nooruddin), examines the relationship between American religious exceptionalism and prejudicial and antidemocratic attitudes.
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/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/one-nation-all-beliefs/id1686172926
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0HIjnVZjUwY8H1PD0M7F04?si=0964303c509d490f
Megaphone: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/SWAJ1268297626?selected=SWAJ5941991368
https://www.au.org/
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundy Axis Mundy You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome back to Straight White American Jesus.
We We are once again here at the Summit for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., hosted by Americans United.
We're here at the Washington Plaza Hotel.
You might hear some voices and some bustling around us because the conference is happening.
I'm joined right now by Dr. Allison Schorl, who is an associate professor in political science at the University of Oklahoma.
You've got a long bio.
You've done a lot of cool stuff in your life, so I'm going to tell people about that in a minute.
But first thing I want to say is thanks for being here.
Thanks for coming.
Yeah, it's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
So you're at University of Oklahoma.
You're in political science, but you're also part of the faculty for Latinx Studies and Women and Gender Studies.
You also run OU's Community Engagement and Experiments Laboratory, which is really neat, Oklahoma City's Community Poll, and OU's Democracy Survey of OU Freshmen.
So you're doing a lot.
I don't know when you sleep.
You have a new book out, which is really amazing, and that is The Everyday Crusade, Christian Nationalism and American Politics.
And that is co-authored with Dr. Eric McDaniel and Irfan Nooruddin.
And that book really looks at the relationship between American religious exceptionalism and prejudicial and anti-democratic attitudes.
Those are obviously things we talk about all the time on this show.
And so let's start there.
Let's start with your book, Everyday Crusade.
I think Christian nationalism is something people think a lot about these days.
It's scary.
Coming from that book, all the data you went through, what are some things people might need to know about religious exceptionalism and anti-democratic movements in the United States related to Christian nationalism?
Well, I think something that often goes unsaid, unstated, unsaid, is that there's a lot of people who might be moderates.
There's a lot of people who try to stay out of the fray.
But because of that, it tends to thrive.
due to the complicit nature of saying nothing.
So whereas a lot of people want to say that this is a fringe movement, which I can see that in some respect, but not when there's nothing on the other side.
There's such a tendency in American politics and in American society to really privilege religion.
And there's a good reason to do that.
Private religious practice is a good thing, at least according to the Constitution, right?
At least according to our institutional design, we want to encourage whatever religious practice People perform, right?
Whether that is to hold religious beliefs that are specifically Christian, whether they're Muslim, whether they're Jewish, whether they're secular, right?
You are allowed to believe whatever you want to believe.
And we celebrate that.
We always have as a nation.
So to then say that there's this thing called Christian nationalism and to say that, you know, there are some very anti-democratic leanings associated with this and fundamental to Christian nationalism.
It's missed on a lot of people.
They say, well, they're just devout people who love God, who love their Christian God and express it.
And they also love their country.
So what could be wrong with that?
I'm just going to stay out of this.
When in fact, These people need to be calling out the anti-democratic leanings of this movement.
So for me, it's all about these moderates and it's all about the people who aren't willing to stand up and advocate for democracy because of their fear of calling out people because of their religious beliefs.
I'm just really glad you brought up the kind of mushy middle there because, you know, what I imagine and I'm curious about your perspective on the ground in Oklahoma is, you know, I imagine there are folks at churches who are saying exactly what you just said.
I'm not this militant political person.
I was not a January 6th.
I don't want to storm the Capitol.
Leave me out of it.
I just want to.
And yet they're sitting next to people in the pews who are listening to the podcast, watching the YouTube channels and really being radicalized from various directions.
And they're together in the same space, and yet that moderate person you're talking about continues to think, well, this isn't hurting me, so it's not an issue I need to tackle.
And I think that really scares me.
And we talked about that at the conference today, about those with identities.
It is hurting, whether that be black Americans, whether that be queer folks, secular folks.
So I'm just really glad you brought that up.
I mean, am I right about that scenario?
Is that kind of what you see in Oklahoma?
There's a moderate person who's sort of saying, This doesn't hurt me.
I'm just a church at the potluck.
Jerry over here wants to get up, get out here and watch all these crazy YouTube videos.
That has nothing to do with my life.
Oh, yeah.
I definitely in Oklahoma and you you want to respect.
Everybody in Oklahoma, right?
It's the Plains.
It's the U.S.
Census South.
It's a very confusing place identity-wise.
It can be Midwestern to some, Southern to others, Southwestern, right?
So there is this regional identity that's sort of strange.
Everybody wants to respect one another.
There is a kindness.
There is a Southern gentleness about Oklahoma, but also Midwestern.
And all of those things align to make people want to very much support the marketplace of ideas and to want to support a very American value of capitalism as liberal.
They think of it as a liberal thought to be accepting of these ideas and let anybody believe what they want to believe.
Without realizing that once this gets codified, it actually is not freedom.
It's supremacy that is now being written into law and affecting those who are non-Christian, affecting those who are not the right type of Christian as well.
Come back to Oklahoma specifically in a second, but just just based off your book and the data that you and and your co-authors went through, folks listening are going to be tired of hearing me preach this sermon.
So I'm going to have you preach this sermon.
What are ways that Christian nationalism is advancing in American policy and American culture?
You know, just from your perspective, what are one or two ways?
Well, I view this largely as an elite led movement.
So when I look at the American public, I don't see huge growth in Christian nationalism.
It's been remarkably consistent as far as my data have shown me.
There can be whenever it's politicized, there will be mobilization and you can see it becoming more or less popular based on whether the public likes what the movement is saying.
So I think there's the subtlety of Christian nationalism is really popular with the American public.
But then when you have some Marjorie Taylor Greene's, for instance, There's something about explicit Christian nationalist labels that bothers people.
So it ebbs and flows, but it stays remarkably consistent within the American public.
Wanting this, maybe a third of the public at any one time will be sympathizers of Christian nationalist beliefs.
But really, we see elites being able to make ground, changing institutions and putting Christianity at the center of who is privileged in American politics.
So I see it through the courts.
In my home state, we have several elites At the state and local levels who have championed Christianity, saying that this should be a theology.
If any state should be a theocratic state, it should be Oklahoma.
They really want to battle.
They're constantly battling Texas for that, I think, as well.
So we have a back and forth between Typically, when you hear about something that sounds very Christian nationalist, and it's usually Texas gets the national press, and then you look up, you sort of look through the books and you're like, oh, Oklahoma has had that for three years already.
And that's my typical experience of, wow, all of these things that are very Christian and very much put you in a tenuous position if you're not, meaning you have to rely On the benevolence of these Christian leaders who decide then it's no longer in the law whether or not to protect you.
Yeah.
Unless you're a Christian.
So I see it in the courts a lot.
I see it in state legislatures all over the U.S.
passing very Christian nationalist legislation.
And I see it organizationally on the national level.
There is huge organizing, huge funding.
To get these policies passed through state legislatures.
So we have Christian nationalist organizations that write up legislation, right?
We have ALEC, but we also have specifically Blitzkrieg.
So we do have Christian nationalist legislation being written and then introduced by separate legislators who aren't necessarily part of these organizations, but they are using the exact legal ease provided by these organizations.
And they are certainly getting funding.
From very large international organizations that are invested in making sure that this legislation gets pushed that puts Christianity ahead of everything else in American society.
I see so much discourse online that calls Christian nationalists fringe or wackos or crazy.
And I understand why people from the outside want to use those labels.
I mean, I understand why they would think that.
I think the disservice that does is it then relegates this to something that is irrational and unorganized.
And the way you just described it and the way that I think many of us who study these things have discovered is that this is an overwhelmingly organized movement.
And it is funded to the, like, hilt.
It is funded 100 times better than any of its political opponents.
And not recognizing that is a serious problem.
The other thing you talked about, and this is really where I want to jump into Oklahoma specifically, is state legislatures have long been overlooked by the Democratic Party, the American left, and so on.
And I just want to walk people through mechanics.
If you're a state legislator and you have people who are basically writing up bills and policy proposals for you, it's almost like somebody did the homework for class and you kind of have to check it.
It's a great service to you because you might be understaffed.
There are a lot of people who serve in state houses that are like, they have a day job, right?
It's a part-time gig.
They're getting like 30, 40 grand a year to be a state legislature, state rep, state senator.
They're still got their nine to five and they're like, I don't have I've got an amazing plethora of staff members who can help me with this.
Oh, look, there's this organization.
They just handed me a packet.
They wrote the law for me.
Well, I'll check my homework and then I'll turn it into the teacher.
And so here's my question.
How does that look in Oklahoma?
I mean, we can talk about LGBTQ plus rights.
We can talk about reproductive rights.
You know, we can talk about schools.
Anything you got on Oklahoma for people who are not on the ground there.
What does it look like from your view coming from the statehouse?
Oh, well, we do have a very conservative and a religiously conservative governor who often appoints people who are also very religiously conservative.
I think one of our most recent scandals was the state secretary of education is also the state superintendent of education taking two incomes.
Now, that got sent all the way to the court, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, and they decided, you know, this is not allowed.
This is, you know, you cannot be both.
These need to be independent people because there needs to be some level of regulation and oversight.
So he stepped down from being secretary of education.
That like sounds like Dwight Schrute making himself manager and assistant regional manager.
That's exactly what it was in the minds of most Oklahomans, regardless of your ideology.
I think it's there is a sense of justice and fairness that Americans and Oklahomans also still want in their government.
And because of the pressure placed upon all of the officials, I think the courts are often the last call of When politics, especially in very conservative-led states, when they tend to enter into these types of situations, it is the courts that, even if they're conservative, right, they do prize the procedure and they prize democracy.
And we're hoping that that will remain intact, even though, obviously, there are attempts to even attack what is supposed to be this judicial precedent of procedural fairness and neutrality.
So this superintendent, he has explicitly wanted to open up the schools for school choice, specifically to make funds available for parents to send their kids to religious schools and to send their kids to any private charter schools as well.
And this has been largely supported by the elites in the state.
I don't think rural Oklahomans are very thrilled.
They have spoken out and even the Republicans who have really supported this charter school movement, as well as the religious schools being funded by public dollars.
Rural Oklahomans are not excited about this.
They already are facing a situation where many of our schools in rural Oklahoma are only open four days a week.
Wow.
Yes.
So if I'm listening right now and I'm trying to parse what you're saying, am I right in concluding that there are proposals at play in Oklahoma that would say, hey, we have a Catholic school, we have an evangelical school.
Taxpayer money is going to go to a voucher so I can show up at that school, pay tuition, and basically get my kid going in that school.
And that money is, in essence, coming from taxpayers.
And so we have What some could draw a conclusion of as religious schools being funded by taxpayer money.
Is that fair?
That is fair.
Yes, that's exactly what the plan is to do.
And that is exactly what the state superintendent has been pushing for with the thought that in Oklahoma, we have such a conservative base that they will try anything to Up the ante, more or less, with conservative values.
So on religious conservative issues, they've tried very hard to push these things through, and they often succeed because sometimes the public most certainly supports some of these policies.
Oftentimes, there's pushback.
And once real people, everyday Americans, are feeling the effects of this essentially political hobbyism that's happening in conservative state legislatures, that's when we start to see a rolling back of these policies.
Unfortunately, we are in sort of a buildup phase right now, and we're seeing a lot of hobbyism.
I mean, with all of that said, are there ways, just from your perspective as a researcher, as somebody who lives in Oklahoma, as somebody who's deeply invested in these things, are there things that can be done to preserve American democracy at the levels of a state legislature, at the levels of a rural Oklahoman, Thinking about who represents them in their state house, the kinds of policies that are being advanced.
What are some of the ways in your context that you think that rise that you just talked about could somehow be combated and tamped down?
I have a lot of faith in people, actually.
I don't think it's as dire a situation, largely because I do talk to everyday Oklahomans, and I know that people can get elected.
If people truly want to change things, they can enter into public spaces in Oklahoma pretty readily.
That is allowed, right?
You're allowed to talk to whomever you want.
You can go to the legislature.
You can talk to real legislators.
You can run for office yourself.
And despite the fact that we have such an overwhelmingly conservative legislature in Oklahoma, there is success when mobilization is high.
And there aren't a lot of mobilization efforts in the state because people think it's a lost cause.
However, when they run, It seems like there are very easy strategies to employ to be able to win elections.
And I have to remind everyone that Oklahoma was majority Democratic voters up until like the 2010s.
So this is not a state that's uncapturable.
By people who want to support democracy.
And I'm not just saying because there's many conservatives who support them.
This is not a one for one.
But for those who truly want to champion democratic politics within their state legislature, there's a space for them.
But they're going to have to, you know, hit the pavement.
There's a lot of work to be done.
And the last thing we should do is give up.
The thing you said just now, I think, is something I just want to say as often as I can, which is There's a sense in which it's hopeless.
Oh, what's the point?
I can't win.
We can't win.
If you go up for a seat, that could be a seat, school board, mayor, that could be state rep, that could be county supervisor.
And then the next thought is like, well, what power do those people have anyway?
Who cares?
And it's like, they have a lot of power.
I mean, let's let's look at the way schools are and their curricula are being transformed.
Let's look at the policies that are being advanced in the statehouses in the way you're talking about.
Let's look at the cultures that are being built on local levels through mayors and through city councils.
There's a lot of influence.
And as you just said, you can win.
And why not try?
And if you lose, if somebody loses by two points the next time, they may not.
And that, I think, is the attitude that has to change.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you know, that brings me to an interesting point.
I think you mentioned something about it.
As long as you go out, you show your face, you win.
And that's absolutely right.
And that is from the Christian Nationalist handbook of we don't care if we lose.
We're just going to be the face of it every time.
And that is something that was stolen from the left during the civil rights movement.
This was exactly the strategy.
And it was a specific strategy that was stolen because people snuck into civil rights organizational meetings in D.C. and learned their program and stole that program.
And it just takes.
How about we revisit that program?
Just keep showing up.
Keep fighting.
That is worth it every time.
And so we're basically out of time ourselves for our interview today with Want to let you get back to the conference and enjoy the summit.
But let me just say first, thank you.
And also where are places people might link up with you and your work if they're wanting to check out the book, wanting to check out new projects you got going on?
Sure, you can go to my website, AllisonShortle.com.
Alternatively, if you just go to OU's political science faculty website, you can find me, Allison Shortle.
I'm also on Twitter, at Shortle.
Okay.
You're also on like seven different faculties at OU, so I'm sure if you just get on the website, you'll be there somewhere.
I'm widely, just Google my name.
I have a strange spelling of Allison, and you'll find me.
Allison, Oklahoma, A-L-L-Y-S-O-N.
You'll find me.
Got it.
That's great.
Well, thank you for being here and we look forward to talking again and have a great rest of the summit.
