On religious a grip on politics. I didnt even notice that is the religious. Is mckay coppins, robert jones and tim alberta to let i made their introductions im going to make it sure it because some of you heres a k k if you buy their books is like tims and he is robby jones and he is michael they have a very nice bio inside their books so you know dont take notes now you robby has a website you know youll never get all that stuff down so just take that and i that they starting a new genre because for each of them the current book is very exciting and i read them and i love them but this is the second book on a related topic so this is a new genre like politics, religion, culture going wrong and this is a follow up book which is brand new and very interesting thing with, if you like, gossip. Ill stop stop tim alberta tim alberta is in here. Here is tim alberta. His book is the kingdom the power and the glory and for those of you recognized where comes from, good for you. These are you know its amazing theyre all Atlantic Staff writers. So this session might be called the Atlantic Staff reunion or maybe theyll title it next year in that way. His first book was, american carnage on the front lines, the republican civil war and the rise of president trump, and that then he followed up with one the kingdom, the power, the glory. Tim alberta is an evangel, the son of an evangelical pastor, and as he opens his book, he describes, his father, his fathers passing, his returning to his congregation and realizing how different he was from the current congregation and the path he chose. So thank you very much for being here, mike wrote the definitive biography of romney. He had amazing access to romneys journals and as i mentioned earlier on mckays key sharing for future is find a terrific figure public figure an interesting background who wanted to write an autobiography and then decided not to and gives you everything. So you have a little homework homework and mckays first book was the wilderness about the dysfunction in the republic. Can part of you know how that worked out and i love this and i love the the gossipy tales robert jones is the hidden roots of white. I used to teach history and i didnt know anything about the doctrine of discovery and holy cow, what was i teaching . It was the establishment of racism and colonialism. And it was done by the pope. So in 1493, when a christian found the country. Holy cow, they took it over and. The people were their property. How did i miss that . And any rate, i have some questions. Well start out with brief ones and then ill them go into some deeper. So mckay. Why dont i ask you . Well, why dont you start with tim . Tim. Because i think i need to do tims first. I want some brief context setting. So in a few words, can explain to us why evangelicals feel persecuted. Sure. Im glad you started with you. Thank you all for being here. First of all, thank you for those very interesting opening remarks remarks. So, yeah, sure. I will just ill start i think we all the three of us spent a lot of time studying, dissecting analyzing, trying to better understand and sort of the unraveling of the right in different ways and i think much of the story theyre setting aside donald trump as sort of a sui generis figure setting aside some of the Political Polarization and and some of the the economic fragmentation and parts of the country sort of getting left behind and all of the things that weve seen transpire in American Life that have sort of upended our our system here in the last, you know, ten or 15 years. I think the key driver, least from where i stand and from the reporting ive is a sense of sort of cultural grievance, cultural resentment. And i think from specifically an evangelical christian standpoint, its important recognize that in the post911 era. And really, i think you would even zoom fast forward just even a little bit more to sort of the end of the bush presidency and the beginning of the obama presidency. There was a feeling and this is a feeling sort of inextricable from. Some of what robert has written about. Ill be interested, hear him sort of build on this. But a feeling that this country was becoming unrecognizable to them, that its judeochristian heritage and values were under systematic attack, that and to be clear some of this rhetoric, some of this thinking is not new. This goes back several in fact, much of sort of modern evangelical as we know it today was sort of built this same persecution complex, Jerry Falwell senior and some of his allies in the 1970s onward. This idea that christiane was under assault in america. But i think that those have intensified and have scaled in a way that we may not fully appreciate. We are not in that world. Just to give a brief example, to help sort of put some meat on the there, i think its important to recognize how quickly some of this social cultural change has happened and to understand that historically do tend to see a backlash. There is that sort of condense that social cultural change. So, for example, when barack obama runs for president in 2008, he is opposed to same sex marriage. He says that he believes that marriage is between one man and one woman. Now, by the end of his eight years later, not only has obama become a full throated supporter of same sex marriage, but also the Supreme Court of the United States has to legalize same sex marriage nationally and any evangelical or christian who in 2016 holds the view that barack obama held in 2008 is now regarded a bigot or worse and they are not welcome in polite company. They are they are a deplorable they are an irredeemable. They are someone who is on the wrong side of history and that they are part of the sort of demographic death spiral that once we get rid of them, we will be able to move into a new, enlightened era in america. And i think that as one example of many has fueled this sense of persecution, of marginalization and a feeling that these people, as donald trump likes to say in his speeches, he talks to evangelical audiences that they are under siege, that barbarians are at the gates and i think the clearest, most concise way to understand the relationship between trump and these people is effectively to realize that. Once you believe barbarians are at the gates, then you decide that maybe, just maybe, need a barbarian to protect you. And that is donald trump to these folks. And that why he has emerged as the unlikeliest but also in some ways sort of the obvious figure as a protector a guardian, a brawler, their behalf because they feel like something is being taken from them and that if they dont stop it now, theyll never get it back. Thank you. Not cheery, but inside well, thank you, mckay the evangelicals or maybe the most loyal democrat. Thats a Mormon Muslim are republicans. And the mormons. Maybe the second most loyal republicans to the mormons have this same view of trump as the political savior of the of their future and their religion. Yeah, its really interesting. The contrast between whitey evangelicals and mormons in this country has been one of the i think the more interest political religious stories the last eight, ten years. The short answer is no. In fact, trump performed historic poorly with mormon. In the last two elections. So from throughout, from basically the late sixties on, mormons were actually most reliable republican religious group in the country until 2016. A typical republican president ial candidate nominee would get somewhere the range of 70 to 80 of mormon votes. Donald trump. The best the best numbers i could see got about 50 of the mormon vote. And so why is that . So why . Why did mormons kind of veer away from the Republican Party as donald trump took over while white evangelicals leaned into it, or at least many did . I think there are a couple different. And mitt romney is is kind of emblematic of this in interesting ways. But and we talked about this a lot, i think a lot of it has to do with the history. Those two groups, mormons and i hoping we can talk more about this because ive been reading tims book and its excellent, fascinating. But one of the arguments he puts forward is that part the what weve seen in the radical ization of a segment at least of white evangelicals is that in tell if im paraphrasing you wrong but is that theyve made america their religion theyve replaced religion with america. Whats interesting is that theyre the. Kind of entanglement of american with their theology and their religion has actually been a moderating influence on mormons. If you look at mormon history in the 19th century through, the middle of the 20th century, mormons kind of defined themselves as people by trying to be welcomed into mainstream america. Right. And from very beginning, mormon leaders, founding prophet of mormonism, joseph tried to make the case that mormonism was inextricably linked with the success of the american project. But most americans didnt buy it. And for the first hundred years of mormonism history, mormons were kind of chased from one state to another, driven into they established their kind of civilization in the desert because no other place would have. And so mormon ism kind of for most of its history, has defined itself by trying to be ideal. Americans and well. And thats for better and worse, you know, a of the racism in the history of mormonism comes from mormons trying to reach for their place in the racial hierarchy the way that white evangelicals kind of already had right white protestants at least. But there are also good that came out of that. Mormons have, a kind of civic minded belief in social cohesion. They have high trust in institutions. They have kind of a a a very kind of simple patriotism that leads them to kind of be repelled by trump, you know, picking with gold star families, for instance, or denigrate of fallen soldiers. Theres also an interesting immigration plays an interesting role here in to 16 there was some survey data that came out that showed that mormons were as likely as white evangelicals to say that america should welcome immigrants. And a lot of that has to do with mormon missionary experiences. A huge majority of of practicing young mormon men served missions, many of them outside of the country for two years. And become you know that obviously an effect on how they view the immigration but also mormons see in their history a story of religious refugees people who basically were driven out of the country and had to find their own, their own place. And so when, for example, donald called for a man on a ban on muslim refugees, it was one of the only times church, the Institutional Church in, salt lake city, released a statement on on politics and explicitly condemned call for a ban on muslim refugees. So there are all different factors at play that have mormons much more skeptic, all of donald trump than other parts of the religious right. With all of that said, i do think that we were starting to see you know, were now eight years into the trump era, right . Nine years, really, if you count when donald started running and i think that some of the the kind of barrier of resistance are beginning to erode. And what i think is happening to mormons and ive been talking some people who study this is basically mormons as a whole are becoming less republican in the trump era. But who have stayed republican are becoming more extreme in their beliefs. Theyre becoming. Yeah. And so theres kind of been this interesting political schism within american mormonism that i is going to be fascinating to watch play over the next the next kind of few election cycles and. I think a lot of it will have to do with whether the Republican Party is sort of becomes permanently a party of trumpism even when trump is gone or if it reverts back to some former version. And we dont know whats going to happen there. Thank you well so thats intra demographics splitting within a group robbie youve looked at democrats and republicans in terms cultural and political religious differences would you explain to the group some of the reason for the split in the party and the dysfunction in our government. Sure. Well you know, the the one term i think we dont often think about when think about American Culture is its a view race religion together. We didnt kind of think of them as separate. So talk about nationalism or we talk about white supremacist, we talk about the christian right, but we dont often pull all those categories together. And i would contend that like, thats blinded us to whats right in front of us here. That if we think about whats being protected with the Maga Movement and the kind his take over the Republican Party, its an ethno religious vision of the country right is a White Christian nationalists as one way of thinking in recent parlance but is a you know, an older term. Its a white anglosaxon protestant vision of the country, this being. So if you think back about the kkk right, many people think of them as, oh, were antiblack, but the kkk had a positive vision for the country. And if you werent a member of the kkk, you had to show you were white, that you were anglosaxon heritage, and that you were a protestant christian. Right. That was the vision of america. It was an ethno religious vision of america that was being thats why they were anticatholic and anti jewish. Right. Not just or antiimmigrant. Right. Thats how all that held together for them. But and thats really been the thats been operative and holding all this together and whats whats, i think, troubling in our current moment is that our two Political Parties have sorted themselves along ethno lines. Right and so for example, the modern republican, we do Public Opinion surveys typical stuff. Republicans are 70 white and christian. The country is 42 white. And christian right. Democrats are 25 white and christian right. So that right there tells you a about whats going on. Right. Theres been the sorting thats happened over time. One of the thing is just to connect some dots here, it is true that mormons were the only ones who moved in 2016 from their typical where they would typically be. Theyre the only that that moved at all in ways that were measurable and that includes white mainline protestants the not evangelical quote unquote liberal end of the white protestant world, voted about six and ten for trump white evangelicals, about eight in ten. But whats i think notable here is if we look at the history, how do we get here . How do we get to those two Political Parties . Look at that. So i saw this in the last session. I grew in jackson, mississippi. My relatives all way back are from middle georgia. All of my grandparents. Right. All baptists, all white all democrat. My grandparents. Right now. Thats kind of weird and way to think. We used to talk about the solid democratic south right in this country. So what happened . And theres a story that white evangelical like to tell about themselves and about ourself, as i should say. And that is that all about abortion, right. And that it was roe v wade that was the. But its not true. The Southern Baptist convention, the largest expression of white protestantism in the country praised the roe v wade decision in 1973. It wasnt till. 1979 that they got around to opposing abortion because they saw it as a catholic issue like. Were not dealing were not upset about Birth Control or the catholic thing. Right. It wasnt till we get paul weyrich, falwell and the kennedys, marriage of the kind of Political Movement that their what it was the real genesis that kind of gets falwell off the sidelines. Falwell also used to preach about the the thing that preachers need to do, stay in the pulpit and not be out in the streets. But what made him say he was preaching against Martin Luther king, thats he said that the place for preachers is in the pulpit, not out in the streets. He was directly talking about kings activism in the pulpits. And, in fact, the thing that organizes the religious right, randall bombers documented this really well is a book bad faith. This really great. He was actually in the room. But essentially what motivated them was to get to get organized was Bob Jones University threatening to get its tax status removed because had a policy against interracial dating on campus. Right. Thats the thing that got them motivated and theres a great book, another book called the rise of republican south the documents, the marker that you can see, the exodus white evangelical christians from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party is the 1964. Voting rights act, followed by the 1965 civil rights act. And thats the fuel, right . The begins. And so if you think about longer history of kind of protecting this idea of a white anglosaxon protestant country, that makes a lot more sense of how we got this movement of the christian out. And in fact, when you hear the rhetoric around the Maga Movement that its not too far off, you still hear this, right . Its our religion. Those kind of words used. And what they mean is white evangelical protestant religion. Thats really who were talking about where you set the groundwork for a scary landscape. So lets go right into the landscape the talk now by the Trump Administration is the establishment of a christian government as opposed to a constant fusion of government. Will each of you give a glimpse as to what a christian government might look like in the us. Probably. I think a similar so so is interesting that that robert just ended off there by talking our religion, which is in fact a phrase that trump himself has been using in recent months at some of his campaign rallies, in the context of saying that maybe when hes president again, we wont let anyone immigrate to this country unless they are a christian. They are part of our religion. Now, donald trump, he of the famous two corinthians and, the having having boasted of never needing to ask gods forgiveness and other things when he says our religion, you are tempted to. Ask him what religion exactly are we talking about . Now im saying that to be cute because i think, as mckay was alluding to earlier, much of the argument im making my book based on many years of reporting and, based on a lifetime inside this subculture, is that, you know as john calvin used to