August 9, 2024 • 51 mins
On this episode of The Middle we're live from Birmingham, Alabama in the heart of the Bible Belt to ask you: What role should religion play in our politics? We're joined by former Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann and Birmingham-based journalist and Vice President of Content for The Gospel Coalition Collin Hansen. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver and his band joins as well, plus questions from our live audience. #religion #christianity #extremism #god #politics #churchandstate
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Jeremy Hobson coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama in
collaboration with Station WBHM.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Along with Tolliver and his band and Toliver.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We're talking about religion this hour, specifically the role of
Christianity in politics. And you grew up in a religious household?
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I did a struma PK. My dad was a pastor
of a bunch of churches. You actually pastor of three churches.
He was kicked out of the first two and I
won't tell you why, but yeah, so I was really
excited about this topic. And my music does you know
incorporate religion wts.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Right right, absolutely, And we're going to hear one of
those songs later. Full disclosure, I did not grow up
in a religious household. I my parents are of two
different religions, didn't grow up very religious. And while the
Constitution is pretty clear about the separation of church and state,
it is undeniable that the Christian religion and identity play
a large role in our political system, whether that's taking
(00:51):
the oath of office on a Bible or the increasingly
intertwined rhetoric that some politicians use to equate political identity
with religious convict. The latest data from the Pew Research Center, however,
finds that only about sixty percent of Americans now identify
as Christian, which is down significantly in the last few decades.
(01:11):
So this hour we're talking about the role of Christianity
in our politics, and let's meet our panel. Elizabeth Newman
is a former Homeland Security official and author of the
book Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism and
the Path Back to Peace.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Elizabeth, great to have you with us.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Jeremy and Colin Hansen is a Birmingham based journalist as
well as vice president of content and editor in chief
of the Gospel Coalition that's a network of churches and pastors.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Colin, welcome to you as well.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, let's start just by introducing you both to our audience. Colin,
you are a Christian. You're the editor in chief of
the Gospel Coalition. You host the Gospel Bound podcast. How
do you see the role of Christianity in our politics?
Speaker 6 (01:56):
I mean it's been there from before the beginning. I
mean the the United States. The people who came here.
Not everybody came here for good motives. People came here
for ill motives, But a lot of the people who
came to the United States from the very beginning were
people who are looking to exercise their faith. And so
this is not something that comes in at a different point,
at a certain later point. But what you can observe
(02:19):
is that throughout American history, religious influence has waxed and waned.
It's been more, it's been less. We sometimes imagine that
this is something where this was the past and now
this is the present, this.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
Is where we're going in the future. The reality religious
influence is up and down.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
Just to give a very brief look at that of
a couple examples, the American Revolutionary period was the low
point of church attendance in American history. It was the
most secular time in American history, followed by the Second
Grade Awakening, which was the peak which led to the
Civil War, and then you see a large decline of
religiosity and influence on politics all the way until the
(02:56):
Cold War, and then you see a massive increase and
the decrease that you're talking about tends to coincide with
the end of the Cold War. So Christianity historically speaking,
especially Christianity, but religion in general has had a huge influence,
but not always the same way.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Do you feel like we're at a low point right
now of Christianity's influence in our politics or where are we?
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Yeah, I definitely think we're at a low point.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
The number of people who affiliated with a church in
the year two thousand was seventy percent. That number over
the course of twenty years has declined to forty seven percent.
But here's what's significant about that number. That number of
seventy percent was stable for almost all the twentieth century.
So something changed around the year two thousand. What I
would pause it is at number one, that was the
(03:40):
first year that a majority of Americans had the Internet
in their homes. Number two is some of the effects
of certainly the end of the Cold War in this
new future.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Interesting Elizabeth Newman, you're also a Christian. You were a
homeland security official in the Trump administration. You left the
administration and said that it was not taking the threat
of violent extremism on the political right seriously.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
That's right.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
I have been in the homeland security space since just
after nine to eleven. I served initially in the George W.
Bush administration. I served as a contractor in the Obama administration.
In the national security space, national security is not a
partisan thing, so serving in the Trump administration, I was
concerned that. And it wasn't just me. There were a
(04:25):
number of people in the counter terrorism community that were
concerned about what we were seeing as an increase in
violent extremism, not just from overseas, not just isis, but
happening from within.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
And we sounded the.
Speaker 7 (04:38):
Alarm and a number of times tried to get it
written into national level policy and were largely rebuffed.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So you didn't feel you had a home in the
Trump administration. What about your faith journey? Do you feel
like you still have a home in your church?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
You know, that's a great question.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
I am a practicing Christian and I do have a
home church, and I feel very welcome in that community.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
But certainly the Christian culture that I grew up in.
Speaker 7 (05:05):
I grew up in Dallas, Texas, so I'm a Bible
belt kid. That culture I'd no longer feel welcome in.
And that was probably a realization that occurred over the
last ten years, but especially around twenty sixteen. Why because
the increasingly I felt that the Christian Church was identifying
(05:29):
with Republican Party politics, and it became one and the same.
So if you were a Christian, you were expected to
vote a certain way, you were expected to have a
certain set of politics. And when you had a candidate
like Donald Trump who didn't even pretend to try to
have the virtues or the values that previous politicians at
least pretended to have. I found it kind of the
(05:51):
height of hypocrisy that a party that thought that somebody
that committed adultery in the Oval office can no longer
serve as president. Somehow they could get behind somebody that
had been thrice married and also committed adultery, and you know,
a whole host of other offenses that are currently pending
before court.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Colin Hanson, without making this all about Donald Trump, let
me just ask you, what do you think of that?
What she's saying about Christianity and its tie to the
Republican Party and feeling unwelcome because her politics are not
what other members of her church's politics are.
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Yeah, my background is in politics as well, and I
actually worked in the Republican Party for a number of
years and identified that way for a long time. I
think what a lot of people are finally realizing this year,
especially with the Republican Party platform changes, is that there's
been a massive shift in the Republican Party, many of
them evangelical Christians living in suburban areas like Washington, d C.
(06:47):
Northern Virginia, the suburbs of Atlanta would be another example.
Suburbs of Dallas would be another example, have largely been
pushed out of both.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Parties, and a lot of the issues that they care about.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
Abortion would be one of them, have been pushed out
of both party platforms. But what's replaced them have been
a number of people who identify more loosely with Christianity
but would be more identified as populists and historically we're Democrats.
So we're going through a political shift that is reshaping
both parties, and so a number of people who had
(07:18):
identified their Christianity with their politics and a former Republican
Party really don't have a home there anymore. And they
certainly don't have a home for the most part of
the Democratic Party either.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I want to at this point in the conversation just
ask you.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I'm sure there are many people who are listening to
this right now who are not religious at all and
would say the Constitution is clear separation of church and state.
Why are we even having this discussion, Elizabeth Newman, what
do you say to people who would say.
Speaker 7 (07:44):
That, Well, I certainly am very thankful that we have
a constitution that allows the free exercise of religion, and
I don't interpret separation of church and state to mean
that you can't have a conversation in the public square
about religion. I think that's one of the most beautiful
things about our country is to have people with different perspectives,
(08:04):
different beliefs, and being able.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
To exchange ideas. I also believe that.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
Just historically, as Colin mentioned, a lot of our countries,
some of the freedoms that got baked into our constitution
actually have their historic roots in Christian principles and Christian
foundational idea of the Amago day. The idea that all
men are created equal. You can tie directly back to
(08:31):
this vision of being made in the image of God,
and that because we're made in the image of God,
we're all able to have the same value, equality, dignity, worth,
and so those concepts that really if you trace the
history of Christiandom, there's a lot of damage that Christianity
(08:52):
has done in the last two millennias.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
I'm not going to.
Speaker 7 (08:56):
Sit here and say like it's all roses, but there
were a lot of beautiful blessings that came to bear
in Western civilization and eventually in the United States. So
it's worth not losing those beautiful things that offered this
idea of human equality and human dignity.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
How do you not lose those beautiful things, as you say,
while recognizing that people can have any kind of religion
in this country and it doesn't have to be based
on the principles of one faith.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
I think that there's fear.
Speaker 7 (09:26):
There's a lot of fear that the country is changing,
and I think there are a lot of people that
come from a Christian background, maybe not actually are Christians.
In fact, we have a lot of data to show
that there are a lot of people that don't consider
themselves to be saved, believe Jesus as their savior, but
they come from Christian culture. They like that culture, they
want to hold on to that culture, and they're scared
(09:48):
because the country has changed rather drastically in a short
period of time, and human beings in general don't like change,
they don't like uncertainty, and in that rapid change, they're
seeking to hold on to something, and part of what
we're seeing in our current politics is various efforts to
try to go back to some golden vision of what
(10:10):
the way it used to be, and of course the
Christian culture gets wrapped into that, and I as a believer,
I think that's not actually an accurate representation of what
Christianity is, but that has gotten wrapped into our politics
right now. And that's part of the reason I wrote
the book, is to try to start separating our politics
from our faith. Those do need to be separate and
(10:33):
how we view the world.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Colin Hansen, is there a mixing of politics and religion
right now in the sense that certain figures, and let's say,
Donald Trump, are seen.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
As religious figures by some.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If you were watching the Republican National Convention recently, people
were talking about how Trump was saved by God during
that assassination attempt, even saved by God so that he
could be the president and of the United States.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
I mean, you always see that in our politics, and
I think it's noteworthy that President Biden had also said.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
I'm not getting out of this race unless.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
God tells, right, the Almighty, unless you.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
Know the Almighty tells me that I should do that,
And so it's pretty much a staple of American politics.
And I think if if a politician did not do that,
it would be conspicuous, but the fact that they do it,
it just is part of the noise. And there are
those moments where politicians will try to use religion, and
(11:33):
it's typically Christianity as a prop to be able to
push for a certain kind of loyalty and that kind
of demand.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
But generally speaking, you see it cut both ways in
our politics.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
Maybe it's sometimes just more invisible to the side that
we prefer.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Stand by, because in a moment, we're going to talk
about just the things you're mentioning there and the rise
of what's called Christian nationalism, and we're going to hear
from members of our live audience.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Don't go anywhere listening to the middle finely fee.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
The flooding, but I got no wings?
Speaker 8 (12:12):
Oh passing baby, who's here?
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Heavy walking to see?
Speaker 9 (12:18):
If you me?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Who's here? Heaven's at my fingers.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Hear the angels singing baby is laughing?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Blue baby.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Boom throo baby boof bom.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Well I'll tell you I'm a shouting god. Nobody around
me stand the child on a ride something see Heaven
found my place on the Earth.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Heavy Day's a.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Hustle from the.
Speaker 10 (12:51):
Death back to birth.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Oh oh yeah.
Speaker 11 (12:55):
Fund the death back to birth.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Oh yeah, this is the middle.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, in the Middle
is a national call in show. We are focused on
elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or
maybe you just want to meet in the middle. This hour,
we're not taking calls because we're in Birmingham, Alabama, asking
you what role should Christianity.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Play in our politics.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I'm joined by former Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman, whose
book is called Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian
Extremism and the Path Back to Peace, and Colin Hanson,
vice president of Content and editor in chief of the
Gospel Coalition. Before we get to our live audience, questions
and comments, Elizabeth Newman, in your book, you write, what
started fifty plus years ago as an alliance between white
(13:43):
Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party for political power has
solidified as the core identity for a strong majority of
the white Evangelical Christian community.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Right, So I because I am a Christian.
Speaker 7 (13:59):
Made when I was looking at why do we have
such an epidemic of violence in this country? As I
mentioned earlier, starting in around twenty fifteen, all of the
metrics start going up, and if you look at who
is perpetrating those attacks, some of them are non ideological,
you can't put them on the right left spectrum. But
of those that are ideologically motivated, they fall on the
(14:22):
right side of the spectrum. And that really concerned me.
There's a lot of academic reasons why that might be,
but there's also in those movements this undercurrent of Christianity now.
And if you were to just stop any random person
that goes to church on Sunday and ask them if
they agree with militia, violent extremism, or white supremacist extremism,
(14:44):
they would say, of course not, that's horrible. Violence is
not tolerated in our religion. But somehow those movements were
gaining momentum, and we also were starting to have increases
in political violence, things that aren't necessarily associated with an
organized violent extremist movement.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
And so I was very perplexed by the.
Speaker 7 (15:07):
Fact that this was coming from my community, like literally geographically,
my community, my faith community, my political community.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
How tied though, is the radicalization of people to religion.
Speaker 7 (15:20):
So, and that's part of the reason I spent the
last three years trying to understand this. I don't think
it's a particular religion in a traditional sense, like take
the politics out of it. Like you go to church
on a Sunday, or practice any faith, You're not going
to walk out of there, more likely to be.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Willing to commit an act of violence.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
The problem is when there are political motives that, combined
with social media, are driving us to live in a
persistent state of fear and outrage. And we are told
over and over again that we're living in this existential
threat of a moment, that your way of life, your
(16:01):
success or survival, is being threatened by some other.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
The other could be.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Defined depending on what community you find yourself in. So,
for a Christian community, the other generally speaking, and I'm
talking white Evangelical Christian community, the other is liberals, it's
coastal elites, it's people who.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Don't practice our faith.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
The other is anybody that's different than us and they're
trying to take away our way of life. And I
don't I could probably ask Colin, I'm sure he's had
similar experiences. I've sat through sermons where pastors have told
us that in our lifetime pastors will be jailed for
teaching a biblically orthodox scripture. And so that fear for
(16:44):
ten ish years has led us to a place where
there's some small percentage of that community who has gotten
to a place where they are cognitively open to violence
as a solution, which is my definition of extremism. And
it's because we've been saturated in fear and grievance cycle
for at least a decade, really going back several decades
(17:04):
because of the merger with politics.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Colin Hanson, Well.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
I think what's so interesting about having this conversation in
the middle is where we're having the conversation in Birmingham, Alabama.
This is a city that is more familiar with forms
of violence than maybe any other city in America, and
certainly in very famous ways in American history, and in
part extremism that's been wielded against Christians, of course, that's
(17:32):
the Sixteenth Street Baptist church bombing in nineteen sixty three
was an act of violence against an actual church and
actual Christians who are exercising their faith. And so extremism
is certainly an American problem. It's not a new thing,
it's not partisan, it's not one specific group.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
But it can be wielded.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
Religion can be wielded by people for any kinds of
different motivations. So fascinating is doctor Martin Luther King Junior
described to himself as an extremist. So I'm an extremist
for love. So the question I think that Elizabeth helps
us to drive toward is it's not necessarily about whether
you're an extremist per se, but what you're an extremist for.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
You can be an extremist for.
Speaker 6 (18:15):
Love and do what doctor King did here in the
streets of Birmingham, or you can be an extremist for
hate and do what the clan members did to those
little girls in that church. So it's not so much
about extremism per se, but about what is fielded for.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
You say, we're here in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Alabama is also, i believe, the state with the highest
percentage of people who identify as Christian out of any
state in the entire country, or at least up there
among the top one or two or three.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And also as you.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Mentioned, there was a history in the civil rights movement
of tying the movement and many parts of it to
the Christian faith. Elizabeth Newman, is is there a difference
between that and some of the Christian nationalism that we
see now.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
Yes, Christian nationalism is arguably more nationalism than it is
Christian nationalism is a political philosophy, and in my world,
where we counter violent extremism, it is it can be
a form of extremism if you are willing to take action,
(19:19):
hostile action against the people that don't fit your nationalist description.
So in nationalism, there's an identity that of the people
that make up the nation, and if you're part of
that group, you're the end group. If you do not
fit that definition of what it means to be a
part of your nationalistic identity, then you're a part of
(19:42):
the outgroup. And what we see in nationalistic cultures it
tends to creep towards giving preference to those that are
on the inside. Sometimes it creeps towards actually providing penalties
to those that are outside. Sometimes it's criminal penalties, sometimes
it's violence. And look are certain smaller variations of nationalism.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
You look at the United Kingdom.
Speaker 7 (20:04):
They have a Church of England, they have a state religion,
but you don't pay more taxes.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
If you don't go to the Church of England.
Speaker 7 (20:14):
You're still allowed to vote, You're still allowed to participate
as a citizen, even if you don't belong to the
Church of England. But there are some in the United
States who are arguing that we should redefine our country
based on what they perceive to be a historical tie
(20:34):
to Christianity and actually give favor or preference to those
who are practicing Christians, that our laws should be favorable
and lean into that Christian heritage.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Why this in group out group, us versus them isn't
a huge part of the Christian faith Love Thy Neighbor?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I mean, this show is called the Middle.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I mean we're talking across party lines from different parts
of the country.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Colin Hanson, what about love thy Neighbor?
Speaker 6 (21:03):
Well, again, it's going back to what I was saying
earlier about what does that love look like? So for King,
what he was all about was saying that my opposing
white segregationist is actually my love for them. But what's
interesting about the Christian faith is that we believe that
you don't even necessarily know always yourself what's best for you,
(21:26):
And so you can extrapolate that to your neighbor as
well and say that sometimes loving your neighbor is not
necessarily doing what they would perceive to be love. Now,
you don't have to be a Christian to think about
this way. You might just be a parent and think
this way. It's a basic aspect of parenting that you
do not always give people what they want, in part
because you say, I love you too much to be
(21:48):
able to do that. So in some ways, our laws,
insofar as they are based on love, are acts of
restraining people against things that would be harmful to them,
whether they want to do that or not.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Again, there's a whole range here.
Speaker 6 (22:01):
We all ascribe to that in certain ways, and we
also recognize other ways where we think that's too far.
But that's part of what Elizabeth is trying to get
at here, is that there's a lot of debate about how.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Far that ought to go.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
And I think it's actually the kind of the rise
of secularism that's bringing this all about kind of to
renegotiate because, as you say, with the church not being
the dominant social force that it had been in the past,
bringing people together with.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
A lot of assumptions that they had shared.
Speaker 6 (22:30):
There's this sense of, well, maybe it's all up for
grabs now we need to renegotiate this communal agreement, to
the point where some people are saying the Constitution is
a dead letter. Need to throw that out, We need
to start from scratch. It's the kind of extremes I
don't support. And they would say that they are loving
their neighbors and doing that. I don't agree with that,
But that's how you get there.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Let's get to some audience questions. Let's hear from you.
Speaker 9 (22:55):
My name is Cail, and listening to what you said
earlier about the faith was down in numbers and attendance
and such. I think one of the reasons is the
lack of trust, trust in the faith, trust in Christianity.
How can we.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
Address that. That's a wonderful question. I appreciate that.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
The lack of trust in religion is actually part of
a much broader decline in trust of all institutions in
American life. About the only institution that doesn't see a
massive decline is the military. But that's why you see
it celebrated in certain environments that's still kind of the
institution everybody can rally around in there. One of the
challenges for any institutions in this era is transparency. People
(23:44):
can see things that they couldn't see before, enlargely because
of the Internet, and that's led to this widespread erosion.
The only thing you can do about that, whether you're
the church or you're a local social club or anything,
is to live with transparency and integrity and to have
leaders who are willing to live according to a creed
that considers others more important than themselves. Christianity, okay, Christianity
(24:10):
should have resources to be able to do that in
the example of Jesus Christ himself, But nevertheless, it proves
very difficult in a world whereas Christians, we understand is
full of sin and we're just as tempted as everybody else.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
But I would love to see.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
The church as setting the example for other institutions to follow.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Perhaps we'll get there.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Thank you for that question. Let's get to another one.
My name is John.
Speaker 10 (24:33):
I grew up in Birmingham and so this is for
either of the panelists. So I'd like to you explain
like the mindset of how why Christians religious people in general,
but Christians especially like to publicly insert their faith into
politics and government, and that is why the Freedom of
Religion Foundation has so much work and abs and secular
(24:54):
people like me get so upset because we feel like
our rights are being trampled on.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So there's that one bibook.
Speaker 10 (24:59):
We're about, you know, not being like the Pharisees going
to pray in the closet instead it out in the public.
Why do more Christians follow that practice?
Speaker 7 (25:07):
I mean, it's a really great question, right, like that
our private faith should be more real than our public faith.
I think, and I do think that's gotten inverted, mainly
because I.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Think there's two answers to your question. You said, why
is it that.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
Politics has faith so prominent, and I would I would
say it's because it works, It gets you votes. It's
there's a segment of our society that sees the spiritual
is very powerful, and so if they see a politician
using it, they kind of they identify, like, oh, they're
like one of me. Even even though I would I
(25:46):
would say, like, especially in an era of transparency, I
find it odd that somebody's personal actions don't attest more
than what they say on a you know, dias Like,
there's just this disconnect between behavior that would, in Christian parlance,
the fruit or the lack thereof. But somehow if they
(26:09):
say the right thing on a campaign slogan or on
a you know stage somewhere where that counts more than
their actual action.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I wonder if you think we're seeing that, by the way,
right now, in the fact that a number of pretty
conservative Republican states have been voting overwhelmingly in favor of
abortion rights, even though the politicians that they tend to
elect would be publicly against that.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
Yeah, I don't really, I will tell you, like I've
struggled with. I grew up in the nineties, and I
thought that when the leaders were telling us, like, no, no,
it's really important. Personal character matters. That's what I grew
up with. Personal character in our leaders matter. And that's
(26:53):
why if you know, you're growing up in the Bible
Belt as a Republican, well you can't vote for Clinton,
Like that's what I taught. And then somehow twenty years
later that's not the same. Like, and so you start
to go, oh, we don't actually believe this.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
This really is about power, This isn't about character.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
At all, And to be clear, I don't think that's
true for everybody, but certainly there were a whole lot
of leaders, and a whole lot of Christian leaders like
pastors who kind of just chucked aside the character thing
and said, you know, it's this election is too important.
(27:33):
We can't stand up for our values because we got
to defeat the other guys. And I think that there's
just a lot of entanglement with power, and it became
very hypocritical. But I hear what you were saying, sir,
and I think it's a real detriment and a soling
on Christianity itself that we're not creating a space where
(27:58):
you feel loved and front and welcomed to the public square,
because that's what our faith teaches us.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
We should be doing that. We should be welcoming.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
To all, regardless of what you believe, because you, in
my belief, are made in the image of God. So
it's a shame that you don't feel that from the
Christian community.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
These audience questions are fantastic, So let's get another one.
Speaker 11 (28:21):
Yeah, my name is Imma Noble and I'm from Birmingham
and I've lived here my whole life. As we know,
the separation of church and state was paraphrased from a
letter of Thomas Jefferson's. Do you feel like this idea
is sufficiently reflected in the Constitution and if not, what
would codifying that look like?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Great question, that's.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
A good question.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
Yeah, in response, of course, to Baptists, to the Danbury
Baptists in that particular case, I think it's a fair
summary in a lot of ways of what the free
exercise clause means and the idea of keeping government interference
out of out of religion and that concept. But again,
where it's often gone astray is the notion of separation
(29:05):
of religion from public life. That clearly was not a
concept that anybody would have had back then, despite the
fact that Jefferson himself, of course was very famously not
a practicing Christian, same way John Adams, even George Washington
were again shockingly secular figures for that time. But I
(29:26):
think one thing I just want to point out as
a Baptist and as a Christian is that the separation
of church and state has been one of the best
things for the church.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Elizabeth pointed out.
Speaker 6 (29:38):
The Church of England Enmeshing official church theology with politics
does not go well, but mainly it goes badly for
the church. And so part of my concern as a
Christian and as a Baptist is to preserve that so
that the government and religion might do each what they
(30:01):
do best, and that I think as Christians we are
at our best when we're putting our faith into action
by loving our neighbors, which includes political engagement in a
lot of different ways.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
So I don't know what it would look like to
codify that.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
More so it would be interesting legislatively to think about that,
but certainly Supreme Court usually is what fills the gap
these days.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I can't let us mention Thomas Jefferson without stating my
favorite Thomas Jefferson fact, which is that in the nineteen sixties,
the early nineteen sixes, because Thomas Jefferson, for all of
his faults that have been talked about, was also like
one of the most brilliant people ever to occupy the
White House.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
And John F.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Kennedy had all of the Nobel Prize winners over to
the White House in the early nineteen sixties, and he said,
never before in the history of this room has there
been such a collection of intellect, with the possible exception
of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Learn that in Monticello.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Will stand by because in a moment we're going to
talk about new moves by some politicians to increase the
level of Christianity in all of our lives. You're listening
to the Middle coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama, in
association with w B h M.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
We should take some more questions.
Speaker 12 (31:14):
Man, I can spicy in here.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
This one is called sweet Tes, dedicated to all the
good food we had to wen.
Speaker 5 (31:31):
Yeah, I'll bring that when I got a.
Speaker 13 (31:42):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I know that I got.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
Oh No, this.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Is the Middle.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm Jeremy Hobson in Birmingham, Alabama. We're asking you this
hour what role should Christianity play in our politics. I'm
joined by Colin Hanson, vice president of content and editor
in chief of the Gospel Coalition, and former Homeland Security
official Elizabeth Newman, whose book is called Kingdom of Rage.
Before we get back to the audience right here in Alabama,
(32:25):
the state Supreme Court made national news recently when it
outlawed in vitro fertilization treatment, or IVF in February, and
the Chief Justice wrote, human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed
without incurring the wrath of a holy God.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Colin. Is that appropriate coming from a.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Judge who is supposed to respect the separation of church
and state.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
It's a good question. I think you can see it
a couple different ways. To pretend like our law is
secular without reference to the divine, even if it doesn't
mention the divine is to fool ourselves historically.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Speaking in there.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
At the same time, we do have a Constitution that
is a shockingly secular document for its period of time
that does not use those explicit Christian appeals in those
kinds of cases. So not only is it a rather
unusual move, but probably not one that is warranted precisely
(33:25):
on the terms of the Constitution. But in some ways,
the Supreme Court was simply saying the quiet part out
loud that yes, our laws have their origins in many
cases in different forms of divine revelation.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But Elizabeth Neuman, and you write about this in your book,
how does that play out when you have an issue
like same sex marriage or like gender identity, which is
obviously in the news a lot right now, where maybe
you have a judge who feels that way, but you
also have a First Amendment issue or in the person's
ability to live their life and be free.
Speaker 7 (34:01):
I mean, this is where we need the legislature to
be doing its job. If you take relatively new issues,
right like transgender challenges of how do we help kids
who are struggling with their gender identity? You know that's
a tough question, and we don't. We're just getting evidence
(34:24):
in to know the right way to help kids, and
we should be having dialogue about that. And right now
we're just yelling at each other at talking points, and
I don't know that that's actually helping the kids.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
So there's two pieces here.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
One, all of us as citizens should be learning how
to have dialogue around kind of tough conversations, but not
in fear, but out of love for I think most people.
Most people are like, how do we help our kids?
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Right?
Speaker 7 (34:57):
Like, most of us just want our kids to do
well and we want to find the right.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Path forward on an issue like this.
Speaker 7 (35:04):
So one, we as citizens need to do a better
job and how we dialogue about it and not give
into those political talking points.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
But two, we need our legislatures to do their job.
Speaker 7 (35:13):
It's not the job of a court to figure this out.
The court's just supposed to interpret the law as it
was written by a legislature, and the legislature isn't addressing
these issues. We need to vote those goes out and
get somebody in who will do the job.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Let's go to the audience. Sir, you have a question,
our comment. My name is Richard, another non believer here.
Speaker 14 (35:38):
To me, the most important part of the Bible is
two phrases, do unto others as you would have them
do unto you, and love thy neighbor as thyself. Do
you think it would help if the Democrats turn the
tables on the Republicans say, okay, if you're going to
bring religion into this, let's go full Jesus.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Immigrants are our neighbors.
Speaker 14 (36:01):
Let's love them and help them.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Those who are.
Speaker 14 (36:05):
In need of health care, Jesus would say, let's give
them universal health care. And by the way, would Jesus
want you to carry an assault rifle with a thirty
round magazine.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
That's a good it's a good question.
Speaker 6 (36:25):
I would simply point out that there's a reason that
President Biden was preaching in a church almost every single week,
because religion is central to the Democratic Party's arguments and
could introduce you to the religious left and figures like
Jim Wallace who have been around for many decades arguing
that exact thing and certainly had a huge influence in
(36:46):
the Obama administration as an example.
Speaker 5 (36:48):
So I think this is a theme that I keep
coming back.
Speaker 6 (36:50):
To a little bit here, which is that we act
as though Christianity or.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Result on one seth on one side.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
But I don't think anything in American politics, historically or
present it makes any sense without understanding the massive influence
on all of our politics of Christianity in particular. And again,
I just want to point out, of all places, Birmingham, Alabama,
which is one of the most if not the most
religious metro metro areas in the country, is precisely that
(37:19):
way because of its Democratic voters, who are African Americans
who bring their faith to every aspect of their life
every day, including their politics. So I don't think it's
I think we're seeing a lot of that already.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Let's go to another question for the audience.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
Good evening.
Speaker 8 (37:38):
My name is John, I've been here the last ten years.
I'm from Maryland, born and raised. I guess my question
to statement is around human inefficiency. How do we continue
to show up in moments and be outside of what
we want for ourselves right on a macro scale for
thousands of years and we still haven't been able to
(38:01):
reframe this problem and adjust how we even exist in
a moment so we'll be more closer to kayness, love, integrity, respect, peace.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Tacos.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
I don't know, I mean I love tacos.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
I'm from Texas, Breakfast Tco.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
Breakfast Tacos. I had a pert carnita last night.
Speaker 7 (38:24):
So in the book, I spend the first half of
the book explaining what extremism is, how people radicalize, why
people radicalize, what's really going on, and I'll give you
the cliff notes version. We've been studying this problem for
two decades and the primary drivers are not ideological, they
are psychosocial.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
It's an unmet.
Speaker 7 (38:46):
Need for belonging and an unmet need for significance. And
in the second part of the book, I offer suggestions
primarily for the community. I came from the Christian community,
the Conservative community, and here's what we can do to
build protective factors so that we're less vulnerable to those
voices that can pull us into an extremist mindset. But
(39:10):
those factors kind of come down to loving your neighbor,
getting outside of yourself. You know, how do you solve
the problem of belonging. You go out and you get engaged.
How do you solve the problem of significance? You find
belonging because our significance is not contrary to what our
culture teaches us. It is not the degree that you get,
(39:33):
it's not the profession or the awards that you can
put on your bookshelf. Your significance is going to be
in the other people that you invest in. At least
that's what I believe, and I think if we would
spend more time carving it, like doing the hard work
(39:53):
of making sure that you have time and space in
your calendar to be investing in those relationships that really matter,
whether it's your family or whether it's your neighbors or
your community. I would suggest it needs to be more
than your family. But sometimes we're in seasons of life
that that's all we can do. But get out there
and being investing in your community, that's where we're going
(40:17):
to find our significance. And in doing that, in serving
one another, we find our belonging to.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
You mean we don't find our belonging and significance in
doom scrolling on social media.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
That's not I tried it for a while.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Does not work, Tolliver, that's what you thought.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
I was like, don't come for me, jar.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Let's get to another member of the audience here.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
My name's Katie. I'm from Birmingham.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
The question I have is this, what would your response
be to the shift from religious rhetoric and politics to
religious products and propaganda in politics.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Oh man, you actually, you know your question prompted something
else in my mind because after the attempted assassination, I
do a lot of conversations with members of the press,
helping them understand things about extremists and radicalization and mass
shooters that kind of stuff. And one of the phenomenon
that we're seeing in individuals that are committing these attacks
(41:15):
is that they don't They're not like the extremists from
twenty years ago.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Twenty years ago, ideology was really.
Speaker 7 (41:23):
Intense and deeply rooted, and people would have read texts
and there's like usually somebody who's in charge of saying
like this is.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
The ideology that we belong to. Think bin Laden right,
like lit or like the Charles de nine.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
Yes, should there be another example of that?
Speaker 7 (41:36):
Yeah, and and so there's there used to be like
a deeply held tie to the ideology that was motivating
them or encouraging them, giving them that moral permission structure
to go commit the.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Act of violence.
Speaker 7 (41:48):
That's not the situation these days. In most cases, the
ideology is like memeified, meaning like they're radicalizing by just
seeing funny pictures with like a little word here or there.
It's not text based, it's image based.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
It's very vibe. It's about the vibe, which is wild,
but it.
Speaker 7 (42:11):
Also is indicative of the individuals that are moving towards this.
It's not a rational thing. It's not a mindset of
like I'm going to read a bunch of text to better.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Understand why I need to do this.
Speaker 7 (42:23):
It's not a logic as they're in a place of
deep despair and more and more we're seeing people that
are very neolistic, like there's there's no way out of this,
and that's why they go and do these horrific acts.
And I am drawing the connection to your question because
it's a reflection of culture as a whole. We don't
read as much as we used to. There's tons of
(42:45):
data that tells us this. Now we our tension spans
are so much shorter.
Speaker 5 (42:50):
So much so that but don't socialize as much.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
We don't socialize as much.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
Sex is way down.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Yeah, there's that too, there's that too, it is and
so there's just this.
Speaker 7 (43:02):
We're kind of increasingly moving to a place where it's
just the picture and that's all that matters, and that's
what motivates us.
Speaker 6 (43:08):
The Las Vegas shooting, that's still the largest mass shooting,
is that right?
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Do we don't even mot motive.
Speaker 7 (43:14):
It was never considered an act of terrorism because there's
no ideological nexus that was discovered.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Let's get to another question from the audience.
Speaker 12 (43:21):
My name is Jim, and what I like to understand
is what do we mean by Christian extremism. I will
say this, if it had not been for Christian extremism,
I was in that bombing at sixteenth Street. You killed four,
You killed four of my young girls. If it had
(43:43):
not been for Christian extremism. Telling me, you've heard it
said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. If
it hadn't been for Christian extremism. From a black preacher
that said, love your enemies because the Word of God
said it. Extremism taught me not to hate, taught me
(44:06):
to love and to see every human being not by
the color of their skin, but what the content of
their character is. What is Christian extremism that we label
it as something to be fearful of when the extremism
is to learn to love one another as Christ has love.
(44:28):
That's extremism to me. And why do you vilify that
type of extremism?
Speaker 1 (44:34):
If I could ask, why do you consider that extremism?
Speaker 12 (44:37):
Because what do we say in Christian extremism? What do
you talk what is Christian extremism? I see more extremism
on the other side than coming from religious Christians. Why
are we labeling Christians as extremists? And what is that?
That's the question I'm asking, What is Christian extremism?
Speaker 7 (44:56):
I love the question and I love the framing that
you're bringing to it. In my my professional world, extremism
is associated with violence. It is not the Webster definition
of extremism, which could include things that here's the mainstream
and extremes are on either side. That's not my professional
(45:18):
way of approaching extremism. Extremism in my world is when
an in group perceives a threat from an outgroup to
their success or survival and determines that the only action
they can therefore take is hostile action. It's the hostile
action that makes it extremist from a counter terrorism perspective.
I'm not suggesting that there aren't plenty of other lenses
(45:41):
to view the term extremism, but the reason I wrote
the book was to address the hostile action that has
become kind of second nature for a large swath of
the Christian culture that I came from. Hostile action is
a spectrum. There's a lower end of the spectrum that
is not criminal. It includes billying, harassment, it threats, and intimidation.
(46:04):
Now you can do a lot of things in civil
court with those things, but it is actually really hard
to criminally charge that lower end of the spectrum. Then
it moves into criminal activity like hate crime, property destruction.
Then you get to terrorism and genocide. That's the hostile
action spectrum. What we know about people that go on
to commit violent extremism, so the violent side of that
(46:27):
spectrum is that they start off on the lower end
of the spectrum. The way that we understand people's pathway
is that you always are going to have a much
larger think of it like a funnel, a much larger
number at the top who are willing to cognitively be
open to the possibility that violence is an option. People
(46:48):
that are willing to engage in that harassing behavior. Maybe
it's just online, maybe you would never do it in person,
but it's still harassing or threatening or intimidating.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
It still meets that definition.
Speaker 7 (46:59):
As you moved down down the funnel, smaller and smaller
percentage will actually have mobilized to violence. Very small percentage
actually move into that criminal space.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Let's get one more question in Hello.
Speaker 13 (47:10):
I'm Rosemary Bogan. I've lived here in Alabama for twenty
eight years that I'm originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so I
won't sound like i'm from here. My question is how
close do you think we are to a theocracy where
people believe that leaders are supremely appointed and supremely led
(47:36):
by a divine power that they think is the divine
power the right.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
One great question, Colin Hanson.
Speaker 6 (47:44):
So I have likewise observed a surprising number of people
who are advocating what Elizabeth is talking about.
Speaker 5 (47:53):
Especially a theocratic.
Speaker 6 (47:55):
Government that would impose actual theological tests for criminality. I
didn't see that nearly as much twenty years ago as
I see it now. But I think it's precisely because
the possibility is ever more absurd that it would actually happen.
(48:17):
So it's an inverse relationship. The more you hear people
talk about it, the less likely it actually is to happen.
Speaker 5 (48:25):
So it's actually related.
Speaker 6 (48:26):
You hear more talk about theocracy because of secularism. So,
like I said, everything's just kind of jumbled up and
people are grasping for some sort of stable order. And
to put it another way, very briefly, there were two
forces that brought America together. One was historic Protestant especially Christianity.
(48:48):
The second was what the scholar James Davison Hunter at
the University of Virginia describes as the hybrid Enlightenment. That's
more of what you think of with Jefferson and others.
The difficulty in our situation right now is, as we've
been talking about all night, Christianity is at a low
ebb of influence in religion in general, even with a
lot of immigration influx, a lot of secularism. But it
(49:12):
combines then with the decline and eclipse of the Enlightenment
as well. People don't trust Enlightenment liberalism the way that
they used to. There's not a sense of objective standards
outside the self that our founders would have had, and
so broadly speaking, in a culture, there's a question of
can this system of government actually work anymore? So that's
(49:36):
why you see some people saying, well, what we really
need to do is go back to a Christian kind
of theocracy.
Speaker 5 (49:41):
But again, I think it's largely.
Speaker 6 (49:43):
Because it's simply utterly implausible that you hear more people
talk about it.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
So Colin Hanson believes The Handmaid's Tale is not on
its way to the United States. Well, I want to
thank our audience and my guests, former Homeland Security of
Elizabeth Newman. Her book is called Kingdom of Rage, The
Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace,
and Colin Hansen, vice president of content and editor in
chief of The Gospel Coalition, thanks so much to both
(50:09):
of you.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
And the Middle is brought to you by Longnook Media,
distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois, and produced
by joe An Jennings Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander and John Barth.
Our intern is Anikadesslar. Our technical director is Jason Kroft.
Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haig. Thanks to
Will Dalberg, Caroline Spears, Karma Tolliver not related to Our Tolliver,
(50:36):
Michael Harrington, Darryl mccallough and John Malone at WBHM for
hosting Us Here at workplay in Birmingham, and thanks to
the more than four hundred and ten public radio stations
making it possible for people across the country to listen
to the Middle I'm Jeremy Hobson and I will talk
to you next weeks.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Stas
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Jeremy Hobson coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama in
collaboration with Station WBHM.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Along with Tolliver and his band and Toliver.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We're talking about religion this hour, specifically the role of
Christianity in politics. And you grew up in a religious household?
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I did a struma PK. My dad was a pastor
of a bunch of churches. You actually pastor of three churches.
He was kicked out of the first two and I
won't tell you why, but yeah, so I was really
excited about this topic. And my music does you know
incorporate religion wts.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Right right, absolutely, And we're going to hear one of
those songs later. Full disclosure, I did not grow up
in a religious household. I my parents are of two
different religions, didn't grow up very religious. And while the
Constitution is pretty clear about the separation of church and state,
it is undeniable that the Christian religion and identity play
a large role in our political system, whether that's taking
(00:51):
the oath of office on a Bible or the increasingly
intertwined rhetoric that some politicians use to equate political identity
with religious convict. The latest data from the Pew Research Center, however,
finds that only about sixty percent of Americans now identify
as Christian, which is down significantly in the last few decades.
(01:11):
So this hour we're talking about the role of Christianity
in our politics, and let's meet our panel. Elizabeth Newman
is a former Homeland Security official and author of the
book Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism and
the Path Back to Peace.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Elizabeth, great to have you with us.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Jeremy and Colin Hansen is a Birmingham based journalist as
well as vice president of content and editor in chief
of the Gospel Coalition that's a network of churches and pastors.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Colin, welcome to you as well.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, let's start just by introducing you both to our audience. Colin,
you are a Christian. You're the editor in chief of
the Gospel Coalition. You host the Gospel Bound podcast. How
do you see the role of Christianity in our politics?
Speaker 6 (01:56):
I mean it's been there from before the beginning. I
mean the the United States. The people who came here.
Not everybody came here for good motives. People came here
for ill motives, But a lot of the people who
came to the United States from the very beginning were
people who are looking to exercise their faith. And so
this is not something that comes in at a different point,
at a certain later point. But what you can observe
(02:19):
is that throughout American history, religious influence has waxed and waned.
It's been more, it's been less. We sometimes imagine that
this is something where this was the past and now
this is the present, this.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
Is where we're going in the future. The reality religious
influence is up and down.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
Just to give a very brief look at that of
a couple examples, the American Revolutionary period was the low
point of church attendance in American history. It was the
most secular time in American history, followed by the Second
Grade Awakening, which was the peak which led to the
Civil War, and then you see a large decline of
religiosity and influence on politics all the way until the
(02:56):
Cold War, and then you see a massive increase and
the decrease that you're talking about tends to coincide with
the end of the Cold War. So Christianity historically speaking,
especially Christianity, but religion in general has had a huge influence,
but not always the same way.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Do you feel like we're at a low point right
now of Christianity's influence in our politics or where are we?
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Yeah, I definitely think we're at a low point.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
The number of people who affiliated with a church in
the year two thousand was seventy percent. That number over
the course of twenty years has declined to forty seven percent.
But here's what's significant about that number. That number of
seventy percent was stable for almost all the twentieth century.
So something changed around the year two thousand. What I
would pause it is at number one, that was the
(03:40):
first year that a majority of Americans had the Internet
in their homes. Number two is some of the effects
of certainly the end of the Cold War in this
new future.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Interesting Elizabeth Newman, you're also a Christian. You were a
homeland security official in the Trump administration. You left the
administration and said that it was not taking the threat
of violent extremism on the political right seriously.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
That's right.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
I have been in the homeland security space since just
after nine to eleven. I served initially in the George W.
Bush administration. I served as a contractor in the Obama administration.
In the national security space, national security is not a
partisan thing, so serving in the Trump administration, I was
concerned that. And it wasn't just me. There were a
(04:25):
number of people in the counter terrorism community that were
concerned about what we were seeing as an increase in
violent extremism, not just from overseas, not just isis, but
happening from within.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
And we sounded the.
Speaker 7 (04:38):
Alarm and a number of times tried to get it
written into national level policy and were largely rebuffed.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So you didn't feel you had a home in the
Trump administration. What about your faith journey? Do you feel
like you still have a home in your church?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
You know, that's a great question.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
I am a practicing Christian and I do have a
home church, and I feel very welcome in that community.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
But certainly the Christian culture that I grew up in.
Speaker 7 (05:05):
I grew up in Dallas, Texas, so I'm a Bible
belt kid. That culture I'd no longer feel welcome in.
And that was probably a realization that occurred over the
last ten years, but especially around twenty sixteen. Why because
the increasingly I felt that the Christian Church was identifying
(05:29):
with Republican Party politics, and it became one and the same.
So if you were a Christian, you were expected to
vote a certain way, you were expected to have a
certain set of politics. And when you had a candidate
like Donald Trump who didn't even pretend to try to
have the virtues or the values that previous politicians at
least pretended to have. I found it kind of the
(05:51):
height of hypocrisy that a party that thought that somebody
that committed adultery in the Oval office can no longer
serve as president. Somehow they could get behind somebody that
had been thrice married and also committed adultery, and you know,
a whole host of other offenses that are currently pending
before court.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Colin Hanson, without making this all about Donald Trump, let
me just ask you, what do you think of that?
What she's saying about Christianity and its tie to the
Republican Party and feeling unwelcome because her politics are not
what other members of her church's politics are.
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Yeah, my background is in politics as well, and I
actually worked in the Republican Party for a number of
years and identified that way for a long time. I
think what a lot of people are finally realizing this year,
especially with the Republican Party platform changes, is that there's
been a massive shift in the Republican Party, many of
them evangelical Christians living in suburban areas like Washington, d C.
(06:47):
Northern Virginia, the suburbs of Atlanta would be another example.
Suburbs of Dallas would be another example, have largely been
pushed out of both.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Parties, and a lot of the issues that they care about.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
Abortion would be one of them, have been pushed out
of both party platforms. But what's replaced them have been
a number of people who identify more loosely with Christianity
but would be more identified as populists and historically we're Democrats.
So we're going through a political shift that is reshaping
both parties, and so a number of people who had
(07:18):
identified their Christianity with their politics and a former Republican
Party really don't have a home there anymore. And they
certainly don't have a home for the most part of
the Democratic Party either.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I want to at this point in the conversation just
ask you.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I'm sure there are many people who are listening to
this right now who are not religious at all and
would say the Constitution is clear separation of church and state.
Why are we even having this discussion, Elizabeth Newman, what
do you say to people who would say.
Speaker 7 (07:44):
That, Well, I certainly am very thankful that we have
a constitution that allows the free exercise of religion, and
I don't interpret separation of church and state to mean
that you can't have a conversation in the public square
about religion. I think that's one of the most beautiful
things about our country is to have people with different perspectives,
(08:04):
different beliefs, and being able.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
To exchange ideas. I also believe that.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
Just historically, as Colin mentioned, a lot of our countries,
some of the freedoms that got baked into our constitution
actually have their historic roots in Christian principles and Christian
foundational idea of the Amago day. The idea that all
men are created equal. You can tie directly back to
(08:31):
this vision of being made in the image of God,
and that because we're made in the image of God,
we're all able to have the same value, equality, dignity, worth,
and so those concepts that really if you trace the
history of Christiandom, there's a lot of damage that Christianity
(08:52):
has done in the last two millennias.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
I'm not going to.
Speaker 7 (08:56):
Sit here and say like it's all roses, but there
were a lot of beautiful blessings that came to bear
in Western civilization and eventually in the United States. So
it's worth not losing those beautiful things that offered this
idea of human equality and human dignity.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
How do you not lose those beautiful things, as you say,
while recognizing that people can have any kind of religion
in this country and it doesn't have to be based
on the principles of one faith.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
I think that there's fear.
Speaker 7 (09:26):
There's a lot of fear that the country is changing,
and I think there are a lot of people that
come from a Christian background, maybe not actually are Christians.
In fact, we have a lot of data to show
that there are a lot of people that don't consider
themselves to be saved, believe Jesus as their savior, but
they come from Christian culture. They like that culture, they
want to hold on to that culture, and they're scared
(09:48):
because the country has changed rather drastically in a short
period of time, and human beings in general don't like change,
they don't like uncertainty, and in that rapid change, they're
seeking to hold on to something, and part of what
we're seeing in our current politics is various efforts to
try to go back to some golden vision of what
(10:10):
the way it used to be, and of course the
Christian culture gets wrapped into that, and I as a believer,
I think that's not actually an accurate representation of what
Christianity is, but that has gotten wrapped into our politics
right now. And that's part of the reason I wrote
the book, is to try to start separating our politics
from our faith. Those do need to be separate and
(10:33):
how we view the world.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Colin Hansen, is there a mixing of politics and religion
right now in the sense that certain figures, and let's say,
Donald Trump, are seen.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
As religious figures by some.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If you were watching the Republican National Convention recently, people
were talking about how Trump was saved by God during
that assassination attempt, even saved by God so that he
could be the president and of the United States.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
I mean, you always see that in our politics, and
I think it's noteworthy that President Biden had also said.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
I'm not getting out of this race unless.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
God tells, right, the Almighty, unless you.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
Know the Almighty tells me that I should do that,
And so it's pretty much a staple of American politics.
And I think if if a politician did not do that,
it would be conspicuous, but the fact that they do it,
it just is part of the noise. And there are
those moments where politicians will try to use religion, and
(11:33):
it's typically Christianity as a prop to be able to
push for a certain kind of loyalty and that kind
of demand.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
But generally speaking, you see it cut both ways in
our politics.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
Maybe it's sometimes just more invisible to the side that
we prefer.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Stand by, because in a moment, we're going to talk
about just the things you're mentioning there and the rise
of what's called Christian nationalism, and we're going to hear
from members of our live audience.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Don't go anywhere listening to the middle finely fee.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
The flooding, but I got no wings?
Speaker 8 (12:12):
Oh passing baby, who's here?
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Heavy walking to see?
Speaker 9 (12:18):
If you me?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Who's here? Heaven's at my fingers.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Hear the angels singing baby is laughing?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Blue baby.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Boom throo baby boof bom.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Well I'll tell you I'm a shouting god. Nobody around
me stand the child on a ride something see Heaven
found my place on the Earth.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Heavy Day's a.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Hustle from the.
Speaker 10 (12:51):
Death back to birth.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Oh oh yeah.
Speaker 11 (12:55):
Fund the death back to birth.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Oh yeah, this is the middle.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, in the Middle
is a national call in show. We are focused on
elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or
maybe you just want to meet in the middle. This hour,
we're not taking calls because we're in Birmingham, Alabama, asking
you what role should Christianity.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Play in our politics.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I'm joined by former Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman, whose
book is called Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian
Extremism and the Path Back to Peace, and Colin Hanson,
vice president of Content and editor in chief of the
Gospel Coalition. Before we get to our live audience, questions
and comments, Elizabeth Newman, in your book, you write, what
started fifty plus years ago as an alliance between white
(13:43):
Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party for political power has
solidified as the core identity for a strong majority of
the white Evangelical Christian community.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Right, So I because I am a Christian.
Speaker 7 (13:59):
Made when I was looking at why do we have
such an epidemic of violence in this country? As I
mentioned earlier, starting in around twenty fifteen, all of the
metrics start going up, and if you look at who
is perpetrating those attacks, some of them are non ideological,
you can't put them on the right left spectrum. But
of those that are ideologically motivated, they fall on the
(14:22):
right side of the spectrum. And that really concerned me.
There's a lot of academic reasons why that might be,
but there's also in those movements this undercurrent of Christianity now.
And if you were to just stop any random person
that goes to church on Sunday and ask them if
they agree with militia, violent extremism, or white supremacist extremism,
(14:44):
they would say, of course not, that's horrible. Violence is
not tolerated in our religion. But somehow those movements were
gaining momentum, and we also were starting to have increases
in political violence, things that aren't necessarily associated with an
organized violent extremist movement.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
And so I was very perplexed by the.
Speaker 7 (15:07):
Fact that this was coming from my community, like literally geographically,
my community, my faith community, my political community.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
How tied though, is the radicalization of people to religion.
Speaker 7 (15:20):
So, and that's part of the reason I spent the
last three years trying to understand this. I don't think
it's a particular religion in a traditional sense, like take
the politics out of it. Like you go to church
on a Sunday, or practice any faith, You're not going
to walk out of there, more likely to be.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Willing to commit an act of violence.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
The problem is when there are political motives that, combined
with social media, are driving us to live in a
persistent state of fear and outrage. And we are told
over and over again that we're living in this existential
threat of a moment, that your way of life, your
(16:01):
success or survival, is being threatened by some other.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
The other could be.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Defined depending on what community you find yourself in. So,
for a Christian community, the other generally speaking, and I'm
talking white Evangelical Christian community, the other is liberals, it's
coastal elites, it's people who.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Don't practice our faith.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
The other is anybody that's different than us and they're
trying to take away our way of life. And I
don't I could probably ask Colin, I'm sure he's had
similar experiences. I've sat through sermons where pastors have told
us that in our lifetime pastors will be jailed for
teaching a biblically orthodox scripture. And so that fear for
(16:44):
ten ish years has led us to a place where
there's some small percentage of that community who has gotten
to a place where they are cognitively open to violence
as a solution, which is my definition of extremism. And
it's because we've been saturated in fear and grievance cycle
for at least a decade, really going back several decades
(17:04):
because of the merger with politics.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Colin Hanson, Well.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
I think what's so interesting about having this conversation in
the middle is where we're having the conversation in Birmingham, Alabama.
This is a city that is more familiar with forms
of violence than maybe any other city in America, and
certainly in very famous ways in American history, and in
part extremism that's been wielded against Christians, of course, that's
(17:32):
the Sixteenth Street Baptist church bombing in nineteen sixty three
was an act of violence against an actual church and
actual Christians who are exercising their faith. And so extremism
is certainly an American problem. It's not a new thing,
it's not partisan, it's not one specific group.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
But it can be wielded.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
Religion can be wielded by people for any kinds of
different motivations. So fascinating is doctor Martin Luther King Junior
described to himself as an extremist. So I'm an extremist
for love. So the question I think that Elizabeth helps
us to drive toward is it's not necessarily about whether
you're an extremist per se, but what you're an extremist for.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
You can be an extremist for.
Speaker 6 (18:15):
Love and do what doctor King did here in the
streets of Birmingham, or you can be an extremist for
hate and do what the clan members did to those
little girls in that church. So it's not so much
about extremism per se, but about what is fielded for.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
You say, we're here in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Alabama is also, i believe, the state with the highest
percentage of people who identify as Christian out of any
state in the entire country, or at least up there
among the top one or two or three.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And also as you.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Mentioned, there was a history in the civil rights movement
of tying the movement and many parts of it to
the Christian faith. Elizabeth Newman, is is there a difference
between that and some of the Christian nationalism that we
see now.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
Yes, Christian nationalism is arguably more nationalism than it is
Christian nationalism is a political philosophy, and in my world,
where we counter violent extremism, it is it can be
a form of extremism if you are willing to take action,
(19:19):
hostile action against the people that don't fit your nationalist description.
So in nationalism, there's an identity that of the people
that make up the nation, and if you're part of
that group, you're the end group. If you do not
fit that definition of what it means to be a
part of your nationalistic identity, then you're a part of
(19:42):
the outgroup. And what we see in nationalistic cultures it
tends to creep towards giving preference to those that are
on the inside. Sometimes it creeps towards actually providing penalties
to those that are outside. Sometimes it's criminal penalties, sometimes
it's violence. And look are certain smaller variations of nationalism.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
You look at the United Kingdom.
Speaker 7 (20:04):
They have a Church of England, they have a state religion,
but you don't pay more taxes.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
If you don't go to the Church of England.
Speaker 7 (20:14):
You're still allowed to vote, You're still allowed to participate
as a citizen, even if you don't belong to the
Church of England. But there are some in the United
States who are arguing that we should redefine our country
based on what they perceive to be a historical tie
(20:34):
to Christianity and actually give favor or preference to those
who are practicing Christians, that our laws should be favorable
and lean into that Christian heritage.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Why this in group out group, us versus them isn't
a huge part of the Christian faith Love Thy Neighbor?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
I mean, this show is called the Middle.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I mean we're talking across party lines from different parts
of the country.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Colin Hanson, what about love thy Neighbor?
Speaker 6 (21:03):
Well, again, it's going back to what I was saying
earlier about what does that love look like? So for King,
what he was all about was saying that my opposing
white segregationist is actually my love for them. But what's
interesting about the Christian faith is that we believe that
you don't even necessarily know always yourself what's best for you,
(21:26):
And so you can extrapolate that to your neighbor as
well and say that sometimes loving your neighbor is not
necessarily doing what they would perceive to be love. Now,
you don't have to be a Christian to think about
this way. You might just be a parent and think
this way. It's a basic aspect of parenting that you
do not always give people what they want, in part
because you say, I love you too much to be
(21:48):
able to do that. So in some ways, our laws,
insofar as they are based on love, are acts of
restraining people against things that would be harmful to them,
whether they want to do that or not.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Again, there's a whole range here.
Speaker 6 (22:01):
We all ascribe to that in certain ways, and we
also recognize other ways where we think that's too far.
But that's part of what Elizabeth is trying to get
at here, is that there's a lot of debate about how.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Far that ought to go.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
And I think it's actually the kind of the rise
of secularism that's bringing this all about kind of to
renegotiate because, as you say, with the church not being
the dominant social force that it had been in the past,
bringing people together with.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
A lot of assumptions that they had shared.
Speaker 6 (22:30):
There's this sense of, well, maybe it's all up for
grabs now we need to renegotiate this communal agreement, to
the point where some people are saying the Constitution is
a dead letter. Need to throw that out, We need
to start from scratch. It's the kind of extremes I
don't support. And they would say that they are loving
their neighbors and doing that. I don't agree with that,
But that's how you get there.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Let's get to some audience questions. Let's hear from you.
Speaker 9 (22:55):
My name is Cail, and listening to what you said
earlier about the faith was down in numbers and attendance
and such. I think one of the reasons is the
lack of trust, trust in the faith, trust in Christianity.
How can we.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
Address that. That's a wonderful question. I appreciate that.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
The lack of trust in religion is actually part of
a much broader decline in trust of all institutions in
American life. About the only institution that doesn't see a
massive decline is the military. But that's why you see
it celebrated in certain environments that's still kind of the
institution everybody can rally around in there. One of the
challenges for any institutions in this era is transparency. People
(23:44):
can see things that they couldn't see before, enlargely because
of the Internet, and that's led to this widespread erosion.
The only thing you can do about that, whether you're
the church or you're a local social club or anything,
is to live with transparency and integrity and to have
leaders who are willing to live according to a creed
that considers others more important than themselves. Christianity, okay, Christianity
(24:10):
should have resources to be able to do that in
the example of Jesus Christ himself, But nevertheless, it proves
very difficult in a world whereas Christians, we understand is
full of sin and we're just as tempted as everybody else.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
But I would love to see.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
The church as setting the example for other institutions to follow.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Perhaps we'll get there.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Thank you for that question. Let's get to another one.
My name is John.
Speaker 10 (24:33):
I grew up in Birmingham and so this is for
either of the panelists. So I'd like to you explain
like the mindset of how why Christians religious people in general,
but Christians especially like to publicly insert their faith into
politics and government, and that is why the Freedom of
Religion Foundation has so much work and abs and secular
(24:54):
people like me get so upset because we feel like
our rights are being trampled on.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So there's that one bibook.
Speaker 10 (24:59):
We're about, you know, not being like the Pharisees going
to pray in the closet instead it out in the public.
Why do more Christians follow that practice?
Speaker 7 (25:07):
I mean, it's a really great question, right, like that
our private faith should be more real than our public faith.
I think, and I do think that's gotten inverted, mainly
because I.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Think there's two answers to your question. You said, why
is it that.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
Politics has faith so prominent, and I would I would
say it's because it works, It gets you votes. It's
there's a segment of our society that sees the spiritual
is very powerful, and so if they see a politician
using it, they kind of they identify, like, oh, they're
like one of me. Even even though I would I
(25:46):
would say, like, especially in an era of transparency, I
find it odd that somebody's personal actions don't attest more
than what they say on a you know, dias Like,
there's just this disconnect between behavior that would, in Christian parlance,
the fruit or the lack thereof. But somehow if they
(26:09):
say the right thing on a campaign slogan or on
a you know stage somewhere where that counts more than
their actual action.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I wonder if you think we're seeing that, by the way,
right now, in the fact that a number of pretty
conservative Republican states have been voting overwhelmingly in favor of
abortion rights, even though the politicians that they tend to
elect would be publicly against that.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
Yeah, I don't really, I will tell you, like I've
struggled with. I grew up in the nineties, and I
thought that when the leaders were telling us, like, no, no,
it's really important. Personal character matters. That's what I grew
up with. Personal character in our leaders matter. And that's
(26:53):
why if you know, you're growing up in the Bible
Belt as a Republican, well you can't vote for Clinton,
Like that's what I taught. And then somehow twenty years
later that's not the same. Like, and so you start
to go, oh, we don't actually believe this.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
This really is about power, This isn't about character.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
At all, And to be clear, I don't think that's
true for everybody, but certainly there were a whole lot
of leaders, and a whole lot of Christian leaders like
pastors who kind of just chucked aside the character thing
and said, you know, it's this election is too important.
(27:33):
We can't stand up for our values because we got
to defeat the other guys. And I think that there's
just a lot of entanglement with power, and it became
very hypocritical. But I hear what you were saying, sir,
and I think it's a real detriment and a soling
on Christianity itself that we're not creating a space where
(27:58):
you feel loved and front and welcomed to the public square,
because that's what our faith teaches us.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
We should be doing that. We should be welcoming.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
To all, regardless of what you believe, because you, in
my belief, are made in the image of God. So
it's a shame that you don't feel that from the
Christian community.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
These audience questions are fantastic, So let's get another one.
Speaker 11 (28:21):
Yeah, my name is Imma Noble and I'm from Birmingham
and I've lived here my whole life. As we know,
the separation of church and state was paraphrased from a
letter of Thomas Jefferson's. Do you feel like this idea
is sufficiently reflected in the Constitution and if not, what
would codifying that look like?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Great question, that's.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
A good question.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
Yeah, in response, of course, to Baptists, to the Danbury
Baptists in that particular case, I think it's a fair
summary in a lot of ways of what the free
exercise clause means and the idea of keeping government interference
out of out of religion and that concept. But again,
where it's often gone astray is the notion of separation
(29:05):
of religion from public life. That clearly was not a
concept that anybody would have had back then, despite the
fact that Jefferson himself, of course was very famously not
a practicing Christian, same way John Adams, even George Washington
were again shockingly secular figures for that time. But I
(29:26):
think one thing I just want to point out as
a Baptist and as a Christian is that the separation
of church and state has been one of the best
things for the church.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Elizabeth pointed out.
Speaker 6 (29:38):
The Church of England Enmeshing official church theology with politics
does not go well, but mainly it goes badly for
the church. And so part of my concern as a
Christian and as a Baptist is to preserve that so
that the government and religion might do each what they
(30:01):
do best, and that I think as Christians we are
at our best when we're putting our faith into action
by loving our neighbors, which includes political engagement in a
lot of different ways.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
So I don't know what it would look like to
codify that.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
More so it would be interesting legislatively to think about that,
but certainly Supreme Court usually is what fills the gap
these days.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I can't let us mention Thomas Jefferson without stating my
favorite Thomas Jefferson fact, which is that in the nineteen sixties,
the early nineteen sixes, because Thomas Jefferson, for all of
his faults that have been talked about, was also like
one of the most brilliant people ever to occupy the
White House.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
And John F.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Kennedy had all of the Nobel Prize winners over to
the White House in the early nineteen sixties, and he said,
never before in the history of this room has there
been such a collection of intellect, with the possible exception
of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Learn that in Monticello.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Will stand by because in a moment we're going to
talk about new moves by some politicians to increase the
level of Christianity in all of our lives. You're listening
to the Middle coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama, in
association with w B h M.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
We should take some more questions.
Speaker 12 (31:14):
Man, I can spicy in here.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
This one is called sweet Tes, dedicated to all the
good food we had to wen.
Speaker 5 (31:31):
Yeah, I'll bring that when I got a.
Speaker 13 (31:42):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I know that I got.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
Oh No, this.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Is the Middle.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm Jeremy Hobson in Birmingham, Alabama. We're asking you this
hour what role should Christianity play in our politics. I'm
joined by Colin Hanson, vice president of content and editor
in chief of the Gospel Coalition, and former Homeland Security
official Elizabeth Newman, whose book is called Kingdom of Rage.
Before we get back to the audience right here in Alabama,
(32:25):
the state Supreme Court made national news recently when it
outlawed in vitro fertilization treatment, or IVF in February, and
the Chief Justice wrote, human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed
without incurring the wrath of a holy God.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Colin. Is that appropriate coming from a.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Judge who is supposed to respect the separation of church
and state.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
It's a good question. I think you can see it
a couple different ways. To pretend like our law is
secular without reference to the divine, even if it doesn't
mention the divine is to fool ourselves historically.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Speaking in there.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
At the same time, we do have a Constitution that
is a shockingly secular document for its period of time
that does not use those explicit Christian appeals in those
kinds of cases. So not only is it a rather
unusual move, but probably not one that is warranted precisely
(33:25):
on the terms of the Constitution. But in some ways,
the Supreme Court was simply saying the quiet part out
loud that yes, our laws have their origins in many
cases in different forms of divine revelation.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But Elizabeth Neuman, and you write about this in your book,
how does that play out when you have an issue
like same sex marriage or like gender identity, which is
obviously in the news a lot right now, where maybe
you have a judge who feels that way, but you
also have a First Amendment issue or in the person's
ability to live their life and be free.
Speaker 7 (34:01):
I mean, this is where we need the legislature to
be doing its job. If you take relatively new issues,
right like transgender challenges of how do we help kids
who are struggling with their gender identity? You know that's
a tough question, and we don't. We're just getting evidence
(34:24):
in to know the right way to help kids, and
we should be having dialogue about that. And right now
we're just yelling at each other at talking points, and
I don't know that that's actually helping the kids.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
So there's two pieces here.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
One, all of us as citizens should be learning how
to have dialogue around kind of tough conversations, but not
in fear, but out of love for I think most people.
Most people are like, how do we help our kids?
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Right?
Speaker 7 (34:57):
Like, most of us just want our kids to do
well and we want to find the right.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Path forward on an issue like this.
Speaker 7 (35:04):
So one, we as citizens need to do a better
job and how we dialogue about it and not give
into those political talking points.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
But two, we need our legislatures to do their job.
Speaker 7 (35:13):
It's not the job of a court to figure this out.
The court's just supposed to interpret the law as it
was written by a legislature, and the legislature isn't addressing
these issues. We need to vote those goes out and
get somebody in who will do the job.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Let's go to the audience. Sir, you have a question,
our comment. My name is Richard, another non believer here.
Speaker 14 (35:38):
To me, the most important part of the Bible is
two phrases, do unto others as you would have them
do unto you, and love thy neighbor as thyself. Do
you think it would help if the Democrats turn the
tables on the Republicans say, okay, if you're going to
bring religion into this, let's go full Jesus.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Immigrants are our neighbors.
Speaker 14 (36:01):
Let's love them and help them.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Those who are.
Speaker 14 (36:05):
In need of health care, Jesus would say, let's give
them universal health care. And by the way, would Jesus
want you to carry an assault rifle with a thirty
round magazine.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
That's a good it's a good question.
Speaker 6 (36:25):
I would simply point out that there's a reason that
President Biden was preaching in a church almost every single week,
because religion is central to the Democratic Party's arguments and
could introduce you to the religious left and figures like
Jim Wallace who have been around for many decades arguing
that exact thing and certainly had a huge influence in
(36:46):
the Obama administration as an example.
Speaker 5 (36:48):
So I think this is a theme that I keep
coming back.
Speaker 6 (36:50):
To a little bit here, which is that we act
as though Christianity or.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Result on one seth on one side.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
But I don't think anything in American politics, historically or
present it makes any sense without understanding the massive influence
on all of our politics of Christianity in particular. And again,
I just want to point out, of all places, Birmingham, Alabama,
which is one of the most if not the most
religious metro metro areas in the country, is precisely that
(37:19):
way because of its Democratic voters, who are African Americans
who bring their faith to every aspect of their life
every day, including their politics. So I don't think it's
I think we're seeing a lot of that already.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Let's go to another question for the audience.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
Good evening.
Speaker 8 (37:38):
My name is John, I've been here the last ten years.
I'm from Maryland, born and raised. I guess my question
to statement is around human inefficiency. How do we continue
to show up in moments and be outside of what
we want for ourselves right on a macro scale for
thousands of years and we still haven't been able to
(38:01):
reframe this problem and adjust how we even exist in
a moment so we'll be more closer to kayness, love, integrity, respect, peace.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Tacos.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
I don't know, I mean I love tacos.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
I'm from Texas, Breakfast Tco.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
Breakfast Tacos. I had a pert carnita last night.
Speaker 7 (38:24):
So in the book, I spend the first half of
the book explaining what extremism is, how people radicalize, why
people radicalize, what's really going on, and I'll give you
the cliff notes version. We've been studying this problem for
two decades and the primary drivers are not ideological, they
are psychosocial.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
It's an unmet.
Speaker 7 (38:46):
Need for belonging and an unmet need for significance. And
in the second part of the book, I offer suggestions
primarily for the community. I came from the Christian community,
the Conservative community, and here's what we can do to
build protective factors so that we're less vulnerable to those
voices that can pull us into an extremist mindset. But
(39:10):
those factors kind of come down to loving your neighbor,
getting outside of yourself. You know, how do you solve
the problem of belonging. You go out and you get engaged.
How do you solve the problem of significance? You find
belonging because our significance is not contrary to what our
culture teaches us. It is not the degree that you get,
(39:33):
it's not the profession or the awards that you can
put on your bookshelf. Your significance is going to be
in the other people that you invest in. At least
that's what I believe, and I think if we would
spend more time carving it, like doing the hard work
(39:53):
of making sure that you have time and space in
your calendar to be investing in those relationships that really matter,
whether it's your family or whether it's your neighbors or
your community. I would suggest it needs to be more
than your family. But sometimes we're in seasons of life
that that's all we can do. But get out there
and being investing in your community, that's where we're going
(40:17):
to find our significance. And in doing that, in serving
one another, we find our belonging to.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
You mean we don't find our belonging and significance in
doom scrolling on social media.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
That's not I tried it for a while.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Does not work, Tolliver, that's what you thought.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
I was like, don't come for me, jar.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Let's get to another member of the audience here.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
My name's Katie. I'm from Birmingham.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
The question I have is this, what would your response
be to the shift from religious rhetoric and politics to
religious products and propaganda in politics.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Oh man, you actually, you know your question prompted something
else in my mind because after the attempted assassination, I
do a lot of conversations with members of the press,
helping them understand things about extremists and radicalization and mass
shooters that kind of stuff. And one of the phenomenon
that we're seeing in individuals that are committing these attacks
(41:15):
is that they don't They're not like the extremists from
twenty years ago.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Twenty years ago, ideology was really.
Speaker 7 (41:23):
Intense and deeply rooted, and people would have read texts
and there's like usually somebody who's in charge of saying
like this is.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
The ideology that we belong to. Think bin Laden right,
like lit or like the Charles de nine.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
Yes, should there be another example of that?
Speaker 7 (41:36):
Yeah, and and so there's there used to be like
a deeply held tie to the ideology that was motivating
them or encouraging them, giving them that moral permission structure
to go commit the.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Act of violence.
Speaker 7 (41:48):
That's not the situation these days. In most cases, the
ideology is like memeified, meaning like they're radicalizing by just
seeing funny pictures with like a little word here or there.
It's not text based, it's image based.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
It's very vibe. It's about the vibe, which is wild,
but it.
Speaker 7 (42:11):
Also is indicative of the individuals that are moving towards this.
It's not a rational thing. It's not a mindset of
like I'm going to read a bunch of text to better.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Understand why I need to do this.
Speaker 7 (42:23):
It's not a logic as they're in a place of
deep despair and more and more we're seeing people that
are very neolistic, like there's there's no way out of this,
and that's why they go and do these horrific acts.
And I am drawing the connection to your question because
it's a reflection of culture as a whole. We don't
read as much as we used to. There's tons of
(42:45):
data that tells us this. Now we our tension spans
are so much shorter.
Speaker 5 (42:50):
So much so that but don't socialize as much.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
We don't socialize as much.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
Sex is way down.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Yeah, there's that too, there's that too, it is and
so there's just this.
Speaker 7 (43:02):
We're kind of increasingly moving to a place where it's
just the picture and that's all that matters, and that's
what motivates us.
Speaker 6 (43:08):
The Las Vegas shooting, that's still the largest mass shooting,
is that right?
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Do we don't even mot motive.
Speaker 7 (43:14):
It was never considered an act of terrorism because there's
no ideological nexus that was discovered.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Let's get to another question from the audience.
Speaker 12 (43:21):
My name is Jim, and what I like to understand
is what do we mean by Christian extremism. I will
say this, if it had not been for Christian extremism,
I was in that bombing at sixteenth Street. You killed four,
You killed four of my young girls. If it had
(43:43):
not been for Christian extremism. Telling me, you've heard it
said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. If
it hadn't been for Christian extremism. From a black preacher
that said, love your enemies because the Word of God
said it. Extremism taught me not to hate, taught me
(44:06):
to love and to see every human being not by
the color of their skin, but what the content of
their character is. What is Christian extremism that we label
it as something to be fearful of when the extremism
is to learn to love one another as Christ has love.
(44:28):
That's extremism to me. And why do you vilify that
type of extremism?
Speaker 1 (44:34):
If I could ask, why do you consider that extremism?
Speaker 12 (44:37):
Because what do we say in Christian extremism? What do
you talk what is Christian extremism? I see more extremism
on the other side than coming from religious Christians. Why
are we labeling Christians as extremists? And what is that?
That's the question I'm asking, What is Christian extremism?
Speaker 7 (44:56):
I love the question and I love the framing that
you're bringing to it. In my my professional world, extremism
is associated with violence. It is not the Webster definition
of extremism, which could include things that here's the mainstream
and extremes are on either side. That's not my professional
(45:18):
way of approaching extremism. Extremism in my world is when
an in group perceives a threat from an outgroup to
their success or survival and determines that the only action
they can therefore take is hostile action. It's the hostile
action that makes it extremist from a counter terrorism perspective.
I'm not suggesting that there aren't plenty of other lenses
(45:41):
to view the term extremism, but the reason I wrote
the book was to address the hostile action that has
become kind of second nature for a large swath of
the Christian culture that I came from. Hostile action is
a spectrum. There's a lower end of the spectrum that
is not criminal. It includes billying, harassment, it threats, and intimidation.
(46:04):
Now you can do a lot of things in civil
court with those things, but it is actually really hard
to criminally charge that lower end of the spectrum. Then
it moves into criminal activity like hate crime, property destruction.
Then you get to terrorism and genocide. That's the hostile
action spectrum. What we know about people that go on
to commit violent extremism, so the violent side of that
(46:27):
spectrum is that they start off on the lower end
of the spectrum. The way that we understand people's pathway
is that you always are going to have a much
larger think of it like a funnel, a much larger
number at the top who are willing to cognitively be
open to the possibility that violence is an option. People
(46:48):
that are willing to engage in that harassing behavior. Maybe
it's just online, maybe you would never do it in person,
but it's still harassing or threatening or intimidating.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
It still meets that definition.
Speaker 7 (46:59):
As you moved down down the funnel, smaller and smaller
percentage will actually have mobilized to violence. Very small percentage
actually move into that criminal space.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Let's get one more question in Hello.
Speaker 13 (47:10):
I'm Rosemary Bogan. I've lived here in Alabama for twenty
eight years that I'm originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so I
won't sound like i'm from here. My question is how
close do you think we are to a theocracy where
people believe that leaders are supremely appointed and supremely led
(47:36):
by a divine power that they think is the divine
power the right.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
One great question, Colin Hanson.
Speaker 6 (47:44):
So I have likewise observed a surprising number of people
who are advocating what Elizabeth is talking about.
Speaker 5 (47:53):
Especially a theocratic.
Speaker 6 (47:55):
Government that would impose actual theological tests for criminality. I
didn't see that nearly as much twenty years ago as
I see it now. But I think it's precisely because
the possibility is ever more absurd that it would actually happen.
(48:17):
So it's an inverse relationship. The more you hear people
talk about it, the less likely it actually is to happen.
Speaker 5 (48:25):
So it's actually related.
Speaker 6 (48:26):
You hear more talk about theocracy because of secularism. So,
like I said, everything's just kind of jumbled up and
people are grasping for some sort of stable order. And
to put it another way, very briefly, there were two
forces that brought America together. One was historic Protestant especially Christianity.
(48:48):
The second was what the scholar James Davison Hunter at
the University of Virginia describes as the hybrid Enlightenment. That's
more of what you think of with Jefferson and others.
The difficulty in our situation right now is, as we've
been talking about all night, Christianity is at a low
ebb of influence in religion in general, even with a
lot of immigration influx, a lot of secularism. But it
(49:12):
combines then with the decline and eclipse of the Enlightenment
as well. People don't trust Enlightenment liberalism the way that
they used to. There's not a sense of objective standards
outside the self that our founders would have had, and
so broadly speaking, in a culture, there's a question of
can this system of government actually work anymore? So that's
(49:36):
why you see some people saying, well, what we really
need to do is go back to a Christian kind
of theocracy.
Speaker 5 (49:41):
But again, I think it's largely.
Speaker 6 (49:43):
Because it's simply utterly implausible that you hear more people
talk about it.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
So Colin Hanson believes The Handmaid's Tale is not on
its way to the United States. Well, I want to
thank our audience and my guests, former Homeland Security of
Elizabeth Newman. Her book is called Kingdom of Rage, The
Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace,
and Colin Hansen, vice president of content and editor in
chief of The Gospel Coalition, thanks so much to both
(50:09):
of you.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
And the Middle is brought to you by Longnook Media,
distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois, and produced
by joe An Jennings Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander and John Barth.
Our intern is Anikadesslar. Our technical director is Jason Kroft.
Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haig. Thanks to
Will Dalberg, Caroline Spears, Karma Tolliver not related to Our Tolliver,
(50:36):
Michael Harrington, Darryl mccallough and John Malone at WBHM for
hosting Us Here at workplay in Birmingham, and thanks to
the more than four hundred and ten public radio stations
making it possible for people across the country to listen
to the Middle I'm Jeremy Hobson and I will talk
to you next weeks.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
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Host
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