June 5, 2025 • 50 mins
On this archive episode of The Middle we're coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama in the heart of the Bible Belt to talk about the role of Christianity in our politics. We're joined by former Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann and Birmingham-based journalist and Editor-in-Chief The Gospel Coalition Collin Hansen. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver and his band joins us as well, as we take questions from our live audience. #religion #christianity #extremism #god #politics #churchandstate
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of the Middle was actually broadcast last August,
but we loved it so much we're bringing it to
you again.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm Jeremy Hobson coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama, in
collaboration with Station WBHM, along with Tolliver and his band
and Tolliver, we're talking about religion this hour, specifically the
role of Christianity in politics. And you grew up in
a religious household?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
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 wits right right?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
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 and whether that's taking the oath
of office on a Bible, or the increasingly intertwined rhetoric
(01:05):
that some politicians use to equate political identity with religious conviction.
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. So
this hour, we're talking about the role of Christianity in
our politics, and let's meet our panel. Elizabeth Newman is
(01:28):
a former Homeland Security official and author of the book
Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism and the
Path Back to Peace. Elizabeth, great to have you with us,
Thanks for having me. 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 2 (01:49):
Colin, welcome to you as well.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Well.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
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 (02:06):
I mean, it's been there from before the beginning. I
mean 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
(02:29):
is that throughout American history, religious influence has waxed and waned.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
It's been more, it's been less.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
We sometimes imagine that this is something where this was
the past and now this is the present, this is
where we're going in the future. The reality religious influences
up and down. 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
(02:57):
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.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Way until the Cold War.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
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 3 (03:20):
Do you feel like we're at a low point right
now of Christianity's influence in our politics or where are we?
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Yeah, I definitely think we're at a low point.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
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.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So something changed around the year two thousand.
Speaker 6 (03:47):
What I would pause it is at number one, that
was the 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 3 (03:59):
Interesting Elizabeth Numan, 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 7 (04:12):
That's right. 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.
(04:34):
There were a 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. And we sounded the
alarm a number of times, tried to get it written
into national level policy, and were largely rebuffed.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
So you didn't feel you had a home in the
Trump administration. What about your faith journey? Do you feel,
like you said, still have a home in your church?
Speaker 7 (05:02):
You know, that's a great question. I am a practicing
Christian and I do have a home church, and I
feel very welcome in that community. But certainly the Christian
culture that I grew up in. 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
(05:23):
that occurred over the last ten years, but especially around
twenty sixteen. Why because increasingly I felt that the Christian
Church was identifying 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
(05:46):
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 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
(06:07):
get behind somebody that had been thrice married and also
committed adultery and you know, a whole host of other offenses.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Colin Hanson, without 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 (06:29):
YEA, My background is in politics as well, and I
actually worked in the Republican Party for a number of
years and.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Identified that way for a long time.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
I think what a lot of people are finally realizing
is that there's been a massive.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Shift in the Republican Party.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
Many of them evangelical Christians living in suburban areas like Washington,
d C. Northern Virginia, the suburbs of Atlanta would be
another example. Suburbs of Dallas would be another example, have
largely been pushed out of both parties, and a lot
of the issues that they care about, abortion would be
one of them, have pushed out of both party platforms.
But what's replaced them have been a number of people
(07:04):
who identify more loosely with Christianity, but would be a
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 identified their
Christianity with their politics and a former Republican Party really
don't have a home there anymore, and they certainly don't
(07:25):
have a home for the most part of the Democratic
Party either.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I want to at this point in the conversation just
ask you. 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 (07:45):
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 religon. I think that's one of the most beautiful
things about our country is to have people with different perspectives,
(08:05):
different beliefs, and being able to exchange ideas. I also
believe that 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
(08:28):
that all men are created equal. You can tie directly
back to 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
(08:49):
history of Christiandom, there's a lot of damage that Christianity
has done in the last two millennias. I'm not going
to sit here and say like it's all roses, but
there 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
(09:12):
this idea of human equality and human dignity.
Speaker 3 (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 7 (09:25):
I think that there's fear. 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
(09:47):
that culture, and they're scared 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, 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
(10:10):
golden vision of what 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
(10:32):
need to be separate and how we view the world.
Speaker 3 (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 as religious figures by some.
If you were watching the Republican National Convention, people were
talking about how Trump was saved by God during that
assassination attempt, even saved by God so that he could
(10:59):
be the present 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
I'm not getting out of this.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Race unless God tells, right the Almighty.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
Until unless you know, the Almighty tells me that I
should do that, And so it's 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 it's typically Christianity as
(11:35):
a prop to be able to push for a certain
kind of loyalty and that kind of demand.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
But generally speaking, you see it cut both ways in
our politics.
Speaker 6 (11:45):
Maybe it's sometimes just more invisible to the side that
we prefer.
Speaker 3 (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 2 (11:58):
Don't go anywhere listening to the Middle.
Speaker 8 (12:04):
Fine food, and but I got no age.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
O pass.
Speaker 8 (12:15):
Baby, here's the heavy walking to see Who's heaven is
my fingers?
Speaker 9 (12:23):
The angels singing baby is laughing baby.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
If you're just tuning in, we're usually a national call
in show focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically,
politically and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet
in the middle. This hour, we are not taking calls
because we're listening back to a show from last year
that we did in front of a live audience in Birmingham, Alabama,
asking about the role of Christianity in our politics. My
(12:59):
guests were former Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman, whose book
is called Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism
in the Path Back to Peace, and Colin Hanson, who's
vice president of content and editor in chief of the
Gospel Coalition. As we continued our conversation, I asked Elizabeth
Newman how Christianity and politics in the United States became
so intertwined. In her book, she writes, what started fifty
(13:22):
plus years ago as an alliance between white 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 7 (13:34):
So, I, because I am a Christian, made a decision
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
(13:56):
put them on the right left spectrum. But of those
that are ideologically motivated, they fall on the 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
(14:17):
goes to church on Sunday and ask them if they
agree with militia, violent extremism or white supremacist extremism, 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,
(14:39):
things that aren't necessarily associated with an organized violent extremist movement.
And so I was very perplexed by the fact that
this was coming from my community, like literally geographically, my community,
my faith community, my political community.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
How tied though, is the radicalization of people to religion.
Speaker 7 (15:00):
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 the faith, You're not
going to walk out of there, more likely to be
willing to commit an act of violence. The problem is
(15:22):
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 success or survival, is
(15:43):
being threatened by some other. The other could be 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 don't practice our faith. The other is
(16:05):
anybody that's different than us and they're trying to take
away our way of life. And 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 ten ish years has led us
(16:26):
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
this fear and grievance cycle for at least a decade,
really going back several decades because of the merger with politics.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Colin Hanson, Well.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
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
(17:12):
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, but it
can be wielded. Religion can be wielded by people for
(17:35):
any kinds of different motivations. So fascinating is doctor Martin
Luther King Junior described himself as an extremist, said, I'm
an extremist for love. So the question I think that
Elizabeth helps us to drive toward is is not necessarily
about whether you're an extremist per se, but what you're
an extremist for. You can be an extremist for love
(17:55):
and do what doctor King did here in the streets
of Birmingham, or you can be an extreme 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 2 (18:09):
You say, we're here in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
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. And also,
as you 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 there is
(18:33):
there a difference between that and some of the Christian
nationalism that we see now.
Speaker 7 (18:39):
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
(18:59):
action 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, than you're a part of
(19:22):
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, there are certain smaller variations of nationalism.
(19:43):
You look at the United Kingdom. They have a Church
of England, they have a state religion, but you don't
pay more taxes. If you don't go to the Church
of England, 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
(20:05):
the United States who are arguing that we should redefine
our country based on what they perceived to be a
historical tie 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 3 (20:26):
Why this in group out group, us versus them isn't
a huge part of the Christian faith.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Love thy neighbor?
Speaker 10 (20:34):
Why?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I mean this show is called the Middle.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I mean we were talking across party lines from different
parts of the country.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Colin Hanson, what about love thy neighbor?
Speaker 6 (20:43):
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,
(21:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
To be love.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Now, you don't have to be a Christian to think
about this way. You might just be a parent and
think this way.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
It's a basic aspect.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Of parenting that you do not always give people what
they want, in part because you say.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I love you too much to be able to do that.
Speaker 6 (21:29):
So in some ways, our laws, insofar as they're based
on love, are acts of restraining people against things that
would be harmful to them, whether they want to do
that or not. Again, there's a whole range here. We
all ascribe to that in certain ways, and we also
recognize other ways where we think that's too far. That's
part of what Elizabeth is trying to get at here
is that there's a lot of debate about how far.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
That ought to go. And I think it's actually the
kind of the rise.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
Of secularism that's bringing this all about kind of to renegotiate, because,
as you.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Say, with the church not being the dominant.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
Social force that it had been in the past, bringing
people together with a lot of assumptions that they had shared,
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
(22:25):
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 2 (22:32):
Let's get to some audience questions. Let's hear from you.
Speaker 10 (22:35):
My name is kil.
Speaker 11 (22:38):
And listening to what you had said earlier about the.
Speaker 10 (22:43):
Faith was down in numbers and attendance and such.
Speaker 11 (22:46):
I think one of the reasons is the lack of trust,
trust in the faith, trust in Christianity.
Speaker 10 (22:53):
How can we.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Address them? That's a wonderful question.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
I appreciate that 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's celebrated in certain environments that still
kind of the institution everybody can rally around in there.
(23:19):
One of the challenges for any institutions in this era
is transparency.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
People can see things that they couldn't.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
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,
(23:50):
Christianity 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 is full of sin and we're just as tempted
as everybody else.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
But I would love to see the.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Church as setting the example for other institutions to follow.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Perhaps we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Thank you for that question. Let's get to another one.
Speaker 10 (24:13):
My name is John.
Speaker 11 (24:13):
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 from
Religion Foundation has so much work and abs and secular
(24:34):
people like me get so upset because we feel like
our rights are being trampled on. So there's that one
Bible verse about you know, not being like the Pharisees
going to pray in the closet, set it out in
the public. Why don't more Christians follow that practice?
Speaker 7 (24:47):
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 goutten inverted, mainly
because I think there's two answers to your question. You said,
why is it that politics has faith so prominent? And
(25:08):
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 would say, like, especially in an era of transparency,
(25:29):
I find it odd that somebody's personal actions don't attest
more than what they say on a you know, dias somewhere,
Like there's just this disconnect between behavior that would in
Christian parlance, the fruit or the lack thereof. But somehow
if they say the right thing on a campaign slogan
(25:51):
or on a you know, stage somewhere where that counts
more than their actual actions.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
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 (26:12):
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
(26:33):
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 was 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. This
really is about power, This isn't about character at all.
(26:56):
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. We can't stand up
for our values because we got to defeat the other guys.
(27:17):
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 selling on Christianity itself that we're
not creating a space where you feel loved and affirmed
(27:40):
and welcomed to the public square, because that's what our
faith teaches us. We should be doing that. We should
be welcoming 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 3 (27:58):
These audience questions are fantastic, So let's get another one.
Speaker 12 (28:01):
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 2 (28:19):
Great question, that's.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
A good question.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
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
(28:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
But I think one thing I just want to point.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
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 4 (29:17):
Elizabeth pointed out.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
The Church of England in meshing 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
(29:40):
they 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. So I don't know what
it would look like to codify that. More so it
would be interesting legislatively to think about that, but certainly
Supreme Court usually is what the gap these days.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
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 2 (30:17):
And John F.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
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 have there
has there been such a collection of intellect, with the
possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. Learn that
in Monticello will stand by because in a moment. We're
(30:38):
going to talk about new moves by some politicians to
increase the level of Christianity in.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
All of our lives.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
You're listening to the Middle coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama,
in association with WBHM.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Which is more questions.
Speaker 10 (30:54):
Man, it's been spicy in here. This one is called Sweets,
dedicated to all the good food. We've had a baby.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
We're listening back this hour to a conversation we had
in front of a live audience in Birmingham, Alabama, last
year about the role of Christianity in our politics. My
guests were 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.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Just before the show was recorded.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
The Alabama State Supreme Court made national news when it
outlawed in vitro fertilization treatment, or IVF. The Chief Justice
of the State Supreme Court wrote, human life cannot be
wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.
So I asked Colin Hanson, is that appropriate coming from
a judge who is supposed to respect the separation of
(32:12):
church and state.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It's a good question. I think you can see it
a couple different ways.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
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 speaking in there. At the same time,
we do have a constitution that is a shockingly secular
document for its period of time that does not use
(32:38):
those explicit Christian appeals in those kinds of cases.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
So not only is it a rather unusual move, but.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
Probably not one that is warranted precisely 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 3 (33:04):
But Elizabeth Numan, 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 the person's ability
to live their life and be free.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
I mean, this is where we need the legislature to
be doing its job. If you take relatively new issues,
right like transgender challenges, how do we help kids who
are struggling with their gender identity? You know, that's a
(33:45):
tough question, and we don't. We're just getting evidence 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. So there's
two pieces here. One, all of us as citizens should
(34:06):
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? Right? Like, most of us just want
our kids to do well, and we want to find
the right path forward on an issue like this. So one,
(34:27):
we as citizens need to do better job and how
we dialogue about it and not give in to those
political talking points. But two, we need our legislators to
do their job. 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 2 (34:52):
Let's go to the audience. Sir, you have a question,
our comment.
Speaker 13 (34:56):
My name is Richard, another non believer here. 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,
(35:17):
let's go full Jesus. Immigrants are our neighbors.
Speaker 14 (35:21):
Let's love them and help them. Those who are in
need of health care, Jesus would say, let's give them
universal health care.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And by the way, would Jesus want you to.
Speaker 13 (35:35):
Carry an assault rifle with thirty round magazine?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
That's a good it's a good question.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
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 figure like
Jim Wallace, who have been around for many decades arguing
that exact thing, and certainly had a huge influence in
(36:06):
the Obama administration as an example. So I think this
is a theme that I keep coming back to a
little bit here, which is that we act as though
Christianity or result on one side. But I don't think
anything in American politics, historically or present makes any sense
without understanding the massive influence on all of our politics
(36:26):
of Christianity in particular.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
And again, I just want.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
To point out, of all places, Birmingham, Alabama, which is
one of the most if not the most religious metro
are metro areas in the country, is precisely that 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
(36:52):
we're seeing a lot of that already.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Let's go to another question from the audience.
Speaker 15 (36:57):
Good Evening. My name is John Bin the last ten years.
I'm from Maryland, born and raised. I guess my question
the statement is around human inefficiency. Howy we continue to
show up in moments and be outside of what we
want for ourselves right on a macro scale, for thousands
(37:19):
of years and we still haven't been able to reframe
this problem and adjust how we even exist in a moment,
so we'll be more closer to kindness, love, integrity, respect, peace.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Tacos.
Speaker 7 (37:30):
I don't know, I mean I love Tacos. I'm from Texas.
Breakfast breakfast Tacos. I had a perk carnita last night.
So in the book, I spent the first half of
the book explaining what extremism is, how people radicalize, why
(37:51):
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. It's an unmet need for belonging and an
unmet need for significance. And the second part of the
book I offer suggestions primarily for the community. I came
(38:16):
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 usen to
an extremist mindset. But those factors kind of come down
to loving your neighbor, getting outside of yourself. How do
(38:39):
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, it's not the profession or the
awards that you can put on your bookshelf. Your significance
(38:59):
is going to and 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 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
(39:22):
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 to find our significance. And in doing that,
in serving one another, we find our belonging to.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
You mean, we don't find our belonging and significance in
doom scrolling on social media.
Speaker 7 (39:47):
That's not I've tried it for a while.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It does not work, Tolliver. That's what you thought.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I was like, don't come for me, jar.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Let's get to another member of the audience.
Speaker 12 (39:57):
Here.
Speaker 7 (39:58):
My name's Katie.
Speaker 5 (39:59):
I'm from The question I have is this, what would
your response be to the shift from religious rhetoric in
politics to religious products and propaganda in politics?
Speaker 7 (40:10):
Oh man, 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 is
(40:33):
that they don't They're not like the extremists from twenty
years ago. Twenty years ago, ideology was really 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 the ideology that we belong to think beIN laden right,
like lit like the.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Charles nine Yes should be another example of that.
Speaker 7 (40:54):
Yeah, and 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 act of violence. That's not
the situation these days. In most cases, the ideology is
like memified, meaning like they're radicalizing by just seeing funny
(41:17):
pictures with like a little word here or there. It's
not text based. It's image based. It's very vibe. It's
about the vibe, which is wild, but it 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
(41:38):
understand why I need to do this. It's not a logic.
They're in a place of deep despair and more and
more we're seeing people that are very nehilistic, like 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
(41:58):
as a whole. We don't read as much as we
used to. There's tons of data that tells us this.
Now we our tension spans are so much shorter, so.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
Much so that we don't socialize as much.
Speaker 7 (42:10):
We don't socialize as much.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Sex is way down.
Speaker 7 (42:14):
Yeah, there's that too. There's that too. It is and
so there's just this. 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 4 (42:25):
The Las Vegas shooting, that's still the largest mass shooting.
Is that right? Do we still not? We don't even
know a motive.
Speaker 7 (42:31):
It was never considered an act of terrorism because there's
no ideological nexus that was discovered.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Let's get to another question from the audience.
Speaker 8 (42:38):
My name is Jim, and what I liked 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
(43:00):
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
(43:23):
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.
(43:45):
That's extremism to me. And why do you vilify that
type of extremism?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
If I could ask, why do you consider that extremism?
Speaker 8 (43:54):
Because what do we say in Christian extremism? What are
you talk what is Christian extremism? I see more extremism
on the other side then 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 (44:13):
I love the question and I love the framing that
you're bringing to it. In 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 way of
(44:35):
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 to view
(44:58):
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, threats, and intimidation. Now you can
(45:21):
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,
(45:43):
so the violent side of that 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 that are willing to
(46:06):
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. It still meets that definition.
As you move down the funnel, smaller and smaller percentage
will actually have mobilized to violence. Very small percentage actually
move into that criminal space.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Let's get one more question in Hello.
Speaker 16 (46:27):
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
(46:53):
by a divine power that they think is the divine power?
The right one.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Question, con Hansen.
Speaker 6 (47:01):
So, I have likewise observed a surprising number of people
who are advocating what Elizabeth is talking about, especially a
theocratic government that would impose actual theological tests for criminality.
I didn't see that nearly as much twenty years ago
(47:23):
as I see it now. But I think it's precisely
because the possibility is ever more absurd that it would
actually happen. So it's an inverse relationship. The more you
hear people talk about it, the less likely it actually
is to happen. So it's actually related to you hear
(47:43):
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. The second
(48:06):
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 combines then
(48:30):
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 why you see
(48:54):
some people saying, well, what we really need to do
is go back to a Christian kind of theocracy.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
But again, I think it's.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
Largely because it's simply utterly implausible that you hear more people.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Talk about it.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Our conversation from last summer in front of a live
audience in Birmingham, Alabama, in partnership with WBHM. That was
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, The Rise of
Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. Next week
(49:27):
we'll be right back here live and our One Thing
Trump Did podcast will drop in a few days on
the Middle podcast feed.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
As always, you can reach.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Out to us at Listen to the Middle dot com,
where you can also sign up for our free weekly newsletter,
and of course by Middle merch like T shirts and
hats and mugs. The Middle is brought to you by
Lungnok Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois,
and produced by Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmas, Dawes,
John Barth, Anikadeshler, and Brandon Condritz. Our technical director is
(49:56):
Jason Kroft. Thanks to our satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience,
and the now more than four hundred and thirty public
radio stations that are making it possible for people across
the country to listen to the Middle, I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
I'll talk to you next week.
This episode of the Middle was actually broadcast last August,
but we loved it so much we're bringing it to
you again.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm Jeremy Hobson coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama, in
collaboration with Station WBHM, along with Tolliver and his band
and Tolliver, we're talking about religion this hour, specifically the
role of Christianity in politics. And you grew up in
a religious household?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
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 wits right right?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
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 and whether that's taking the oath
of office on a Bible, or the increasingly intertwined rhetoric
(01:05):
that some politicians use to equate political identity with religious conviction.
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. So
this hour, we're talking about the role of Christianity in
our politics, and let's meet our panel. Elizabeth Newman is
(01:28):
a former Homeland Security official and author of the book
Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism and the
Path Back to Peace. Elizabeth, great to have you with us,
Thanks for having me. 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 2 (01:49):
Colin, welcome to you as well.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Well.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
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 (02:06):
I mean, it's been there from before the beginning. I
mean 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
(02:29):
is that throughout American history, religious influence has waxed and waned.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
It's been more, it's been less.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
We sometimes imagine that this is something where this was
the past and now this is the present, this is
where we're going in the future. The reality religious influences
up and down. 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
(02:57):
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.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Way until the Cold War.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
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 3 (03:20):
Do you feel like we're at a low point right
now of Christianity's influence in our politics or where are we?
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Yeah, I definitely think we're at a low point.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
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.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So something changed around the year two thousand.
Speaker 6 (03:47):
What I would pause it is at number one, that
was the 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 3 (03:59):
Interesting Elizabeth Numan, 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 7 (04:12):
That's right. 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.
(04:34):
There were a 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. And we sounded the
alarm a number of times, tried to get it written
into national level policy, and were largely rebuffed.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
So you didn't feel you had a home in the
Trump administration. What about your faith journey? Do you feel,
like you said, still have a home in your church?
Speaker 7 (05:02):
You know, that's a great question. I am a practicing
Christian and I do have a home church, and I
feel very welcome in that community. But certainly the Christian
culture that I grew up in. 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
(05:23):
that occurred over the last ten years, but especially around
twenty sixteen. Why because increasingly I felt that the Christian
Church was identifying 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
(05:46):
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 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
(06:07):
get behind somebody that had been thrice married and also
committed adultery and you know, a whole host of other offenses.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Colin Hanson, without 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 (06:29):
YEA, My background is in politics as well, and I
actually worked in the Republican Party for a number of
years and.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Identified that way for a long time.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
I think what a lot of people are finally realizing
is that there's been a massive.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Shift in the Republican Party.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
Many of them evangelical Christians living in suburban areas like Washington,
d C. Northern Virginia, the suburbs of Atlanta would be
another example. Suburbs of Dallas would be another example, have
largely been pushed out of both parties, and a lot
of the issues that they care about, abortion would be
one of them, have pushed out of both party platforms.
But what's replaced them have been a number of people
(07:04):
who identify more loosely with Christianity, but would be a
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 identified their
Christianity with their politics and a former Republican Party really
don't have a home there anymore, and they certainly don't
(07:25):
have a home for the most part of the Democratic
Party either.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I want to at this point in the conversation just
ask you. 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 (07:45):
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 religon. I think that's one of the most beautiful
things about our country is to have people with different perspectives,
(08:05):
different beliefs, and being able to exchange ideas. I also
believe that 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
(08:28):
that all men are created equal. You can tie directly
back to 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
(08:49):
history of Christiandom, there's a lot of damage that Christianity
has done in the last two millennias. I'm not going
to sit here and say like it's all roses, but
there 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
(09:12):
this idea of human equality and human dignity.
Speaker 3 (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 7 (09:25):
I think that there's fear. 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
(09:47):
that culture, and they're scared 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, 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
(10:10):
golden vision of what 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
(10:32):
need to be separate and how we view the world.
Speaker 3 (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 as religious figures by some.
If you were watching the Republican National Convention, people were
talking about how Trump was saved by God during that
assassination attempt, even saved by God so that he could
(10:59):
be the present 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
I'm not getting out of this.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Race unless God tells, right the Almighty.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
Until unless you know, the Almighty tells me that I
should do that, And so it's 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 it's typically Christianity as
(11:35):
a prop to be able to push for a certain
kind of loyalty and that kind of demand.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
But generally speaking, you see it cut both ways in
our politics.
Speaker 6 (11:45):
Maybe it's sometimes just more invisible to the side that
we prefer.
Speaker 3 (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 2 (11:58):
Don't go anywhere listening to the Middle.
Speaker 8 (12:04):
Fine food, and but I got no age.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
O pass.
Speaker 8 (12:15):
Baby, here's the heavy walking to see Who's heaven is
my fingers?
Speaker 9 (12:23):
The angels singing baby is laughing baby.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
If you're just tuning in, we're usually a national call
in show focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically,
politically and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet
in the middle. This hour, we are not taking calls
because we're listening back to a show from last year
that we did in front of a live audience in Birmingham, Alabama,
asking about the role of Christianity in our politics. My
(12:59):
guests were former Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman, whose book
is called Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism
in the Path Back to Peace, and Colin Hanson, who's
vice president of content and editor in chief of the
Gospel Coalition. As we continued our conversation, I asked Elizabeth
Newman how Christianity and politics in the United States became
so intertwined. In her book, she writes, what started fifty
(13:22):
plus years ago as an alliance between white 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 7 (13:34):
So, I, because I am a Christian, made a decision
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
(13:56):
put them on the right left spectrum. But of those
that are ideologically motivated, they fall on the 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
(14:17):
goes to church on Sunday and ask them if they
agree with militia, violent extremism or white supremacist extremism, 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,
(14:39):
things that aren't necessarily associated with an organized violent extremist movement.
And so I was very perplexed by the fact that
this was coming from my community, like literally geographically, my community,
my faith community, my political community.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
How tied though, is the radicalization of people to religion.
Speaker 7 (15:00):
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 the faith, You're not
going to walk out of there, more likely to be
willing to commit an act of violence. The problem is
(15:22):
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 success or survival, is
(15:43):
being threatened by some other. The other could be 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 don't practice our faith. The other is
(16:05):
anybody that's different than us and they're trying to take
away our way of life. And 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 ten ish years has led us
(16:26):
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
this fear and grievance cycle for at least a decade,
really going back several decades because of the merger with politics.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Colin Hanson, Well.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
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
(17:12):
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, but it
can be wielded. Religion can be wielded by people for
(17:35):
any kinds of different motivations. So fascinating is doctor Martin
Luther King Junior described himself as an extremist, said, I'm
an extremist for love. So the question I think that
Elizabeth helps us to drive toward is is not necessarily
about whether you're an extremist per se, but what you're
an extremist for. You can be an extremist for love
(17:55):
and do what doctor King did here in the streets
of Birmingham, or you can be an extreme 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 2 (18:09):
You say, we're here in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
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. And also,
as you 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 there is
(18:33):
there a difference between that and some of the Christian
nationalism that we see now.
Speaker 7 (18:39):
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
(18:59):
action 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, than you're a part of
(19:22):
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, there are certain smaller variations of nationalism.
(19:43):
You look at the United Kingdom. They have a Church
of England, they have a state religion, but you don't
pay more taxes. If you don't go to the Church
of England, 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
(20:05):
the United States who are arguing that we should redefine
our country based on what they perceived to be a
historical tie 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 3 (20:26):
Why this in group out group, us versus them isn't
a huge part of the Christian faith.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Love thy neighbor?
Speaker 10 (20:34):
Why?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I mean this show is called the Middle.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I mean we were talking across party lines from different
parts of the country.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Colin Hanson, what about love thy neighbor?
Speaker 6 (20:43):
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,
(21:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
To be love.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Now, you don't have to be a Christian to think
about this way. You might just be a parent and
think this way.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
It's a basic aspect.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Of parenting that you do not always give people what
they want, in part because you say.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I love you too much to be able to do that.
Speaker 6 (21:29):
So in some ways, our laws, insofar as they're based
on love, are acts of restraining people against things that
would be harmful to them, whether they want to do
that or not. Again, there's a whole range here. We
all ascribe to that in certain ways, and we also
recognize other ways where we think that's too far. That's
part of what Elizabeth is trying to get at here
is that there's a lot of debate about how far.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
That ought to go. And I think it's actually the
kind of the rise.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
Of secularism that's bringing this all about kind of to renegotiate, because,
as you.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Say, with the church not being the dominant.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
Social force that it had been in the past, bringing
people together with a lot of assumptions that they had shared,
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
(22:25):
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 2 (22:32):
Let's get to some audience questions. Let's hear from you.
Speaker 10 (22:35):
My name is kil.
Speaker 11 (22:38):
And listening to what you had said earlier about the.
Speaker 10 (22:43):
Faith was down in numbers and attendance and such.
Speaker 11 (22:46):
I think one of the reasons is the lack of trust,
trust in the faith, trust in Christianity.
Speaker 10 (22:53):
How can we.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Address them? That's a wonderful question.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
I appreciate that 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's celebrated in certain environments that still
kind of the institution everybody can rally around in there.
(23:19):
One of the challenges for any institutions in this era
is transparency.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
People can see things that they couldn't.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
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,
(23:50):
Christianity 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 is full of sin and we're just as tempted
as everybody else.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
But I would love to see the.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Church as setting the example for other institutions to follow.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Perhaps we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Thank you for that question. Let's get to another one.
Speaker 10 (24:13):
My name is John.
Speaker 11 (24:13):
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 from
Religion Foundation has so much work and abs and secular
(24:34):
people like me get so upset because we feel like
our rights are being trampled on. So there's that one
Bible verse about you know, not being like the Pharisees
going to pray in the closet, set it out in
the public. Why don't more Christians follow that practice?
Speaker 7 (24:47):
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 goutten inverted, mainly
because I think there's two answers to your question. You said,
why is it that politics has faith so prominent? And
(25:08):
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 would say, like, especially in an era of transparency,
(25:29):
I find it odd that somebody's personal actions don't attest
more than what they say on a you know, dias somewhere,
Like there's just this disconnect between behavior that would in
Christian parlance, the fruit or the lack thereof. But somehow
if they say the right thing on a campaign slogan
(25:51):
or on a you know, stage somewhere where that counts
more than their actual actions.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
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 (26:12):
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
(26:33):
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 was 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. This
really is about power, This isn't about character at all.
(26:56):
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. We can't stand up
for our values because we got to defeat the other guys.
(27:17):
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 selling on Christianity itself that we're
not creating a space where you feel loved and affirmed
(27:40):
and welcomed to the public square, because that's what our
faith teaches us. We should be doing that. We should
be welcoming 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 3 (27:58):
These audience questions are fantastic, So let's get another one.
Speaker 12 (28:01):
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 2 (28:19):
Great question, that's.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
A good question.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
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
(28:44):
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.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
But I think one thing I just want to point.
Speaker 6 (29:08):
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 4 (29:17):
Elizabeth pointed out.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
The Church of England in meshing 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
(29:40):
they 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. So I don't know what
it would look like to codify that. More so it
would be interesting legislatively to think about that, but certainly
Supreme Court usually is what the gap these days.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
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 2 (30:17):
And John F.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
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 have there
has there been such a collection of intellect, with the
possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. Learn that
in Monticello will stand by because in a moment. We're
(30:38):
going to talk about new moves by some politicians to
increase the level of Christianity in.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
All of our lives.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
You're listening to the Middle coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama,
in association with WBHM.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Which is more questions.
Speaker 10 (30:54):
Man, it's been spicy in here. This one is called Sweets,
dedicated to all the good food. We've had a baby.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
We're listening back this hour to a conversation we had
in front of a live audience in Birmingham, Alabama, last
year about the role of Christianity in our politics. My
guests were 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.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Just before the show was recorded.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
The Alabama State Supreme Court made national news when it
outlawed in vitro fertilization treatment, or IVF. The Chief Justice
of the State Supreme Court wrote, human life cannot be
wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.
So I asked Colin Hanson, is that appropriate coming from
a judge who is supposed to respect the separation of
(32:12):
church and state.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It's a good question. I think you can see it
a couple different ways.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
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 speaking in there. At the same time,
we do have a constitution that is a shockingly secular
document for its period of time that does not use
(32:38):
those explicit Christian appeals in those kinds of cases.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
So not only is it a rather unusual move, but.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
Probably not one that is warranted precisely 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 3 (33:04):
But Elizabeth Numan, 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 the person's ability
to live their life and be free.
Speaker 7 (33:25):
I mean, this is where we need the legislature to
be doing its job. If you take relatively new issues,
right like transgender challenges, how do we help kids who
are struggling with their gender identity? You know, that's a
(33:45):
tough question, and we don't. We're just getting evidence 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. So there's
two pieces here. One, all of us as citizens should
(34:06):
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? Right? Like, most of us just want
our kids to do well, and we want to find
the right path forward on an issue like this. So one,
(34:27):
we as citizens need to do better job and how
we dialogue about it and not give in to those
political talking points. But two, we need our legislators to
do their job. 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 2 (34:52):
Let's go to the audience. Sir, you have a question,
our comment.
Speaker 13 (34:56):
My name is Richard, another non believer here. 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,
(35:17):
let's go full Jesus. Immigrants are our neighbors.
Speaker 14 (35:21):
Let's love them and help them. Those who are in
need of health care, Jesus would say, let's give them
universal health care.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And by the way, would Jesus want you to.
Speaker 13 (35:35):
Carry an assault rifle with thirty round magazine?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
That's a good it's a good question.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
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 figure like
Jim Wallace, who have been around for many decades arguing
that exact thing, and certainly had a huge influence in
(36:06):
the Obama administration as an example. So I think this
is a theme that I keep coming back to a
little bit here, which is that we act as though
Christianity or result on one side. But I don't think
anything in American politics, historically or present makes any sense
without understanding the massive influence on all of our politics
(36:26):
of Christianity in particular.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
And again, I just want.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
To point out, of all places, Birmingham, Alabama, which is
one of the most if not the most religious metro
are metro areas in the country, is precisely that 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
(36:52):
we're seeing a lot of that already.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Let's go to another question from the audience.
Speaker 15 (36:57):
Good Evening. My name is John Bin the last ten years.
I'm from Maryland, born and raised. I guess my question
the statement is around human inefficiency. Howy we continue to
show up in moments and be outside of what we
want for ourselves right on a macro scale, for thousands
(37:19):
of years and we still haven't been able to reframe
this problem and adjust how we even exist in a moment,
so we'll be more closer to kindness, love, integrity, respect, peace.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Tacos.
Speaker 7 (37:30):
I don't know, I mean I love Tacos. I'm from Texas.
Breakfast breakfast Tacos. I had a perk carnita last night.
So in the book, I spent the first half of
the book explaining what extremism is, how people radicalize, why
(37:51):
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. It's an unmet need for belonging and an
unmet need for significance. And the second part of the
book I offer suggestions primarily for the community. I came
(38:16):
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 usen to
an extremist mindset. But those factors kind of come down
to loving your neighbor, getting outside of yourself. How do
(38:39):
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, it's not the profession or the
awards that you can put on your bookshelf. Your significance
(38:59):
is going to and 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 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
(39:22):
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 to find our significance. And in doing that,
in serving one another, we find our belonging to.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
You mean, we don't find our belonging and significance in
doom scrolling on social media.
Speaker 7 (39:47):
That's not I've tried it for a while.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It does not work, Tolliver. That's what you thought.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I was like, don't come for me, jar.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Let's get to another member of the audience.
Speaker 12 (39:57):
Here.
Speaker 7 (39:58):
My name's Katie.
Speaker 5 (39:59):
I'm from The question I have is this, what would
your response be to the shift from religious rhetoric in
politics to religious products and propaganda in politics?
Speaker 7 (40:10):
Oh man, 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 is
(40:33):
that they don't They're not like the extremists from twenty
years ago. Twenty years ago, ideology was really 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 the ideology that we belong to think beIN laden right,
like lit like the.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Charles nine Yes should be another example of that.
Speaker 7 (40:54):
Yeah, and 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 act of violence. That's not
the situation these days. In most cases, the ideology is
like memified, meaning like they're radicalizing by just seeing funny
(41:17):
pictures with like a little word here or there. It's
not text based. It's image based. It's very vibe. It's
about the vibe, which is wild, but it 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
(41:38):
understand why I need to do this. It's not a logic.
They're in a place of deep despair and more and
more we're seeing people that are very nehilistic, like 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
(41:58):
as a whole. We don't read as much as we
used to. There's tons of data that tells us this.
Now we our tension spans are so much shorter, so.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
Much so that we don't socialize as much.
Speaker 7 (42:10):
We don't socialize as much.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Sex is way down.
Speaker 7 (42:14):
Yeah, there's that too. There's that too. It is and
so there's just this. 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 4 (42:25):
The Las Vegas shooting, that's still the largest mass shooting.
Is that right? Do we still not? We don't even
know a motive.
Speaker 7 (42:31):
It was never considered an act of terrorism because there's
no ideological nexus that was discovered.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Let's get to another question from the audience.
Speaker 8 (42:38):
My name is Jim, and what I liked 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
(43:00):
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
(43:23):
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.
(43:45):
That's extremism to me. And why do you vilify that
type of extremism?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
If I could ask, why do you consider that extremism?
Speaker 8 (43:54):
Because what do we say in Christian extremism? What are
you talk what is Christian extremism? I see more extremism
on the other side then 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 (44:13):
I love the question and I love the framing that
you're bringing to it. In 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 way of
(44:35):
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 to view
(44:58):
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, threats, and intimidation. Now you can
(45:21):
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,
(45:43):
so the violent side of that 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 that are willing to
(46:06):
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. It still meets that definition.
As you move down the funnel, smaller and smaller percentage
will actually have mobilized to violence. Very small percentage actually
move into that criminal space.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Let's get one more question in Hello.
Speaker 16 (46:27):
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
(46:53):
by a divine power that they think is the divine power?
The right one.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Question, con Hansen.
Speaker 6 (47:01):
So, I have likewise observed a surprising number of people
who are advocating what Elizabeth is talking about, especially a
theocratic government that would impose actual theological tests for criminality.
I didn't see that nearly as much twenty years ago
(47:23):
as I see it now. But I think it's precisely
because the possibility is ever more absurd that it would
actually happen. So it's an inverse relationship. The more you
hear people talk about it, the less likely it actually
is to happen. So it's actually related to you hear
(47:43):
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. The second
(48:06):
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 combines then
(48:30):
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 why you see
(48:54):
some people saying, well, what we really need to do
is go back to a Christian kind of theocracy.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
But again, I think it's.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
Largely because it's simply utterly implausible that you hear more people.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Talk about it.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Our conversation from last summer in front of a live
audience in Birmingham, Alabama, in partnership with WBHM. That was
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, The Rise of
Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. Next week
(49:27):
we'll be right back here live and our One Thing
Trump Did podcast will drop in a few days on
the Middle podcast feed.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
As always, you can reach.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Out to us at Listen to the Middle dot com,
where you can also sign up for our free weekly newsletter,
and of course by Middle merch like T shirts and
hats and mugs. The Middle is brought to you by
Lungnok Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois,
and produced by Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmas, Dawes,
John Barth, Anikadeshler, and Brandon Condritz. Our technical director is
(49:56):
Jason Kroft. Thanks to our satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience,
and the now more than four hundred and thirty public
radio stations that are making it possible for people across
the country to listen to the Middle, I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
I'll talk to you next week.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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