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In this month's bonus episode, Brad and Dan discuss the impact of June's personal happenings and analyze Pew data on religion, gender, and politics. The hosts examine trends in young men veering right, potential influences of Russ Vought in a Trump administration, and the implications of Project 2025. They examine a narrative on societal shifts in LGBTQ acceptance during the 2010s and the contemporary backlash against gender norms, connected through new Pew research. The episode also features reflections on the moral grounding of non-religious Americans and the enduring presence of Christian nationalist beliefs among Biden voters. Finally, Brad teases a humorous story about Election Day 2008.
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:23 Family Matters and Episode Overview
01:02 Pew Data on Religion, Gender, and Masculinity
02:23 Teaching Anecdote and Changing Social Norms
05:07 Discussion on Morality and Social Influence
08:59 Pew Data on Gender Issues Among Young Men
11:09 Humorous Interlude: Home Alone and Aging
13:54 Back to Pew Data: Gender Norms and Voting Patterns
31:12 Religion's Role in Public Life
34:46 Conclusion and Subscriber Information
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Straight Away American Jesus, our bonus episode.
It's a little late this month.
Just so much going on, but good to see you, Dan.
It's good to see you, Brad.
Recording bright and early.
Probably not even bright yet in Brad's time and early.
It's good to have you, as always, with the gravelly voice.
That's why we all really tune in.
Yeah, lots going on this week, this month, I should say.
I just want to warn everybody, both of us have family stuff happening.
And what it means is Dan and I have been trying forever to be able to sit down and do this.
We may be a little short of two hours this month.
That's not because we don't care.
There's been deaths in the family.
There have been very serious illnesses on the part of close members of families.
So it's just one of those situations where the month of June has been It's totally taken over by, you know, family stuff, things that are really, really important.
But it also brings up the travel stuff.
So we've both been sort of bouncing around.
And yeah.
So anyway, but we're here and we're going to talk about three things.
Talk about some Pew data about religion, but also about gender and masculinity.
And I think some reflections on young men veering to the right of their, their counterparts and what that means and what's happening there.
Want to talk about Russ Vought, the man who many think will be Trump's chief of staff.
A lot of talk about Project 2025 out there and completely justified and hoping there's more because everyone needs to know about that.
But Russ Vought, very likely, Dan, could be the man who implements large chunks of Project 2025 if he is the chief of staff and a central node in the Trump administration.
So we're going to do a deep dive on him and surprise, surprise.
It's really scary the more you learn about him.
Who knew?
But we'll let you all know about that in a minute.
I'm going to finish today with a story, a fun story, and a story that I don't know if I've ever told you, Dan.
It's about Election Day 2008, when Barack Obama became president.
involves me humiliating myself on a first date.
So look, if you're not a subscriber, I don't know why you're not paying, going to sign up right now, because we're going to save that for the end and it'll be worth the price of admission, I promise.
All right, Dan, take us through some Pew data, but I think you have a story for us even before we get there.
Well, this is just sort of a teaching anecdote that leads into this.
And so when I was an undergrad, and I remind everybody, I was an undergrad at a conservative Christian college, right?
So nobody, or I probably shouldn't say nobody, anybody who is openly, say, pro-queer inclusion would have been very on the down low with that.
And certainly what we call social justice concerns, that's the language we use now, didn't figure prominently and so forth.
But As we've talked about before, Brad, back in, this would have been the mid to late 90s, right, into the early aughts, American society as a whole was not affirmative of things like marriage equality and so on and so forth, okay?
Why do I bring that up?
I bring it up because if you fast forward to when I started teaching 12, 14, 15 years ago, I remember one of the things that struck me was how, for most students, it was just kind of common sense that we should affirm LGBTQ people.
It was just common sense that racism is bad and things like affirmative action were generally good and so forth.
What I found, and I think what sort of surprised me, because I would often go into the classroom, and I don't think you and I have ever talked about this.
I'd be interested in your, you know, if your reflections were similar or not.
And I know that it would vary regionally and so on.
But I would go in the classroom sometimes ready to kind of have to defend these things or theoretically articulate them or give students reasons why we should be a more inclusive society or, you know, or how this benefited people.
And I often kind of wouldn't need to go there because students were like, yep, cool, we're with it.
And you would read lots of stuff back when millennials were all the thing in, you know, all the news.
You would read all this stuff about how inclusive millennials were and how they didn't have the same attitudes as boomer parents and so on and so forth.
It's all good, right?
And I think that that's affirmative and positive and whatever.
But my concern was, I remember I talked to colleagues about this.
And again, I don't remember if you and I ever talked about this, but my concern was, is it really a conviction that they hold?
In other words, are they really committed to things like LGBTQ plus inclusion?
Are they really committed to things like social justice?
Or is it just kind of the social winds have changed enough that this is kind of, you know, this is the cool thing to do.
Of course, we affirm queer people.
Of course, we affirm these things and so forth.
And the reason that I had that question, and I should say, obviously, there were people of color and queer folks and allies who were committed.
I don't mean to denigrate any of that.
I'm talking about the sort of run-of-the-mill students, like, yeah, sure, cool.
People should marry who they want to marry.
It's all good, right?
And I used to wonder if, like, what happens if the culture changes, right?
What happens if there's a shift?
And the reason I wondered this is because sociologists will say, I've been reading some about this this week, and that most people, including most religiously identified people... This is going to be a shock, Brad.
You're going to hear this.
You're going to be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't know it.
It changes my worldview.
Most people get their morality from the social groups in which they are socialized.
Not the Bible, not the Quran.
It's the social groups in which they're socialized.
And when they appeal to things like the Bible, the Quran, as we know and talk about all the time, they are reading those things or appealing to those things as the groups into which they are socialized sort of tell them that they are.
That the so-called religious reasons for their morality are often kind of an after-the-fact justification for a prior socialization identity, what have you.
OK?
Here's the thing.
That also applies to non-religious people, right?
Everybody tends to find their morality from the social groups of which they are a part.
So this week I was reading a new book by Jerome Baggett called The Varieties of Non-Religious Experience.
It's a sociologist and interviewed something like 500 self-identified American atheists and so forth.
I'm using this book in a class this fall, so I finally sat down and just sort of powered through it all.
But it's really interesting because that's what he finds.
And the really only difference between religious folks and non-religious folks in this domain is that the non-religious folks are pretty open about it.
They're like, I got my values from my family or I tend to think that society overall has been progressing over time and we should affirm that and so forth.
But Bagot offers this, so he has a discussion that he writes down or recounts with one of his subjects, and this is what it says.
The person has just said, I get my stuff from my family, I get it from society, I get it from whatever.
And he asks him this question, how do you know that all this is what you should be doing?
And the respondent says, well, I think our morals come from the society we live in.
So I really just try to live out what I learned from my parents, my schooling, from the whole culture, from everything.
It's all informed me.
Bagot says, but here's what I think is a tough question when I think about sometimes.
If society changes all the time, are the morals it conveys at any one point in time trustworthy?
And his respondent says, I don't really know the answer to that.
Honestly, where we are now works for me.
It's what morality means for me.
That's tough.
Bagot presses more, sort of gently.
You can imagine this conversation going on.
He's asking this question.
He says, I know.
Here's an even tougher version.
If you were born a couple hundred years ago when slavery was legal and women couldn't vote and children were expected to work long hours and so on, would that alter what morality means for you?
And his respondent says, yes, I have to say it probably would.
People weren't a-holes or anything back then.
They just lived in a different time and saw things differently.
Maybe 200 years from now, people will question my morality because I walk by homeless people on my way to work, or live in a big house with a furnace that burns natural gas.
So maybe they'll think I'm the a-hole for just imbibing the values and customs of my society.
And Baggett says, and me too, I must admit.
That's when the moral worth of those values and customs, if they change over time and from place to place, what is their moral worth?
And his poor respondent says, this is the stuff we do in classes all the time, right?
Poor respondent says, dude, you're killing me.
I really don't know the answer to that one.
Society makes me better than I'd be without it.
That's for sure.
But is it moral in that larger sense?
Hard to say.
OK, why do I bring that up?
I bring it up because it's that same concern that I had when I had all those students.
And I said, we live at that time where this kind of cultural moment where it's the cool thing to do to affirm this.
And I was wondering about this because what we find is that as society changes, people's views change.
And I think this is all to set up this Pew data we've been talking about.
So the Pew came out with a survey on cultural issues in the 2024 election.
People know I love the survey data and that sort of stuff.
And this is what it found out, and CNN noted this, and I think some other places did too, that one of the things it opens up is the potential gender gap between, in particular, younger men and women on a number of different issues, including lots of issues related to gender, sexuality, and so forth.
Now, I want to take a dive into this and I want to look at some of this because I think it's significant.
Now, the data is broken down by Trump supporters and Biden supporters, and no surprise, Biden supporters are way more progressive than Trump supporters, right?
They are much further to the left than Trump supporters.
But what's interesting is that on a number of issues, Biden supporters Who are men, particularly what they're calling young men, 18 to 49.
I'm glad that I still count as a young man.
Wait a minute.
In their definition, I know.
Wait a minute.
Yeah.
Wait a minute, Pew.
Hold on.
Hold on.
I'm not sure they say specifically young men, but they're like- 18 to 49 and then 50 plus, that's their division.
So I'm glad we got that straight because I was just about to email Pew.
What I just learned is it's Dan Miller who put the label young men on the 18 to 49 year olds.
Well, young men and a little bit of CNN's reporting on this too, calling it young men.
You look, it's 18 to 49.
So I'm glad that I'm young.
The aches and pains I have have nothing to do with middle age.
How?
What?
That's an amazing set of categories.
The 48 year old is in the cat and whatever.
All right.
Just good.
I mean, I feel great too.
Yeah.
I mean the, you know, the, the, the heartburn I had after eating ice cream with my kid last night and the, you know, the backache I have from taking them swimming.
Sure.
Yeah.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
I'm blown away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I pulled, I pulled a quad like watching my son do Taekwondo the other day, but I'm still a young man, so it's good.
Yeah.
Can I, can I, can I just say something real quick about this?
Every year I get older and I think about the difference between being 18 and 48, you know, is the Home Alone movie becomes more and more realistic.
I'm sorry to interrupt a very serious thing you're doing, but it is our bonus episode.
Yeah.
But you know, you pulled a quad watching your son.
Like when you watch the Home Alone movie and you're like, this is so dumb.
That little kid can't beat up Joe Pesci.
Right.
But then you think of Joe Pesci as you know, whatever he is in his, his late forties as the thief in that movie.
And you know, Kevin McAllister has him running all over the place and he like slips on ice.
Like, think about it, Dan.
Think about if in this, in the same set of days, you slipped on ice and hurt your back.
And then, like, you fell down the stairs.
You'd be out for six weeks.
I actually am impressed that the robbers in Home Alone were still able to even come back to the house after they got done like they did the first time.
I just wanted to interject that very serious scholarly analysis to this.
Well, I was worried when you said that it reminds you of Home Alone that you were, you know, maybe this is how you're supplementing your income when people travel and things, you know, you got like Brad Onishi sneaking through the house, turning on the taps, all that stuff.
I'm in my 40s now, and I want you to know, people, that I have a renewed... Not a renewed.
I have, for the first time, sympathy and admiration for the thieves in Home Alone, just for their pure grit to be in their 40s out here, hurting their backs and their legs, and they still came back to try to rob the house.
You know what?
Good for you.
Okay?
That's all I want to say.
Thank you, Dan.
I apologize.
As long as we're on important and serious digressions, this is sort of like the series Cobra Kai.
I don't know if people have watched that.
It was the one that started on, like, YouTube and got picked up by Netflix.
But you're getting a little sympathy for Johnny, right?
You get a little bit of the thing.
Like, he tells Daniel LaRusso at one point that the kick he used at the end of Karate Kid was, like, illegal.
And you're like, it probably was.
Like, you know.
It probably was.
And so you're like, oh, poor Johnny, picked on by Daniel LaRue.
Like, it's switching the narratives.
Brad, we want you to know that we've known that you're demonic.
We talk about this all the time.
You identify with criminals, so... I'm not pro robbery or home invasion.
I don't think those things are good.
I just want to say... Pro grit.
I had never considered the physical toll on the thieves in Home Alone before this, and, you know, I just want to say that when you get to your 40s, sometimes things change, and you sympathize with people you didn't think you would.
With all that said, Dan, please continue.
So we, the two younger men hosting the podcast, will continue our discussion here.
Yeah, so what does all this say?
What it shows is that there is, among 18 to 49-year-old men in America, there is or there appears to be a growing backlash against specifically changing gender norms, right?
Why is that important?
It's important because we have this story that often assumes younger voters are going to vote Democratic.
They're going to vote for Biden.
They're going to vote for progressive principles and a democratic platform and so forth.
And what we see if we look at this data is that specifically on gender issues, that there are some gaps that open up between men and women, particularly or not particularly, but even on the Biden side.
OK, they're not huge, but we know that these elections are decided by minuscule amounts.
OK, so I want to I want to just run through some of these and some of the significance of this.
There are some numbers.
Folks, just go Google Pew cultural issues in 2024 election if you want to take a look.
And don't worry if I throw out some numbers and you don't remember them and so forth.
But here are some examples.
I'm talking about Biden voters in particular.
Trump voters, yes.
Huge backlash against the gains of women and minorities and others in society.
That's what we've been talking about since literally the first day of the podcast.
But among Biden voters, so for example, men are almost twice as likely to agree that, quote, the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men.
So among Biden voters, if you're a man, you're almost twice as likely to agree with that statement as you are if you're a woman.
It's a small number.
It's only 12%.
It's a minority of Biden voters, but it's almost double what it is for female or female-identified Biden voters.
More men than women agree that society is better off if people prioritize marriage and having children over other kinds of priorities.
Men are less comfortable than women with women keeping their names after marriage.
Men are more likely than women to view declining birth rates as bad for the country.
There's your replacement theory stuff, right?
Among male-identified Biden voters, there it is.
Overall, and this is both Trump voters and Biden voters, Americans in general overall say that gender assigned at birth corresponds, is one's permanent gender.
More Americans, an increasing number of Americans believe that one's assigned gender at birth is their gender, period.
So there's, in my view, backwards movement on that.
Of course, all of these differences are more pronounced among younger Trump voters.
But what's the takeaway?
The takeaway, to tie it back to the anecdote, I think society has changed so much.
I don't mean that society is less inclusive than it used to be.
I don't have a utopian vision that once upon a time we were in a fully inclusive society.
But one of the things we talk about all the time, Brad, right, is that this These views have become louder, they have become more visible, they have become more mainstream as MAGA Nation has intensified, as Trump and his articulation of a particular vision of America has become the pronounced vision.
And what I see when I look at this is I see male voters who are hearing that.
Certainly a lot of Trump voters, but I hear Biden voters Hearing that as well.
I hear that resonating.
Why does that matter to me?
It matters because I wonder now when I walk into my classroom sometimes, and I hear it in students.
I hear the ambiguity.
I hear an ambiguity that I didn't hear 10 or 15 years ago.
And I find that really interesting because many of these students demographically on other things, they're more likely to be Biden voters than Trump voters.
Many of them still will be.
But in these elections that are created by the thinnest margins, in elections where the Electoral College math always favors Republicans.
I wonder how much it matters that you have what I consider significant minorities, very much minorities of Biden voters, but significant minority differences in those voters between men and women.
So this was one of the big takeaways.
We've got some other things about religion, but I'm interested in your thoughts about that.
If you see the same things anecdotally in classrooms and have those discussions and so forth, whatever you feel most relevant, including and up to Christmas classic movies that we might need to discuss.
Thank you.
Diehard.
A Christmas movie.
I agree.
Do not email me.
Okay.
So I want to go back to the years I think you're referencing.
So I think you're referencing years in the kind of 2010, 2015 range.
2010, 2015 range.
Yeah.
Um, you know, we're after George W. Bush.
We have Barack Obama as president and.
And, you know, I think there was a moment there where, again, I'm just finishing grad school, like in, you know, Barack Obama's first term.
I know you're... I graduated in 2010.
Yeah.
So, you know... That was my PhD.
Yep.
So I would go in to teach, you know, as a teaching assistant at UCSB.
And I agree that there was this sense in the country that... I want to be a little bit specific here.
I think that being gay or lesbian, Um, and those folks, you know, gay or lesbian folks getting married was a kind of standard default part of a lot of my students' kind of cultural horizons.
It just didn't phase them.
Okay.
Yep.
And I think that felt different.
It felt, oh, wow, because in the 90s, when you and I were growing up, that would have been quite disorienting for a lot of those students.
Two thirds of Americans overall in the 90s opposed marriage equality.
So something in that neighborhood.
So, you know, 60, 65, 70 percent opposed.
So there's this huge shift in those like 15 years or so.
The 15 or 20 years from 1995 to 2015.
There's just this huge cultural shift on gay marriage and so on.
Now, what I think you're referencing then is, so what happened?
Because now it seems like we're going backwards.
And I would say that I think there's a couple things at play here that catch my attention when I think about this Pew data.
I think one is What you're pointing out is that these folks who seem to not be phased by advances in LGBTQ rights.
I think we're doing so.
When it didn't feel like a threat to them.
So when you think about that anecdote from Baggett's book and the person who's, yeah, I just, my morality, the morality of today's works for me.
And, but think about what that, what that respondent said.
And I assume it's a man.
I don't know why, but when I was listening, okay.
So when I was listening, I was like, this is a, this is a man just sort of new.
What did he say?
What did he literally say?
Today's morality works for me.
Let's let's like break that down.
He's what he's trying to express is like, well, yeah, this fits like this works for me.
Like, hey, Dan, you want to eat it?
Where do you want to go to dinner here?
That works for me.
OK, great.
But if we, if we do a professor thing here, if we do a little like scholar thing here or a little something here, works for me means the system works for you.
The system is working for someone like you.
The system is made, right?
Like you have a certain place in society.
You are not unhoused.
You are not.
It sounds to me like somebody trying to get documentation to be in a certain country.
It does not sound to me like you are somebody who's fighting to get a family member who you're married to, to this country.
Because they, you know, we can go on down the line of the folks who the system does not work for.
Folks who are, you know, unable to work because of, you know, physical abilities and things.
We can go on down the line.
I think if we think about young men today, they increasingly think the system is waged against them.
If you're the 24-year-old straight guy, cishet guy, there's just a lot of There's a lot of forces around you trying to convince you that the system, it's not about, and we talk about this all the time with Christian nationalism, that it's not that the system's gotten more equal, it's that the system is now turned against you.
That it's a zero-sum game.
Like that one part of the survey says, the advances of women have been made at the expense of men.
Because it's a zero-sum, either if women make advances, it must come at the expense of someone else.
That's the idea.
It's, it's a, it's a pie and you can only split it so many ways.
So what I think about is that 24 year old man who's basically saying, yeah, there's like women out here vying for my position and people of color.
And, um, there's a lot of like initiatives for people to be included and for like our institutions to reflect the demographics of our country, which include many BIPOC individuals, which include gay people and trans people and folks who are non-binary and Blah blah blah, like on and on and on.
Where do I fit?
Who's fighting for me?
And when they have that feeling, who are the voices that chime into them?
Who swoops into their life?
Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro.
And then if we really want to talk about who's swooping into a lot of their lives, it's people like Andrew Tate.
It's these misogynistic, disgusting, gross voices, right?
It's Nick Fuentes.
I mean, you know, whether it's the incel side, whether it's the Andrew Tate misogynist, you know, abusive sexual side.
Those voices are the ones that are like, yeah, man, you better fight.
You know, you better stand up for your masculinity.
Otherwise, you'll be left behind.
You'll be replaced, as you mentioned.
So I guess the takeaway for me is that that sort of general hazy LGBTQ affirmation of the 2015s.
Was general and hazy because there was no threat.
And once and I'm not saying there's a threat now, please don't misunderstand me.
I'm not saying that somehow LGBTQ people are threatening anyone.
It was it was not culturally articulated as a threat the way that the right does it now.
They're very intentional about constituting creating.
A sense of perpetual threat, and I think that brings it into focus and now it is perceived as a threat instead of, as you say, something kind of hazy and abstractly okay and to each their own kind of mentality.
And I know people are going to point this out and you and I are both very aware of it.
That's not an accident.
Okay, so when Oberfell happens, what does the American do?
All of the institutions, all of the think tanks, they find ways to say, we need to make LGBTQ inclusion a threat to you, Mr. 24-year-old cishet guy.
And cishet guy who could be black, could be brown, could be Asian.
Okay, we need to make the gay person, the lesbian person, the bisexual person, we need to make them other to you and a threat to you such that you turn against them actively.
So all of that has been coordinated.
And I guess that's what I think about here, Dan, is just, you know, we talk about white lash in this country, that every time that BIPOC folks make headway and there's a sense of a step forward, there's a white lash, right?
There's a reaction to it based on whiteness.
And I think here we have a kind of backlash to to those things.
And I'll just say one more thing here.
And I think everyone knows this is it's not an accident that a lot of it starts with trans people and trans lives and says, these are the folks who are a threat.
They're a threat to the social order.
They're a threat to your safety.
They're a threat to nature.
They're right.
And we could go through all the examples of when, in the 90s, in the 60s, whenever you want to go back to it, of people in drag, of people who are, you know, presenting themselves in public in ways that their performance of gender doesn't necessarily match up with their assigned sex at birth.
And there was cultural spaces for that.
Like, I think of whatever the 90s movie is by John Leguizamo.
You all remember that?
I cannot remember.
My brother and I were just talking about that movie.
Anyway, there were small, but there were spaces.
And now, I just watched a video last night where there was a drag competition held at a hotel in Hawaii and a woman came down and tried to ruin it and threw a huge fit and said, I'm not going to expose my children to this perversion.
That's a direct result of a coordinated effort.
And if you start with trans people who, there's so many Americans, Dan, and I don't have to tell you this, who are so much less familiar with and close to a trans person rather than a gay person.
So many more Americans have a gay cousin, a gay friend, a gay colleague, and they know that and they've, it's part of their landscape, but not a trans person.
So the American right is to start with the trans people because people don't, they're unfamiliar, they're scared, they're, and then they, Just some other reflections on this as you bring those points up.
I've cited this before too, but a theologian named Miguel, a theologian and ethicist named Miguel de la Torre, I got the phrase from him and I feel like I need to credit him every time, but he has this notion what he calls hating downward.
And when somebody is, because there is, I talk about it briefly in my book, other people talk about it, the sense among White middle-class Americans and white middle-class men, and by men I mean cis-identified, mostly straight men, that things are not working for them and that they aren't, economically speaking, right?
Everybody knows that since the 70s you've had wage stagnation, it's harder to be in the middle class, it's harder to maintain that.
They've talked about before, you know, I grew up with one working parent and lots of my friends had one working parent and very few people have one working parent now because most families can't afford to have one working parent and on and on and on.
So among other things, that's that's one dimension.
But the story of why that is, if you're on the right, is to point to people who are more vulnerable than that population.
So women who already experience greater discrimination, people of color who already experience greater discrimination, sexual and gender minorities who already experience greater discrimination, and scapegoat them, create this phenomenon of what Delatory calls hating downward.
So that what?
So that all those disaffected white middle class people don't look at The elite, almost all white, cis, hetero, mostly men in society who have structured it that way.
There's another piece that sort of picked up on what you said.
We're focusing primarily on gender and gender-related issues here.
We could talk about social justice issues and things like that.
But you can also, if you are a racial or ethnic minority, if you're part of a minority community, if you are Asian American, if you're Latin American, if you are Black, and you are already marginalized outside, defined as the other to a dominant white society.
What's one of the ways you belong?
By coalescing around opposition to something that white people are opposed to.
So you get all those straight, cis, white people who portray the gains of women and the gains of queer folk as a social threat.
And now, if I'm Asian American, if I'm Black, I can belong a little more to dominant white society.
I can be a little bit more acceptable If I also rally around the anti-pride flag, if I rally around the straight pride flag, if I do that, then I'm a little bit closer to being counted as an authentic American by that majority white society that does not count me as such.
So there are lots and lots and lots of dynamics here, all, as you, I feel like you're usually the historical voice, right, in what we do, as you document so well, very intentional, programmatic, Yeah, the hating downward, but you're right.
and plans by people on the right to capitalize on exactly those kinds of just social realities of the way that human social groups work.
Yeah, the hating downward, but you're right.
And I think everything you're saying there about bringing in those who've been marginalized otherwise to queer hate is an effective strategy.
Unfortunately, we're seeing that happen with the New Apostolic Reformation right now.
If you put some pieces together, you're seeing black and Latino and Asian voters in Christian spaces turn to Trump because of everything you just said.
That is happening.
It is.
Period.
So anyway.
All right.
You want to do quickly just a few takeaways about religion from this and then we'll shift?
Yeah, yeah.
So again, quickly, there were some spots specifically on the role of religion in public life.
Again, Trump voters, way more, you know, Christian nationalist, pro-Christian country, all that kind of stuff than Biden voters.
But there were some what I thought were pretty interesting and telling numbers about Americans in general, so not limited to Trump voters, and about Biden voters.
So just a few things.
For example, Half of all Americans, and even 50%, say that the Bible should have a great deal or some influence on U.S.
laws.
Right.
I would count that as a Christian nationalist perspective, right, as an indicator.
So I will also say with that, 30%, so about a third of Biden voters are in that Bible influence camp, that the Bible should influence American laws.
There's a question that was posed that said, let's say that there's a conflict between what the Bible says or what the will of the people is, which should win?
Right?
Now, half of Americans said the Bible's got nothing to do with it.
So half of Americans are like, why are we talking about the Bible?
That's irrelevant.
But of the people who say that there should be, 30% of Americans say we should defer to the Bible.
That's not Trump voters, that's Americans.
A third of Americans are like, well, you know, if the Bible and the will of the people conflict, we should go with the Bible, right?
Among Trump voters, it's 18%.
It's almost one in five.
I agree with that, that we should go with what the Bible says, not the will of the people.
There's a couple others.
A third of Biden supporters, 34%, say that the U.S.
should not declare the country a Christian country.
So that's the good news, right?
We don't need to say America's Christian, but they should still promote Christian moral values.
So a third of Biden voters say, well, we don't need to say it's a Christian country, but yeah, the government should absolutely be advocating Christian values.
And again, 20% of Biden supporters say that one has to be a Christian to have moral values.
Now that means 80% of Biden voters don't say that, right?
And that's a big number.
But one in five is not small.
And again, I'm just interested in these broad cultural narratives that we have.
Christian nationalism is all Republicans.
It's all on the right.
It's something new.
It doesn't exist anywhere else.
It does, and it exists among Biden voters.
It exists among, let's call it the moderate left.
And I think all of these things could influence the 2024 election.
So those are some of the reflections, just briefly, on religion.
And again, the numbers are stratospherically higher among Trump voters, but they're there with Biden voters as well.
I'll just direct people to a book.
I interviewed Brian Kaler and Bo Underwood.
They wrote a book called Baptizing America.
You can look up the interview and you can read their book.
They talk all about how the mainline Christians in this country have a Christian nationalist problem.
And it pretty much tracks with everything you just said, Dan, that this is not just an evangelical issue or a MAGA issue.
And it's easier when we think it is, because we can be like, oh, it's one or the other.
So I would just say, Check that book out.
Check my interview out.
The episode is not just evangelicals, because it really does, I think, provide some similar analysis to everything you just outlined.
So I had the opportunity to do a guest lecture kind of thing with Bo a little while ago and yeah, solid scholarship, solid historical work.
So absolutely recommend the book.
All right, folks, let's, Dan, if you don't mind, let's, let's do a little audible and give people some, let's, um, shift gears.
I'm going to tell you a funny story to kind of lighten the mood, and then we'll finish with something really not that fun.
So... Heavy, light, heavy.
We'll have the good stuff in the middle of the sandwich.
And, you know, this is the moment, folks.
Hit pause.
Go get a soda or drink of water.
Stretch your legs, or I don't know what you're doing.
And I should say, I don't think I know this story, so I'm braced.
I'm ready for, you know, whatever comes.
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