January 6, White Christian Nationalism, and How We Got Here, with Bradley Onishi

Episode Transcript
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Randy (00:06):
I'm Randy, the pastor, half of the podcast, and my
friend Kyle is a philosopher.
This podcast hostsconversations at the
intersection of philosophy,theology and spirituality.

Kyle (00:15):
We also invite experts to join us, making public a space
that we've often enjoyed off air, around the proverbial table
with a good drink in the backcorner of a dark pub.

Randy (00:24):
Thanks for joining us and welcome to A Pastor and a
Philosopher Walk Into a Bar.
So white Christian nationalismis something that is quite
depressing to me and is all overthe news.
We've interviewed Kristen Dume,we've interviewed Paul Miller.

(00:47):
We've talked about whiteChristian nationalism, but it's
something that we have to talkabout more and more because it's
coming to the forefront moreand more.
It's not even just kind ofbehind the veil and some weird
revival in Tennessee happening.
Politicians on CNN are arguingfor why they're okay with
Christian nationalism and thatlabel.
Now I mean it's getting thatmainstream.
So our guest today is BradleyOnishi and he wrote the book

(01:09):
called Preparing for War theExtremist History of White
Christian Nationalism and whatComes Next.
And within this book Brad makesthe case that Trump and Maga
Nation in January 6th was notjust an anomaly.
It wasn't just something thatjust combusted and exploded out
of nowhere.
It's been building for the last60 years and maybe even more,
and there might be somethingthat comes next and it's kind of

(01:31):
stark and startling, but it'sreally important, I think.

Kyle (01:33):
It is.
So this is, I don't knowthird-ish kind of maybe more
than that kind of conversationin this vein about this topic
that we've had.
It's something that we keepcoming back to because it's
extremely important.
It's very current.
This is the most I used the wordpolemical in the interview.
It's the most you said stark.
There's a strong warning inthis book, more so than you get
in some of the others.

(01:54):
It's very I don't know what theright word is it's honest and
also dire, and I think it mightbe right.
So Brad's a scholar of religion.
He's a co-host of a podcastcalled Straight White American
Jesus with some of our listenersmight be familiar with a
co-host with another religionscholar.
He teaches at the University ofSan Francisco.

(02:14):
He really knows his stuff andwe talk a bit about his
religious history, very similarto our own.
He makes the strong claim thathe, if he had continued on the
trajectory that he grew up in,could very easily have been one
of the insurrectionists at theJanuary 6th event, but instead
became an academic and is nownot religious at all.
But yes, has very important andvery timely warnings that a lot

(02:36):
of us need to pay closeattention to.
This is one of our morepolitical episodes.
We don't actually do those veryoften and some of our opinions
come out in this one so yeah,fair warning.

Randy (02:45):
Buckle up.
Speaking of buckle up, what arewe drinking here today?

Kyle (02:48):
Kyle, yeah, I hope this is a buckle up whiskey.
I'm really not sure I've had itonce, and it was a long, long
time ago, and I don't rememberanything about it other than
that I liked it well enough tobuy a bottle, which I then
promptly forgot about.
So apparently there is only onewhiskey distillery in Wales and
it's called yeah, it's calledPindaren, so we've had Scotch on
the show, we've had Irishwhiskey on the show, we've had

(03:10):
Japanese whiskey on the show.
We've never had anything fromWales, and that's because
there's only one.

Randy (03:16):
I've never had anything from Wales.

Kyle (03:17):
Yeah, so this is a single malt Welsh whiskey, finished in
Madeira casks.
It's called Legend.

Randy (03:24):
It's lighter than Japanese whiskey, I mean it's
almost yellow and clear.

Kyle (03:28):
I do remember thinking this is nothing like Scotch,
this is nothing like Irishwhiskey, it's its own thing.

Randy (03:34):
I get a little Scotch in the nose, a tiny bit.

Kyle (03:38):
It does have that Japanese kind of smell.

Randy (03:40):
Yep, yep, it's its own thing.
It's like a very mild Scotch,without the all the oak and
perfuming.

Kyle (03:50):
I think that's the Madeira coming through it is that's got
to be the finishing cast, butit retains that floral character
that I associate with Japanesewhiskey Very light-bodied, easy
drinking.
Elliot, you said it almostlooks like champagne in the
glass.

Elliot (04:04):
And floral is exactly the word.
This one's as much about thenose.

Randy (04:09):
I don't get the floral on the nose, but I definitely get
it in the palette.

Kyle (04:14):
I really like it.
I'm glad I'm congratulating mypast self for buying the bottle.
It's really nice.
It's completely unique.

Randy (04:23):
It is and this would be a great entry-level whiskey.
I want to say it doesn't haveany of the objectionable flavors
besides the fact that it'swhiskey, but it's again kind of
bright, kind of floral.
It's not going to burn yourface off, I don't do.
You know what the ABV is?

Kyle (04:39):
I think it's 41%.

Randy (04:41):
Okay, so it's a lower cut too.
It's very pleasant.

Kyle (04:45):
I'm very curious about the mash bill.
I don't think they're going totell If it's a straight single
malt, it's just going to bebarley.
So I'm not sure what elsethey're doing differently.
If they're stills are different, I should look into that, but
it's really great.

Randy (05:00):
It is very good.
Yeah, if you're confused andyou're listening to us for the
first time wondering why we'retasting whiskey, this is what we
do.
We are a pastor and aphilosopher walking to a bar.
We love to have conversationsthat you have in a bar and we
like to have an alcoholicbeverage to sample.
That kind of sets the mood.
So what is this?
Again, one more time, kylePendarin legend Cheers, cheers.

Kyle (05:19):
Dr Bradley Onishi, thank you so much for joining us on
the Pastor and the Pastor.

Randy (05:34):
Thanks for the invitation Great to be here.
Brad, can you just tell us andour listeners just how you got
here, who are you, what do youdo and why you wrote this book?

Bradley (05:47):
Yeah, so I grew up in Southern California Orange
County, and I think a lot ofpeople, particularly in the
Midwest, might think ofCalifornia as a liberal place.
You know hippies walking aroundin sandals and everything else.
Where I grew up is really theBible Belt of Southern
California.
So I didn't have a religioushome growing up, but I converted
at age 14 at an evangelicalmegachurch when my like eighth

(06:10):
grade girlfriend invited me toBible study.

Kyle (06:13):
So she dumped me pretty quick.

Bradley (06:15):
But I stayed at church and it kind of became my second
home and by the time I was 20, Iwas a full-time minister at
that church.
I was married to my high schoolsweetheart and ready to start
seminary.
So my conversion was not just akind of passing fad or
something that you know I wassort of lightheartedly doing.

(06:37):
I was a true Jesus freak in theevangelical sense, and by the
time I was in my early twentiesI'd gone to seminary.
I was reading a lot andbasically the more I read in
history and philosophy andtheology, the more I started to
think that the faith I'd beenbrought into was more about a
conservative political agendaand a certain idea of America

(06:58):
than it was about the gospel.
And so that led to just decadesof more reading, more
exploration, more theologicaltraining, philosophical training
and eventually writing a bookabout white Christian
nationalism that really uses mystory to tell that story.

Kyle (07:17):
Yeah, so how did you tell the story of how it?
Because you went to Oxford tostudy theology, and pretty much
directly out of a fundamentalistministry context, if I read
correctly.
So how did that happen?

Bradley (07:28):
Short answer is I completely bamboozled the
University of Oxford until I gotinto a master's degree.

Randy (07:34):
I thought you were going to say Brad.
I thought you were going to sayit's a God thing, no, no, I
mean, at the time I thought thatthe longer story I'll just.

Bradley (07:42):
I prepared fastidiously to go to graduate school out of
seminary and my then wife, whohad been my partner since
freshman year of high school,was a basketball player, so she
wanted to like play some myprofessional basketball.
I wanted to go to like graduateschool and be a theologian.
We decided we would move toEngland.
So I applied to like all theseplaces you know, oxford and

(08:04):
Birmingham and Edinburgh andthen we went and visited.
We'd never been out of thecountry before and so, except
for mission trips to Mexico,we'd never been to anywhere else
except for those mission trips.
So we get there to Oxford andI'm like dressed in a suit and
tie.
She comes with me to meet thisworld famous theologian and it's
like all right, I'll meet youback here in an hour.

(08:25):
Well, right, when she said thathe was coming to the door to
meet me and she, she likefreaked out and like I don't.
She was wearing like sweatpantsand tourist clothes and she was
.
We were both out of our element, super embarrassed, like we
don't know how to act.
So he comes to the door and hesays oh, bradley, you've come a
long way to meet me here.
Please come in, come in and Ithought like, and I looked

(08:45):
around I didn't see her.
I'm like, well, I guess I don'tknow what happened here, but I
guess we were good.
And right before we walk in thedoor he's like just tell me one
thing, who's in my bushes?
And he like points to thebushes and my wife's like waving
from there and we he's like youshould come in too.
So she comes in and thisprofessor, this theologian, was
also like a somebody very intoliterature.

(09:06):
Well, she was a literaturemajor.
They ended up talking for likean hour and a half about
literature and to this day I'mconvinced that that meeting is
what bamboozled the university.

Kyle (09:15):
It'd be funny if they admitted her instead of you.
No, I think.

Bradley (09:19):
I think they would have preferred to admit her but she
didn't apply, so they admittedme.

Kyle (09:23):
Nice yeah, who was that professor?

Bradley (09:26):
It's a guy named Paul Fittis who's a Baptist
theologian who sort of in theBaptist world in the UK is kind
of a in the pantheon oftheologians, but somebody who
wrote a lot about the Trinity,somebody who wrote a lot about
eschatology and a lot abouttheology and literature and he
has a if you look him up,friends, if you're listening
last name FIDDES.

(09:46):
He has a very distinctive look.
He looks like his facial hairsout of the Abraham Lincoln genre
and he also is very short.
So when he was coming towards me20 years ago from his his flat
in Oxford I knew exactly who hewas, because it was like Abraham
Lincoln meets somebody who sortof looks the size of a, you

(10:10):
know, a little bit bigger than ahobbit, and anyway, it was all
very intimidating but it workedout and he ended up being one of
my advisors at Oxford and,honestly, one of the best people
I've ever met.

Kyle (10:20):
What a fantastic story.
I didn't know there wereBaptists at Oxford, so that's
awesome.

Bradley (10:24):
Yeah, my, my college back.
Sorry, I'm talking a lot aboutthis.
I apologize.

Kyle (10:29):
My fault that I asked.
I'm talking to you all thisstuff.

Bradley (10:31):
but the Baptist college I went to is the only
non-Englican college at Oxfordand it backs up to the Eagle and
Child where, so like, we shareda wall where with the pub where
Tolkien and Lewis used to meetevery week with the Inklings.
So I'm like a fundamentalistI've never drank a beer, and my
first week at Oxford we go tothe pub where, like Lewis and
Tolkien used to hang out, andthat's where I had my first beer

(10:51):
.

Randy (10:52):
So that's a good place to have your first beer.
So you converted Christianityin 1995 into the evangelical
world.
That's like right in my willhouse.
In your book you said thatevangelical Christianity you
converted to is just as much, orwas just as much, about a
particular myth about the UnitedStates as it was about the
gospel of Christ.
Can you explain that for us?

Bradley (11:13):
Yeah.
So where I come from inSouthern California, there is
this incredible concentration ofevangelical Quakers.
And I know some of you are justsome of you perked up.
You're driving right now andyou're just like what is an
evangelical Quaker?
So my church is Richard Nixon'schurch.
So if you, if you're familiarwith Richard Nixon at all, his
family were Quakers, and so ifyou think about Quakers usually

(11:33):
like oh, peace, egalitarianism,social justice well, we didn't
do any of that.
We were just a run of the mill,white mega church, right Like we
, like the people at my churchwho are in charge would have
rather emulated Rick Warren thanGeorge Fox.
And so by the time I'm like 22,23, and I've read all this

(11:54):
Quaker history and theology, I'mlike looking around, thinking
we have a prayer meeting everyTuesday morning and every
Tuesday we pray for the policeand the military like 300 times,
because that's what everyone inthe church asks us to pray for.
Not one time have we ever prayedfor peace, for the end of war,
for the end of hunger Never, andthat was like a light bulb

(12:15):
moment of like how can we be notonly Quaker, but how can we be
Christians if these are notthings we pray for and hope for,
and that was really one of thekind of like doorways that
opened up for me this idea thateverything that I'd learned
about being 100% anti-abortionor quote unquote pro-life,
everything I'd learned about,you know, the gospel of Christ

(12:37):
is not really telling people togive up their riches to follow
you know the savior, all of thethings I'd learned about
American exceptionalism after 911 in our church they all
started to crumble and I startedto think this is about American
exceptionalism and conservativepolitics, not about the radical
gospel of the Sermon on theMount.

(12:58):
And that was kind of thebeginning of the end for me.

Kyle (13:02):
Yeah, I didn't know there were nationalistic Quakers
either.

Randy (13:05):
I'm learning all sorts of new stuff.

Kyle (13:06):
It's almost like an oxymoron.
So you've also mentioned in thebook that you're no longer a
Christian at all anymore.
You've just left the tententirely.
Would you mind telling us whatthat trajectory was like?

Bradley (13:17):
Yeah, you know, and it's not really.
It's not a kind of angry exit.
I'm like I still do so muchwork with pastors and Christians
.
I'm honestly, if you ask me tospeak, I'm still most
comfortable speaking in church.
You know what I mean.
So none of it is like you know,religion is the worst.

(13:37):
I'm on a mission to get rid ofreligion in the world.
You know, it's none of that.
It's really like I got to Oxfordand it was the first time in my
adult life that I was not inministry.
I'd been in ministry since Iwas 18.
And it was the first time in mylife I was away from my
hometown.
So like I was used to going tothe grocery store and seeing 10
people from church, right, so Iget 6,000 miles from home and in

(14:00):
my mind I'm like finally I canvisit the kinds of churches I've
been reading about.
I can go to literally thechurch where John Wesley used to
preach and see what that'sabout.
I can go to the high churchAnglican service and like,
figure out what liturgy is.
Never done that before, right,and I did that.

(14:20):
And I just ended up at a pointwhere I started to live my
values and I started to live my,my kind of beliefs in a way
that just wasn't part of achurch community.
So you know where I stand in2023, it's hard to identify
myself because I don't want tosit here and say, oh, I'm an
atheist who blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, because I don't
think I am.
That said, if I'm honest withyou, I don't participate

(14:43):
regularly in a Christiancommunity.
That said, I tend to hang outwith a lot of religious people
clergy, christians, church goingfolks and often find them to be
the people I enjoy talking tothe most.
So it's I'll just say it'scomplicated.

Kyle (14:58):
Sure, as it is for all of us.
I appreciate that.
So the launch point for thebook really is kind of the
insurrection on January 6th andyou say several times and well,
take, take me back to what washappening when that happened for
you, what your experience of itwas like and how the idea of
this book came out of it.

Bradley (15:18):
Yeah, I like a lot of us.
January 5th 2021 is whenRaphael Warnock and John Ossef
were confirmed as winners of theelections to be the senators
for Georgia.
So now it's like Biden'spresident and there's going to
be a slim majority of a slimDemocratic majority in the
Senate, and Congress iscontrolled by the Dems.

(15:39):
Here's the point.
I woke up on January 6th prettyhopeful about that, thinking.
You know, this doesn't mean arevolution, but it means
something different than thelast four years.
So I got up at like dawn and Iwent surfing and it was 39
degrees.
I know for y'all that's nothing, but you know for California me
, that's too cold and it was.

(16:00):
You know, the water was cold and50 degrees.
But I was alone and I wasstaring at the horizon and
thinking better days are aheadand I should have known better
Like I do know better.
But I got in the car, drovehome and as soon as I start work
that morning, there's justpeople streaming across the
screen who are like tearing downthe Capitol and, like everybody
, listening.
I was horrified.

(16:21):
But within a couple of minutesI realized I could have been
there, because I was so zealouswhen I converted, I was so
committed to my faith that if aman in the church had said, hey,
next week we got to go stopthis election from being stolen.
I bought you a plane ticket.
Are you in?
18, 19, 20 year old me wouldhave been like let's go.

(16:42):
Yeah, I'm in, I'll go there.
I learned later that there werepeople from my old church who
were there.
There were others who werethere on December 12th at the
first Jericho March, and so thathit me, that hit my bones.
My body started to sort of liketense up when that all came to
a head and then I thought allright, I really want to explain

(17:05):
this history.
Yes, january 6 will always bean aberration in American
history, but there was a historythat led up to it that can help
people understand how we gothere.
And that's really when Idecided yeah, it's time to write
all this down.

Kyle (17:18):
Yeah, so you said, just like you alluded to just now,
several times in the book it'skind of I don't know a theme
that that could have been me.
I could have been there, Icould have been one of those
people.
Do you really believe thatthough?
I mean, some people might saythat you know, if you're a smart
and independent enough thinker,you'll eventually see your way
out of any kind of cultist groupthing that would lead to some
actually insurrection, violentevent like that.
But you seem committed to thefact that if your life had gone

(17:42):
somewhat differently, thatreally could have been you.
Is that right?

Bradley (17:45):
Yeah, so I think.
So I think back to me when Iconverted at age 14.
And so by the time I'm like 15,my mom asks me what do you want
for Christmas?
And I said to her you know, mom, I don't want you to buy me any
presents.
And I pulled out thesepamphlets for my backpack and I
was like I want you to spend allthat money on Bibles to send to

(18:05):
these countries in South Asia,because there's people there
who've never heard about Jesus,right.
And so she kind of looked at memy mom was an Christian.
She looked at me like I reallywish you were a normal teenager,
which is like smoking pot andlike sneaking out of the house.
But she's like fine, all right,I'll do that.
I let a Bible study once a weekin my public high school, so I'd
sit on this bench at lunch and,like you know, people would

(18:27):
hang out sometimes and we wouldtalk about the book of John or
whatever.
Other times at lunch I wouldwalk around the schoolyard and
ask people if they knew Jesusand if they realized they were
probably going to go to hell.
A lot of my Friday nights werespent outside of the movie
theater, so when people wouldcome out like my age.
I'd be like hey, what's up, I'mBrad, you know, have you met
the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
Here's.
My point is, like that's who Iwas.

(18:49):
I was captain of the basketballteam in high school, but I was
the only person with noLetterman's jacket, because it
costs like $200.
And I told my mom once againlike hey, you want to buy me a
Letterman's jacket, why don't wespend $200 on Bibles for people
in South Asia?
Anyway, that track record oflike zealotry leads me to think
that, like that, you know, ifyou catch me the summer after I

(19:11):
graduate high school and you'relike we got to go to DC to save
our country from like Godlessruin, there's a good track
record that says I might havebeen there.
Yeah, I might have done it.
And if I had not been there, Iwould have been praying for
those who were there as a kindof supporter.

Kyle (19:27):
Sure, I appreciate that honesty really do.

Randy (19:31):
Yeah, go ahead.

Kyle (19:33):
Yeah, so let's talk about James Dobson.

Randy (19:37):
Exactly Good, good.

Kyle (19:40):
Only as an example.
So you describe how, for a lotof evangelical leaders in the
80s and 90s, like Dobson, thetime when America really lost
its way, really foresoakedmorality, was not the 1860s and
prior to that, you know, when wethought enslaving other humans
was great, it was rather the1960s, which seems horribly

(20:02):
ironic to me.
But can you explain that, whythey thought that, and describe
a bit of that history and if youcan draw a line from there to
where we are today?

Bradley (20:10):
Yeah.
So you know, there's data thatbacks us up, that shows us that
a lot of folks who identify aswhite evangelical or who scores
Christian nationalists justreally think that the time
America was great was not the1950s and the time that led to
the supposedly catastrophicstate were now is the 1960s.

(20:30):
So the 1960s include what?
They include the Civil RightsMovement, they include a Voting
Rights Act.
They include sweepingimmigration reform.
They include expansiveliberation movements for women.
They include expansiveliberation movements for queer
folks, not to mention the LovingCase, which protects
interracial marriage in all 50states.

(20:53):
Feminine Mystique is publishedin 1963, stonewall 1969, I could
go on and on and on.
If you look at the writings ofsomeone like Dobson, if you look
at the writings of Focus on theFamily executives, if you read
literature by any number ofluminaries writing in the
evangelical world, what theywill tell you is that the 1960s
is when the social order wasdisrupted and the country fell

(21:15):
away from God.
And so to me, that's themtelling on themselves.
Because if you're saying youwant to go back to the 1950s,
you're saying you want to goback to a time before the Civil
Rights Movement, the VotingRights Act, immigration reform
and everything I just talkedabout.
And so their answer would beyes, because that is when,

(21:36):
supposedly, the nuclear familyfell apart, that is when divorce
rates skyrocketed, that is whenbeing a gay person in American
culture became mainstream, thatis when the sexual revolution
happened, and on and on and on.
So that is the time when theywould say that the American fall
from God's plan really tookplace, and we've been on a

(21:56):
slippery slope ever since.

Randy (21:59):
In the book you paint this, you go all the way back to
slavery in the 1860s and I lovethe case you make.
It stunned me as I was readingit where you talk about how the
argument supporting slavery inthe 1860s, or the same arguments
that were to fight against theCivil Rights Movement, were the
same arguments to fight againstthe Equal Rights Act, to make
equality for women a thing inthe workplace, and even not for

(22:20):
LGBTQ rights and all of it is.
We have to protect the family,we have to protect family values
.
Whether it's slavery, whetherit's civil rights movement,
whether it's women, whether it'sLGBTQ, it's all the same.
Tell us about how youdiscovered that kind of familiar
strain and theme.

Bradley (22:36):
Yeah.
So if you look at thepro-slavery theologians and the
many of the pro-slaveryChristian voices of the 1850s,
what they're going to do isoutline something that goes like
this there is a God givensocial order that society should
follow, and that God givenorder includes a man who is the
patriarchal head of the family,a woman who is submissive to his

(23:00):
authority and takes care of thechildren, children who view
their father as the voice of God, and a sense that the household
is really a microcosm ofsociety, that that patriarchal
family should extend to thewhole of society.
The argument also says thatanyone in the household is part
of that family structure.

(23:21):
Now, the household in the 1850sfor many southern plantation
owners included enslaved people.
So the argument went those whoare in my household, meaning
those who are working the fieldson my plantation as enslaved
folks, are also to submit to theauthority of the patriarchal
head of the family.
And they are my children,because those who are not white

(23:48):
can never reach a stage ofdevelopment that is anything
beyond grown-up children.
That's family values, 1850sstyle, right, that's pro-slavery
family values.
What you hear in the wake ofeverything we just talked about
the 1960s is well, family values, yeah, we should have a nuclear

(24:08):
family where a patriarchalfather is in charge, a
submissive wife is alongside him, children who are equally
submissive to their father andsociety working in the same
fashion as that patriarchalfamily.
That's why the sexualrevolution, that's why families
that don't follow that structure, families that have two dads or

(24:30):
two moms, are somehow differentthan what we just talked about,
are not only different orsomething that I'm not used to,
but they're an aberration fromGod's plan for society.
Right, and so you can see howfamily values has been touted as
a defensive tactic.
Hey, we're just good old peopleof faith, god and country

(24:52):
Americans.
We're just out here trying toprotect our kids.
I don't know why you're out heretrying to change everything and
make everything different andupset the social order, when, in
fact, in my mind, when I hearfamily values, that's a tactic
of offense.
You're going on offense.
You're saying we have a visionfor society and we're here to
impose it on everybody and we'regoing to claim that it's God's

(25:13):
vision and therefore it hasdivine legitimacy.
So family values when I hearthat, I'm like.
Family values has always beenused as a discourse, from the
1850s to the 1950s to the 2023s,as an argument against things
like interracial marriage rightCigaration in schools.
Always so, anyway.
I could go on and on, butthat's how I got there.

Randy (25:35):
Yeah, it's a stunning thing that seems so like.
What can you say when somebodysays, well, I'm just for family
values, man, I'm for protectingmy family, for protecting the
family?
It's almost the trump card.

Bradley (25:48):
In many ways it's really hard rhetorically to get
around it because, just likemoms for liberty right, moms for
liberty show up and they'relike look, I'm just a mom, I'm a
mama bear who cares about mychildren.
Yeah, how do you get aroundthat rhetorically?
Because mom is one of thehighest moral authority
positions one can hold.
If you you just said it I'm forthe family, right, definitive

(26:12):
article right, Definitivearticle, right.
I'm for the family, meaningthere's one kind of family, and
I'm here to protect it.
And I think for me, the answeris look, I totally understand
that you want to do what's bestfor your family, but what you're
telling me is that my familyand the ways that others create
relationships full of love andcare, familial ties, the ways

(26:35):
that people are kin, you'retelling me that you need to do
away with their versions of loveand care and family in order
for your version of the one andonly family to exist.
That's not okay.
Yes, wanting what's best foryou and your children, I'm on
board.
Let's do it.
I want that too, yeah.
But when your vision meanseradicating others ways of

(26:58):
living and flourishing, thenyou're not just for family
values, you're for somethingtotally different.
Yeah.

Randy (27:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, as I was reading it just struck me
you know the pro-slavery whiteChristian saying I'm standing up
for my family.
Slavery needs to stay in place.
Then, in the 50s, integrationin public schools comes along
and these same white Southernevangelicals are saying you
don't get to tell my family thatthey're going to be in class
with black kids.
So all of a sudden the privateschools and homeschooling

(27:27):
revolution begins because theydon't want their kids to be
around black kids.
Then the Equal Rights Act comesin and it takes decades to pass
because white Americanevangelicals are standing
against having women haveequality and equal pay in the
workplace.
Now LGBTQ people are fightingfor rights and they're saying no
, this is white Americanevangelicals saying no, I need
to protect my family, you don'tget any rights.

(27:50):
I'm going to this is a strongquestion, but I really am
interested in your take, bradley.
Would you say there's a peoplegroup in the history of the US
who has fought against equalityfor human beings more than the
white American evangelicalchurch?
I think my, and I hope there is.

(28:11):
I really hope you say there isanother group that fought
against equality harder than ourtradition.

Bradley (28:16):
I don't think there is, but here's the way I want to
frame my answer.
Okay, so I think I'm going tosay that you will hear from your
conservative uncle at yourbarbecue about yeah, on my show
we call him Uncle Ron, right?
So you're at the barbecue,you're just trying to get your
hamburger and here comes UncleRon.

(28:37):
He just watched Fox News.
He's hot off the press, justlistened to Charlie Kirk or
somebody.
Joe Rogan told him some stuff.
All right, hey, uncle Ron, howyou doing.
And he says you know blah, blah,blah, blah, black on black
crime.
Can you you know?
I mean, can you imagine howmany you know?
And he starts telling you aboutstatistics, about how black
people are violent.

(28:57):
And my response to all Quran isthat if you look at the history
of this country, even before itwas a country, there is no
disputing the fact that whitepeople have been the most
violent and the most criminalthroughout that 400 years,
whether it comes to the middlepassage, enslaving other human
beings, whether it comes to theattempted genocide of indigenous

(29:18):
folks, whether it comes to, youknow, the just horrific
violence against Asian and AsianAmericans on the West Coast
from the 1880s to the 20thcentury and during COVID,
whether it comes to talkingabout borders and where you know
, the Mexico starts and theUnited States stops, and vice

(29:42):
versa.
So when I answer this question,I want to say yes, but I also
want to do so without lettingeveryone else off the hook,
because it's easy to be like,yeah, you know those white
evangelicals.
Just they just been fightingprogress for 400 years.
And that's true, yes, it is.

(30:03):
There's no, there's no.
I mean, there are.
There are moments of that, youknow, being a little different.
We can talk about the Wesleyansof the late 19th century or
something.

Kyle (30:13):
So, you know, I know someone's going to email me and
be like what about this?

Bradley (30:16):
So that's totally fine, okay, but I don't want to let
the mainline Christians off thehook, I don't want to let the
secular folks off the hook, Idon't want to let, like anybody
else, just be like, well, I'mglad I'm not part of that group,
because we clearly got it right.
Because I think if we look atthe country's history, there's
really no way to think that ifyou examine it as a whole.

(30:37):
So anyway, that's my longanswer.
That's good and it's one that'san affirmative, but with that
kind of framing, yeah, let'stalk about Barry Goldwater.

Kyle (30:47):
So for people he takes up a large chunk of at least one of
the chapters in your book, andfor people like me that don't
know anything about him we'veheard heard of him.
He's the guy that lost to JimmyCarter, right, but kind of
surprisingly actually he lost toLinda Johnson.
London Johnson.
See, I don't even know who helost to.
He's the guy that came close towinning but didn't.
But the way he was, the way youdescribe it but the way he

(31:10):
describes it in the book.
It's astonishing that he didn'twin.

Randy (31:13):
It's astonishing that he got the nomination.

Kyle (31:16):
But okay, so describe Barry Goldwater and describe
what he did to American politicsand how he prefigures, in some
ways, donald Trump, becausetoday it's surprising that Barry
Goldwater didn't win.

Bradley (31:28):
For sure, no, for sure I loved.
I'm a Barry Goldwater, if I'mhonest.
So all right, here we go.
This is like one of my favoritetopics and I'm going to try and
make it as exciting as I can.
So in 1964, we have apresidential election and
everybody, you know, hopefullyremembers that John Kennedy had
been assassinated, right, only alittle bit before that.
But everybody thinks theRepublicans are going to

(31:50):
nominate Rockefeller andRockefeller that the heir to the
Rockefeller, you know, fortune,all that stuff.
Governor of New York, he's thecountry curb Republican.
He's the Mitt Romney, right,okay, he's that that kind of
Republican, okay.
But Barry Goldwater is thissenator from Arizona and he
fashions himself when he showsup in public.
He's the cowboy senator, okay.

(32:12):
He's a maverick, okay, muchlike John McCain who is his
successor in the Senate in the80s.
So Barry Goldwater talks tough,he's not interested in policy,
but he is bombastic.
So he's going to tell you thatyou know, if we use nuclear
weapons in Vietnam, that that'sa solution.
He's going to tell Southernersand others there's no way I'm

(32:34):
going to sign laws that aregoing to enforce civil rights.
You all just figure that outfor yourself.
Wink, wink, wink, right.
He's going to say thatlibertarianism and the
government backing off is thebest solution, not the
government doing things like, Idon't know, putting into place
voting rights acts and otherthings that would ensure
fairness.
Okay, when this guy goes on thecampaign trail he's magnetic.

(32:56):
He's got this baritone voice.
He's got a square jaw.
You know, he's one of thosepeople that, if you asked folks
from the 60s, the men wanted tobe him.
They're like oh my God, barryGoldwater.
And there was, like you know,so many, so many women who
wanted to be with BarryGoldwater.
That was how he was framed.
He somehow becomes the GOPnominee for president in 1964.

(33:19):
Well, how did that happen?
It happened because in theSouthwest of the United States
Arizona and California and inthe South he became the emblem
of right wing, conservative,libertarian, christian,
nationalist politics.
If you remember and I know mostpeople don't the only

(33:42):
Republican president before thatin the last, like previous, two
decades was Dwight Eisenhower.
Dwight Eisenhower was famousfor the middle way.
He was like I'm a Republicanbut I work with everybody right.
What's his most famous thing?
He like created our highwaysystem.
So he's like a Republican whoinvests in infrastructure and
spends a lot of tax dollars.

(34:02):
There are so many people by 1964that are like we don't want the
middle way, we want our way.
So we're going to vote for thisextremist who's going to use
nuclear weapons and do nothingfor civil rights.
We're going to vote for the guy, okay, who is going to tell us
and this is his most famous linethat extremism in the defense
of liberty is no vice.

(34:23):
In essence.
Telling you, the whiteconservative Christian person,
if you want to keep your country, if you don't want the black
people who are starting toorganize in a civil rights
movement, if you don't wantimmigration reform, if you don't
want women right marching intothe workforce en masse, then
extremism is the antidote.

(34:45):
My argument throughout the bookis that he lost that
presidential election.
If you all go read yourpresidential history, lyndon
Johnson destroyed him.
It was an absolute slaughter.
But the foot soldiers of thatcampaign, they never forgot
those lessons.
The lessons were extremism, nocompromise and the will to power
, and that is what they tried toput in place for the next six

(35:07):
decades.
And that is part of the storyof how we get Donald Trump.

Randy (35:12):
You kind of make this case that it's almost a straight
line from Barry Goldwater toRonald Reagan to Donald Trump,
which I have some Republicanfriends who would really quibble
with your the way youcharacterize Ronald Reagan.

Bradley (35:28):
Tell us about that line in those three individuals,
sure so happy to talk aboutRonald Reagan any time because
Ronald Reagan, just like BarryGoldwater, was most at home in
my backyard Southern California.
Ronald Reagan, politically,grew up in Southern California
and Ronald Reagan learns hispolitical chops from Goldwater

(35:50):
and other extremists in theSouthwest of the United States.
Where does where does Reagankick off his campaign when he's
when he wants to run forpresident?
He kicks it off in Delaware,mississippi.
I don't know the place where 15years earlier three civil
rights activists had beenmurdered by white supremacists.

(36:10):
Right, and he did so under theguise of states rights.
And if you read historians onthis issue they're like.
This was a clear symbolicgesture to many in the South of
how Ronald Reagan would be aspresident.
Reagan's approach to things inmy mind followed upon Goldwaters

(36:31):
.
He was just much more mediasavvy, much better in front of a
camera and much better atplaying himself as a kind of
conservative who wanted what wasbest for America, rather than
as a brusque extremist who wasgoing to use nuclear weapons in
South Asia.
Reagan's really important tothe story, because who does
Reagan beat when he runs in 1980?

Kyle (36:52):
Jimmy Carter, I know this one You're a philosopher.

Elliot (36:59):
You don't have to know history, it's unimportant.

Bradley (37:00):
Yeah, but Jimmy Carter's like built in a lab for
the white conservativeChristian right.
Jimmy Carter is a SouthernBaptist by his families, or
Southern Baptist.
He grows up in rural Georgia ona peanut farm.
He marries a high schoolsweetheart, he becomes a
military officer and then whenhis daddy dies he goes home to
take over the farm.

(37:21):
That's his family values as agets yeah Right.
What more do you want in apresidential candidate if you're
a white evangelical?
And yet who do they choose andthis is going to sound familiar
the divorced Hollywood guy whowas kind of wishy-washy on
abortion when he was governor ofCalifornia, did not have a
great relationship with hischildren and really was pretty

(37:42):
religiously illiterate, and yetgarnered the vote of who?
The religious right, the moralmajority Jerry Falwell, pat
Robertson, billy Graham.
You can start to see thelineage from Goldwater to Reagan
and you can start to see theforeshadowing of Donald Trump
and the evangelical support thathe got.

Randy (37:59):
Yeah, that was.
I didn't put this in theoutline, brad, but that was one
of my small beefs with what youbrought there, which is kind of
this Reagan versus Carter, youknow, contrast and saying, well,
all the people who should havevoted for their own in Jimmy
Carter didn't, and they votedfor, for Ronald Reagan.
And I want to say I kind ofthink we all would do that, like

(38:21):
, I think, progressives,liberals if we had somebody who
matched our religion, say, oryeah, who matched our religion
but didn't match up at all withwhat we believe politically, we
would vote for the people personwho votes with us politically.
I mean, I think, when it comesdown to it, we'd vote for Mormon
and Mitt Romney if he matchesour priorities or we would vote

(38:42):
for Bill Clinton if he matchesour, you know, if he votes the
way we want them to vote and allthat stuff.
I kind of think that's a, that'sa human condition.
What are your thoughts on that?

Bradley (38:52):
So I hear you and I think here's my claim is that I
don't know who one should havevoted for in any election.
What I do know is that what theReagan Carter election shows me
is that the people who claimedthat are what our government
needs is more piety.

(39:12):
What our country needs is morefaithful people.
What our country needs is agood Christian in charge who
will do what God wants when itcomes to tough decisions.
Those people saw that guy notas the Southern Baptist who
teaches Sunday school and leavesthe house with a Bible under
his arm.
They thought of that Christianin government as again the

(39:34):
divorced Hollywood actor right,who was really religiously
illiterate.
The people who are claimingpiety is one of the most
important parts of being aleader are the ones who are
willing to vote for the impiousperson who would do their
bidding when it came to policy,and that, to me, is the
hypocrisy here.
So I totally get it.

(39:55):
We all want to vote for thebest candidate, but the people
I'm talking about are usuallythe ones preaching to the rest
of us that what's wrong withthis place is all the impiety,
and then they often vote for theperson who seems to most of us
to be the least pious, the leastmoral, the least trustworthy,
and I think Donald Trump's kindof example A of that.

Randy (40:13):
Oh yeah, I mean, if 1980 didn't do that, 2016 definitely
told us Totally Doesn't matterwhat your faith is.
And we were actually justtalking to Rob Schenck.
I don't know if you know Rob orknow of him, but we worked out
in two months, tuesday and hebrought us into Pat Robertson's
80th birthday party inWashington.
A bunch of all the evangelicalpowers that be were there, and

(40:36):
that was in 2011 and DonaldTrump.
This is the first time Robert'sseen Donald Trump on the scene
and as a Republican, shakinghands, making speeches, and he
told us there was a speech thatDonald Trump gave, and Rob
looked around at his tables,which was full of evangelical
luminaries and he said guys,what is this guy doing here?
And one of them, who's veryfamous he wouldn't tell us who,

(40:56):
which I would have loved to know, though some of them.

Kyle (40:58):
He might have told us off.
We didn't ask off the record.

Randy (41:00):
But one of them looks to.
The one says that guy is justthe perfect A hole.
Who's going to get all of thepolicies pushed forward that we
want pushed forward?
And that sounds a lot like yourcase.

Bradley (41:13):
So to me that encapsulates Trump in a nutshell
, right.
So I think there is a lineagefrom Goldwater to Reagan to
Trump.
But I think Trump is an is anacceleration and a kind of
heightening of certain aspectsof the story.

(41:33):
Here's my take on this If youget to George W Bush right, you
have what evangelicals think ofas like we finally got an
evangelical president.
I don't know about y'all, butwhen I was in church in like
1999, 2000,.
The adults were saying, hey,he's a really evangelical.
He got changed his heart, hesaved him from alcoholism, he

(41:53):
reads the Bible, blah, blah,blah.
Okay, and by the time we got tothe end of George W Bush, I
think a lot of people feel likehe didn't scratch the itch.
It was like, yeah, he might bea Christian but still got a lot
of gay people running around anda lot less people seem to be
Christian than they should be.
And you know, 9, 11 happened inthis whole war on terror that

(42:16):
he concocted is still going on.
And then what happened?
Like he didn't scratch the itch.
And then you got eight years ofBarack Obama.
And if Jimmy Carter was builtin a lab for the white Christian
, barack Obama was built in alab to scare the white
evangelical like he's.
Mixed race dads from anothercountry got black wife.
He's got black kids.

(42:37):
He's spent most of hischildhood in Hawaii.
Is that even a state?
That's what they're thinking?

Randy (42:43):
Right.

Bradley (42:43):
His name is Barack, his name is Hussain and now gay
people can get married, allright, and by the end of it, you
know what they're thinking.
They're thinking exactly whatthat evangelical luminary said.
They're thinking we need anasshole who will brutalize the
people that need to bebrutalized to get this country
back in order.
Yeah, I don't want my cockcould be a pastor.
I don't want Ted Cruz to get uphere and do whatever Ted Cruz

(43:06):
does.
I want to brutalize.
I want a barbarian that willdestroy the people that need to
be destroyed, so this countrywill be back how it should be.

Kyle (43:14):
Yeah, that's a compelling take to me.
I'm not an expert, I'm not ahistorian or political scientist
, but that rings true.
I wonder if poor Jimmy Cartermight have played a role in
normalizing that or making thatdistinction easier to make the
kind of Falwell Jr we want to.
We want to.
What did he say about Trump?
I'm not voting for a pastor,I'm voting for a whatever.
Because Carter was so sincereand so meek and so genuine in

(43:39):
his Christianity that it mighthave led a lot of evangelicals
realize maybe that's not what wewant.
He wants actually somethingdifferent.
Maybe religion isn't thatimportant to us in a leader.

Bradley (43:51):
Well, and I know, like Christian Dumea, has stopped by
to talk to y'all, and this, Ithink, speaks to the masculinity
piece, right?
So I think the connectionbetween Carter and Obama has
always been that the goal fortheir political opponents was to
try to emasculate them, right?
Is Carter a real man?
Carter wants diplomacy.
He doesn't want to like fightthe Iranians, he wants to like

(44:14):
negotiate with them.
Carter's going to give thePanama Canal back to Panama.
Are you serious?
Barack Obama drinks lattes and,like, wears dad jeans as he a
man.
Yeah, yeah, you know he's shownup in a tan suit and you know
Vladimir Putin is like riding ahorse with no shirt on and he
just tackled a bear and somehowand like.
So one of the pieces here ismasculinity.

(44:37):
Right, it's an.
And this is where someone likeGoldwater really prefigures
Trump, because Goldwater wasthis aggressive, brusque, quote,
unquote man's man who justtalked tough and took action and
, you know, faced theconsequences later.

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Kyle (45:51):
So I'm going to ask a charged question that puts all
my cards on the tablepolitically, but our listeners
at this point are not going tobe surprised.
So can you comment on theconservative tendency to turn
whatever they happen to want atthe moment into a religious
right, or to make whateveraffects their affluence a matter
of religious liberty?
This is a trope at this point,yeah.
And just get your thoughts onit.

Bradley (46:11):
So my take on this is that it is very similar to why I
think Christian.
You know there's a lot ofdebate out there as to whether
or not talking about Christiannationalism is actually helpful.
Is it just academics andcommentators who talk about
Christian nationalism?
But to me, the value of talkingabout Christian nationalism is
this Christian nationalism, theChristian part, gives a divine

(46:34):
cover right to things that areotherwise seen as negatively
abhorrent.
If you just show up on thescene and you're like you know,
white nationalism, should wegive it a shot again?
People are like go away.
If you show up on the sceneright up until recently, this is
not true anymore, right?
And you're just openly,vitriolically homophobic, it's

(46:58):
not going to play.
Now things have changed.
Let's just be very honest,2000,.
You know, the last two, threeyears have seen a turn in that
rhetoric.
What's the point?
The Christian and Christiannationalism provides a cover for
xenophobia, homophobia,queerphobia, racism and so on.
Religious liberty does the same,because if you cloak something
as this, is a matter of myreligious conscience and my

(47:21):
religious freedom rather than mydesire to be a bigot.
It's a much more compelling case, right?
It's just like the familyvalues issue we talked about a
little bit ago.
It's just like the Moms forLiberty stuff.
If you show up and say I cannotdo this based on my Christian
faith, I cannot make this cakefor your wedding, I cannot make

(47:41):
this website for your wedding, Icannot do your hair that way
because that's a gay hairstyleand that would go against my
Christian creative you knowexpression.
You're basically saying thatwhen I show up in public,
anything that I deem as divineis my right.
That's a much more compellingcase in the American legal

(48:03):
system in public square thanjust saying I don't want to
serve gay people or black peopleat my bar, at my barbershop or
my salon, so I'm going to justput that sign up.
So to me, that's what it comesdown to.
I'm happy to have like a littlebit more of a complex
discussion on that, but I thinkthat's the heart of it.

Randy (48:19):
The interesting thing, or what this reminds me of, is
I've seen a couple of articlesabout this recently and I've
even experienced it where, whenyou think of two groups of
people, groups who are dead setagainst each other more than you
could think of traditionally inthe last 20 years since 9 11.
It's been evangelicalChristians and Muslims and
that's a one sided hate rightLike evangelicals have done.

(48:39):
You know a lot and a lot ofterror said a lot of terrible
things, done a lot of terriblethings to the Muslim community.
But what I think a lot ofpeople are finding now is that
Muslims and evangelicalChristians have homophobia and
really want to keep LGBTQ rightsdown.
They have that in common.
They're realizing it andthey're realizing that there's
not many more people in the inour country who actually think

(49:03):
like us and you're seeing themkind of move together.
Almost because of that, I dothese lunches where Christian
leaders and Muslim leaders gettogether and we talk about
things that are affecting ourcommunities.
It's really brilliant time.
The last two times in a row theMuslim leaders, leaders of
mosques, imams have wanted tosympathize with us and talk

(49:23):
about how the culture is setagainst us with all these LGBTQ
stuff and those of us from mychurch who are inclusive and
affirming like oh okay, let'stalk in a different way about
this, you know, but theycompletely thought we were going
to have this common bond Overtalking about suppressing rights
from LGBTQ community.
Have you heard or seen any ofthis as well, brett?

Bradley (49:42):
Yeah, so I think I would just start by saying it's,
it's, there are, like it's notall Muslims.
Right, there are certain Muslimcommunities, right, just like
we would.
You know we wouldn't say allChristians Exactly, you know we
would.
We would be specific.
We would say you know, thereare non affirming evangelicals,
and then there are.
There are many mainline folksand others who are affirming,
right.
So I just want to be very clearyes, thank you.
It's not a blanket statementfor for all American Muslims or

(50:05):
all Muslims Period.
What I have seen, what I, what Ican speak to, is that, just as
you're seeing some of that inyour pastoral and interfaith
lunches and meetings, I thinkthat is where moms for liberty
is having a lot of success.
So they're, they're approachingother religious groups and
saying, hey, do you want yourchildren reading right Books

(50:27):
that have LGBTQ characters?
Well, we may not be the samereligion, but what if we're?
What if we are allies in thisfight?
So I do think that if like, forexample, if people look up
Glendale, california, right nearHollywood, there was literal
physical violence where parentswho are Christian and Muslim
were fighting against folks whowere, who were arguing that you

(50:48):
know, the curriculum should beinclusive and include those
kinds of materials.
So this again is a strategy.
It's a strategy that says thatyou know, the the enemy of my
enemy is my friend, and so wecan team up here and maybe
homophobia is the way for us toget together.
This is true in other places.
If we look at like wellnesscommunities, there's a lot of

(51:10):
like yoga moms who are hangingout with a lot of like
evangelical moms because theyboth agree that, like COVID,
vaccines are the worst, right.
So you're kind of seeing thesestrange ally ships pop up in
various places.
Interesting.

Kyle (51:25):
Yeah, can I ask one more question about James Dobson?
Yes, tell us about the atheisteugenicist who he RA'd for.
I did not know this.

Bradley (51:38):
Yeah, so James Dobson was a kind of mentored by this
man named Paul Popano, and PaulPopano was eugenicist who opened
up, you know, variousinstitutions, family
institutions that were meant to,in his mind, protect the
American family, but morespecifically to protect the

(51:58):
white American family.
Paul Popano was very much infavor of white families, white
women, having as many babies asthey could so that they could
not allow other races to replacethem.
Especially in the United Statesand its demography, that should
sound pretty familiar to people.
That should sound a lot likethe great replacement theory
that is often peddled on theright today.

(52:20):
Well, james Dobson came sort ofto professional age under Paul
Popano.
He was Popano's assistant, heworked for him, and people
forget that Dobson got a degreefrom the University of Southern
California, so he was in andaround Los Angeles, and so my
argument would be and this isreally following work by Audrey

(52:41):
Claire Farley and Sarah Maslinand others that Dobson puts
Popano's eugenicism and hiswhite supremacy into a
theological paradigm.
Popano was an atheist, and yetwhat Dobson's able to do is put
a lot of that teaching into akind of fundamentalist
theological frame and pedal itas what I don't know something

(53:01):
we might have talked abouttonight family values, right.
So it all kind of.
It all kind of fits togetherand it's really sinister when
you start to dig into the like,the details of it all.

Randy (53:12):
Yeah, there's, and there's similarities, like you
were saying, between what Popanosaid and what Dobson actually
was advocating for Speaking of.
I mean, james Dobson is justthis kind of poster boy for
religious right political worldand you make this statement in
the middle of your book that Ikind of arrested me because I
grew up in one of these families.
You say that abortion was notthe central factor that

(53:34):
motivated white evangelicals toget involved in politics, but
rather racism.
Now, that's interesting and Iwant to.
I just want to bring my littlebit of pushback in my experience
.
Now, my experience is my, onlymy experience, not the whole
thing.
But I mean, I grew up onSaturday mornings being dragged
by a parent of mine to stand ina picket line and abortion
clinic yeah, almost every singleSaturday for for a long time.

(53:56):
And I can tell you that parentdidn't do that because they were
motivated by race or racism.
They did it because they werehorrified by, you know, abortion
and all that.
So I think a number as I read abook like this, as I read
Preparing for Wars, I read Jesusand John Wayne, or as I read
Paul Miller's book or Sam LeePerry's book I try to listen

(54:19):
through the lens of some of myconservative friends, to do, you
know, be fair to them.
This seemed like one of thosetimes that maybe wasn't fair to
them, but tell me why you wrotethat.

Bradley (54:28):
Yeah, totally, just a great Saturday morning tradition
.
I'm sure you're oh, it's so fun.
Yeah, pancakes, and then herewe go, yeah, okay, here's my,
here's my point.
There there are so many folkslike you and in some case, like
me, who were convinced that themost important political issue

(54:50):
of our time was abortion.
Right, so don't get me wrong.
I am in no way trying todisregard your experience or the
experience of many, many, manyother evangelicals who were
basically like, who were taughtthat, hey, you need to get
involved in politics because ofthe unborn babies.
Right, I, when I was 15, I usedto take like tracks and

(55:12):
pamphlets to school that hadgrotesque images on them and
pass them out to my classmates.
And be like this is why youshould be against the board,
right, the whole thing.
The statement that you'rereferring to is meant as a
historical statement that goeslike this it's really easy for
evangelicals to tell a storythat says well, you know,
traditionally we weren't reallyinto politics, we were just into

(55:32):
saving souls and we just wantedpeople to really have salvation
.
But you know what, when theystarted murdering babies, we had
to get involved because we'rejust not going to stand for that
and God's not going to standfor that.
So in the 70s and the 80s and90s we just had to get mobilized
and get out there campaigns,picket lines and voting.
That's what we did for God andfor this country stand up for
the unborn.
The historical record shows usthat evangelicals on the whole

(55:58):
got involved in politics in mass.
They were mobilized as a votingblock by things like the
integration of schools and thethreats by the IRS and others to
not allow churches andsegregation of schools to be tax
exempt.
So the statement that you'rereferring to there is really
meant to say that.
If you ask Paul Weirich andsome of those that were trying

(56:21):
to mobilize evangelical votersin the 1970s, they tried
abortion and they largelyweren't successful.
When they tried segregation andwhite kids going to school with
black kids, they weresuccessful.
If you look at the historicalrecord, like in 1969, 90% of
Texas Baptists were for abortionin some form.
The head of the SouthernBaptist Convention was for

(56:44):
abortion in some form.
So there's a switch that getsflipped.
So my statement is not todisregard your experience.
My statement is to say thatwhen it comes to a mass
mobilization of whiteevangelicals, the first trigger
was really race and racism, evenif, eventually, abortion became
a really, really, reallyinfluential way to get people

(57:08):
out on the picket lines andvoting and so on and so forth.

Randy (57:12):
You also highlighted some religious right leaders and how
they've looked to Russia, andVladimir Putin in particular, as
kind of the model for what apure nation that white Christian
nationalists aspire to.
I feel that I feel also feellike it's a strong claim, but I
think we see that.
Can you explain that?
What's behind that pure nationthat?

Kyle (57:32):
what.

Randy (57:32):
American nationalists could look to, or white
Christian nationalists couldlook to and say that's what
we're looking for.

Bradley (57:39):
Yeah.
So let's, let's connect a wholebunch of dots we've been
talking about tonight, so let'sgo back to James Dobson.
James Dobson is going to teachpeople all about having the
right kind of family, okay.
So what is he going to say?
He's going to say look, youwant a family with.
You want a family with apatriarchal father and husband,
a submissive wife and children.
Okay, you're going todiscipline those children

(58:00):
corporal punishment, all thatstuff.
We have gender roles that needto be enforced.
Okay, great.
If you read closely in theDobson literature and the other
sort of teachings about familyvalues, there's a kind of subtle
discouragement of interracialmarriage.
Right, unequally yoked, notgoing to work out, not, not sure
that's part of God's plan for alot of people.

(58:20):
My argument is this if you're awhite Christian nationalist,
you are part of the originalpurity culture, because you have
always envisioned the idealstate of the country as being
one in which the American bodypolitic.
When you imagine the Americanbody, it's a white body, it's a
patriarchal body, it's aChristian body, it's a body that

(58:41):
speaks English as its firstlanguage, right, it's a body
that is a straight, whiteAmerican body.
Okay, so what's happened overthe last four or five decades in
the minds of white Christiannationalists is the American
body is no longer looking likeit should and in fact, it's been
invaded by outside forces.

(59:02):
It has been infected withcertain diseases.
That is immigration and allthese folks apparently coming
over the border and infectingthe country.
That is queer families andqueer people who are disrupting
how the family and the nationand the body should look.
Okay, that is all these folkswho are no longer Christian.
The largest, you know, fastestgrowing religious group in the

(59:26):
country are the nuns, thosepeople who are not religious.
I can go on and on about howthey think of the American body
as infected, as impure and ashaving been totally taken over
by a set of people who are notupholding its constitution how
it should.
When you put Barack Obama in theWhite House and he's the

(59:48):
executive of the country, he'sthe commander in chief, when the
face of the country is a mixedrace man with a black family,
the white Christian nationalistsmay not say it, but they feel
in their bones.
They feel it like this isn'tright.
You know how like I'm, like I'msuper old now I'm like in my
40s and I wake up and my kneehurts and I'm like why is my
knee hurt?

(01:00:08):
What did I do yesterday Like gorock climbing?
Nope, just in my 40s knee hurts.
And then I got to figure outlike, I got to reverse engineer
it.
Like, how did I hurt my knee?
Oh, I stepped off the curbbecause I'm in my fort.
No, did I like play basketballfor seven hours?
Nah, just in my 40s knee hurts.
They feel it in their bones.
And then they reverse engineerright, why the country's gone

(01:00:29):
bad?
They find the reason post facto.
Now they eventually realize wedon't have the numbers, we don't
have, like, the votes.
We are a minority.
So Paul Weirich, one of thefounders of the religious right,
starts going to Russia.
He starts looking to Russia inthe 1990s as a kind of like
antidote to the problem.

(01:00:50):
Hey, the American body.
It's starting to look a lotmore racially diverse, a lot
less Christian, a lot more queer.
What are we going to do aboutit?
We don't have the numbers towin elections.
Wow, vladimir Putin.
Who is this guy?
Well, vladimir Putin is anauthoritarian leader.
He doesn't wait for Congress,he doesn't ask for permission,

(01:01:10):
he doesn't go through democraticprocesses and he does
everything he does in terms ofviolence against immigrants,
jailing gay people and rulingwith an iron fist in the name of
what?
Russia's Christian history, itsspiritual values and its family
traditions?
When you listen to VladimirPutin, he's always talking about
the spiritual heritage ofMother Russia and the great

(01:01:34):
Christian values that it isupheld for millennia Right.
So, all of a sudden, vladimirPutin is this ultramasculine
authoritarian figure who's ableto rule a country that looks
pure and in order and the wayGod wants it, and you start to
get a lot of American Christianswho are like, huh, why can't we
have that?
So, like Lauren Vitsko, theSenate nominee in Delaware from

(01:01:59):
the Republican Party in 2020,openly says I identify more
Vladimir Putin than Joe Biden.
She actually said in one videoI wish Vladimir Putin would
invade America and save us fromJoe Biden.
So I'm not making this up.
This isn't just like sort oftheory.
This is all based in like many,many, many instances of

(01:02:21):
conservative white Christiannationalists in the United
States thinking of Putin or hisOrban right in Hungary as the
exemplar of the Christian leaderin the face of someone like
Barack Obama or Joe Biden orwhoever maybe.

Kyle (01:02:36):
So one of the things we like to do around here for our
Patreon subscribers is ask aquestion that only they get to
hear the answer to.
So the next one is going to bethat, and it's about QAnon and
the John Birch Society, which isanother thing I didn't know
anything about and learned aboutin your book.
So compare and contrast QAnonand the John Birch Society for
our listeners and explain howone maybe prefigured the other.

Randy (01:03:19):
This is something that I think should get all of us, if
you consider yourself a followerof Jesus or a Christian, to
think a little bit.
You shared your history ofbeing enthralled by the
apocalyptic and cryptic imageryof the Book of Revelation.
In high school, going to thisBible study, that was normally
really small and then all of asudden exploded in size when you
started talking aboutrevelation.
Because and I think this is allof our experiences as current

(01:03:40):
or former evangelicals we lovedthat shit.
We loved the Book of Revelationand all the cryptic, crazy
imagery and the interpretationsof it that came from it, all the
dates that we said the world'sgoing to end in and who's going
to be the Antichrist and who'sgoing to be the beast from the
sea, and blah, blah, blah.
And you kind of correlate theevangelical community's
proclivity to believe somewhatsensational and extreme

(01:04:02):
interpretations of apocalypticimagery in the Bible to the
evangelical propensity tobelieve conspiracy theories.
Makes perfect sense to me, buttell us about that connecting
thread.

Bradley (01:04:12):
Yeah, so there's data on this.
It's not just me, you know,sort of opining on this, you
know my argument would be thisthat if you are willing to enter
into a religious context whereyou are told and I'm not sure
about you, but when I was ateenager, you know, we had all
the rumors right that theEuropean Union which had formed
in the 90s was really the signof the Antichrist, that the Euro

(01:04:35):
, this like currency, was goingto be the sign of, you know, the
rise of the end times.
They were going to put chips inour, in our wrist, and we were
going to have a barcode and wehad the whole thing.
If you enter into a religiousspace that teaches you to think
that way not nothing based onevidence, nothing based on a
deep reading of a text, based onits historical context or its

(01:04:59):
linguistic context, but one thatenters into a kind of a line of
reading that goes from here'swhat this symbolic book of
Revelation says that directlyapplies to events in the
European Union or elections inRomania, or something my
argument is this you're primedto think in conspiratorial terms

(01:05:21):
and I know that not a lot ofpeople there's people listening.
They're not going to like that,but there's data on this.
Paul Jube, who's a sociologistat Denison University, has done
great work showing us that whiteevangelicals score so high I
mean, we're talking like an 80%tiles when it comes to believing
in conspiracy theories such asQAnon.
If you score as a whiteChristian nationalist, there is

(01:05:42):
a very high chance that you'regoing to believe in certain
forms of conspiracy, aboutIlluminati, kapal's of elites,
election fraud and so on and soforth.
So we have sociologicalevidence that points us to the
fact that if you believe thingslike we're discussing here
regarding the end times or otherfantastical religious doctrines

(01:06:03):
, you have been primed, you havebeen sort of trained to enter
into a conspiratorial cosmos,and the two don't seem
incoherent.
I'm not saying that about allreligion.
So, please, if you're thinkingthat, that's not what I'm saying
, I'm not saying that allreligious spaces prime people
for this, but I think certainones do.
I'm not going to back off fromthat claim, and I think our

(01:06:25):
experiences speak to that, justin terms of how we used to think
of the end of the world.

Randy (01:06:29):
Yeah, no, I think there's a fair amount of truth in that.
So I love the way you connectedthe Jericho March Group, which
called the white Christiannationalist to descend on DC in
January 5th.
So the Jericho March Group on,I think December 12th you said,
called all Trump loving Biblebelieving Christians to
Washington, to march aroundWashington, pray for a reversal

(01:06:50):
of the election and pray for youknow the right thing to happen.
Then on January 5th they didthe same thing Everyone come to
Washington, come in March.
We're going to.
We're going to the JerichoMarch and January 6th.
We all know what happened andyou equate that to.
You even call it Joshua 6 meetsJanuary 6th and you kind of
make this case.
That says, if you're a personwho believes in Joshua 6, it's,

(01:07:11):
you know.
We all know the Bible storywhere God says march around the
city seven times and the wallswill come crumbling down.
They do.
But then God says go and killevery man, woman, child, animal,
leave nothing alive.
And you kind of say well, ifyou are raised to think that God
can tell a people, go, killevery man, woman and child in
that city and for myrighteousness and for my

(01:07:31):
namesake, you might have noproblem marching around
Washington and then going andinvading the Capitol.
In this you know, quote unquote, sacred space, because God told
us to do it.
Maybe and even you kind ofpaint pictures of every time
there was an advance on January6th in the Capitol, people would
stop and pray.
Or there was Kerry Job'sRevelation song get being sung
as they would make anotherevents in other events and

(01:07:53):
they're worshiping and praising.
It sounds a lot like that story.
Tell us about that connectionyou made.

Bradley (01:07:58):
Well, I think for me, the first part of this is that a
lot of us who grew up in churchat least evangelical church we
heard about Jericho a lot.
I don't know about y'all, butlike when I was a youth pastor
and I needed like a lesson quickbecause I hadn't prepared very
well, jericho is like reallyeasy, because you go to Jericho
you're teaching a bunch of 15year olds the Bible and you're
like look, y'all just trust God,even when the world thinks

(01:08:19):
you're crazy, and God will do amiracle.
Look at happening Jericho.
And everyone's like, yeah,great lesson, you know.
And then there's always a kidwho raises his hand, is like or
her hand, and is like you know,yeah, but they went in and
killed everyone.
Why did they?
Why did God want them to dothat?
And you're like, yeah, lessonsover.
All right, I think we got agame Is there donuts left.
All right, go grab a donut onyour way out, we'll see you next
week, all right?
And my point with that is Ithink a lot of people who went

(01:08:42):
to the Jericho March thought,yeah, we're going to march
around our nation's capital,around our state's capital, and
the walls are going to fall downand we're going to drive out
the interlopers and theevildoers, the Canaanites.
But if and yeah, and if youthink about the story though the
story is one of that says whenthe walls fall down, go in there
and kill everything.

(01:09:04):
If that's what you're using, isyour rally cry December 12,
january 5, you're telling mewhat you're intending to do, but
it's easy to miss, even for thepeople who are participating,
because they're thinking, yeah,jericho, god does miracles,
walls are going to fall down.
We trust God when the worldthinks we're crazy.
But all of a sudden, you havethe legitimacy right.

(01:09:24):
You have the legitimacy to say,yeah, I'm at the capital today.
I just broke a window.
Am I a treasonous human being?
Am I a criminal?
No, I'm a holy warrior.
I'm like those guys in Jericho6.
I'm doing exactly what Godwants and in fact, I'm going to
stop to pray so that we can allremind ourselves and tell
ourselves that when we'recharacters in the story, we're

(01:09:45):
not characters in the story whoare the bad ones, the criminals,
the treasonous, the seditious.
We're the ones who prayed.
God let the walls down and nowwe're doing what he wants, and
that is overrunning the capitalviolently in order to make sure
an election does not getcertified.

Randy (01:10:03):
Yeah, yeah, startling.
You also say in the end of yourbook it culminates brilliantly.
And you say that maybe January6 is not like the culmination of
something, but maybe the tip ofthe iceberg of something.
Maybe there's more going onhere.
And in particular, you talkabout this incredible thing that
I think most of us on theeastern half or even in the

(01:10:25):
Midwest of the United Statesdon't really know about, which
is this idea of American redoubt.
Can you tell our listenersabout this phenomenon of
American redoubt?

Bradley (01:10:34):
Yeah, it's a really fascinating thing and a really
scary thing.
So for the last decade or sothere's been this movement for
people to move to what they callthe American redoubt.
Redoubt means a refuge or safeplace or stronghold, so they're
eventually, they're in essence,moving to a safe space.
Let's just put that out thereNext time Uncle Ron tells you

(01:10:55):
about a safe space.
Just keep that in mind.
And the safe space is Idaho,wyoming, montana and the eastern
parts of Oregon and Washington.
And the argument for theAmerican redoubt is this is a
place of refuge where we canbuild the kind of society that
we want, a society that is basedon Christian values and, in

(01:11:18):
some cases, theocratic values,that we can build a Christian
society.
And there are people who arepart of the American redoubt
that want to secede from theunion, they want to leave the
United States.
There are people who are partof the American redoubt that are
openly saying that there shouldbe violence against those who
are not Christians and who arenot elected officials who

(01:11:38):
profess the Christian faith.
The American redoubt has reallytaken hold, and so if you look
at the politics in somewherelike Cordillane Idaho, like
northern Idaho, you have some ofthe most conservative politics
in the country, because peopleare moving to that region from
southern California, fromSeattle, from the northeast, and

(01:11:59):
they're doing so not just torelocate, right.
It's not just like, hey, we'regonna move to a place that's
cheaper to live in terms of realestate and less congestion and
no traffic and there's riversand there's lakes and don't get
me wrong one of the mostbeautiful parts of the country.
But in their mind they're likewe're going there to shape a
public square into a Christianversion of what we want, so

(01:12:21):
we're gonna run for mayor, we'regonna run for school council,
we're gonna run for countysupervisor.
You know there's a lot of fightsright now of like, hey, why are
these books in our libraries?
Why do we have books by gayauthors in our libraries?
That's what you're hearing momsfor liberty say.
A lot of the arguments fromthese folks is why do we have a
library at all?
I don't want taxpayer moneygoing to that.

(01:12:42):
We don't need a library.
Like, the government shouldn'tbe ponying up a hundred grand a
year to support a local library.
Get rid of it, right.
So if you and there's no wayfor me to do justice to this
movement in a minute or two.
But if you read that chapter,what you'll find there is
basically people who think thatthe next civil war is coming.
They're getting ready for it assurvivalists and preppers and

(01:13:05):
those arming themselves, andwhen it happens, they're gonna
emerge victorious into a newAmerican society that is built
on the theocratic principles.

Kyle (01:13:14):
So that's my last question for you, brad, and it's a
terrifying one to end on.
I wish I had a more optimisticquestion to come to close out
our time.
But the last two words in yourbook are civil war.
War is in the title.
Your book stands out from someof the other political books
that are more historical, moreyou know political science that
we've read and featured on theshow by being a little more.

Randy (01:13:36):
This book is very historical.

Kyle (01:13:37):
It is, but it's also a little more polemical and it's a
.
It pulls no punches andespecially at the end, the
warnings are really dire.
So do you really think that ourreligious political situation
is zero some?
If so, why?
And are you really concernedabout another civil war?

Bradley (01:13:51):
Yeah.
So I think I'm not.
I don't think it's zero, some,by any means.
The reason I called the bookPreparing for War is not because
I think that I want to preparefor war.
This is not like, hey, anyonewho'll listen, let's prepare for
war.
It is more to say, there arefolks who've been preparing for
war for 60 years.
The American Redoubt I justtalked about is kind of the most
extreme, distilled version ofthat.

(01:14:12):
But there are people who havethought of extremism as a virtue
, as I said with Goldwater, fora long, long time.
So they have been preparing forwar.
They see many in the country astheir enemies, not their
political opponents, notsomebody who disagrees with them
, but as their enemies who arefrom Satan, demonically occupied
and need to be destroyed.

(01:14:32):
That's how they see them.
So that is why I called itPreparing for War.
Now I think, when it comes tocivil war, do I imagine a kind
of North versus South conflict?
Not necessarily, but when Ilook around our country, what I
see are little fires everywhere.
I see conflicts, right.
I see people who are willing todestroy power grids so that you
can't have direct Queen storyhour, right.

(01:14:52):
I see people who are willing toterrorize librarians to the
point that they quit becausethey don't want books by LGBTQ
authors or BIPOC authors in thelibrary.
I see people willing to sitoutside a voter drop box in
Arizona with AR-15s andbasically watch, quote, unquote,
that drop box as people taketheir ballots to be counted.

(01:15:16):
I see folks who are willing tomemorialize J6 as a great
American battle in which martyrsdied and martyrs who should be
remembered, people that inspirefurther action as we go forward.
So when I think of civil war, Idon't think of North versus

(01:15:37):
South.
What I think of is, if you missthe little fires, the conflicts
that are broiling around us now,the ways that so many people
feel unsafe, whether in alibrary, whether at a school
board meeting, whether whenthey're trying to vote, when
they're trying to go to target,and people are just tearing up
like displays with pride,products and celebrations, I

(01:15:59):
think you start to see that welive in a time when the distrust
in our civic spaces is at avery high level and people are
willing to gesture towards allkinds of violence in order to do
what they think needs to bedone.
So, once again, am I predictingcivil war?
I'm not.

(01:16:19):
What I'm saying is is there isa lot of people who've been
preparing for conflict for sixdecades, and January 6th should
not be one of those things wherewe're like well, that happened,
but at least we controlled itand it didn't stop Biden and the
election from going forward.
We should think of it as that'sa warning as to what could
become our normal, and I thinkthat's really the takeaway.

Randy (01:16:42):
Yeah, it's stark.
I mean there's more you couldgo down.
The governor of Michigan wasalmost kidnapped.
I mean there's so much.
This is a call for level headed, sober minded Democrats and
Republicans to say we're losingour mind as a nation, we're
giving into the extremists andwe're giving our votes to the

(01:17:05):
ones that we think are thebiggest A-holes who can push our
policies forward, and we needto check ourselves.
There was a person who walkedthe earth, I believe 2,000 years
ago who said that we need torepent because the kingdom of
God is here, and I think this isa moment where we as a country
need to repent.
But, bradley Onishi, it's astark, kind of dark book, but
it's just a really good piece ofhistory that brings us into how

(01:17:28):
we got to where we are.
It's called Preparing for Warthe extremist history of white
Christian nationalism and whatcomes next.
Thanks for writing this book.
Tell us about your podcastagain, or the name of your
podcast one more time.

Bradley (01:17:38):
Thanks so much for having me, and I promise I'm
more fun at parties than thisbook.
So the podcast is straightWhite American Jesus.
So we talk about this stuffevery week.
We do the show three times aweek.
We've been doing it for fiveyears and so we break down every
aspect of this.
Like you, we were evangelicalsand evangelical ministers.
We're now scholars of religion,so we study this stuff

(01:17:59):
historically and sociologicallyand we have done for the last 15
years, so we provide that lenson things, and so we have great
guests.
We have a weekly roundup everyFriday and we pull no punches
and we try to be on flinching inour analysis.

Randy (01:18:15):
Awesome.
Well, thanks for your time,bradley, it's been a pleasure.
Thanks so much for having me,gil.

Kyle (01:18:19):
Thanks, appreciate it.
Well, that's it for thisepisode of A Pastor and a
Philosopher.
Walk Into a Bar.
We hope you're enjoying theshow as much as we are.
Help us continue to createcompelling content and reach a
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Forward slash a pastor and aphilosopher, where you can get
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(01:18:40):
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Randy (01:18:41):
Also, please rate and review the show on Apple
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These help new people discoverthe show and we may even read
your review in a future episodeif it's good enough.

Kyle (01:18:53):
If anything we said really pissed you off, or if you just
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pastorandphilosopheratgmailcom.

Randy (01:19:03):
Catch all of our hot takes on Twitter, at ppwbpodcast
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See you next time, cheers.

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January 6, White Christian Nationalism, and How We Got Here, with Bradley Onishi

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