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In the aftermath of the 2024 elections, Democrats are grappling with how to approach religion in a political landscape dominated by a GOP turned Christian nationalist party loyal to Donald Trump. Should they attempt to position themselves as the party of God, or is there a better path forward? In this episode, Sarah Levin, founder of Secular Strategies and a member of the Democratic National Committee’s Interfaith Council, discusses how secular Democrats are collaborating with people of faith to create a truly inclusive big tent. Sarah explores why imitating GOP-style religious politics is a losing strategy and explains how language around morality and shared values can bridge divides between believers and nonbelievers. We dive into the unifying potential of issues like voting rights, democracy, and protecting immigrants, and why the way forward is not about putting God back into the Democratic Party but building a vision of justice and inclusion for all Americans.
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It is Inauguration Day, and I know it's going to be difficult.
Most of you probably won't watch.
Some of you will.
And nonetheless, today begins the official Trump second term.
In order to get you through that, I want to give you some really, really, really good news and a great announcement.
Coming in February, we have a new podcast at AccessMindyMedia called One Nation Indivisible by none other than Andrew Seidel.
Many of you know Andrew as the author of The Founding Myth in the American Crusade, somebody who's an incredible voice when it comes to matters on separation of church and state, religious freedom, freedom from religion, and so much more.
Andrew's a great friend of mine, and I had a chance to talk to him about the new pod.
And what he hopes to accomplish in the coming year as we wade through this first bit of Trump's second term.
Andrew, we could not be more excited to be doing this with you.
It's so great to partner with you.
We've worked together in the past, and now it's amazing just to welcome one nation indivisible to the Axis Wendy Media Network.
First thing I want to ask you is about this moment in American history.
It's a big one.
It's truly a time of fear, of change, and uncertainty.
What can we expect from you and the pod in the first episodes as you get going in February?
The podcast is going to be a mix of experts and history and the modern Christian nationalist assault on our democracy.
And the first few episodes are going to reflect that.
One of the first episodes will include our friend Annika Brockschmidt, who is a...
Brilliant historian, expert on the rise of authoritarianism in Germany, who also happens to be an expert on Christian nationalism here in the United States and has written a couple of books about that.
And we're going to talk about whether or not we really are Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
Another episode is going to feature a deep dive into one of those Christian nationalist talking points that everybody will see in a couple of days.
It's going to get trotted out.
You've actually already seen, but I'm not going to hint more on that.
And how this kind of historical relic, this artifact, this scar still affects us today and is used to fuel the modern Christian nationalist assault.
And then, of course, we are going to do a roundup and a look at everything that the Trump administration has done in its first few weeks, first month or so, and see...
Just how much damage we expect.
And listen, I think it's really important.
I am not going to be warning you or scaring you unnecessarily.
We do not want anticipatory obedience.
If these executive orders that he's doing are nothing, I'm going to tell you.
Because we don't want you to be getting freaked out and worried.
We want you to be worried about the stuff that there is to worry about.
And there's probably going to be a lot, but we'll be covering it.
With an even hand and a non-fearmongering hand.
So, I mean, that's just some of the first few things.
And again, you know, tons of experts are going to be coming onto this show.
People who are in this fight, who are in the attempt to resist the American slide into authoritarianism.
That's going to be the guests in between my rants, in between the historical deep dives.
It's going to be a blast.
One of the things about podcasts is there's so many of them.
And I think that there's a lot of folks who will be surprised that you don't have a podcast.
Everyone else does.
Why not, Andrew?
And so you finally do.
What are the kinds of things you want to get into that you're not hearing anywhere else or perspectives or conversations that you think need to be had but you can't find?
The North Star of this podcast is going to be expertise.
We are the experts, and when we are not, we are going to learn from the experts.
I think there's a lot of podcasts out there, Joe Rogan.
Who have no idea what they are talking about.
They have no way to challenge the people that they bring on.
They uncritically accept everything.
That is not what we are going to do.
We are going to find the best people to help you understand what is going on in the world around you.
The experts.
But, you know, again, expertise is pointless unless people can actually understand it.
So that is going to be a critical part of what we do, too, is translate that expertise into something that you can not only understand, I think that's absolutely crucial.
Of course, there's going to be a ton of bonus content that people who are subscribers of Straight White American Jesus are going to be able to have access to.
Then we're also going to do some fun things.
I do a show called Libations and Conversations that I've done for my patrons back when I was running a Patreon.
And I used to do it a couple times live on YouTube.
So I'll have some of these experts, these friends of mine, come on.
We'll have a drink and we'll do it live and give you a chance to ask questions.
It'll be a lot of fun.
on.
But the real focus of the show is going to be the Christian nationalists assault on this country that have tried to remake America in the image of their religion from the early colonies to this new Trump administration.
And that includes, again, those artifacts from that historical wave of Christian nationalism that we saw in the 1950s, that we saw in the 1860s, that we saw in the 1830s, right?
And how modern Christian nationalists will point Those are going to be some of our historical deep dives.
But it's also going to be the battles that are happening in our courts for religious freedom and the separation of church and state right now.
The Supreme Court of the United States just took a case that could upend all kinds of tax exemptions for any organization that claims to be religious in the United States.
It's a case out of Wisconsin involving unemployment insurance.
And basically you have these entities that are affiliated with Catholic charities saying, therefore they don't have to buy into the system at all.
They're completely exempt.
and that can change the face of American employment.
It's gonna affect everybody in this country.
So we're gonna dive deep into that as well.
And of course, Trump and what's happening with American politics.
You're gonna hear me rant.
You're gonna hear me interview experts.
We're gonna do these historical deep dives.
It's gonna be a lot of fun.
I hope people come along for the ride. - We've got a long road ahead of us, Andrew.
You're going to be on the mic.
You're going to be sharing your insight with us, having great conversations.
What are the most pressing issues as we get going with Trump's...
You know, this kind of gets at another question that I was asked when I was talking with some friends about this, which is also, you know, Andrew, why now?
Why are you doing this now?
And, you know, I have like 15 ideas for the next book, but I'm not quite ready.
And I was approached for actually five times in 2024 to start a podcast.
I was too busy working to actually change the outcome of the election.
I wasn't ready to do that now, but now.
Now, with this new Trump administration, and because the influence of the conservative media, the dominance, utter dominance of conservative media across wide swaths, across all of America, influenced the election, now really is the time for me to do this.
Trump won because of conservative media dominance, and we need an antidote to that.
And now I'm not saying I'm going to be that antidote, but I'm definitely going to be part of it, because...
That is the reason that I chose of all of those offers to come to Access Mundi Media.
I think it has the best vision and the best chance to actually make a difference fighting back against that utter media dominance that we saw that influenced the election so heavily and that we talked about at our event in L.A., Brad.
And to me, the most pressing parts of the Trump administration that we're going to look at are, I mean, one is how much damage are they going to do?
And can we recover from that damage?
So I want to do realistic assessments of that in real time.
All right, again, I don't want to do the fear-mongering.
I don't want to scare people unnecessarily.
I want to look at what's happening and say, you know what?
This is a thing that Trump has done that doesn't really have much teeth, that I don't expect to actually have that big of an impact.
It's rhetoric.
It's talk that matters, but it's not going to necessarily impact us in the long term.
Let's take a breath here.
Again, we don't want to scare people into obeying in advance.
That is one of the key tactics of authoritarians, and we're not going to contribute to that.
Another thing that I'm really interested in looking at the Trump administration is it's different this time around.
Last time when they won, they were not expecting to win.
Nobody on that side expected.
They were the dog that caught the car.
This time, they have been preparing, right?
Russ Vogt, self-professed Christian nationalist who is out to, you know, reform and rehabilitate, in his words, the image of Christian nationalism, has been working on implementing Phase 2 of Project 2025 for more than a year.
And that means he's been sitting there drafting and helping get drafted these executive orders, the departmental guidance, these new policies that are going to go into place.
We're expecting between 300 and 500 executive orders coming down in So this is something that we're going to certainly be looking at and be working to educate you on.
Again, not scare you, educate you on.
And again, I think it's also just crucial to say that we're going to give you ways that you can fight back, that you can resist.
And then finally, another thing that I'm going to be interested in, in a wedge that I think we need to drive as...
Well, now as somebody who has a microphone and a podcast, the wedge we need to drive is between the theocrats and the oligarchs.
There are the folks like Russ Vogt who are these just zealous Christian nationalists, these ideologues, and then you have the oligarchs who are out there to enrich themselves.
And I think when those two branches of the Trump But I do think it, in the long run, might help us survive.
So then this is something that I'm going to be learning about as we move forward on the podcast too, and then I'm definitely going to want to bring experts in to educate us all on.
But I also want to emphasize this is not a Trump podcast.
This is a podcast about religion and the law and the battle for who we are as a country, as a people.
That's what we're going to be covering.
All right, y'all.
So we have just some other great news.
One last bit of kind of positivity before we go.
And that is Andrew's going to be doing bonus content every week and his episodes will drop on Tuesdays.
Every Tuesday, there'll be an extra segment for subscribers.
And guess what?
If you are a Straight White American Jesus subscriber, you will automatically get access to Andrew's content.
If you want to sign up for Andrew's bonus content, you will also get the Straight White American Jesus bonus content and some bonus content from all of our affiliates.
So what does that mean?
It means you can check the show notes now, sign up, get ready for Andrew's show to drop.
And if you sign up this week, We have a promotion that you can be part of Swatch Premium for $50 for the entire year.
So, sign up now.
Get access to Andrew's show when it drops.
And before it does, got a couple weeks before liftoff, dig in to Straight White American Jesus and the bonus content we do every week.
The bonus episodes, the 800-episode archive, the Discord that includes so many great discussions and so many great folks talking about important things, and ad-free listening.
All right, y'all.
Can't wait for this.
It's huge.
It's big news.
And I hope you'll go and hit that subscribe button right now.
Check it out in the show notes.
The Democrats have a religion problem, but perhaps not in the way that you think.
In the wake of the 2024 elections, there's a lot of soul searching going on, trying to figure out what happened and how to move forward.
One of the issues is how Democrats can approach religion.
They face a...
GOP that has turned into a Christian nationalist party whose only measure is loyalty to Donald Trump.
For some, that means that imitation is the best route.
Sell to the American public that they can be the party of Christianity and God.
For others, however, it's a losing strategy.
Not because they don't want to include people of faith in the Democratic coalition, but because imitation is not a winning way.
And also because it will leave significant people out of the big tent.
Today I talk with Sarah Levin, founder and principal of Secular Strategies and a member of the Interfaith Council in the Democratic National Party.
Sarah talks about the ways that secular Dems are working with people of faith to create that big tent.
About the ways that language and messaging around virtue and morality is a way to bridge the divide between nonbelievers and believers.
Talks about the ways that issues such as voting rights and democracy, protecting immigrants and the most vulnerable, unite Americans rather than divide them.
And that the way forward is not simply to put God back in the Democratic Party, but to build a message that makes room for everyone.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
As I just told you, I'm here with somebody who has been here before, but it's been too long, and that is Sarah Levin.
So, Sarah, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
It's great to be back.
Yeah, I'm so glad you're back, and it comes at...
The perfect time, and there's a lot to talk about.
One of the things that, I mean, you do so many things.
When I think about your work, I wonder how you get through the day, because you're up to a lot.
But one of the things you did recently is write a great op-ed with Representative Jared Huffman, who's been on the show before, friend of the show, one of our few non-believing, openly non-believing members of Congress, a humanist, and along with a couple of others.
There's a lot of soul-searching going on right now in the Democratic Party.
There's a lot of wondering what's next, how to move forward, what is the way to building a different and new and bigger coalition and so on and so forth.
But your op-ed is really about the ways that we might frame messaging to make sure that the coalition is as big and expansive as it should be and it doesn't alienate those who are not religious.
So, op-ed comes out.
You and Jared, Representative Hoffman, wrote this.
What spurred you, first of all, to sit down and put pen to paper and write an op-ed about the ways the Democratic Party needs to really think about its outreach to nonprofits?
Yeah, thanks for the question.
The New York Times published an article that spurred the op-ed.
And the title is, These Spiritual Democrats Urge Their Party to Take a Leap of Faith.
And, you know, it's the New York Times.
It's an, you know, impactful publication.
And there was a complete lack of secular perspective in the article.
And what it was suggesting is really concerning.
And it's frankly like a pretty typical knee-jerk reaction that I've seen for a while.
There's almost near universal agreement, in my experience, among Democrats that we have...
ceded the territory on faith and religious freedom and religion to the GOP. There's a lot of frustration around that, especially because Democrats are actually the party of religious freedom, whereas the GOP stands for white Christian nationalism and imposing a narrow set of extreme beliefs on everybody else, which is not religious freedom.
So there's this general agreement that, like, we're the party of religious freedom and we've ceded this territory and that's really frustrating.
But the prescription, first of all, there is no strategy as of yet that has come from leadership on how to flip the script.
And this article in the New York Times is an example of the kinds of things we see suggested that are really concerning.
So a few things about the article that kind of prompted us, like, we need a response.
First of all, all of the politicians profiled, except for one, are Christian.
And the one exception is Governor John Shapiro, who's Jewish.
And so this is like, first of all, the fact that the default when we're talking about expression of faith is we're defaulting to majority Christians with some exceptions, with some Jews.
It's like it's like religious minorities don't exist.
Right.
Including secular people.
So there's no discussion at all about the fact that we have this growing number of religiously unaffiliated, non-religious voters that are underrepresented.
And the fact that, frankly, there's already we know, and Congressman Huffman will say that he has colleagues that are non-religious that are not willing to be public.
And that's true at all levels of government.
So the complete lack of discussion about.
That expression of secular beliefs is really apparent.
And the fact that there's just no acknowledgement that if you are Hindu, if you're Sikh, if you're Muslim, and you decide to really talk about your faith and be really forward about it in the way that they're suggesting and they're taking example from people like Senator Warnock and Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who, by the way, are really great at expressing their beliefs in a way that is authentic to them.
That can connect with people.
But you have to recognize that if they were Muslim, if they were Hindu, they may not be received the same way.
And voters may not receive it the same way.
So there's like that kind of default centering of, I hate the term Judeo-Christian because it's made up, but, you know, essentially Jewish and Christian voices, but mostly Christian with some exceptions for Jewish people, right?
So there's just a complete exclusion of that experience.
And the bigger suggestion is that the Democratic Party urge Democrats to talk more about faith and to kind of take this overall position.
And I, by the way, I've been you know, I'm on the DNC Interfaith Council, so I've been paying close attention to the race for DNC chair and the other leadership positions, which are going on right now.
And I was listening to some of the candidates in a candidate forum recently, and one of them said something to the effect of, you know, the GOP has convinced people that, you know, the Republicans stand for this and we don't.
And in that list, he said, people believe that Republicans care about God and we don't care about God.
That's a great example of the exact kind of...
Language that we're trying to avoid.
I don't want the Democratic Party to position itself as, quote, caring about God.
First of all, who's God?
And what about people who believe in multiple gods and people who don't believe in any God, right?
There's an assumption there.
When you say we don't care about God, of course, that's code for the Christian and maybe the Jewish God, right?
It's completely exclusive.
And what does it mean for a political party to care about God, right?
That's code for...
I'm promoting faith in and of itself and usually the default, you know, centered faiths, which is Christianity, which is not inclusive.
That's not the big tent party.
And so our op-ed is really trying to make that distinction of there's a big difference between being a party where you can openly express your beliefs, both religious and secular, which is not something that the article covered.
It was just talking about kind of the centered mainstream faith expressions.
Which we completely support, right?
If it is authentic to you, and it certainly is for Senator Warnock, and it certainly is for Secretary Buttigieg and all the politicians who were highlighted in the New York Times, they're authentic, right?
And they should feel comfortable.
Everyone should feel comfortable expressing their authentic beliefs, but that should include secular folks.
And that's not to be confused with...
Having a message on religious freedom, because that's where I feel like instead of trying to replicate what the GOP is doing, which is weaponizing religion and claiming to be speaking for, essentially for God and for religion, but a very specific one, we don't want the Democratic Party to replicate that and say, no, no, no, no.
We're actually, we have the truth about Christianity.
Our version of Christianity is right.
Because then you get in this, and this is really common, right?
I've seen Democrats engage in this, and it's in Republican framing, right?
So they're justifying their hardline immigration policies and quoting scripture.
And then you have progressive Christians saying, no, actually, Jesus would welcome the immigrant and then quoting scripture to justify their position.
And that's fine if that's personal to you, if you as an individual politician, an individual elected official, you're voting this way because you feel that way.
But that's where we have to distinguish between individualizing and universalizing belief, because the political party and the individual politician are different, and we need to make sure that the party is not speaking for religion, is not positioning itself as the arbiter of kind of the true version of any religion or Christianity.
And what we should be doing and what we're arguing for in our op-ed is that...
Instead of being in that framing of, like, who has the true version, right?
Who is the more godly?
Who is the more pro-faith?
How about we talk about the fact that we are the party of religious freedom for people of all faiths and none?
You know, and talk about what real religious freedom is and talk about the hypocrisy and the extremism of white Christian nationalism.
Then you're kind of, you're escaping this kind of narrative, this framing.
Where we're going back and forth on basically which party gets to be the arbiter of faith or Christianity.
And we're going on the office and say, you are undermining religious freedom because you're imposing a narrow set of beliefs on everybody.
We're the ones who are protecting religious freedom for everyone.
You don't see the party really, even though it's in the platform.
You don't really see that kind of messaging come out of the Democratic Party, and we'd really like to see that instead of this very knee-jerk, limited perspective that leaves a lot of people out and, frankly, I think really advantages Republicans by staying within the narrative and the framing that they've set.
What you just said there at the end is what I could not get out of my mind as I read both the op-ed and the Times and then your and Representative Huffman's response op-ed.
And that is, there's a temptation here to say, oh, we lost this election cycle in terms of the national elections and so on.
Therefore, the strategy should be imitation and replication.
The strategy should be, take the narrative they've spun and let's win it.
Let's do it better.
Without considering that that narrative itself is myopic, it is exclusionary.
And it leaves out so many others.
There's also, and I want to make this clear and make sure that we don't miss this, because there are folks listening who are religious, and they're kind of wondering about, well, where does this leave the progressive Christian in what you're talking about?
And in the op-ed, you and Representative Huffman are very clear.
Your appreciation for Mallory McMorrow, who's been on this show, is evident.
Your appreciation for Senator Warnock, your appreciation for Pete Buttigieg is evident.
There's no sense here of being the party of anti-religion, right?
There's a sense here of saying what unites us and what is possible is, A, what you said there about being the party of religious freedom and freedom from religion, right?
Freedom from one religion that the government is imposing on everybody.
And also being a party that unites secular and religious people alike around morals and values.
Rather around having the same God.
And I want to make sure that all of that gets in there, that there's no sense here of you and Representative Huffman being like, religion is not allowed anymore.
We're going a different direction as the Democratic Party.
Far from that.
And then saying there's actually a way to unite us as secular and religious people around our morals and values, because a lot of progressive folks, whether they are humanists or whether they are Episcopalian, whether they are Sikh or whether they are Presbyterian, have A lot of the same values when it comes to voting rights, democracy, LGBTQ rights, things related to income equality, protecting trans folks, and so on and so forth.
So I want to make sure all those get in as we kind of move forward with this.
What do you see as the way?
Well, jump in.
Go ahead.
Really quickly, because I do think, in particular, Senator Warnock and Secretary Buttigieg, they strike me, and I think, you know, Representative Morrow as well, they strike me as religious.
Politicians who have really taken the time to think about how to express their beliefs in a way that does not alienate people who don't believe to their faith group.
It's really apparent to me as an atheist when I hear them speak that they thought about it for more than five minutes.
Because they are very careful about the way that they express.
They are completely open about their faith and they don't hold back and they shouldn't.
But they will say things like, for example, Senator Warnock talks about how his faith informs his values, but he doesn't bring the doctrine with him, right?
He understands and he knows that it's important to note that he's basing his policies on his values, which come from his faith, but he knows that there's a distinction between that and codifying doctrine into law.
Right?
Those kinds of statements, you know, he can talk as much as he wants about theology and I as the atheist will hear that and still feel included and still feel seen because I hear him make that distinction.
That's the difference between individualizing and universalizing those beliefs.
So what we're suggesting is actually not to change that part of the status quo where people like Senator Warnock and Secretary Buttigieg feel comfortable.
I've heard, interestingly enough, from both religious and secular Democrats that they don't feel comfortable expressing themselves in democratic spaces, which is a huge problem.
That means nobody feels comfortable.
The party has a problem talking about religion, period.
And so I would love if there are more people, and I know there are some, there are politicians of faith who don't feel comfortable, and they should.
I 100% support that.
I want everyone for whom it is authentic to them.
To feel comfortable expressing their faith and connecting with voters in that way.
But we also need to make sure that secular politicians have that space and that we don't universalize it for everybody, that we focus, like you said, on the shared values and that the party is not taking on the mantle of faith as a political party, but creating that space and then focusing on those shared values.
What does data show us about how folks are, even in rural areas, even in rural America, are able to respond to language surrounding morals and values rather than around doctrine or religious identity?
Is there evidence that people will respond to language surrounding moral courage, to use one phrase that comes up in the op-ed, rather than language that says, vote for me because I'm a minister, vote for me because...
I'm part of this church.
Vote for me because I'm a Christian like you.
So I'm really glad you asked that.
We mentioned the Rural Voter Initiative in the article, and Isaac Wright, who's part of that organization, we actually brought him and my good friend, Dr. Juhan Navarro Rivera, who's a political scientist, as well, to the DNC Interfaith Council in Chicago, the DNC convention, to specifically present research on this.
Because really the high level is that, yes, they have done research in rural areas and found that when you use moral language, values-based language, you can capture both secular and religious voters.
Because remember, secular voters are everywhere.
They're not just like in New York and California, right?
You can go and look at a map at the Public Religion Research Institute and click on every state and you will see.
That while there's higher and lower rates, depending on the state, even in Texas, even in Mississippi, everywhere, every state, including the most religiously conservative, have non-religious people that are more or less at the national average of now close to one in three and at least a quarter, right?
Just because areas are really conservative doesn't mean secular people don't exist.
They might just be more quiet about it because of the social pressure.
So this idea of like, oh, the rural voter, they're all very religious, they're all attending church.
First of all, that's not necessarily true.
And what we were really trying to debunk with the research is this idea that you have to choose.
Well, we have to choose between religious and secular voters because there's no way to appeal to both without alienating the other.
And that's just not true.
We have shared values and there's language you can use that, and again, it has to be authentic to you.
And I believe that both a religious politician and a secular politician can authentically express their beliefs and still connect with the other side, right?
I think there's a lot that religious voters can connect with from a humanist who's saying, hey, my values come from the fact that I believe in one life and one world and I want to leave it a better place.
And secular voters like myself can relate to people like Senator Warnock and Secretary Buttigieg.
I may not relate to the theology, but the fact that, you know, when they're talking about, you know, loving thy neighbor, you know, there's a secular version of that that I'm translating, you know, that I can relate to, right?
So I think we really need to give credit to voters, too, that if you're authentic, and by the way, that's the other thing that they shared in that presentation.
Voters can pretty much tell when you're not authentic.
And I don't think that's kind of common sense.
Give voters credit.
When you're faking it, we can usually tell.
And it doesn't go over well.
So, you know, be authentic and then focus on the shared values.
And also, you know, if you're running for office, what are you going to do for voters, right?
Most people just want to know, how are you going to make my life better?
We've talked about that endlessly on this show, that if you can make people's lives better, You might just be able to outstrip all of the kinds of categories and the narratives and the various forms of propaganda that are everywhere in our public square, whether it is California and New York, San Francisco and Manhattan, or it is in the rural parts of Nebraska or the far reaches of Louisiana.
I will tell you, Sarah, I'm somebody who's definitely a weird person and I don't need emails telling me how people, okay, I know already.
But I'm weird in the sense that Over the last two years, I have spoken at dozens of churches.
And I feel comfortable in church because I was raised in church.
I have degrees in theology.
And when I'm with progressive Christians, we don't talk about the Democratic Party needing to be the party of God.
What the progressive Christians I hang out with want to talk about is protecting health care, making sure that house people can find a way to find a path towards having a home and having basic human needs met.
They want to talk about protecting trans kids.
They want to talk about protecting LGBTQ rights.
And when I leave there, oftentimes I'll go give a talk at a humanist chapter or at the Freedom From Religion Foundation or hang out with the American Atheists.
And you know what?
I always tell my religious friends about those groups is we're talking about the same thing over there.
We end up talking about democracy, voting rights.
Let's protect the most vulnerable.
And one group thinks that the other is like over there just trying to drum up how we can get God back into politics.
The other thinks that the atheists and the humanists are like, well, let's just get some pizza and prove God doesn't exist.
That's our goal for today.
And both groups are usually talking about the same agenda.
Yeah.
Like, how do we protect the most vulnerable?
How do we help each other live in a free and fair democracy where we can all thrive?
It'd be great if the Democratic Party found a way to say, hey, y'all, our morals and our courage and our resolve are pretty united right now, even if we don't share the same religious or non-religious identities.
So that sticks out to me.
What are the ways people can, you know, the Democrats can appeal to people of faith, people of no faith?
And what are other thoughts you have surrounding all of these issues?
Yeah, you know, something that just came to mind from what you just said is, you know, people who truly believe in religious freedom are not concerned about converting or deconverting other people.
You know, like that.
I think that's important to notice that if you believe in pluralism and then you're not, you know, you just want everybody to live out their life and you're not concerned with convincing them to come to your side, which is another in addition to the shared values and shared concerns.
That's the other reason that you're hearing the same conversations in both spaces, because most of us are not concerned with converting or deconverting because we respect.
Religious freedom.
That's the whole bag, right?
You get to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't impact or undermine my ability to practice or not practice, right?
And I feel like as common sense as that is, I do think it's important to point out because too often we do get the secular community, like you said, gets a few kind of loud voices that are really focused on deconversion and all that kind of stuff.
Kind of drown out the rest of us who really don't care.
Most of us have family members and friends, maybe a lot of spouses who believe.
And we don't care.
We just want to live out our lives.
And I think most progressive Christians feel the same way.
They're not trying to force their beliefs on other people.
In terms of what the Democratic Party could be doing, I think, first of all, I mean, a lot of the work that I do within Secular Democrats of America and on the Dean's Interfaith Council is starting with a baseline of education.
Because if you think about it, there's kind of a suite of issues, you know, abortion, gun control.
You know, trade, all these things that if you're going to run for office or if you're going to be a leader in the Democratic Party at any level, you have to have a position and you have to kind of have a baseline understanding of your talking points and what the opposition says about those issues.
Right.
So there's kind of what I call like a base level fluency on a number of issues.
Church state separation and religious freedom are not one of them.
I can tell you right now, most Democrats that I meet have not spent.
Really, a lot of time thinking about what is the Republican message on this?
And what is my message on this?
And if I were to be asked a stupid gotcha question by a Republican opponent, like, do you support Sharia law?
Or are you, you know, why do you want to take God out of the public sphere?
Like, what is your automatic response?
Like, have you thought about how you're going to get out of the narrative trap and come out on top?
Most Democrats have not.
So there's a baseline of kind of education of how should we be thinking about these issues?
Because, by the way, sometimes it's not an easy answer.
You know, sometimes for these issues, especially when it comes to things like public accommodation and taxpayer dollars, you have to understand how to talk about the public sphere and how to talk about the difference between, yeah, you can get a permit to...
Shout on a megaphone in the literal public square, and that's fine.
But taxpayer dollars, everybody pays into.
So yeah, no taxpayer dollars should be funding discrimination because we all pay into that pot.
So that adoption care center, that foster care center that has a government contract, aka taxpayer dollars, should not be allowed to discriminate on your dime, right?
But those kinds of talking points and kind of thinking through how to talk about those issues.
That requires thinking about it for more than five minutes, right?
Really taking the time to have a deep dive.
So we do a lot of education around those issues, kind of baseline church state stuff, what the issues are.
And on the flip side, because that's kind of the proactive angle of like, what do we stand for?
Also talking about white Christian nationalism, there's still a lot of education to be done about what that is, what it means, how to recognize it.
And a lot of what I'm trying to do is convince Democrats that it's okay to say the words.
It's okay to say the words.
In fact, most Christian nationalists don't want to be called Christian nationalists because they know it's a liability.
I don't know if you saw this, but there was a, I think it was Politico had, or maybe you've seen it, I don't want to misspeak, but there was a There was a reporter who very, you know, called out a white Christian nationalist, used the words.
And then Tony Perkins at Family Research Council on Catholic Vote sent a letter, you know, upset that they, you know, were presented that way.
And to me, that is another really strong anecdote to show.
And we also have data from the Public Religion Research Institute in Brookings that show that most people have heard of Christian nationalism, do not view it favorably.
It's really hard to spin it to make it sound good.
But we shouldn't assume that Republicans can't figure out a way to do that.
So what I say to Democrats is, listen, there's a window of opportunity here.
A lot of people haven't heard of this yet.
It's a liability.
Clearly, Christian nationalists don't want to be called this.
Call it out when you see it.
Because it is to our advantage.
Don't be afraid.
And one of the reasons that they're afraid, besides the fact that the Democratic Party just has a problem talking about religion in general, is there's this fear that you're going to upset Christians, right?
That it's going to come off as anti-Christian, which is why it's so important to also educate them about the fact that, hey, there's this whole thing called Christians against Christian nationalism.
You have a lot of allies in the Christian community who will stand with you and say those words with you because they're concerned about what white Christian nationalism is doing to their faith and the reputation of Christianity, right?
So there's a lot of education, right?
If you have the status quo, which is what I think we have, where both religious and secular people in the party feel uncomfortable expressing themselves, nobody's super comfortable or taking the time to talk about religious freedom and the issues.
That's the first thing you do before you craft a messaging strategy and an outreach strategy, right?
So I think we're really behind because we need to have that baseline.
If it was kind of a default, imagine a default where every Democrat is expected to be as fluent in church, state, and religious freedom issues as they are in abortion or gun rights or immigration.
Like, what's your position?
What's it going to say on your website?
Like, what are your talking points?
We would be in a totally different position than we are now because instead we would be talking about what is the party's messaging strategy and what resources are we allocating?
What messengers are we, right?
We're not there yet because we're still in that first phase of, hey guys, you should be talking about this.
Yeah.
I'm, yeah, you got me.
The hairs on my arms are standing up because like everything you just said.
I feel like my mission for four and five years now of trying to educate folks, trying to get folks to realize that you're going to have to call out Christian supremacy, Christian prejudice when it happens, and you can't be afraid of that.
Like, yes, Tony Perkins will clutch his pearls and he'll send a letter.
And you know what?
We're going to just have to be okay with that.
I also think...
That you're exactly right that when you start standing up with a message that says, we're not going to stand for the imposition of one religion on all other people, there's just a very direct way to appeal to that everyday person that says, hey, Bob, hey, Jennifer, hey, you over there?
Like, we're totally, 100% in favor of religious freedom in every way.
And the only way we can have that is freedom from religion.
Because you know what?
There's a lot of churches in your town.
And if Christian nationalism takes root, one church, one vision of Christ, one vision of your tradition is going to be imposed on the rest of us.
When they put those Ten Commandments up there in the classroom, I want to know why you're going to give the government the permission to translate your Holy Bible.
Which translation did they pick?
Holy text and its translation is showing up in front of your kids.
I don't like that either.
And whether I'm secular or Christian, why don't we just not have one government imposing one Christianity on everyone and just let all of us practice how we'd like?
Wouldn't that be better?
You're like, there's a message here.
There is.
There's a way to...
If you flip the script, and listen, I'm an evidence-based girl, so these are ideas.
They should be message tested with nationally representative data and focus groups, right?
But these are...
These are ideas, right?
I think most people don't like the idea of the government churching their kids, right?
What if we talked about the fact that, hey, you know, do you really want the public schools being the place where your kids are churched?
And I think that's just a different way.
They're saying they're taking God out of the schools.
But we could be talking about the fact that...
Hey, you know, I think that churching belongs in your churches and your home.
I don't want that.
I don't think the government through the public schools should be addressing that.
Right.
That's I think appeals to that kind of individualism that across the political spectrum is just very American.
Right.
Like, don't tell me what to do.
Right.
And that's those are the kinds of messages when we're talking about things like, you know, school curriculum and book bans and vouchers and all this, you know, instead of saying.
No, no, we're not trying to take God out of the schools.
Like, that's not a response, right?
We're saying, no, we want to keep the government out of that entirely because it's not their role to church your kids.
In addition to what you said around, like, hey, well, what version is it going to be, right?
So I think that there are messages like that.
There's messages around, of course, imposing.
Like, again, nobody wants religion imposed on them through the government.
And then having a message that's on the attack of like, hey, you know what Republicans want to do?
They want to impose religion on your family.
On your community, they want to get into your doctor's office and and get their pastor and, you know, dictating what you know, what your health care decisions are.
And I think, you know, the taxpayer dollars thing is another thing that really bugs me.
I feel like we don't talk enough about the fact that religious organizations that are that are behind these kind of schemes to get Funds to private religious schools, to government contracts for adoption and foster care agencies that are turning away Jews and Catholics and anybody that they don't deem, you know, aligned with their views.
They, you know, they're really smart because they use the word discrimination to describe the government saying, hey, we're not going to contract with you because you discriminate.
Like, they're literally the ones discriminating but saying, no, that's discrimination if you don't.
But I view that as entitlement.
What makes you entitled to taxpayer dollars?
We all put into that pot.
No one is entitled to a government contract.
No one is entitled to taxpayer dollars.
You want to use taxpayer dollars?
You better prove that those services, whether it's adoption care, whether it's a school, is going to accept everybody who pays into that pot, right?
That's a different framing.
It's going back to like, hey...
We have rights as taxpayers to make sure that you're not taking my money and then giving it to someone who's going to discriminate against me, especially when it comes to social services.
But I never really hear that discussion, right?
And that's really important because that's when we talk about like the public sphere and accommodation and those kinds of things.
The other side has a whole messaging strategy to make it sound like they're the ones who are victims, but it's the taxpayers who are the victims in this situation where they are just Raiding the government piggy bank to fund their own institutions, right?
They're not satisfied, and by the way, they have enough money to do it on their own, but they're not satisfied with that.
They want unfettered access to government funds, our taxpayer dollars, to discriminate, carte blanche, and to teach kids that the world is 6,000 years old on our dime.
Those are the kinds of messages that I would love to play with.
That kind of flipped the script.
It's not, no, we're not doing that, what you're accusing us of, because then you're, again, in that narrative trap, but flipping the script and saying, hey, we're going to protect your taxpayer dollars because if you're paying in, you should be receiving all the benefits from those contracts.
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