i think you ruth simmons for for inspiring us. i don't think there are many sharecropper's daughters from south can be called chevalier of the french legion of honor what? one of the maids in the story you have book is extraordinary. as are you. a poem. thank you. thank you so much. howtim alberta.

thanks for this opportunity to talk about your great new book. journalist writer for the atlantic. i've recently learned detroit lions fan thanks for thanks writing this book. it's really a brilliant piece of political and, religious journalism. and i also read it as a kind of heartfelt plea for the evangelical to, you know, quoting from revelation to write to return to their first love. so i think that was the church of ephesus. it's not i know it's not easy saying things about the tribe,

the community, religious community in which you sort of came of age. and i know that takes courage. so thanks. well professor. you're very kind for saying that thank you because i that you've lived through this thing and you know firsthand how difficult it is to be the squeaky wheel and to step out of line with your own tribe and. i'll be honest, you know, i don't feel particular really brave or, courageous in doing this. i wish, frankly, that i would have had the courage to do it a long time ago. this problem festered and got to where is today? i think if i'm honest, there was a long period of time for me where i knew that the problem existed, could see it. i could observe it. and i just kept quiet about it. and i think for the reasons that many of us keep quiet, you know, you don't want to air the laundry of your family. you want to make people look

bad, especially, you know, that that, you know, they might have the best of intentions and a good heart but maybe they've just lost their way a little bit and, you know, ultimately it took sort of a tragedy in my life to really reckon with this and confront it and and i, i feel almost guilty saying that because i wish that had been able confront this a long time ago and. i hope for anybody listening if they take nothing else from all of this that that hopefully they will find the courage do so. yeah. let's talk a little bit about this. i mean, lot of a lot of these interviews begin with, you know, how did you get interested in the book. i'm interested in that question. but let's do it through your dad. tell me tell me a little bit about your dad or tell us a little bit about your dad, his spirit sort hovers over this book. i don't know if that's evangelical theology, but. but what his spirit is definitely that you dedicate

this book to as a way of kind of getting into the subject and your motivation writing it. and i know you've talked this before, but tell us a little bit about your dad. so my dad was an amazing guy, just someone who could have done anything he wanted the world and in fact as a young man, he was kind of a hotshot new york rising rapidly in the world of finance and was sort of able to call his own shots and had the world at his feet and around the time that he was about years old. he started to just this crushing, empty, despite having a great salary, a cadillac to drive, and a beautiful home, beautiful wife, beautiful firstborn. my oldest brother, chris, my dad just felt empty and aimless and

he had never in god. he grew up in an unbelieving. he considered himself a atheist, in fact, and he had he was an undergraduate and for one reason or another. he found himself one day wandering a church in the hudson valley goodwill church and there at goodwill. my heard the gospel for the first time, and he gave his life to jesus and. it sparked this rag call transformation. people who knew him? my mother and they just they didn't recognize him anymore. he was waking up at like four in the morning and spending in prayer, reading his bible, filling legal pads with notes, sitting, meditating silently. my mother was not a christian at the time. none of my dad's brothers, none of his family members were christians, and they all thought that he'd lost mind. and then they really thought he had lost his mind when not long

after that, he felt the lord calling him to enter the ministry, to leave his finance career and go to seminary, to preach and my mom became, a christian, but she still thought this whole thing was a little bit nutty. and my dad realized that it probably was little bit nutty, but he he felt, the lord anointing him and calling to do this. so for next couple of decades, my parents who had been living this pretty, you know, high flying life, my dad was in finance in new york. my mom worked for abc radio in new york. they were kind of movers and shakers they sold everything they owned and they spent the next couple of living on food stamps, working in small church ministries around the country. and that that change of trajectory is really the story of my family and what brought me to a place i grew up rooted in the christian faith, specifically rooted in the

evangelical. and my dad in so many ways was not only my my role model as a father but but but my spiritual role model, the guy who even though he taught me not to emulate him to only emulate jesus, you know, i did want to emulate him and for a long time. i considered my dad to be almost like the paragon of what a good christian was. and in many ways that's still true. but as i grew older and became began to feel a certain disillusionment with, the institution of the church, you know, my and i began to have some disagreements which. i think in many ways the generation final clash there is of an undercurrent of the book. how old were you? were you born when your father made his conversion? you know, i wasn't even born yet. i was actually born nine years after my dad became a christian. okay.

and tell me a little bit, you know, you had these generational con here. you do mention in the book that, you know, you still do attend church. i think if i got this correctly, you're pursuing a seminary degree. you know, to talk very briefly about, you know, you you know, how you how you have continued to kind live a christian life despite maybe some disagreements you've had with your father and with the larger community. yeah, that's right. so it's interesting, professor, my faith has actually never been stronger than it is now, which is a pleasant surprise. and i'm really grateful the lord for that. but when set out to pursue this project, i was really worried about what, you know, invest igniting the church and exposing some this corruption and this drift would do to walk with jesus and it's only made it stronger. you know, i will say that i

think for for many christians, including myself, as of about or six years ago, there's idea that you can't possibly love jesus. you can't possibly serve god while simultaneously airing the dirty laundry of the church. but one needs to only look at, you know, the apostle paul, who in his letters his occasional to the early churches in the ancient world was doing just that. and he was and he was saying, listen, you know, we have a standard here. and we are we are held as as believers inside this church to highest level of accountability. in fact, i write in the book about how the new testament model really was a great and and forgiveness and understood banding towards the outside world towards those who did not believe in god because they know any better. but real strict accountability for those inside church because

they did know god and they did know better. and in the modern american context, it feels like we've sort of flipped that on its head that we are just incredibly gracious and forgiving and understanding and almost enabling toward those inside church who are doing and saying things that are anti biblical in on like. but we are so to condemn and hostile and antagonistic toward the outside when we see that same thing. so my own faith journey has taken some unexpected turns in recent years as i've simultaneously become disillusioned with the institution of american christianity, and yet simultaneously drawn closer in my relationship christ so that a journey that is very much possible but i think in many ways one that seems counterintuitive or almost contradictory to to some believers. yeah. as i listen to you talk, tim, i'm i'm thinking about the book.

okay. i there's a lot, there's almost like a mini sub. john of books right now that are emerging on, you know, x evangelicals or former christians or christians who are disillusioned with evangelicalism telling their stories about how evangelicalism fractured the nation or destroyed my faith. these of things i don't get. same impression from your. as i do when i when i read those other books. is that fair? you know, i'm sure you're aware of some of this literature. i mean are you positioning yourself somewhere is, this book different or maybe you're trying to do the same. you know, professor, it's it's a fair question. i think what i'm trying to do is be faithful more than anything else. and i don't want to sound trite or cliche in saying that, but ultimately, you know both as a

christian and as a journalist, i was taught to know, seek truth and. i've tried to seek truth here. i've tried to both you know, when you shine a light into darkness, which is really the job of a good journalist, you are both exposed using something that is wrong something that is false. but you're also illuminating something that is right and something that is true. and so as i go about this project, what i'm really trying to do in shining that light is to not just expose what is wrong, but to illuminate is right. c.s. lewis wrote rather famously, that we know what a crooked line. we know that a line is crooked because we know what a straight line looks like. and i think for those of us who are followers, jesus, we know what the commands of jesus are

and we understand how we are to conduct ourselves as his followers and how are to engage the world around. and when see the church straying that i think we have an and a responsibility lovingly but firmly to to call that out and to speak that truth. the power and that's all i've tried to here. and mind you that i'm as flawed and as imperfect as any of the people i write about in the book. and in fact, more so and i'm not infallible and i know that i have made my mistakes. certainly even in the pages of this book. and i hope that nonetheless, god can use me as as a vehicle to help do exactly what what some of these other folks are trying to do in their own way. in these books you're describing, which is ultimately to turn our eyes back to jesus

and away from some of these sort of ephemeral distractions of this world that have become idols to us. yeah, let's great. let's dig in now to some of the content of the kingdom power and the glory. i mean, everyone is in here. i was i was joking with you before we went on before. we went on the air that, you know, i've been blogging this stuff for five, six, seven years. and every time i the page, there was another figure i was very, very with and have been watching closely. but a lot of the figures that you write about really emerge into sort of public life emerge american evangelicalism right around the time of donald trump. and then you have the summer of 2020 with black lives matter protests. george floyd's killing of george floyd. you have covid virus, all of

this stuff. the local church and i think only journalists can of get at the way in which these monumental changes in the culture whether it be the political culture or whatever have have shaped you know these local congregations it's and again do a wonderful job of trying to explain this and interviewing the right people what are the one of the there's several i'll call for lack of a better term i'll call them human people who who threaded throughout this book, who show up again and again and again. that kind of in many ways drive your narrative you're always coming back to them. one of them was your father's believe he was your father's associate pastor or, his mentee, if you will. he pastors your dad's old church. his name is chris winans. i hope i'm pronouncing his name right. yes. how tell me his story. how does this of new pastor, a new senior, at least navigate of

this change and? what does it tell us about even angelic ism in the last say six, seven, eight years? well, i'm glad you asked because a fascinating story. and i think a universality to that is really instructive for a lot of and a lot of churches. so my dad had essentially built this church that i grew up in from. the time that it was a start up effectively and had pastored it and led it for about 25 years and. this is this is in brighton, michigan. that's in the suburbs of detroit, where grew up in brighton, michigan. so my dad had been the pastor of this church for a quarter century and. he'd been looking for a successor for some time. he'd been looking for an area parent, someone who he could groom to eventually take over and my dad was really stressed out about it in the last years of leading the church. he was really that he might not

find the right person. and then one day at a denominational meeting, he met this young associate pastor who happened be working at goodwill church up in the hudson valley, the very where my dad had been saved, all those years earlier. and in fact, the church where my dad had worked his first job out of seminary as, an associate pastor, i was born there my nursery was in the church manse library, sort of kind of a holy ground for my family. that's what my parents always called this church in new york. so my dad met this young man and. he was just the perfect fit. he was the perfect candidate. he's he he's young, he's brilliant. he's humble. he's got just an excuse is it command of scripture and just has a gentle heart and a servant's heart. and my dad thinks. oh, this is unbelievable. wow. now the lord is working here. so he brings this guy to michigan to, our church, to to to begin grooming him and so

that he can take over. there's just one problem with this young guy. this young pastor chris winans. he's not a conservative of mega republican in fact, he's even like a little bit of lefty now. he's not like a full blown progressive democrat or anything. but chris is who his entire as it relates to politics is through the lens of scripture. so he doesn't particularly like guns, he doesn't like violence, he doesn't like wars, he doesn't like bad language, he doesn't like adulterers. he's he's he's kind of a strict, morally upright guy that would seem not to be a problem for some of your listeners who would say, well, yeah, church he's a pastor. what's the issue? well, in the context of a very conservative republican congregation in a very republican community like, the one i grew up in that puts bull's eye on your back. people can just tell if you don't speak the language if your

cues are even a little bit off culturally, politically, they can pick that up. so this young guy, chris winans, comes and eventually my dad names him the successor. he takes over the church and things start to sideways pretty fast for him. even just stray remarks that he makes off the cuff about current events or what's in the news. people are kind of coming after him for it now. my dad is still hanging around the time. he's still like, you know, looming around the church and he's got chris chris's back and. chris knows that well. as long as pastor alberta is here vouching for, i'm going to be fine. and then my dad dies and all at once, i've lost my father. and this young pastor, chris, has sort of lost a father figure in my dad who suddenly has handed over the keys to this big megachurch, to this young who is already viewed suspiciously by a

lot of his congregants. and then shortly after my dad dies, boom, covid 19 hits. and in the democratic governor gretchen whitmer, she issued shutdown order that implicated of worship. and so pastors all across the state had a decision to make. do you with the government and close your church for some period of time or do you defy the government and stay open. and for pastor chris and the elders at my home church, they thought that that was an easy decision make that that you know, there was uncertainty great angst at that a lot of older members in our congregation who were vulnerable and they said listen we're going to take the safe route here and we will do, you know, virtual worship for a few weeks. and we're going to close down the church. and then things really started to get bad for him because there were a lot of people at our church who were furious who thought that he was being a coward, who thought that they were sort of appeasing the regime, appeasing the deep state, appeasing the secular who

wanted to shut down the and banish christianity from public life. and i think here, professor, i should just pause to emphasize how for evangelicals myself, who grew up steeped the subculture and marinating in this message for decades, that the left was coming for us, that day, that that the church would be in the crosshairs, and that the and the secularists would try to persecute and and eradicate christianity from american life. covid-19 to a lot of these people felt like the fulfillment of prophecy. it really did. and so winans, this young pastor, suddenly he finds himself just hanging on for dear life because first it's covid-19 and then it's george floyd being murdered. and the and the racial protest thing and demonstrating and riots that are breaking out and the violence in cities. and then you've got donald trump's reelection campaign, the violence ensuing from that

january 6th. and suddenly this young pastor is completely distraught. he's seeing an exodus in, his home church with congregants flooding of the doors, saying that he's not sufficiently tough, that he's not willing to fight back against the left, not willing to fight back against joe biden. and black lives matter and the rest. and so this young pastor who just loves lord and wants to preach and wants help shepherd this flock, he finds himself basically to the point where he's wondering if he should just quit ministry altogether, walk away from the church. and it was sort of a tragic thing for me to witness. and he is losing members in his church. and your dad's church to a another down the road pastored by a guy who basically turning pulpit into a crusade against vaccines and critical race theory so forth and his is

growing right rapidly his church is growing rapidly that's that's exactly right professor and again this is there's a universality to this i think a lot of people will this church down the road from my home church in my hometown i had never heard of it. it was it was a pretty roadside church. and i had never heard of the pastor. it just they were not really on my radar. and i did know most of the churches. in the area because of how i'd grown up and the networks that i in. and yes, this pastor decided that he going to use his church as sort of a staging ground to against gretchen to rebel against government orders during covid 19. and then really it several steps further started bringing in republican started bringing in a lot of fringe conservative activists and basically turned

his pulpit into a soapbox turned his sunday morning worship into like an amateur fox news set they were spending, you know, 20, 30, 40 minutes on some sunday mornings just railing against the democratic party, railing against the media, railing against anthony fauci and and this church was exploding in membership in fact, they grew more than tenfold during a period of about a year during the covid pandemic. and that growth was directly attributable to all of these folks leaving, churches like my home and they wanted something that was pugilistic they wanted something that militant and they found in this congregation this a kind of an unapologetic blood and soil christian national pastor who was deciding to cap

allies on all of this anger and resentment and grievance that saw in the community from people toward their pastors who were unwilling to to do what, you know, he was doing was to effectively use the church as a weapon in, the culture wars. and he was rewarded for it this pastor, he was a rewarded for it mightily in terms of the growth of his congregation, in terms of the finances. in fact recently they moved into massive new facility down the road a spark bling new multimillion dollar facility because of all the growth from this project that he pursued at the beginning of covid 19 and this happening all over the country i followed closely this guy in california jack hibbs and there are others who who they defied covid protocol. they preached sort of sermons against critical race theory and black lives matter and they grew they're also other churches.

i think that that that maybe were not as overt in using the pulpit for these but they also grew which leads to a question and i don't know if you can answer or not, but, you know when these churches become so politicized, you know, you hear like robert jeffress, who you interviewed for this book talking about getting people saved, preaching the gospel. to what extent does the gospel then become not only the saving grace of jesus christ, but you also have to adopt a particular political agenda that in order to be a christian like like imagine if someone went to this pastor you're talking about in michigan church and, just started reading the bible and said, hey, i'm a i'm a liberal democrat, right. did the conversion, you know,

the kind of question that you know, i'm often asking when i see these see these churches going in this direction, what do you think about that? well, look, this is i think in many ways, the entire problem, which is that we've taken one standard and and sort of swapped it out for or at the very least, we've aside the biblical standard. we've put another standard right next to it, which is this sort of partizan political, you know, tribal standard of. you know, where do you stand on vaccines? well, who did you vote for the last election? i've been in a lot of church settings where this is not implicit, it's not a wink, a nod. it is spoken, it's verbalized. and it's very much made clear the pulpit that this is the standard. this is the litmus test to be a part of our church and i think that's discouraging.

obviously for any number of reasons. but chief them, professor, as you well know, is that the church is called ultimately to take the gospel of jesus christ to all the nations and to to make out of unbelievers and to baptize them in the name of the father and the son and the holy. and it is incredibly difficult to do when you have erected these barriers to entry in the church that have nothing to do with jesus, that have nothing to do with the father, the son, the holy spirit. i'm often asked, well, what does it mean to be an evangelii? well, and it's a very good question. part of what it to be an evangelical is the verb in that word to even generalize, right, to evangelize to people who don't know jesus. but how can we evangelize people who don't know jesus when we are telling them, hey, you know, jesus is great and we really want you to know about him, but

we can't really talk to you about him unless you vote the way we do, unless you, you know you follow the same facebook pages do, unless you're part of the same, you know, cultural tribe that we're a part of, if you check all those boxes, then great. we can have a conversation about how jesus who fully god and fully man came to earth to be the mediator between, god and mankind. we can that conversation. but first, let's just make sure that you check all of these political boxes that is an incredibly dangerous thing for the church to be doing and it's now doing it at a scale that i'm not sure we've ever seen before. yeah. so you i've been i've been studying evangelicalism for, for, for a couple of decades. i have an evangelical in that world for a long time. and you know we talk about walking the sawdust trail, you know the old billy sunday crusades, right? so you're walking to the altar to get saved and become a trump supporter or, you know,

whatever, it's just a really, really odd kind of time that we're in right now. but it's it's pervasive. and your book convinced me that this is going on, you know, all over place. let's talk about let's talk about donald trump a little bit more, you know, by this point, most of the people watching this know that went for trump, you know, 80%, 81% of the numbers you see in 2016 and 2020. when i wrote my book in 2018, it published, believe me, one of the believe me was the name for it. one of the one of the critiques i got was that i was painting these trump evangelicals the 81% with a kind of monolithic brush. right. they were all the same. and and i think i got that wrong because there were people who voted evangelical because who voted for trump for all kinds reasons. they were there are people who voted for trump who were not, you know, wearing makeup america great again had at the rallies

and so forth you seemed to you seem to have a sense of that of of the difference. what makes these voters different? also, what makes them kind of unify. well, i'm glad you asked that because i really try go out of my way i think on the second page of the book even if i if memory serves two to make this point that when we talk about well why you know 80% of white evangelicals vote trump we are talking about you know, tens of millions of people and so let's let's let's try to treat them with some nuance and let's try to really understand the diverse motivations and behaviors and impulse is that that informed this this question. i think we have to consider these people as points that are plotted across the vast spectrum here and. certainly at one end of that spectrum, you do have evangelicals who are sort of nakedly hypocritical, who are political animals, who sort of

shameless in their support for, donald trump. in fact, they will still bring up bill clinton's extramarital scandals and his bad behavior today. and then in the same breath, talk about how well with trump, you know, god has sort of positioned him for this and chosen him for this. and god uses imperfect people all time. so that is certainly present at one end of the spectrum. i think at the far other end of the spectrum. professor, you've got a lot of evangelicals were kind of nauseated at the prospect of voting for donald in 2016, and they did anyway. they did so because they have a deep, abiding concern for, the unborn and they are single issue voters in many ways and they care greatly abortion and they saw that there were going to be probably two or three supreme court appointments that next term, and they just kind of held their nose and they voted for trump. and then in many cases, they asked for forgiveness afterwards because they felt so guilty about it. i think in the middle of the

spectrum are where most of the people are and sort of floating back and forth and think that for a lot of them, they're kind of they're horrified by trump's behavior. they think his rhetoric is awful. they would never point to him as a role model for their children or their grandchildren, but i think for many of them, what does them to your question is a sense of america armageddon, a sense that this country, this blessed that has been so successful in spreading the gospel around the world that, has been sort of at the cutting edge of the freedoms, the god given freedoms that we have to exemplify in front of the world that this country is under attack, that this country is on its last legs, that the secular progressive, godless left is coming for christianity, and that they've been coming for christianity for a long time.

but that now this fight has really intensified outside and that if we don't stand up and do something about it now, then we might never get our country back and. for a lot of those folks who think that way, even if they find donald trump to be sort of personally loathsome, they're willing to look at him and say, well, desperate times for desperate measures. maybe, maybe this uncouth, you know, playboy million air with the with the with the filthy mouth and the three marriages and the casinos and all these messes. maybe he's exactly the strong man. we need to defend us and to defend the church and to defend christianity in this country. so understanding why people would view him that way is, i think, essential to then trying to unpack what's happening in the church right now. and of the fault lines that have emerged both during the trump presidency and in the aftermath. yeah, this idea of victimhood this idea of fear sort of

pervades much of this this kind of trump voter, you know. and by the way even a fear and victimhood, there there major themes throughout your book i just can't get around the idea and i wonder what you think about this i think you'll agree i just also get around the ideas as much as i want to nuance. you know, as a historian, that's what we do write complexity. nuance. at the same time, you know, 81% of american evangelicals responsible for everything that's just happened right. you know, january 6th, you know, the wall, the you know, you know, it's it's you who put him into office. you know how would you respond to someone like me who who still is bothered by that even though that 81% is a very diverse group. well, listen would say two things. i would first that i'm bothered by it in many ways. i think the second thing i would

say is a lot of those people, they would respond to you and say, well, if hillary clinton had won and if all sorts terrible things had happened, including, you know, a sort of a dramatic escalation in the liberalization of, abortion laws and sort of accelerated attacks on christianity in this country then then wouldn't you feel responsible for that, professor john fea? and think where we have to on this ultimately is, people of good faith upon much intended can and should exam these political issues and to some different conclusions certainly different conclusions on the what what policies do you support the who who do you vote for? i think many cases that is good

and healthy. now, i would also caveat that by saying that donald trump this point has done everything possible. daring evangelicals to say what more can i do to lose your support? what more do i have to say in order you to recognize that i am a deeply immoral and unwell individual? so i would not at this point say that there is a highly credible, highly case for voting for donald trump for president from an evangelical christian perspective, i think it's difficult to find. however, i think in general, when examining our political system, there should be healthy among believers. again, on the who who do you vote for? and the what policies do you support? i think at the same time, the one thing where there should be union liberty is on the question of how how do we as believers

engage with the political culture, how do we treat people with whom we disagree? how do we go carrying out our civic duties? and on that question of the professor, there is simply ambiguity when you read scripture, we are taught to love our neighbor. we are taught to pray for those who persecute us, we taught to turn the other cheek. there's just there's not there are no two ways to read the new testament teachings here. and my fear is that the the the resentment and the grievance and the anger that are witnessing in the evangelical today has almost created a permission structure, has allowed a lot of people to say that. basically, all are off. and the sermon on the mount no longer matters. and we have to sort you know, the ends justify the means in this moment of crisis, whether

it's whether voting for donald trump or, whether it's joining a sort of far militant movement or whether it's using our churches as a to win the culture wars. it's all game at this point. and the how thrown out the window and i just think that that's such it's just such a disservice to the gospel and that that comes very clearly in the chapter on ralph reed, the political lob for evangelical political operatives. it's winning, right? i don't know how many times i've heard reed say, you know. yes, you're saying tim alberta is right, but we need to win and again, that that ends and means. question is essential. are you optimistic, though, that evangelicals can engage deeply in way that you're describing with the who, the what the you know, the how and so forth, you know, i'm struck by i was really struck because it's probably in my own neck of the woods here in pennsylvania by this pastor. you he talk about who who prayed

at a doug mastriano rally and doug mastriano being this christian nationalist gubernatorial. who do you know lost lost in 2022 for the governorship, but he seemed to have no clue what he was getting into when he was praying, praying for mastriano at a rally or at least praying at the rally, he seemed completely a political. he seemed to have no interest in really thinking deeply about how faith informs politics. and then i was also thinking here, know it just hit me this interview had with the yale theologian wolf, who basically says, i'm going to read here, i'm going to quote that part of the problem in the evangelical church is the, quote, loss, educated, thoughtful readership. and i'm going back here, you know i'm sure you familiar at some point having encountered it's now 30 years old. you know mark noble's famous book, the scandal of the

evangelical mind, which leads me back to the question, do you think evangelicals you know what hope do you have for evangelicals to be able to engage thoughtfully and deeply in this kind of political project that you're talking about and yeah, how much this just kind, populist, anti intellect, just how much is it just always going to prevail? well, professor, let me this and i mean it sincerely. i am not choosing to be optimistic because in many ways i'm deeply pessimistic about the state of the culture the state of the country. and in many ways, the state. the evangelical movement, as i think, comes across in the book. i will say, however, that there is an optimistic note and that does give me genuine optimism in this space, which is there is and i alluded to this at the outset, a real generation or

schism here throughout my reporting. what i consistently surprised by and encouraged by was i was in spaces with a young evangelicals. you know, at one point in the book, i to them as the children of the moral majority and by the way, i would consider myself a child of the moral majority right. was my dad's milieu that was his generation. that was the movement that he was a part of. and think that the children of the moral majority have enough distance from it now and they are clear in a way that their parents really couldn't be. they see this for what it is. they see the unraveling of the church. they see the the pervasive influence of politics and tribal culture, wars and money, corruption. they see how the gospel has been as a cudgel against our enemies in this country. and they want nothing to do

with. this younger generation, they really i've been i've been at the extent to i will run into and spend time around young evangelicals who on paper are just like their parents, they are culturally and politically very conservative if they they would sort of reflexively lean toward voting republican every couple of years. but when you get into the meat of this they are so profoundly different in terms of where their priorities are, in terms of their ability to come, analyze politics as something sort of very different from their faith and really effectively. professor understanding that politics should be viewed through a filter of their faith rather than viewing their faith, the filter of their politics. in other words whereas many of their are listening to the sermon on sunday about poverty or about migrants whatever and thinking about it maybe through

the prism of what they heard on fox that week. their children they might see a fox news clip. and they're listening to something about poverty or and they're thinking about it through prism of what they heard in their service on sunday and at a school like liberty university which in many ways of course is sort of the avatar of of the corruption and the grift and drift of the evangelical world. when you spend time around the students, i've just been shocked. the best way possible to include counter how many of them are willing to sort of step out and and break sharply from what their parents have done and what the previous generations have sort set in motion inside the church. and so i will say genuinely that i do take some serious optimism from that. let's talk a little bit about liberty now that you mentioned it. another one of these sort of human threads, if i could call

them that, in your book is this familyeally father son only appeared book the olsens you ow our time. we don't have much time left tell me a little bit about the olsen. so what are their names again? one is an english professor and one was an early student at liberty doug and olsen. yeah doug and nick? yes. doug and nick. no, no, that's. that's okay. no, it's it's a fascinating story. and what i essentially tried to do was tell the story of liberty university through two overlapping generational arcs, one of them obviously being jerry falwell and his son, jerry falwell jr, who took over the university, then kind of infamously fell from grace due to a scandal several years ago, but then even so, through the eyes of this other and son, doug

olson had been a contemporary of jerry falwell senior. he was one of the first students to enroll at liberty university back in the seventies after it was founded. and and doug, who's now in his seventies, he's an older gentleman now. he was really a on the inside of the falwell empire. he married a girl who was very close with, the falwell family, lynchburg, virginia, is a very small place back then. and everybody knew everybody and. this guy, doug olson, not only went to school at liberty, but he wound up working on the faculty there, working the staff there, and got to know all these people really well from the inside. and what he saw back then, really began to concern him, particularly as it related to the founding of the moral and the sort of turning liberty university from a christian into a sort of cultural, a place that used less and less to advance

the kingdom of christ, and more and more to the kingdom of republicanism in america and doug olson, eventually became rather disillusioned and he left liberty university behind. and this, by the way, just so i can interrupt. yeah, this is this just so listeners know viewers know this is before the whole scandal you're reading about in the papers with jerry falwell and the poor junior and the pool boy. there's concerns going back to the eighties. that's right. that's that's exactly right. and i'm glad you pointed that out because. yes. this is happening in the eighties with this man, doug olson. and so doug olson, he has a son, he and his wife, their firstborn son. his name is nick. and doug effectively decides that because their family has been wrapped up in liberty university and in the falwell empire, that he want to spoil that for nick, that he's got his own concerns and his own decision and but he's going to keep it to himself. and so nick, his son grows up and all he wants to do is go to

liberty like everybody else, his family and he does. and winds up coming to school there. and he begins to see some of the same things as his father, some of the same corruption, some of the same greed, some of the same betrayal of biblical principles, but nick decides that he wants teach there and he winds up joining the faculty and teaching in the english department. and for a number of years, he's trying to be a part of the he's trying to help save liberty from effectively. and then he finally gets to a place as talking with him for this book where just decides that he can't that liberty in some ways is just to be broken fundamentally, perhaps for people like him to save it. and so he decides to go on the record with me in this book detailing in a pretty astonishing what he has seen from the inside liberty. and it's it's a heartbreak story. but i would say it's a heroic

story because to return full circle, the beginning of our conversation. professor, one of the hardest things to do for anyone in any walk of life is to blow the whistle on their own people, to step out of line and to of shame their own tribe. and this this young guy, nick olson, he has a family. he's got young kids. he's got a wife, he's got a and a house and he's got students who he loves. and he will almost certainly be fired by liberty university. this book comes out because they have very strict rules there about sort of keeping everything in-house and not going and speaking to the media about what you've seen internally it's this the school has effectively almost been run as like an organized crime syndicate for decades and and here's this guy deciding to blow the whistle and speak out because. he believes that ultimately when he stands before the lord. one day he's going to be judged based on this decision and based on how he decided to use his

influence and his place, the culture, and whether he was god or whether he was serving things of man. and that is sort of the narrative arc, not only nicholson, but of a lot of the characters in this book. this that's just that just an amazing story. and here we talk about courage, the beginning of this. at the beginning of this conversation, you know, i mean, this this this is an act of courage by nicholson it's amazing over the years, i have had a regular correspondence email correspondence with i'd say maybe four or five professors who are in the same as nicholson. some have left liberty, but some are still there. and really is a dysfunctional situation, at least for an academic institution. let me me ask you here about some of these interviews that you did and again, not much time left, but i was really struck, you know, by just you were able

to get to talk you. and then when you did talk to these people, i guess was surprised sometimes by the that they answered. so, you know, you talked to robert jeffress at first baptist church, dallas and he hints at this idea maybe we've gone too far the evangelicals have gone too far with this embrace of trump. and it's hurt the witness, the gospel or this megachurch pastor down the road from your father's church. you know, you confront him on sort of misinformation about vaccines. i think it was. and he says, well, maybe, yeah you're right. maybe we shouldn't put that in the story or something or there's guy preaches under this huge tent named greg locke in tennessee. you know he's he admits he went too far with some of his sort of pro-trump or anti-vaccine at attacks. and then, you know, this guy who runs this huge pentecostal, charismatic outlet, stephen

strang, who's like very disturbed as he's looking at michael flynn, is this is a former national security adviser for trump his his reawakening tour saying, oh, this is way over the top all you know all these things that people are saying, you know, it's it's it's little bit problematic. but they don't say these things in public. they don't say these things to their people. i don't know if it's because you were in atlantic and maybe they just like that kind of power and access i don't know. i'd be curious what you think what it was really fascinating to me how some of these people actually kind of maybe off it's too hard of a word but at least offered a little bit of nuance. well, you're exactly right. and this is i would say one of the thematic undertones of the of the book, which is that a lot of these people in positions, leadership and influence they

know. right. yeah, they do in a lot of these exchange things that you're describing there almost, winking and nodding at me a little bit to say listen you. know you're calling out on this thing. i recognize that you're right. i recognize that this is crazy. i recognize that this thing is not. but for many of them, those sort of say, you know, by using of these tools at my i'm then bringing in more people. and then once i've brought in these people, i can reach them with the gospel. so really, i'm playing three dimensional chess here and the ends justify means again. but right, it's, it's, it's disturbing and really discouraging, you know, are called to not only look after the sheep, but to keep the wolves at bay. and a lot of these people have themselves become wolves. there's just no other way to say

it. and i wish that i could say it more diplomatically. i wish i could hedge my my rhetoric a little bit here, but i there's just there's no way around the reality that some of these people, whatever their motivations, what's over the insane motives that have sort of brought them to this place they are now actively harming the witness of jesus christ, are actively undermining the mission and the purpose of his church and it's tragic, but it's not necessarily new. and i think you know, we should recognize that there have always been back to the first century. there have always been heretics. there have always been people who have traded on the name of jesus for for extra biblical aims and and i do think that it is incumbent upon those of us

who, again, we are sinners as well, are flawed. we will make our mistakes, will stray from the path and. we will need forgiveness for doing so. but of us who are clear eyed in seeing this for what is and what it has become, we have an obligation to speak about it and we have an obligation to try to reach some of these folks who have led astray. and who perhaps don't know better, and therefore been seduced by these these earthly idols of nation and power politics. we have an obligation to try to reach them and to try to bring them back, because at the trajectory that we're on now, this is heading towards something not only dangerous and not only damaging, but i would say dangerous as well. yeah, our times about up here and that's it. really, really well put. you know, there's so much more we could talk. i haven't even i hardly been i don't think i'd mentioned russell moore he features

prominently in your book rachael denhollander the sexual abuse scandals, the southern baptist convention, julie roys you know, this whole kind of infrastructure, infrastructure of kind of whistleblowers, you know, so, so much more in here that we didn't get to cover. but in the last minute or two, i want to end on i don't know if it's a lighter note. it's a lighter to me. but tell me about tell me about robert jeffress, his shrine in quote unquote shrine to donald. yeah. so robert jeffress. for those who don't, is the pastor of baptist church of dallas. it's one of the country's really historic megachurches. and it's a position of enormous influence and and religious authority, really. and robert jeffress is, best known for being probably trump's most outspoken evangelical little ally, someone who is, you know, stood by his side through thick and, thin. and i've gotten to know pastor

jeffress very well over the years. and i must that i rather like him. i find him to be just a a very kind individual and someone i've prodded and, prompted to try to be a little more introspective thinking about these things, as you alluded to a moment ago, professor what was most striking to me in the time i've spent talking with pastor jeffress was he brought me into his office at the church in dallas and his secretary had pointed out this corner of his and had called it a shrine. she was sort of being tongue in cheek. but it truly is a to donald j. trump, it is unlike anything i'd ever seen anywhere much less inside of a church. i mean, we're dozens, dozens of framed photographs, banners and signs with trump's image on it, printed out tweets and, email, correspondences, signed by trump, a pair of trump's

cufflinks. all all of these, all these things that had been gifted to jeffress, he had on display. and yeah, i just i don't want to overstate it. but it was i think i describe it in the book as a temple trumpism and that's exactly what it was. obviously, it's almost humorous, but it's also, i think, pretty disconcerting. and, you know, i think pretty revealing window into some of this. tim, our time is up. thank you so much for taking time to talk with me today. i wish we could go another couple hours. maybe someday we'll get a chance to sit in a coffee shop and and do. but i loved the book. get out there, get a copy. great christmas gift, professor. i hope we get the chance to do. i'm a great admirer of as well. and thank you very much for the opportunity to to have this