[inaudible conversations] >> hello. we are ready to get started here. i'm so glad to see you all today it's really nice outside and you chose to come in here and hear something very stimulating nonetheless. my name is layla. we are really excited to be welcoming john fea. before you started a few notes.

we would love it if you turned off your cell phones. we are going to be recording today. we are also recording with c-span and it will be life on booktv. when it is time for questions addicted please come to the microphone that is right here it will be recorded for everyone here in the store listening as they browse and for everyone at home on their televisions. your questions will get heard. similarly if you could please leave your chairs right where they are when he has done we have another event later in the day. after questions and answers there is a large. >> of books at the cash register waiting there. while you were there please grab a calendar. we have a ton of events happening, all kinds of things throughout the summer and that is available at the cash register. with all of that out of the way

we are really welcoming john fea. it's a thrill for us to have introduced the press professor of american history and the chair of the history department at messiah college in mechanicsburg camp pennsylvania. specializes in early america and the pedagogy of history. the author of seven books. that includes a historical introduction. why study history reflecting on the importance of the past and a history of american bible society. he has written essays and reviews for nist down the lead diverse array of publication which includes the "chronicle" for higher education, journal of american history the "washington post" al-jazeera sojourners, everything. ..

a remarkably nuanced soul searching rigorously historical analysis from its self identified evangelicals and academic and wonder of wonders, it is a positive and productive contribution to the dialogue. something we don't see nearly enough. it's divided high above the fray and we are so happy to be welcoming him to debate politics and prose. thank you, john fea, for coming. [applause] >> let me just a justice of little bits for my height. thanks everybody for coming out to this event. such a beautiful day and you are here listening to a book talk.

so kudos to you, and a book about donald trump. on a day like this maybe we don't want to be thinking of him. everyone coming thanks to politics and prose for inviting me. we are about to go off on a seven city tour so i can think of a better place to get that going them right here in one of the best bookstores in the country. so very excited to be here. the genesis of the book dates back to november 8, 2016. the presidential election i was fully expecting history to take place. of course i am an american historian and wanted to be present when the first female president of the united states

was elected. however we got a different kind of history. we got the history of a reality television star. a new york business real estate tycoon, somebody that managed to get elected despite all of his remarks that could be defined as racist, misogynistic. we learned about his bragging about sexual assaul assaults onn which he later dismissed as locker room talk. we learned more about his past with adulterous affairs with adult film stars and so on and so forth. so we could sort of make a list of some of the problematic at least from where i sit as an evangelical some of the more problematic things associated

with our president. as i sat there and i watched my adopted home state of pennsylvania go to trump, i watched michigan and wisconsin go to trump. i sat there and i was tweeting. i began to get some of the twitter posts if you will of some of the evangelical leaders that have supported the ticket and isolate things like praise the lord donald trump has one, god has delivered donald trump to the presidency. thank god the christians came out and did the right thing and voted for this man. on and on. as someone that identifies as an

evangelical christian as myself, i was angry, i felt betrayed by what happened and then later i learned later in the week that roughly eight out of ten white evangelicals have actually voted for donald trump. but at that moment, emotion took over, the passions took over and i wrote out a tweet that said if this is evangelicalism, im out. the next day or the day after they wrote a piece in the atlantic in which he quoted or embedded my tweet in the peace and next thing you know my e-mail box started filling up with all of my progressive friends saying good job, way to go. it's about time you got out of that backwards form of religion. glad you are re-signing. i think it was the evangelical

history professor ron wells. i'm guessing most of you won't know him but he made a wonderful comment from resigning. you can't resign from evangelicalism because there is no place to send the letter so to whom do you send a letter to blacks and of course my e-mail box was filled with evangelical friends saying don't abandon us, stick with it. it's from the greek word meaning gospel or good news. it has a transformative power over so many people. so back and forth. i wrote a few things about it but then after about a week or two passions died down and i don't think they waned very much but i started to clearly. i remember interestingly enough that i was an american historian as well. i got caught up and i thought

why is it that eight out of ten white evangelicals voted for this man? is there something within the history of american evangelicalism that made this a perfectly normal decision? what was it and i soon realized and kicked myself in a sense i should have seen this coming. i studied and devoted a significant portion of my career at this point of thinking that the history of evangelicalism. this seems perfectly logical that 81% would vote in light of the things i studied and it's at that point i decided i want to think about this as a historian and evangelical myself to think about the historical forces that led so many white evangelicals

to vote for donald trump. so i just want to read a very brief passage of "believe me" and then try to conclude what i believe to be the forces that let all of these white evangelicals to vote for trump. when he speaks to the followers in the rallies that have become a fixture of the populist brand he loves to use the phrase believe me. the internet is filled with video montages using the signature catchphrase perhaps even more frequently than make america great again. i encourage you to look for those they are pretty entertaining and also pretty sad. believe me folks, we are building the wall. believe me, we are building the wall. i love women, believe me, i love women. women. i love women and i have great

respect for women, believe me. i am the least racist person you've ever met, believe me. the world is in trouble if we are going to straighten out, that's what i do, i fix things. we are going to straighten them out, believe me. and perhaps most importantly for the subject of my book, with the state is right up front in the trump administration our heritage will be cherished and protected, they can did like you've never seen before, believe me. this is the story of why so many believe in donald trump. you can think of all different things, abortion, religious liberty as defined by evangelicals, immigration. you can come up with all sorts of multiple social and cultural issues that let american

evangelicals to back donald trump but they fall into the larger categories and what i've concluded is american evangelicals voted for donald trump in such large numbers because the privileged certain things over other things. they privileged theodore overholt. they privileged political power over humility commanded a privileged nostalgia over history so those are the three central themes of the book. let me talk about them briefly and then we will take questions because i know many of you will probably have them. first gear over hope. i love the pulitzer prize-winning author marilyn robinson who said in a "new york times" essay on fear she said

fear is not a christian habit of mine. if you look at the bible, which modern evangelicals would've to be an authoritative book in the bible speaks about fear in two ways. one, fear of god, a reverence for god, for an all-powerful god, a providential god who intervenes in the lives of human beings and answers prayer, performs miracle at times. and because evangelicals have a fear of death god, they put their fear and trust so that is the other way that it treats the notion of fear is to fear not. perfect love casts out fear, the bible teaches. think of the famous psalm 23, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil for thou art with me and comfort me. fear is not a christian habit of

mine. nonow again, my theological and religious tradition teaches me we live in a very broken world. i've learned that from reading the protestant reformers, people like reinhold mueller. the world is broken and fear is a natural product of that. we are all afraid, but it is not a christian option as they read my bible to dwell in their fear or to build policy around here were to build public engagement with the world around that fear. it leads evangelicals to find salvation or saviors in things other than their highest allegiances of the person god has been get their highest allegiances to. as i began to explore this i began to conclude one could write an entire history of american evangelicalism with fear at the center.

in almost every instance whenever there is some kind of significant social, cultural or religious change in the united states there has been a backlash whether it be catholic immigrants coming in in the 1840s and 50s and the nativist backlash associated with it, whether it be evangelical slaveholders in the south fearful of slave rebellion but also of all of this abolitionists in the north looking to disrupt rooted in slavery and white supremacy as we have the religious defense of the institution of slavery and we could go on. i talk about all these examples in the book.

in the atlantic a couple of weeks ago, i also suggested that there were evangelical alternatives to some of these fearful reactions. on a lot of things was driven by hope is often chosen not to. it was donald trump tapped into that longest history of evangelical fear. but it is especially since the 1970s and 80s with the emergence of the moral majority and went even further under the age hears of barack obama when the idea that america as a city on a hill, a place in which the god has been threatened in a variety of ways bus resulting in

these responses. hope on the other hand, ultimately it is forward-looking and overcomes fear. christians of all stripes come evangelicals or any christian beliefs and the coming kingdom of god we call it defined by love and compassion and mercy and justice and sometimes we forget about that and we look to the past as i will mention in the second and they would be happy to address this further in the q-and-a. how about political power over humility. christianity as i understand is a religion in which we worship and give our highest allegiance to a suffering savior on the cross through sacrifice all for the sins of the world. it is someone who was taken to

the mountain in matthew chapter four and was tempted with all of the power in the world and turned powerdown but you since the 1970s and early 1980s with the rise of the so-called christian right and majority, evangelicals have sought to try to bring change and affect the culture largely through the pursuit of political power. what's interesting about this is there have been thoughtful evangelical christians have provided alternative ways of thinking about social change, cultural change, being a witness for their faith in the world that is not connected to political power but they've largely been ignored by american evangelicals because the architects of the christian right people like jerry falwell

senior and others did such a good job that you make a meaningful contribution in the world this through the partisan politics. i don't think that he gets enough attention in the textbooks. he's one of the most significant political figures because he managed to teach millions and millions of evangelicals that there is only one way to engage in public life. it's a political playbook as i call it a day will then appoint the right supreme court justices and the members of congress will confirm these justices and we will bring about moral change

and reclaim, renew, restore the christian nation that somehow has been lost. that is a powerful, powerful playbook and connected with the gop. because of that, evangelicals flocked to donald trump. it's always been associated in the past with presidential candidate that had a certain degree of character or respected american institutions. that playbook was pushed to thee test i would argue in 2016 once it survived if the candidate didn't have traditional moral character and guess what, it did. third, nostalgia over history. nostalgia has been something that has defined the american

christian right for a long time for most of its history but i i want to talk particularly overweight is defined the american christian right since the 1970s and 1980s. there has been a long-standing position among the christian right a historical argument if you can call it that the united states and was founded in some ways is a christian nation and that we need to somehow return america to its roots come at its founding. it's built upon an amazingly dubious claim about what the founders were trying to create when they founded the nation but nevertheless it is a historical narrative that have political power thanks to politicians who peddle in the study of the past i hesitate to call them historians but politicians who use the passage cherry picked from the past two or political agenda in the present. they are out there.

they have a large following. they don't hang out in places like politics and prose, but they have massive followings in the heartland in so-called red states and they are articulating a historical narrative that america was a christian nation and we can get into that in the q-and-a. rather than accepting the situation we are in and the world and looking forward, american evangelicals are constantly looking backward trying to reclaim something that is either never coming back when they have never exist again in the first place. think about the phrase make america great again. people i talk to tend to focus on the word great. when was america great?

we are going to make it great again. i am a historians of a zero hin that word again. donald trump is very unclear to me and maybe some of you have a better grasp of this but he's been very unclear as to when america was great. as a historian i want him to pin that down so i can then enter the fray and say the cas okay se 1950s was great with a 19th century was great. great. but then talk about what happened in that century and then we can decide whether or not that was great or not. the only thing i can go on is that every time he appeals to the american past, he appeals again to our darkest moment. he has a picture of the white supremacist indian hating that he thought he was an indian lover, andrew jackson on his wall. he makes appeals to america first and anti-semitic

isolationist mantra used in the 1930s. he plays with a dog whistle that richard nixon and george wallace used to compel or try to stop or get white americans to be afraid of the race riots going on in the assassination of martin luther king and robert kennedy. every time he appeals t to the past it i as to the most divisie moments. i think evangelicals need to be careful in praising any candidate that wants to make america great again in the sense that nostalgia looking back to the past can be dangerous in a selfish way of looking at the past. i'm not saying we shouldn't be nostalgia. i'm nostalgic for things that happened all the time, something in your family or memories that can help provide meaning and purpose where we remember good times but as a sense of policy

it is always going to privilege one group over another. it's always going to focus on the people that had good in that era and essentially ignore those who did not think that was particularly great. let's just call it out here. immediately when income african-american and people of color come to mind when we think about when america was great or perhaps when it was not so great. so these are the three major things. one more word about nostalgia. the difference between nostalgia and history it goes in the past and looks at it and its complexities it is like a mirror

we like to quote the phrase there for the grace of god. we have to confront the past even when it makes us very uncomfortable that's what history does. i think it was the great theologian of hope that said it awakens the bed and put the pieces back together that is what we are in the business of giving. being anti-intellectual in some regards it has failed to look straight on at the past because in some ways they are not going to like what they see if they do. so, hope over fear. humility over power politics and history over nostalgia. if you've ever been around for evangelical world you notice

that hope, humility, history, three points. we need at home and a prayer and then we are done. i will take questions. [applause] you get to buy the book. [laughter] thank you for your talk. two questions. one is help me understand this belief that i hear quite often that trump is a flawed king like david. i don't understand so explain that to me. the second thing, is there an ongoing dialogue between the different branches of evangelical believers it seems to me a love of immigrants are becoming a evangelicals. >> the first question about the

king, it would've evangelicals will appeal to the fact that in the bible god often uses flawed individuals to accomplish his purposes is the idea. he could use anybody. so there's one sort of narrative that suggests donald trump is despite his flaws is still being used by god, outside of our control we don't know how he's going to work. he will eve would even work fory like donald trump to restore america or whatever to advance his causes. this might play into a little bit of the division among the white evangelicals at least and then i will get to the people of color. there is another theory out there that trump was converted. one of his leading i call them core evangelicals because they

show up a lot and flatter him is paula white of prosperity preacher who claims trump a born-again experience. there is another narrative of their associated with the old testament king king cyrus. he was a persian king who tested historical books, the first and second i think it is a square when the israelites reached captivity in babylon, it was a pagan king sent them three to go back to the promised land,, buildable polls an poles and soo restore the temple so the narrative goes something like this, donald trump has come along and god has used him to set us free from the eight years of the obama administration or something to that effect so all of the narratives are there.

it is a great piece in which he talked about he was was a big y of god at a pentecostal church in fredericksburg virginia and he noted many of the people were not necessarily happy about the character but they supported his position. i dedicate this book returned to the 81%. i think there's a secondary audience of people that are just interested in the historical forces that lead to donald trump suppers stuff for everybody though of course that is what authors say. but i do think that is true. i dedicate the book to the 19%, so there is this small sector of white evangelicals who are opposed and still identify and are opposed that you don't

notice i keep saying white because you don't see the strong pro- trump support among the african-american community, latin americans, many of the immigrants trump is trying to keep out of the country and white evangelicals who hold the purse strings of power are privileging the u.s. immigration law and privileging the nationstate over their own to use evangelical parlance brothers and sisters in christ. so this book is about those white evangelicals but it's much more complex and complicated than that. so your question is a good one. >> longtime evangelical i have a membership card in my pocket. [laughter] >> i've threatened to tear it up many times. i identify as part of the 19%. giving the civil rights

movement, evangelicals by and large including fundamentalist christians, and the definition i think is not made enough about because there is a difference were on the wrong side of history during the movement. christianity today opposed the civil rights movement. can you talk about the role of racism for those who voted for donald trump with respect to what happened a year previous who received something like 22 to 24% of the votes that the role of racism, nostalgia and history that has resulted in donald trump as president? >> people on the right say it's all about race.

i've tried to navigate a position on that. it's a very important factor you look at the obama presidency what is largely christian leaders on the far right people like dinesh this is a he was president of an evangelical college at one point in his self identification. it was people like newt gingrich and others who demonized barack obama and in some cases supported the donald trumps amendment. i think that is all a major factor that's involved. it's really hard to imagine and measure the rank-and-file. i just have to go on anecdotal

evidence i come from a white working class background i grew up in north jersey if my accent hasn't given it away yet. i know a lot of white working-class evangelicals who voted for trump and largely because of race. race is one factor, abortion and those kind of things are a dominant part of it, too. i try to suggest this. there is a long history of racism within american evangelicalism both southern and northern. christianity today, and even billy graham this came out a lot during billy graham's off heads and things that were written. some i think were unfair to his legacy and others fared pretty

good. but there's a famous pictures of him with martin luther king that gets purveyed out there. he desegregated his revival meetings and so forth, but he was never a strong advocate. he was kind of natural and of course racism is bad, but he never did anything in a positive way to combat racism so this is a big hurdle that they have to get over. it's one of the most important that they will have to deal with. >> being jewish i don't carry an evangelical card. [laughter] a couple things. it seems to me reading the testament teaches us about helping the poor and caring about the community and nonmaterial harder for a rich man to get into heaven and for the life of me, maybe nobody

understands this, by the 81% of evangelicals seems so harsh towards programs for the poor. they are consumed with the morality that surprises me about trump because he's a poster child for having no immorality. also how would you define evangelical? what happens to people who are not christian, how do evangelicals do that? >> that's a lot. the definition is actually one that is being contested right now among the historians of the movement and other theologians. the most famous is associated with an english professor in great britain who said an evangelical is someone who believes in the bible or the inspiration of the old testament and new testament, somebody who

believes in conversion, born-again experience, a moment in time when one accepts jesus christ as their savior. someone with a sort of belief in the centrality of the death on the cross and also somebody who then is an activist and usually it's been understood less in the evangelical circles so it's changing in terms of all things you mentioned likthethings you e feeding the poor and so forth. but i think a lot of historical evangelicals often thought about it in terms of preaching the gospel and trying to convert somebody to jesus christ. as an evangelical i would love to sit down with you tal and tak about my faith and back and forth over coffee. [laughter] i don't think the state should be doing that to.

i was at a conference on secularism at georgetown a few years ago and i said the same thing. the guy interviewing me, a scholar said i like you that you are not in my face and i said i believed in a the good news of jesus christ. anand everybody laughed. but i don't think the state should be involved in it. whathat. what i fear when they get so close to politics and seek the playbook why aren't they supporting candidates that are for social progress of the poor and all these other things, pro- immigration and so forth i think a lot of that is because they have privilege to certain issues over another. i was talking to a reporter about this is a hierarchy within the conservative evangelicalism.

abortion is up there at the top right now probably right alongside religious liberty. >> so-called -- >> that is a fair point. conservative evangelicals rarely talked about it for other fait faiths. then you have of course separating children from their parents and evangelical would condemn the idea but not if it is going to force, you know if it is going to leap into weakening their position on abortion is that you hear someone saying of course we don't want to separate childrenn but we still have to stick with donald trump because he's going to deliver on these higher moral issues. so i think there are evangelical christians in the minority who see much more like the catholic social teaching for example pushing this idea for a long time about the relationship between catholic social teaching

and evangelical civic engagement, the national association of evangelicals has also taken this. i was part of a catholic evangelical dialogue on catholic social teaching several years ago at georgetown. so i think there are evangelicals who are pushing for a much more holistic pro-life kind of agenda tha but they are still in the minority because of the success of the playbook if you will. >> toward non-christians viewed? >> does believe that christianity should be privileged, non-christians command again i'm not endorsing, non-christians should certainly have freedom to worship in the wathe waythey want and so forthi think most of the defenders of the christian right want to

restore america to a christian nation while the symbolism, christian walls that have certain views and so forth i don't think they thought very deeply about liberalism. there are a lot of evangelicals who are thinking about this, just to throw out some names. washington university st. louis law professor, those in the dutch reformed calvinist tradition have thought about this. catholic social teachings, the association of evangelicals. how do we live in a pluralistic society in which our differences are respected i think the christian right -- i talk about this in terms of the dog chasing the bus, they've been chasing the bus for the last 30 or 40 year40years but they haven't tht about what they are going to do when they catch the bus. what do they want, do they want a ten commandments in front of every single city hall or do

they want manger scenes? they don't want to put anybody that has an abortion in jail, so there hasn't been a fully -- there have been ways in which to think about evangelical engagement with people but the christian right seems to want no part of it. so much of the text for who conr ourselves evangelical is at least as much forward-looking as

backward looking in history starting with the call to abraham that is always referenced as a validation for this is the promis promised youo construct on the behavior and thought patterns because this happened you can believe that this will happen. so, what does -- and i get that it's a squishy term especially with regards to the 2016 election, but what have you seen as the worst of the engagement between their beliefs versus what we actually operate on on a day-to-day basis? >> this is what i get at with this whole issue of fear. all of these categories, fear the nostalgia, i separate them, but the they also have played together. maybe a psychologist would be

better at this, but nostalgia is this idea like it's safe. that'that's the timeat the timed better. my way of viewing the world was privileged. so that is still a dominant theme that dominates american evangelicalism. this kind of longing for the golden aggolden age of there arn some who may not be at the front lines of kind of targeting america as a christian nation that just take this idea for granted. again this is part of the political playbook. it certainly isn't a coincidence that jerry falwell and 76 was running around with a liberty baptist college at the time required to bring to every state capital during the god and country rallies talking about the founding fathers on america's bicentennial. so again, that's kind of

nostalgia creates this kind of longing for the lost world and i would agree with you, it is in deed a religion of hope. i need to be careful with the audience here. i know some of you might take this the wrong way but evangelicals and christians of all types believe in the kingdom of god. when betsy uses the word everyone freaks out. they say you want to become an education secretary so you can take over and bring the kingdom of god but that is an in-house term, that is a church term and it means that one day we will be with the lord in a way in which all will be made new. i am not the theological stripe without getting too much into the weeds of thinking we as

evangelical christians should be doing our best despite the brokenness of the world to be able to lead out with this kingdom will one day look like you can do they kingdom come they will be done on earth as it is in heaven. we have a responsibility it's sort of what would the world look like if jesus the king. the world as someone said before, compassion, love, mercy, justice. that's what evangelical christians need to be considering more and that is always a forward-looking idea. >> i read the first chapter of the book last night and i was thinking about nfa george washington students last year and she and i have talked over the years and she is a resident

advisor and actually asked me about political situations in which the student is concerned because his or her parents are depressed about the racis resuli said to her why don't you just have your student call off the defense counsel and they can do something else where they live. the sense that i get from her and her friends is that young people are just not interested at all in this legalistic approach to religion. while it may win a few court cases and even get this latest justice confirmed, they are not going to get people in the churches until they decide to start a family and get back to church. what do you think?

>> the average voter from what i've seen and i think i put this into book, it was 57-years-old. i think most of the evangelicals who voted for donald trump, by the way that is 81% of white evangelical voters let's just keep this clear. it could be a lot higher or lower. teaching and encountering these kind of students is that their parents and their grandparents were schooled again back in the falwell playbook. they came of age politically when they were supposed to do this, vote for the right candidates to get the right supreme court justices. i have two young daughters who

are very kind of socially active and evangelical. i don't see them necessarily sacrificing things like pro-life and abortion and things like that, but they are taking a much more come and i mentioned this in the question before, a full understanding of what life is. which were concerned about the environment, social justice issues and so forth. i think they call it in the book i can't remember if it was in the booklet talks, i live about half an hour, 45 minutes north of gettysburg. i think this is kind of a charge throughout american history you've had these sometimes strongest of the political movements fighting outfit have one last gasp and sometimes it is effective for most wins the

day that i'm a historian, i am not a prophet or futurist in any way but i wonder if that is what we may see among the next generation of evangelical young people. >> going forward i know myself into a lot of my friends around my age definitely anticipated the vice president having a bigger more public full then perhaps he's had so far. where does the vice president fit into all of this? >> from a purely political point of view, this pic of mike pence with a masterful political move. his bedrock faith and kind of conservative he says i'm just a christian, second conservative family member come is that how it goes?

the fact that they can parachute him in if you will to the convention and give a talk at the convention clears the way for him. the fact that one of the big supporters sends a letter to be read at the freedom sunday service at the first baptist church in dallas he can speak the language in a way donald trump can't. he softens him among evangelicals and, you know i just think he may not be as active a vice president as dick cheney or something like that. but certainly symbolically i don't want to go too far but he almost sort of plays the role in this kind of evangelical fortress that stands behind trump and says he's okay. so i think he plays a significant role among the branches of evangelicals. purely political. it was a great pick.

andover chris christie. someone like that. yes it was brilliant on that front. the my name is dave and i wrote a blog called the wandering eagle. two quick questions i want to ask. i'm more towards the edge of the evangelical scene but one thing i've noticed is the draw towards authoritarian figures. i can think about mark driscoll and i wondered if that was possibly part of what happened. i was wondering if you can talk about that and the other question i have as well is i've interacted with people who because of the donald trump phenomena are actually kind of pushing back from evangelicals

and christianity. it's been so toxic and poisonous i just wondered if you can do stuff in regards to the issue that is growing. >> the first question was authoritarianism. one of the things throughout history when people are afraid of it is any guide of this i think history is a limited discipline. i was debating this with my daughter last night at dinner table. she was saying while, you know, historically history shows this and i said history might show that this has happened before, but we need something beyond history to tell us whether that is good or bad that that happened. but it sort of shows that people that are afraid tend to put a blanket covered over all the

evangelicals i've been trying to do that all day to make sure we don't do that but people often turn to strongman. i think trump in many ways is a political strongman. i think that this is back in the fall of 2016 "the new york times" columnist was here speaking at the psychology and he actually compared the fear among american evangelicals to the fear of serious and isis turning towards the al-assad. that was an interesting comparison for a public intellectual to make in public. i don't want to say that they've always turned to strongman. but if you look at the early 20th century history of the evangelical movement, you have some very powerful man, christian evangelical strongman

who have a large following. they built these empires of people who listen to every word they say so there certainly is an authoritarian tendency in the history of american evangelicalism so that shouldn't surprise us if trump can convince them that he is going to deliver. i will protect you. there's all kinds of other candidates that are just as fear mongering. when antonin scalia died, ted cruz was running around saying if you don't elect hillary clinton, the government is going to start chiseling stars of david off of tombstones and the world will be on a cliff. to me that was just blatant sort of fear mongering but what is

interesting, they felt that they could protect him much better in some ways a and there's a lot of debate we could have over why in the primaries they chose trump so you are right to make that connection. in terms of the question of people leaving evangelicals i know a lot of people who were kind of you know, abandoning ship. i'm not quite sure what that means because when i talk to people they say i'm not an evangelical anymore and i would bring up you believe those things that i just mentioned before and they say of course i do. so this all needs to be sorted out, but i wrote when i introduced the term core of evangelicals i did it in a "washington post" piece in which i also talked about the realignment of american protestant christianity or christianity in general that we have seen with trump. i think you are going to find and this iagain this is me justt

falling. i think you are going to find a lot of progressive evangelicals were even sort of moderate evangelicals in the 19% who are going to start to have more in common with mainline protestants or catholics with these kind of things. we will see how it all develops. i am a historian and i prefer to comment on this. that is what is awkward for me e in the book are used to commenting on things 50 years after they have been. so this is a little bit of a departure for in a book like this, but thank you for the question. perfect last question. paul, one of my former students. >> it's always good to see you. [inaudible] [laughter] you talked a little bit about during the talk and also you blogged about this as well, the evangelicals i was curious if

you could comment a little bit further in terms of what their role is whether it is to maintain a certain level of positive pr, the cultural war or if they have more specific favors that they are after. >> i don't know if everyone is familiar, i used the term now court to evangelicals. i draw from that kind of sort of ancient or they should save late medieval renaissance era court years who flattered the king, never kind is the king or queen in some cases of the monarch that they were wrong. i think that there is a group of those right now most are on his evangelical advisory council. some of them believe donald trump is anointed by god and others are just kind of left overs from the old christian right who are still around.

others are part of the prosperity gospel movement and be attracted to the kind of success. nevertheless, i think it was very telling after charlottesville last august when one of the cour the court evang, an african-american pastor in manhattan named a r. bernard decided after charlottesville, enough. i can never associate myself with him. he went on cnn and he said that he was asked why did you quit and he described what was going on in those meetings. he said so far they've been nothing but photo ops, southeass that they can send it to their followers. no one is addressing some of the key issues beyond abortion and religious liberty. i don't know what's happening in those meetings, so i want to be

fair. i'm sure the court evangelicals were influential in moving the embassy, the israeli embassy to traverse a lump. i'm sure they have been advising him, that i think that they are using him to get their war agenda and donald trump is using them. i talk about in the book is a history, a recent history starting with billy graham and richard nixon when the evangelicals get too close to political power, they get burned. and it means it hurts their witness. what they should be doing in society. grant wagner, the biographer of billy graham put it this way, and i'm paraphrasing but he says when almost everyone in the nation had abandoned nixon after watergate, billy graham was still holding on.

so there are lessons there that can be learned about getting too close to political power that the court evangelicals seem to do. even with the immigrants there were some who broke. franklin graham called it despicable or something to that effect. samuel rodriguez of the hispanic evangelical community has always defended himself as a quart evangelical but would always break on immigration issues with trump and there's a couple others but the majority still held the line and they did something where they had these caveat filled responses. like i said before, if were of course it's a bad idea to separate children from their parents at the border. it'spend five or ten minutes how great donald trump is despite this kind of thing or they've remained completely silent.

i'm kind of, call me whatever you want, i'm crazy on this and i monitored their twitter feed. it's amazing to see how silent they are on certain issues but they are quick to speak out on certain others. so yeah, read the book. i develop it a little more in there. thank you everyone. i'm happy to sign on some books. [inaudible conversations] ..